Discover the importance of literature review in research and learn more about why it is held in such high regard by research scholars.

If you are a student conducting academic research or a research professional, you must have noticed how as soon as you come up with a research topic or idea, the very next step in the research process is Literature Review.

Even before you start penning down your title you have to first conduct a literature review and then you can start drafting your research. But why is it so important? What is a literature review? Let's get to learn more about it in detail.

Literature Review in Research:

Literature Review in essence is about gathering the relevant or correct information for the subject that you are studying through your research.

Suppose you want to study Global Warming or conduct research on it, you must first run a complete search for all the relevant information you can gather about it from secondary sources like the internet, academic books, documentaries, or talk shows hosted about the same or similar articles that have been worked on before previously. 

You could have a complete idea as to what you want to document in your research and how you want to give out apt information from your research paper, but you cannot do so without first gathering all the common facts and knowledge that exist to support your ideas or theory. 

When you gather relevant information for a particular subject I.e your research, what you do is collect as much information using secondary sources.

Not only this but you also refer to previously conducted research on the same subject or similar fields of interest for your research. So literature review is also a comprehensive summary of previously done research work. 

But is the goal to copy-paste or plagiarise the information found in previous research? The answer is no. It would make your research unethical and merely a copy of the previously done research with no newness to your research.

Literature review in the literal sense means reviewing the literature so you can find useful information for whatever purpose you need it.

It is more about educating yourself with vast knowledge about your chosen particular subject matter so that you can justify and prove your research with the support of these backing pieces of information.

So what literature review is about is surveying scholarly articles, books, and other sources which are relevant to your particular subject matter.

When you search for relevant data for your research you are conducting a literature review to educate yourself about your research topic in detail. 

As per the definition, “ A Literature Review is a text of scholarly paper which includes substantive findings as well as theoretical and methodological contributions to a particular topic”.

What this means is not only can you find relevant data but you can also find out how to go about doing and conducting your research by understanding the processes adopted by other researchers, etc.

There are a few features of the Literature Review and they are:

1. Literature reviews, reviews, and surveys are secondary sources of information and do not deal with any new or original work. It always deals with previously conducted research or already existing pieces of information.

2. The literature review can establish the foundation of the whole research by being a precursor to it or can be an entire research study in itself due to the vast field that it is.

3. The literature review critically examines in-depth previously conducted research work.

4. It is a summary or synopsis of a particular area of research as the whole subject matter being studied gets surveyed and reviewed. 

5. It allows the reader of your research to understand why you are taking up this particular topic to study or research.

6. Literature Review acknowledges the work of previous researchers and by mentioning the previous study or giving credit to it as a reference study, it is assumed that the current researcher has read, evaluated, and assimilated the work of the previous researcher in his/her research. 

Now that we understand what a literature review does, let us understand why is literature review so crucial to any research work:

The Purpose of Literature Review:

1. The most important purpose of the literature review is to avoid duplication of previously conducted research work in a case of similar work as the present one is already done by some researchers. As discussed above, copy-pasting or plagiarising the information found in previous research would make your research unethical and merely a copy of the previously done research with no newness to your research. 

2. To come up with an alternative way of conducting a slightly different study in a case similar work is already done but has to be carried out for some reason. The reason behind this is all research is empirical and you will get the same results as previously researched if nothing about yours and the previous one is different. Also, another factor is duplication of work will develop no new findings on the same work. You could slightly modify your research and conduct it to find a new angle to it and can successfully avoid duplication of work too.

3. To fill Gaps in Research by incorporating objectives. You can add objectives that you want to achieve once you have a fair idea of all the information you could get from the literature review and make your research more complete.

4. To effectively formulate a hypothesis based on all the previous findings. What this means is that when you conduct a literature review you get a fair idea of what could be your alleged conclusion. This helps you formulate your hypothesis because the literature review helped you guide your train of thought to an assumption about what the conclusion could be. 

5. To test the efficiency of the suggested course of action in previous work. As discussed earlier, you can not only find relevant information but can also find methods of conducting your research from previous works of a researcher and you can put this to the test to see how effective it is.

