On this page:
What is a (systematic) literature review?
Other pages:
Search strategy and search techniques
Selecting and evaluating sources
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This LibGuide helps you set up a (systematic) literature review. In this LibGuide you focus on one (sub)question. The pages of this LibGuide correspond to the first five steps of the 'step-by-step plan for a systematic literature review' (see box below).
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A (systematic) literature review is a literature review specially designed to select and assess individual studies which relate to a specific research question and to combine the results. This must be done in a clear and reproducible way.
A systematic literature review includes:
So: a (systematic) literature review is an overview of all available (empirical) studies around a specific research question (if necessary viewed within a certain period). In particular for newcomers in a certain research field such an overview can be of enormous help. Also the fact that the results of certain studies are clustered leads to a good quality answer to your research question.
1. Formulate a research question (including determining the inclusion criteria)
2. Choose your databases and carry out a literature search
3. Get hold of the full text of the relevant literature and check against your inclusion criteria
4. Select the literature you found on relevance (based on title and abstract)
5. Do a quality check: check the relevant literature on scholarly reliability (based on full text)
6. Data extraction: extract data from the relevant studies
7. Data analysis and data synthesis: interpreting the data from the different studies and trying to cluster the results so that it leads to an answer to the research question
8. Writing and editing your literature review
N.B. Steps 6, 7 and 8 will not be dealt with in this libguide, but remain part of your research plan.