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Literature reviews

Writing a literature review.

The following guide has been created for you by the  Student Learning Advisory Service . For more detailed guidance and to speak to one of our advisers, please book an  appointment  or join one of our  workshops . Alternatively, have a look at our  SkillBuilder  skills videos.   

Preparing a literature review involves:

• Searching for reliable, accurate and up-to-date material on a topic or subject
• Reading and summarising the key points from this literature
• Synthesising these key ideas, theories and concepts into a summary of what is known
• Discussing and evaluating these ideas, theories and concepts
• Identifying particular areas of debate or controversy
• Preparing the ground for the application of these ideas to new research

Finding and choosing material

Ensure you are clear on what you are looking for. ask yourself:.

• What is the specific question, topic or focus of my assignment?
• What kind of material do I need (e.g. theory, policy, empirical data)?
• What type of literature is available (e.g. journals, books, government documents)?

What kind of literature is particularly authoritative in this academic discipline (e.g. psychology, sociology, pharmacy)?

How much do you need?

This will depend on the length of the dissertation, the nature of the subject, and the level of study (undergraduate, Masters, PhD). As a very rough rule of thumb – you may choose 8-10 significant pieces (books and/or articles) for an 8,000 word dissertation, up to 20 major pieces of work for 12-15,000 words, and so on. Bear in mind that if your dissertation is based mainly around an interaction with existing scholarship you will need a longer literature review than if it is there as a prelude to new empirical research. Use your judgement or ask your supervisor for guidance.

Where to find suitable material

Your literature review should include a balance between substantial academic books, journal articles and other scholarly publications. All these sources should be as up-to-date as possible, with the exception of ‘classic texts’ such as major works written by leading scholars setting out formative ideas and theories central to your subject. There are several ways to locate suitable material:

Module bibliography: for undergraduate dissertations, look first at the bibliography provided with the module documentation. Choose one or two likely looking books or articles and then scan through the bibliographies provided by these authors. Skim read some of this material looking for clues: can you use these leads to identify key theories and authors or track down other appropriate material?

Library catalogue search engine: enter a few key words to capture a range of items, but avoid over-generalisations; if you type in something as broad as ‘social theory’ you are likely to get several thousand results. Be more specific: for example, ‘Heidegger, existentialism’. Ideally, you should narrow the field to obtain just a few dozen results. Skim through these quickly to identity texts which are most likely to contribute to your study.

Library bookshelves: browse the library shelves in the relevant subject area and examine the books that catch your eye. Check the contents and index pages, or skim through the introductions (or abstracts, in the case of journal articles) to see if they contain relevant material, and replace them if not. Don’t be afraid to ask one of the subject librarians for further help. Your supervisor may also be able to point you in the direction of some of the important literature , but remember this is your literature search, not theirs.

Online: for recent journal articles you will almost certainly need to use one of the online search engines. These can be found on the ‘Indexing Services’ button on the Templeman Library website. Kent students based at Medway still need to use the Templeman pages to access online journals, although you can get to these pages through the Drill Hall Library catalogue. Take a look as well at the Subject Guides on both the Templeman and DHL websites.

Check that you have made the right selection by asking:

• Has my search been wide enough to ensure that I have identified all the relevant material, but narrow enough to exclude irrelevant material?
• Is there a good enough sample of literature for the level (PhD, Masters, undergraduate) of my dissertation or thesis?
• Have I considered as many alternative points of view as possible?
• Will the reader find my literature review relevant and useful?

Assessing the literature

Read the material you have chosen carefully, considering the following:

• The key point discussed by the author: is this clearly defined
• What evidence has the author produced to support this central idea?
• How convincing are the reasons given for the author’s point of view?
• Could the evidence be interpreted in other ways?
• What is the author's research method (e.g. qualitative, quantitative, experimental, etc.)?
• What is the author's theoretical framework (e.g. psychological, developmental, feminist)?
• What is the relationship assumed by the author between theory and practice?
• Has the author critically evaluated the other literature in the field?
• Does the author include literature opposing their point of view?
• Is the research data based on a reliable method and accurate information?
• Can you ‘deconstruct’ the argument – identify the gaps or jumps in the logic?
• What are the strengths and limitations of this study?
• What does this book or article contribute to the field or topic?
• What does this book or article contribute to my own topic or thesis?

As you note down the key content of each book or journal article (together with the reference details of each source) record your responses to these questions. You will then be able to summarise each piece of material from two perspectives:     

Content: a brief description of the content of the book or article. Remember, an author will often make just one key point; so, what is the point they are making, and how does it relate to your own research project or assignment?

