How to write a literature review, with a worked example

1What a literature review is for

"Literature" here means the published work on your topic: journal articles, books, reports, sometimes government documents. A review discusses that work as a body. The University of North Carolina's Writing Center draws the key distinction: a summary recaps each source, while a synthesis reorganises the information, tracing debates, combining interpretations and showing how the field has moved.

A review can be a paper in itself or a section of a larger one. In a dissertation or proposal it has an extra job: to show where your question fits. The University of Westminster's dissertation guide describes the movement from general background towards your specific focus, ending with the gap your research aims to fill.

2Searching and keeping records

Before you search, clarify the brief: how many sources, what kinds, and whether you are expected to evaluate them or only synthesise. Then narrow the topic. A narrow question keeps the reading manageable, and nobody expects you to read everything ever published.

Search your library's databases with a few combinations of key terms, and look for existing reviews in your area: they show what themes others found and how they organised them. The reference lists of good sources are often the fastest way to the next ones. Check how current your sources need to be. In fast-moving fields an older study may be out of date; in history or the humanities, how thinking changed over time may be the point.

Keep a record of every source as you read it: the full citation, the main argument, the method, the key findings and one line on how it relates to your question. An annotated bibliography is exactly that record, and it makes the writing far quicker.

3Reading for themes

As you read, look for what connects your sources. Do they offer competing explanations? Do they use the same method and reach different results? Is there a question none of them asks? Those connections become the sections of your review.

UNC's handout sets out the main ways to organise the body:

• Thematic: around topics or issues, the most common choice.
• Chronological or by trend: when the change over time is itself the story.
• Methodological: around how the research was done, when method explains the differences in findings.

Whichever you choose, the review still needs an introduction that states its focus and organising principle, a body that discusses the sources, and a conclusion that says what the review shows and where the discussion goes next.

4Writing the synthesis

Write each paragraph around a point, not a source. Open with your claim about the literature, bring in two or three sources that support or complicate it, and close with what that means for your topic. Your voice frames the paragraph; the sources are the evidence inside it.

Be selective: mention only the parts of each source that matter to your focus. Use quotations sparingly, since a survey of many sources rarely has room for them, and paraphrase carefully, keeping the author's meaning and crediting it. If you are unsure where paraphrase ends, read paraphrasing, quoting and AI rewriting.

5Worked example

The two paragraphs below are written for this guide, and the studies are invented, so they are described rather than cited. Both cover the same three studies on part-time work and student grades.

Summary (weak): The first study surveyed 400 students and found that working more than 15 hours a week lowered grades. The second study interviewed 30 students and found that work improved time management. The third study used university records and found no effect.

Synthesis (strong): Research on part-time work and grades disagrees, and the disagreement tracks method. Large surveys tend to find harm above a threshold of weekly hours, while interview studies report benefits to time management that surveys do not measure. A records-based study found no effect at all, which suggests that the measure of "grades" itself may explain some of the conflict. What none of these studies separates is the type of job.

The second version makes a claim about the literature, groups the sources by method, explains the disagreement and ends on a gap. That last sentence is where a research question comes from.

6Common mistakes

• Listing sources one by one instead of grouping them.
• Describing studies without saying what they mean together.
• Leaving out the sources that disagree with you.
• Ending without stating the gap or the direction the discussion should take.
• Citing a source you have not read, including any suggested by an AI tool that you have not checked exists.

AI tools can help you find search terms and map a debate, but they can also invent references. Read literature reviews with AI before you rely on one. If your review is part of a larger project, see the research proposal and dissertation guides, or go back to all guides.

7Our method

We wrote this page from the University of North Carolina Writing Center's handout on literature reviews and the University of Westminster's dissertation structure guide, each read at the source on 9 November 2026 and listed under Sources below. Every rule or figure on the page comes from one of them; advice that is our own judgement is written as advice, and examples written for this page are labelled as invented. When we update the page we re-check each source, and the date at the top shows the last check.

8FAQ