As you are writing and note-taking, begin practicing good citation-habits so you are not scrambling at the end to shoddily construct your reference list. When note-taking, it is good to have a running reference section of all the literature that you are working with so that whenever you add information, you can immediately proffer the full citation. Moreover, avoiding plagiarism will be much easier if you are clear in distinguishing between another author’s insight and your own. When quoting and paraphrasing directly, make sure to add in the page number so that you can easily refer back to the section and confirm accuracy. This way, when you come to write the review, all the relevant information needed to cite the author properly will be easily available. Other helpful tools include citation generators and trackers such as Mendeley, Papers, or Quiqqa. If this is still unclear, plagiarism checkers like Turnitin can serve as backup tools to ensure that you have not carelessly left another’s words uncited. These tools are by no means perfectly reliable, however, and so the best way to avoid plagiarism is to be intentional and careful in your work.

Now that you have found, read through, and taken notes on the studies that establish the background of your own, it is time to summarize the background of your research as concisely and effectively as possible. This task will often require that you address many different sources of information at once (especially given the space constraints of assignments and journals) (Pautausso, 2013). With this in mind, it is important to learn to synthesize and summarize findings under a key term or topic in a purposeful way; which means that you aim throughout to show the reader a meaningful gap in their field. The literature review is not just an aimless summary of what has been said on a given topic, but a purposeful summary which implicates all of the background information towards your project. The literature review is thus a type of discursive prose: prose which not only lists descriptions, but evaluates the evidence according to your research question (Taylor & Proctor, n.d.). Ask throughout: how does this relate to my research question? Is it a plausible answer to the question? When you know the concepts you are critiquing and the concepts you are supporting, then you can begin to organize the literature review in a purposeful way by establishing the background, articulating the research that your study agrees with, and then tactically challenging what is missing. With the state of knowledge and gaps established, you can propose how you intend to address what is missing. The effectiveness of the last part depends on the rest. In sum, the review answers what is there and what is important for your audience, but with a sense that something is missing, leaving your reader with the impression that something should be done to address this gap. This is where your study comes in.

References

Pautasso, M. (2013). “Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review.” PLOS Computational Biology. Retrieved from https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article/authors?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003149.

Taylor, D & Proctor, M. “The Literature Review: A Few Tips On Conducting It.” UofT Health Sciences Writing Centre. http://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/types-of-writing/literature-review/