Critical analysis: an assessment of the relative strengths and weaknesses of the evidence used, and the arguments presented. Has anything conveniently been left out or skated over? Is there a counter-argument, and has the author dealt with this adequately? Can the evidence presented be interpreted another way? Does the author demonstrate any obvious bias which could affect their reliability? Overall, based on the above analysis of the author’s work, how do you evaluate its contribution to the scholarly understanding and knowledge surrounding the topic?    

Structuring the literature review

In a PhD thesis, the literature review typically comprises one chapter (perhaps 8-10,000 words), for a Masters dissertation it may be around 2-3,000 words, and for an undergraduate dissertation it may be no more than 2,000 words. In each case the word count can vary depending on a range of factors and it is always best, if in doubt, to ask your supervisor.

The overall structure of the section or chapter should be like any other: it should have a beginning, middle and end. You will need to guide the reader through the literature review, outlining the strategy you have adopted for selecting the books or articles, presenting the topic theme for the review, then using most of the word limit to analyse the chosen books or articles thoroughly before pulling everything together briefly in the conclusion.

Some people prefer a less linear approach. Instead of simply working through a list of 8-20 items on your book review list, you might want to try a thematic approach, grouping key ideas, facts, concepts or approaches together and then bouncing the ideas off each other. This is a slightly more creative (and interesting) way of producing the review, but a little more risky as it is harder to establish coherence and logical sequencing.

Whichever approach you adopt, make sure everything flows smoothly – that one idea or book leads neatly to the next. Take your reader effortlessly through a sequence of thought that is clear, accurate, precise and interesting. 

Writing up your literature review

As with essays generally, only attempt to write up the literature review when you have completed all the reading and note-taking, and carefully planned its content and structure. Find an appropriate way of introducing the review, then guide the reader through the material clearly and directly, bearing in mind the following:

• Be selective in the number of points you draw out from each piece of literature; remember that one of your objectives is to demonstrate that you can use your judgement to identify what is central and what is secondary.
• Summarise and synthesise – use your own words to sum up what you think is important or controversial about the book or article.
• Never claim more than the evidence will support. Too many dissertations and theses are let down by sweeping generalisations. Be tentative and careful in the way you interpret the evidence.
• Keep your own voice – you are entitled to your own point of view provided it is based on evidence and clear argument.
• At the same time, aim to project an objective and tentative tone by using the 3rd person, (for example, ‘this tends to suggest’, ‘it could be argued’ and so on).
• Even with a literature review you should avoid using too many, or overlong, quotes. Summarise material in your own words as much as possible. Save the quotes for ‘punch-lines’ to drive a particular point home.
• Revise, revise, revise: refine and edit the draft as much as you can. Check for fluency, structure, evidence, criticality and referencing, and don’t forget the basics of good grammar, punctuation and spelling.

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How To Write A Literature Review - A Complete Guide

Table of Contents

A literature review is much more than just another section in your research paper. It forms the very foundation of your research. It is a formal piece of writing where you analyze the existing theoretical framework, principles, and assumptions and use that as a base to shape your approach to the research question.

Curating and drafting a solid literature review section not only lends more credibility to your research paper but also makes your research tighter and better focused. But, writing literature reviews is a difficult task. It requires extensive reading, plus you have to consider market trends and technological and political changes, which tend to change in the blink of an eye.

Now streamline your literature review process with the help of SciSpace Copilot. With this AI research assistant, you can efficiently synthesize and analyze a vast amount of information, identify key themes and trends, and uncover gaps in the existing research. Get real-time explanations, summaries, and answers to your questions for the paper you're reviewing, making navigating and understanding the complex literature landscape easier.

In this comprehensive guide, we will explore everything from the definition of a literature review, its appropriate length, various types of literature reviews, and how to write one.

What is a literature review?

A literature review is a collation of survey, research, critical evaluation, and assessment of the existing literature in a preferred domain.

Eminent researcher and academic Arlene Fink, in her book Conducting Research Literature Reviews , defines it as the following:

“A literature review surveys books, scholarly articles, and any other sources relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory, and by so doing, provides a description, summary, and critical evaluation of these works in relation to the research problem being investigated.

Literature reviews are designed to provide an overview of sources you have explored while researching a particular topic, and to demonstrate to your readers how your research fits within a larger field of study.”

Simply put, a literature review can be defined as a critical discussion of relevant pre-existing research around your research question and carving out a definitive place for your study in the existing body of knowledge. Literature reviews can be presented in multiple ways: a section of an article, the whole research paper itself, or a chapter of your thesis.

A literature review does function as a summary of sources, but it also allows you to analyze further, interpret, and examine the stated theories, methods, viewpoints, and, of course, the gaps in the existing content.

As an author, you can discuss and interpret the research question and its various aspects and debate your adopted methods to support the claim.

