when conducting a literature review authors should consult with librarians

• University of Texas Libraries

Literature Reviews

Steps in the literature review process.

• What is a literature review?
• Define your research question
• Determine inclusion and exclusion criteria
• Choose databases and search
• Review Results
• Synthesize Results
• Analyze Results
• Librarian Support
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools
• You may need to some exploratory searching of the literature to get a sense of scope, to determine whether you need to narrow or broaden your focus
• Identify databases that provide the most relevant sources, and identify relevant terms (controlled vocabularies) to add to your search strategy
• Finalize your research question
• Think about relevant dates, geographies (and languages), methods, and conflicting points of view
• Conduct searches in the published literature via the identified databases
• Check to see if this topic has been covered in other discipline's databases
• Examine the citations of on-point articles for keywords, authors, and previous research (via references) and cited reference searching.
• Save your search results in a citation management tool (such as Zotero, Mendeley or EndNote)
• De-duplicate your search results
• Make sure that you've found the seminal pieces -- they have been cited many times, and their work is considered foundational 
• Check with your professor or a librarian to make sure your search has been comprehensive
• Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of individual sources and evaluate for bias, methodologies, and thoroughness
• Group your results in to an organizational structure that will support why your research needs to be done, or that provides the answer to your research question  
• Develop your conclusions
• Are there gaps in the literature?
• Where has significant research taken place, and who has done it?
• Is there consensus or debate on this topic?
• Which methodological approaches work best?
• For example: Background, Current Practices, Critics and Proponents, Where/How this study will fit in 
• Organize your citations and focus on your research question and pertinent studies
• Compile your bibliography

Note: The first four steps are the best points at which to contact a librarian. Your librarian can help you determine the best databases to use for your topic, assess scope, and formulate a search strategy.

Videos Tutorials about Literature Reviews

This 4.5 minute video from Academic Education Materials has a Creative Commons License and a British narrator.

Recommended Reading

• Last Updated: Oct 23, 2024 11:46 AM
• URL: https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/literaturereviews

Environmental Health Sciences

• Databases (General)
• Subject-Specific Resources
• Health Statistics
• Searching Other Databases - Embase
• Searching Other Databases - Web of Science
• Writing, Citing, & Research This link opens in a new window
• Citation Management
• Evaluating Sources
• Copyright & Publishing
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Library Contact

Frequently Asked Questions

What kind of literature review is appropriate for my research question?    This will depend on your area of research, but in the health sciences, you will most often rely on scholarly journal articles, patents, conference proceedings, & data sets.  You also may need to use books, newspaper articles, & new media, such as Twitter & blog posts.

How much literature should I use?    There is no standard answer to this question, but make sure that you have enough literature to tell your story. You may find examples in the workshops that are occasionally given for graduate students by the Rackham Graduate School & English Language Institute. Discuss this question with your advisor & peers.

How will I find all appropriate information to inform my research?    You should consult multiple databases & resources appropriate for your research area so that you can have a comprehensive view of the research that has already been done in your area. Browse the research guides for your department or subject for databases & other resources recommended for your specific area.  Also consult with your informationist at the Taubman Health Sciences Library to determine the resources you should investigate.

Do I need to document my searches in any way?   If you are going to publish this project, then the answer is a most emphatic "yes," as you'll need to include a description of your searches in the methodology section.  Even if this is just a class research project, keeping track of the search strategies that you used can help you prevent making the same mistake twice. At the least, you'll want to include y) our final search strategy for each database, 2) the number of records deleting duplicates, 3) (depending on the type of review that you're doing) the number of articles that were relevant to your topic & were used in your study. Consult an informationist for specific examples

How will I evaluate the literature to include trustworthy information and eliminate unnecessary or untrustworthy information?    Start with scholarly sources, such as peer-reviewed journal articles & books. Always pay attention to creditability of the source(s) & the author(s) you cite. Citation analysis ( http://guides.lib.umich.edu/citeanalysis & http://guides.lib.umich.edu/citation ) can be useful to check the creditability of sources & authors.

How should I organize my literature? What citation management program is best for me?    Citation management software, such as EndNote, Mendeley, & Zotero, helps you collect & organize references & easily insert citations & format citations & bibliographies in thousands of styles in your Word document.

To choose the program that's right for you, consider which one works best with your literature search & writing process. This guide compares different types of citation management software & provides tutorials for each type. You may also ask your liaison librarian for advice.

How do I ensure academic integrity (i.e., avoid plagiarism)?    Familiarize yourself with different types of intentional and unintentional plagiarism and learn about the University's standards for academic integrity. Start with this guide .  Remember, citation management tools can help you avoid unintentional plagiarism by making it easy to collect & cite sources.