How to best organize your literature review?

Well, the answer is the best way that presents itself after you've done all your reviews.

But there are some common organizational patterns that will probably be of use to you.

And the first of those is the chronological.

You can divide things into decades or half decades.

You can say, well, in the 1950s, they thought autism was caused by cold mothering and bad parenting.

And in the 1960s, they thought, oh, autism is a psychological illness of unknown origin.

And then in the 1990s and today in the 2000s, we say, oh, autism is caused by a genetic susceptibility triggered by an environmental toxin.

And so we have put in chronology the major studies and major authors and researchers along the way, chronology.

Another way is through advancement.

You can say, well, here we have the beginning of nanotechnology.

Here are the researchers, here are the scientists that gave the first breakthroughs in nanotechnology.

And then came this next set of studies, this next set of researchers who gave us the next breakthrough in nanotechnology.

And then this one.

And now here we are today, and that's where your paper begins, breakthroughs, advancements.

You've also got geographical.

Let's say you were doing the modern day slave trade in a research paper.

You could say, well, in the Near East, here are research studies and reports about the modern day slave trade in the Near East.

Here are the research studies and the reports, and this is what the past people have said about the modern day slave trade in Europe, and then Asia, and then Euro-Asia.

In other words, you're taking a geographical approach to everything that's been studied and said about that narrow topic of modern day slave trade.

There are individual ones like questions, for example.

This is something that is often presented to yourself.

What are the major questions in relationship to this topic that have been addressed by researchers through the years?

You figure out what those major questions are by doing your reviews, and then you simply put them in order.

For example, here's an example of a student who did this.

Now, here is her paper.

Here is her introduction to the literature review, and what's the first thing that you see right there?

You see her statement of the four questions that have been addressed over the years by past researchers in relationship to this issue, this topic, and then sure enough, down at the bottom of the page, she begins addressing the first question.

You flip a couple of pages later, and up at the top of the page, you see the second question.

Flip another couple of pages, the third question.

Flip another couple of pages, the fourth question, and in between those questions, she has put in order her summaries of the sources that address each of those questions, and that's a literature review.

Now, the last thing we want to talk about when it comes to the literature review is how you're actually going to write the darn thing, the writing process that you will use.

Well, you have probably figured out it's going to be pretty close to the same process that you use for writing any research project.

First thing you're going to do is to collect your sources, but now because this is an academic research review, the sources that you collect are going to be academic, peer-reviewed sources for the most part, so that means you're going to be going to the databases in places like the UMUC library.

You're going to be going to the private web where the subscription journals are, as opposed to the open web where a lot of consumer newsy type information is, so that's the first thing you're going to do is go to the places, collect your sources.

If your requirement is to review 20 sources, you're going to have to collect 30 or 40 because you're going to be narrowing them out in this next step, and the next step is to analyze them.

Notice I did not say read them, because you don't begin by simply reading every source.

You first start out at this 24,000 foot view of your collection that you've gotten, and you gradually narrow in on them by skimming and scanning, reading the titles, the chapter titles, the subhead, the other sources, the abstracts of them, and by doing that, you are calling out.

You're saying, no, these are not going to be of any use to me, yes, these I am going to keep.

They do fit.

They are going to be of use, and then as you get closer, then you will extend your reading to word-for-word analytical reading, and then once you have really found stuff that is truly relevant to your topic, that's when you start taking notes.

That's when you start writing out citations.

That's when you have found the material that you're actually going to be using in your research study, but notice that you've zoomed in skimming and scanning, and then only gradually do you get down to word-for-word reading.

Keep that in mind about your research analysis of your sources.

The next thing you're going to do is, of course, arrange them, and we talked about some ways that you could arrange them, and the reason I'm repeating this step is that now that you've analyzed them, now that you've taken snapshots of each one that is relevant, I bet you you're going to start seeing patterns, whether it's the question pattern, the chronology pattern, the breakthrough pattern, whatever pattern, you've got to find one, and you make an outline, and underneath each major point in that outline, you list the sources that go in each major point, whether it's decade or breakthrough or geographical region, you list the major sources that go there, and then you've got your last step, and in your last step, you simply work your way through your outline, summarizing your sources and providing transitional connections between each source as you move through your outline, so there you go.

There's the big picture of how to write your literature review.

Once you get it done, once you have established this firm basis on which you can stand, you've got a clear understanding of the past, so that you can move forward with your ideas into the present and the future.

That's the literature review, good luck with it, and don't hesitate to get in contact with us if we can help you with anything, on anything related to this literature review.

Okay, good luck.