What is the purpose of a literature review?

A literature review is meant to help your readers understand the relevance of your research question and where it fits within the existing body of knowledge. As a researcher, you should use it to set the context, build your argument, and establish the need for your study.

What is the importance of a literature review?

The literature review is a critical part of research papers because it helps you:

• Gain an in-depth understanding of your research question and the surrounding area
• Convey that you have a thorough understanding of your research area and are up-to-date with the latest changes and advancements
• Establish how your research is connected or builds on the existing body of knowledge and how it could contribute to further research
• Elaborate on the validity and suitability of your theoretical framework and research methodology
• Identify and highlight gaps and shortcomings in the existing body of knowledge and how things need to change
• Convey to readers how your study is different or how it contributes to the research area

How long should a literature review be?

Ideally, the literature review should take up 15%-40% of the total length of your manuscript. So, if you have a 10,000-word research paper, the minimum word count could be 1500.

Your literature review format depends heavily on the kind of manuscript you are writing — an entire chapter in case of doctoral theses, a part of the introductory section in a research article, to a full-fledged review article that examines the previously published research on a topic.

Another determining factor is the type of research you are doing. The literature review section tends to be longer for secondary research projects than primary research projects.

What are the different types of literature reviews?

All literature reviews are not the same. There are a variety of possible approaches that you can take. It all depends on the type of research you are pursuing.

Here are the different types of literature reviews:

Argumentative review

It is called an argumentative review when you carefully present literature that only supports or counters a specific argument or premise to establish a viewpoint.

Integrative review

It is a type of literature review focused on building a comprehensive understanding of a topic by combining available theoretical frameworks and empirical evidence.

Methodological review

This approach delves into the ''how'' and the ''what" of the research question —  you cannot look at the outcome in isolation; you should also review the methodology used.

Systematic review

This form consists of an overview of existing evidence pertinent to a clearly formulated research question, which uses pre-specified and standardized methods to identify and critically appraise relevant research and collect, report, and analyze data from the studies included in the review.

Meta-analysis review

Meta-analysis uses statistical methods to summarize the results of independent studies. By combining information from all relevant studies, meta-analysis can provide more precise estimates of the effects than those derived from the individual studies included within a review.

Historical review

Historical literature reviews focus on examining research throughout a period, often starting with the first time an issue, concept, theory, or phenomenon emerged in the literature, then tracing its evolution within the scholarship of a discipline. The purpose is to place research in a historical context to show familiarity with state-of-the-art developments and identify future research's likely directions.

Theoretical Review

This form aims to examine the corpus of theory accumulated regarding an issue, concept, theory, and phenomenon. The theoretical literature review helps to establish what theories exist, the relationships between them, the degree the existing approaches have been investigated, and to develop new hypotheses to be tested.

Scoping Review

The Scoping Review is often used at the beginning of an article, dissertation, or research proposal. It is conducted before the research to highlight gaps in the existing body of knowledge and explains why the project should be greenlit.

State-of-the-Art Review

The State-of-the-Art review is conducted periodically, focusing on the most recent research. It describes what is currently known, understood, or agreed upon regarding the research topic and highlights where there are still disagreements.

Can you use the first person in a literature review?

When writing literature reviews, you should avoid the usage of first-person pronouns. It means that instead of "I argue that" or "we argue that," the appropriate expression would be "this research paper argues that."

Do you need an abstract for a literature review?

Ideally, yes. It is always good to have a condensed summary that is self-contained and independent of the rest of your review. As for how to draft one, you can follow the same fundamental idea when preparing an abstract for a literature review. It should also include:

• The research topic and your motivation behind selecting it
• A one-sentence thesis statement
• An explanation of the kinds of literature featured in the review
• Summary of what you've learned
• Conclusions you drew from the literature you reviewed
• Potential implications and future scope for research

Here's an example of the abstract of a literature review

Is a literature review written in the past tense?

Yes, the literature review should ideally be written in the past tense. You should not use the present or future tense when writing one. The exceptions are when you have statements describing events that happened earlier than the literature you are reviewing or events that are currently occurring; then, you can use the past perfect or present perfect tenses.

How many sources for a literature review?

There are multiple approaches to deciding how many sources to include in a literature review section. The first approach would be to look level you are at as a researcher. For instance, a doctoral thesis might need 60+ sources. In contrast, you might only need to refer to 5-15 sources at the undergraduate level.

The second approach is based on the kind of literature review you are doing — whether it is merely a chapter of your paper or if it is a self-contained paper in itself. When it is just a chapter, sources should equal the total number of pages in your article's body. In the second scenario, you need at least three times as many sources as there are pages in your work.