6. To get rid of methodological errors or problems faced by previous researchers from earlier studies. You can certainly learn what not to do from the works of previous researchers to make your current research more efficient and on-point.

7. To refine methodology as per suggestions of improvement from previous researchers. You can keep in mind all the suggestions from researchers to make your research better and more advanced.

8. To add a new dimension to the study base of research. Since you're not duplicating anyone’s work, you are contributing to new development in your subject matter and area of study.

9. To have an idea of tools of analysis used by previous researchers in their study. Previous work becomes your guiding force.

10. To build Theory. A literature review helps you to develop a deeper understanding of the subject matter you are researching and gives you new directions that you wish to explore in the form of new theories. 

11. To structure the report. A literature review helps you with objectives, hypothesis, methodology, tools of analysis, and theory, and in a way, your complete research report takes structure because of your literature review.

Let us now understand what are the Objectives of the Literature Review:

1. As discussed earlier, a review of the literature is done to know what research works have already been done on the topic or related field of research that the researcher wants to presently work on. Because the purpose of the Literature review talks about avoiding duplication of work and make room for new authentic studies. There is no point in conducting the same research over and over again because it would lead you to the same results. You must find new versions of the same to study and research about or question a newer development in the same subject matter and that will be considered new research. 

2. A review of research papers is done to know about the thrust of the issue. The whole point of conducting a literature review is to get a deeper understanding of the subject matter that the researcher wants to know more about. The basic aim of conducting a literature review is to gather relevant information that would help back up the topic chosen by the researcher to study. Once the researcher gets a fair idea of what the topic is about, the researcher can further move on to conducting the research in detail. Reviewing the literature or surveying extensively helps the researcher in getting a complete summary or synopsis of the subject matter that the researcher wants to know more about and wants to conduct his/her research on.

3. It helps in understanding present research in a better way. This is because the work conducted by previous researchers helps the current researcher understand more about what would work and what would not work for his/ her current research. The work of a previous researcher acts as a guiding force for the current research by literally giving directions to the current research by helping the researcher understand how to formulate a hypothesis, how to come up with the theory, what objectives should be worked on, what methodology should be used and which one should be avoided, etc. 

The four main objectives of the literature review are:

1. It surveys the literature in your chosen area of study.

2. It synthesizes the information in the literature into a summary.

3. It critically analyses the information by identifying gaps, showing limitations, and formulating and reviewing areas.

4. It presents literature in an organized way.

The steps for conducting a literature review are:

1. Choose a Topic and Define your Research Question. It is very important to first come up with a clear topic in your mind and a solid research question that you wish to answer by conducting your research. If you are confused about your research question and if your topic is vague and vast, you will not be able to narrow down the scope of your research to a more focused one.

2. Decide on the scope of your review. If you start surveying climate change chances are you will find global information. You will have to decide to what extent you wish to explore and review the literature. Are you having a specific geographical boundary where you want to review literature only up to a particular country’s database, or are you targeting a group of countries, etc? You will have to know specifically just how much you are willing to review and what would suit your study. An extensive literature review can do more harm than good to your research.

3. Select the Database you will use to conduct your searches. Do you wish to survey literature from books, the internet, documentaries, informative podcasts, etc will all depend on what database you choose to get all your information from. For example, if you are conducting a study that requires population studies you will have to pick a population survey database and stick to it for the entire research.

4. Conduct your searches and find the literature. You will be loaded with tons of information and you would not need all of it when you search for your subject matter. It would be crucial to filter information and pick out the literature that best suits your research and is relevant to it.

5. Review the Literature- frame some questions to help you analyze your research.  Now that you have your literature sorted out to use for your research, make sure you frame research questions and then present the information found in these reviews as your backing answers to the same. It gives your research a more structured and systematic approach rather than just overloading information throughout your research. 

We hope this article helped us understand why a Literature review is so crucial in research and why you must conduct it ethically and systematically for optimum results.