Quick tips on how to write a literature review

To know how to write a literature review, you must clearly understand its impact and role in establishing your work as substantive research material.

You need to follow the below-mentioned steps, to write a literature review:

• Outline the purpose behind the literature review
• Search relevant literature
• Examine and assess the relevant resources
• Discover connections by drawing deep insights from the resources
• Structure planning to write a good literature review

1. Outline and identify the purpose of  a literature review

As a first step on how to write a literature review, you must know what the research question or topic is and what shape you want your literature review to take. Ensure you understand the research topic inside out, or else seek clarifications. You must be able to the answer below questions before you start:

• How many sources do I need to include?
• What kind of sources should I analyze?
• How much should I critically evaluate each source?
• Should I summarize, synthesize or offer a critique of the sources?
• Do I need to include any background information or definitions?

Additionally, you should know that the narrower your research topic is, the swifter it will be for you to restrict the number of sources to be analyzed.

2. Search relevant literature

Dig deeper into search engines to discover what has already been published around your chosen topic. Make sure you thoroughly go through appropriate reference sources like books, reports, journal articles, government docs, and web-based resources.

You must prepare a list of keywords and their different variations. You can start your search from any library’s catalog, provided you are an active member of that institution. The exact keywords can be extended to widen your research over other databases and academic search engines like:

• Google Scholar
• Microsoft Academic
• Science.gov

Besides, it is not advisable to go through every resource word by word. Alternatively, what you can do is you can start by reading the abstract and then decide whether that source is relevant to your research or not.

Additionally, you must spend surplus time assessing the quality and relevance of resources. It would help if you tried preparing a list of citations to ensure that there lies no repetition of authors, publications, or articles in the literature review.

3. Examine and assess the sources

It is nearly impossible for you to go through every detail in the research article. So rather than trying to fetch every detail, you have to analyze and decide which research sources resemble closest and appear relevant to your chosen domain.

While analyzing the sources, you should look to find out answers to questions like:

• What question or problem has the author been describing and debating?
• What is the definition of critical aspects?
• How well the theories, approach, and methodology have been explained?
• Whether the research theory used some conventional or new innovative approach?
• How relevant are the key findings of the work?
• In what ways does it relate to other sources on the same topic?
• What challenges does this research paper pose to the existing theory
• What are the possible contributions or benefits it adds to the subject domain?

Be always mindful that you refer only to credible and authentic resources. It would be best if you always take references from different publications to validate your theory.

Always keep track of important information or data you can present in your literature review right from the beginning. It will help steer your path from any threats of plagiarism and also make it easier to curate an annotated bibliography or reference section.

4. Discover connections

At this stage, you must start deciding on the argument and structure of your literature review. To accomplish this, you must discover and identify the relations and connections between various resources while drafting your abstract.

A few aspects that you should be aware of while writing a literature review include:

• Rise to prominence: Theories and methods that have gained reputation and supporters over time.
• Constant scrutiny: Concepts or theories that repeatedly went under examination.
• Contradictions and conflicts: Theories, both the supporting and the contradictory ones, for the research topic.
• Knowledge gaps: What exactly does it fail to address, and how to bridge them with further research?
• Influential resources: Significant research projects available that have been upheld as milestones or perhaps, something that can modify the current trends

Once you join the dots between various past research works, it will be easier for you to draw a conclusion and identify your contribution to the existing knowledge base.

5. Structure planning to write a good literature review

There exist different ways towards planning and executing the structure of a literature review. The format of a literature review varies and depends upon the length of the research.

Like any other research paper, the literature review format must contain three sections: introduction, body, and conclusion. The goals and objectives of the research question determine what goes inside these three sections.

Nevertheless, a good literature review can be structured according to the chronological, thematic, methodological, or theoretical framework approach.

Literature review samples

1. Standalone

2. As a section of a research paper

How SciSpace Discover makes literature review a breeze?

SciSpace Discover is a one-stop solution to do an effective literature search and get barrier-free access to scientific knowledge. It is an excellent repository where you can find millions of only peer-reviewed articles and full-text PDF files. Here’s more on how you can use it:

Find the right information

Find what you want quickly and easily with comprehensive search filters that let you narrow down papers according to PDF availability, year of publishing, document type, and affiliated institution. Moreover, you can sort the results based on the publishing date, citation count, and relevance.

Assess credibility of papers quickly

When doing the literature review, it is critical to establish the quality of your sources. They form the foundation of your research. SciSpace Discover helps you assess the quality of a source by providing an overview of its references, citations, and performance metrics.

Get the complete picture in no time

SciSpace Discover’s personalized suggestion engine helps you stay on course and get the complete picture of the topic from one place. Every time you visit an article page, it provides you links to related papers. Besides that, it helps you understand what’s trending, who are the top authors, and who are the leading publishers on a topic.

Make referring sources super easy

To ensure you don't lose track of your sources, you must start noting down your references when doing the literature review. SciSpace Discover makes this step effortless. Click the 'cite' button on an article page, and you will receive preloaded citation text in multiple styles — all you've to do is copy-paste it into your manuscript.

Final tips on how to write a literature review

A massive chunk of time and effort is required to write a good literature review. But, if you go about it systematically, you'll be able to save a ton of time and build a solid foundation for your research.

We hope this guide has helped you answer several key questions you have about writing literature reviews.

Would you like to explore SciSpace Discover and kick off your literature search right away? You can get started here .

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. how to start a literature review.

• What questions do you want to answer?

• What sources do you need to answer these questions?

• What information do these sources contain?

• How can you use this information to answer your questions?

2. What to include in a literature review?

• A brief background of the problem or issue

• What has previously been done to address the problem or issue

• A description of what you will do in your project

• How this study will contribute to research on the subject

3. Why literature review is important?

The literature review is an important part of any research project because it allows the writer to look at previous studies on a topic and determine existing gaps in the literature, as well as what has already been done. It will also help them to choose the most appropriate method for their own study.

4. How to cite a literature review in APA format?

To cite a literature review in APA style, you need to provide the author's name, the title of the article, and the year of publication. For example: Patel, A. B., & Stokes, G. S. (2012). The relationship between personality and intelligence: A meta-analysis of longitudinal research. Personality and Individual Differences, 53(1), 16-21

5. What are the components of a literature review?

• A brief introduction to the topic, including its background and context. The introduction should also include a rationale for why the study is being conducted and what it will accomplish.

• A description of the methodologies used in the study. This can include information about data collection methods, sample size, and statistical analyses.

• A presentation of the findings in an organized format that helps readers follow along with the author's conclusions.

6. What are common errors in writing literature review?

• Not spending enough time to critically evaluate the relevance of resources, observations and conclusions.

• Totally relying on secondary data while ignoring primary data.

• Letting your personal bias seep into your interpretation of existing literature.

• No detailed explanation of the procedure to discover and identify an appropriate literature review.

7. What are the 5 C's of writing literature review?

• Cite - the sources you utilized and referenced in your research.

• Compare - existing arguments, hypotheses, methodologies, and conclusions found in the knowledge base.

• Contrast - the arguments, topics, methodologies, approaches, and disputes that may be found in the literature.

• Critique - the literature and describe the ideas and opinions you find more convincing and why.

• Connect - the various studies you reviewed in your research.

8. How many sources should a literature review have?

When it is just a chapter, sources should equal the total number of pages in your article's body. if it is a self-contained paper in itself, you need at least three times as many sources as there are pages in your work.

9. Can literature review have diagrams?

• To represent an abstract idea or concept

• To explain the steps of a process or procedure

• To help readers understand the relationships between different concepts

10. How old should sources be in a literature review?

Sources for a literature review should be as current as possible or not older than ten years. The only exception to this rule is if you are reviewing a historical topic and need to use older sources.

11. What are the types of literature review?

• Argumentative review

• Integrative review

• Methodological review

• Systematic review

• Meta-analysis review

• Historical review

• Theoretical review

• Scoping review

• State-of-the-Art review

12. Is a literature review mandatory?

Yes. Literature review is a mandatory part of any research project. It is a critical step in the process that allows you to establish the scope of your research, and provide a background for the rest of your work.

But before you go,

• Six Online Tools for Easy Literature Review
• Evaluating literature review: systematic vs. scoping reviews
• Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review
• Writing Integrative Literature Reviews: Guidelines and Examples

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• How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

Published on January 2, 2023 by Shona McCombes . Revised on September 11, 2023.

What is a literature review? A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research that you can later apply to your paper, thesis, or dissertation topic .

There are five key steps to writing a literature review:

• Search for relevant literature
• Evaluate sources
• Identify themes, debates, and gaps
• Outline the structure
• Write your literature review

A good literature review doesn’t just summarize sources—it analyzes, synthesizes , and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

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Table of contents

What is the purpose of a literature review, examples of literature reviews, step 1 – search for relevant literature, step 2 – evaluate and select sources, step 3 – identify themes, debates, and gaps, step 4 – outline your literature review’s structure, step 5 – write your literature review, free lecture slides, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions, introduction.

• Quick Run-through
• Step 1 & 2

When you write a thesis , dissertation , or research paper , you will likely have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:

• Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and its scholarly context
• Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
• Position your work in relation to other researchers and theorists
• Show how your research addresses a gap or contributes to a debate
• Evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of the scholarly debates around your topic.

Writing literature reviews is a particularly important skill if you want to apply for graduate school or pursue a career in research. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below.

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See an example

Writing literature reviews can be quite challenging! A good starting point could be to look at some examples, depending on what kind of literature review you’d like to write.

• Example literature review #1: “Why Do People Migrate? A Review of the Theoretical Literature” ( Theoretical literature review about the development of economic migration theory from the 1950s to today.)
• Example literature review #2: “Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines” ( Methodological literature review about interdisciplinary knowledge acquisition and production.)
• Example literature review #3: “The Use of Technology in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Thematic literature review about the effects of technology on language acquisition.)
• Example literature review #4: “Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Chronological literature review about how the concept of listening skills has changed over time.)

You can also check out our templates with literature review examples and sample outlines at the links below.

Download Word doc Download Google doc

Before you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic .

If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research paper, you will search for literature related to your research problem and questions .

Make a list of keywords

Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research question. Include each of the key concepts or variables you’re interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list as you discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.

• Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
• Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
• Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth

Search for relevant sources

Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some useful databases to search for journals and articles include:

• Your university’s library catalogue
• Google Scholar
• Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
• Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
• EconLit (economics)
• Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)

You can also use boolean operators to help narrow down your search.

Make sure to read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.

You likely won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on your topic, so it will be necessary to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your research question.

For each publication, ask yourself:

• What question or problem is the author addressing?
• What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
• What are the key theories, models, and methods?
• Does the research use established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
• What are the results and conclusions of the study?
• How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?

Make sure the sources you use are credible , and make sure you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.

You can use our template to summarize and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using. Click on either button below to download.

Take notes and cite your sources

As you read, you should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.

It is important to keep track of your sources with citations to avoid plagiarism . It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography , where you compile full citation information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the process.

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To begin organizing your literature review’s argument and structure, be sure you understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:

• Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches become more or less popular over time?
• Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
• Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
• Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
• Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be addressed?

This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.

• Most research has focused on young women.
• There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
• But there is still a lack of robust research on highly visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat—this is a gap that you could address in your own research.

There are various approaches to organizing the body of a literature review. Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).

Chronological

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order.

Try to analyze patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.

If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.

For example, if you are reviewing literature about inequalities in migrant health outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economic access.

Methodological

If you draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a variety of research methods , you might want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from different approaches. For example:

• Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
• Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources

Theoretical

A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework . You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.

You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.

Like any other academic text , your literature review should have an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion . What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.

The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.

Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.

As you write, you can follow these tips:

• Summarize and synthesize: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
• Analyze and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers — add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
• Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
• Write in well-structured paragraphs: use transition words and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts

In the conclusion, you should summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance.

When you’ve finished writing and revising your literature review, don’t forget to proofread thoroughly before submitting. Not a language expert? Check out Scribbr’s professional proofreading services !

This article has been adapted into lecture slides that you can use to teach your students about writing a literature review.

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If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Sampling methods
• Simple random sampling
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• Cluster sampling
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• Reproducibility

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• Null hypothesis
• Statistical power
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Research bias

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• Implicit bias
• Hawthorne effect
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A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .

It is often written as part of a thesis, dissertation , or research paper , in order to situate your work in relation to existing knowledge.

There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:

• To familiarize yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
• To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
• To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
• To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
• To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.

The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your thesis or dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

A literature review is a survey of credible sources on a topic, often used in dissertations , theses, and research papers . Literature reviews give an overview of knowledge on a subject, helping you identify relevant theories and methods, as well as gaps in existing research. Literature reviews are set up similarly to other  academic texts , with an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion .

An  annotated bibliography is a list of  source references that has a short description (called an annotation ) for each of the sources. It is often assigned as part of the research process for a  paper .  

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• What is a Literature Review? | Guide, Template, & Examples

What is a Literature Review? | Guide, Template, & Examples

Published on 22 February 2022 by Shona McCombes . Revised on 7 June 2022.

What is a literature review? A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research.

There are five key steps to writing a literature review:

• Search for relevant literature
• Evaluate sources
• Identify themes, debates and gaps
• Outline the structure
• Write your literature review

A good literature review doesn’t just summarise sources – it analyses, synthesises, and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

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Table of contents

Why write a literature review, examples of literature reviews, step 1: search for relevant literature, step 2: evaluate and select sources, step 3: identify themes, debates and gaps, step 4: outline your literature review’s structure, step 5: write your literature review, frequently asked questions about literature reviews, introduction.

• Quick Run-through
• Step 1 & 2

When you write a dissertation or thesis, you will have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:

• Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and scholarly context
• Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
• Position yourself in relation to other researchers and theorists
• Show how your dissertation addresses a gap or contributes to a debate

You might also have to write a literature review as a stand-alone assignment. In this case, the purpose is to evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of scholarly debates around a topic.

The content will look slightly different in each case, but the process of conducting a literature review follows the same steps. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below.

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Writing literature reviews can be quite challenging! A good starting point could be to look at some examples, depending on what kind of literature review you’d like to write.

• Example literature review #1: “Why Do People Migrate? A Review of the Theoretical Literature” ( Theoretical literature review about the development of economic migration theory from the 1950s to today.)
• Example literature review #2: “Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines” ( Methodological literature review about interdisciplinary knowledge acquisition and production.)
• Example literature review #3: “The Use of Technology in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Thematic literature review about the effects of technology on language acquisition.)
• Example literature review #4: “Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Chronological literature review about how the concept of listening skills has changed over time.)

You can also check out our templates with literature review examples and sample outlines at the links below.

Download Word doc Download Google doc

Before you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic .

If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research paper, you will search for literature related to your research objectives and questions .

If you are writing a literature review as a stand-alone assignment, you will have to choose a focus and develop a central question to direct your search. Unlike a dissertation research question, this question has to be answerable without collecting original data. You should be able to answer it based only on a review of existing publications.

Make a list of keywords

Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research topic. Include each of the key concepts or variables you’re interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list if you discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.

• Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
• Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
• Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth

Search for relevant sources

Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some databases to search for journals and articles include:

• Your university’s library catalogue
• Google Scholar
• Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
• Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
• EconLit (economics)
• Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)

You can use boolean operators to help narrow down your search:

Read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.

To identify the most important publications on your topic, take note of recurring citations. If the same authors, books or articles keep appearing in your reading, make sure to seek them out.

You probably won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on the topic – you’ll have to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your questions.

For each publication, ask yourself:

• What question or problem is the author addressing?
• What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
• What are the key theories, models and methods? Does the research use established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
• What are the results and conclusions of the study?
• How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge?
• How does the publication contribute to your understanding of the topic? What are its key insights and arguments?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?

Make sure the sources you use are credible, and make sure you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.

You can find out how many times an article has been cited on Google Scholar – a high citation count means the article has been influential in the field, and should certainly be included in your literature review.

The scope of your review will depend on your topic and discipline: in the sciences you usually only review recent literature, but in the humanities you might take a long historical perspective (for example, to trace how a concept has changed in meaning over time).

Remember that you can use our template to summarise and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using!

Take notes and cite your sources

As you read, you should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.

It’s important to keep track of your sources with references to avoid plagiarism . It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography, where you compile full reference information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the process.

You can use our free APA Reference Generator for quick, correct, consistent citations.

To begin organising your literature review’s argument and structure, you need to understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:

• Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches become more or less popular over time?
• Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
• Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
• Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
• Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be addressed?

This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.

• Most research has focused on young women.
• There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
• But there is still a lack of robust research on highly-visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat – this is a gap that you could address in your own research.

There are various approaches to organising the body of a literature review. You should have a rough idea of your strategy before you start writing.

Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).

Chronological

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarising sources in order.

Try to analyse patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.

If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organise your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.

For example, if you are reviewing literature about inequalities in migrant health outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economic access.

Methodological

If you draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a variety of research methods , you might want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from different approaches. For example:

• Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
• Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources

Theoretical

A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework . You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.

You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.

Like any other academic text, your literature review should have an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion . What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.

The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.

If you are writing the literature review as part of your dissertation or thesis, reiterate your central problem or research question and give a brief summary of the scholarly context. You can emphasise the timeliness of the topic (“many recent studies have focused on the problem of x”) or highlight a gap in the literature (“while there has been much research on x, few researchers have taken y into consideration”).

Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.

As you write, make sure to follow these tips:

• Summarise and synthesise: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole.
• Analyse and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers – add your own interpretations, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole.
• Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources.
• Write in well-structured paragraphs: use transitions and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts.

In the conclusion, you should summarise the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasise their significance.

If the literature review is part of your dissertation or thesis, reiterate how your research addresses gaps and contributes new knowledge, or discuss how you have drawn on existing theories and methods to build a framework for your research. This can lead directly into your methodology section.

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .

It is often written as part of a dissertation , thesis, research paper , or proposal .

There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:

• To familiarise yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
• To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
• To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
• To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
• To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.

The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your  dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the ‘Cite this Scribbr article’ button to automatically add the citation to our free Reference Generator.

McCombes, S. (2022, June 07). What is a Literature Review? | Guide, Template, & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved 2 July 2024, from https://www.scribbr.co.uk/thesis-dissertation/literature-review/

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Shona McCombes

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• Library Homepage

Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide: Literature Reviews?

• Literature Reviews?
• Strategies to Finding Sources
• Keeping up with Research!
• Evaluating Sources & Literature Reviews
• Organizing for Writing
• Writing Literature Review
• Other Academic Writings

What is a Literature Review?

So, what is a literature review .

"A literature review is an account of what has been published on a topic by accredited scholars and researchers. In writing the literature review, your purpose is to convey to your reader what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. As a piece of writing, the literature review must be defined by a guiding concept (e.g., your research objective, the problem or issue you are discussing, or your argumentative thesis). It is not just a descriptive list of the material available or a set of summaries." - Quote from Taylor, D. (n.d)."The Literature Review: A Few Tips on Conducting it".

• Citation: "The Literature Review: A Few Tips on Conducting it"

What kinds of literature reviews are written?

Each field has a particular way to do reviews for academic research literature. In the social sciences and humanities the most common are:

• Narrative Reviews: The purpose of this type of review is to describe the current state of the research on a specific research topic and to offer a critical analysis of the literature reviewed. Studies are grouped by research/theoretical categories, and themes and trends, strengths and weaknesses, and gaps are identified. The review ends with a conclusion section that summarizes the findings regarding the state of the research of the specific study, the gaps identify and if applicable, explains how the author's research will address gaps identify in the review and expand the knowledge on the topic reviewed.
• Book review essays/ Historiographical review essays : A type of literature review typical in History and related fields, e.g., Latin American studies. For example, the Latin American Research Review explains that the purpose of this type of review is to “(1) to familiarize readers with the subject, approach, arguments, and conclusions found in a group of books whose common focus is a historical period; a country or region within Latin America; or a practice, development, or issue of interest to specialists and others; (2) to locate these books within current scholarship, critical methodologies, and approaches; and (3) to probe the relation of these new books to previous work on the subject, especially canonical texts. Unlike individual book reviews, the cluster reviews found in LARR seek to address the state of the field or discipline and not solely the works at issue.” - LARR

What are the Goals of Creating a Literature Review?

• To develop a theory or evaluate an existing theory
• To summarize the historical or existing state of a research topic
• Identify a problem in a field of research 
• Baumeister, R.F. & Leary, M.R. (1997). "Writing narrative literature reviews," Review of General Psychology , 1(3), 311-320.

When do you need to write a Literature Review?

• When writing a prospectus or a thesis/dissertation
• When writing a research paper
• When writing a grant proposal

In all these cases you need to dedicate a chapter in these works to showcase what has been written about your research topic and to point out how your own research will shed new light into a body of scholarship.

Where I can find examples of Literature Reviews?

Note:  In the humanities, even if they don't use the term "literature review", they may have a dedicated  chapter that reviewed the "critical bibliography" or they incorporated that review in the introduction or first chapter of the dissertation, book, or article.

• UCSB electronic theses and dissertations In partnership with the Graduate Division, the UC Santa Barbara Library is making available theses and dissertations produced by UCSB students. Currently included in ADRL are theses and dissertations that were originally filed electronically, starting in 2011. In future phases of ADRL, all theses and dissertations created by UCSB students may be digitized and made available.

Where to Find Standalone Literature Reviews

Literature reviews are also written as standalone articles as a way to survey a particular research topic in-depth. This type of literature review looks at a topic from a historical perspective to see how the understanding of the topic has changed over time. 

• Find e-Journals for Standalone Literature Reviews The best way to get familiar with and to learn how to write literature reviews is by reading them. You can use our Journal Search option to find journals that specialize in publishing literature reviews from major disciplines like anthropology, sociology, etc. Usually these titles are called, "Annual Review of [discipline name] OR [Discipline name] Review. This option works best if you know the title of the publication you are looking for. Below are some examples of these journals! more... less... Journal Search can be found by hovering over the link for Research on the library website.

Social Sciences

• Annual Review of Anthropology
• Annual Review of Political Science
• Annual Review of Sociology
• Ethnic Studies Review

Hard science and health sciences:

• Annual Review of Biomedical Data Science
• Annual Review of Materials Science
• Systematic Review From journal site: "The journal Systematic Reviews encompasses all aspects of the design, conduct, and reporting of systematic reviews" in the health sciences.
• << Previous: Overview
• Next: Strategies to Finding Sources >>
• Last Updated: Mar 5, 2024 11:44 AM
• URL: https://guides.library.ucsb.edu/litreview

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• Writing Tips

How Long Should a Literature Review Be?

4-minute read

• 7th October 2023

If you’re writing a research paper or dissertation , then you know how important it is to include a thorough, comprehensive literature review. But exactly how long should your literature review be in relation to the rest of your work? While there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to that question, there are some factors that will help determine the length of your review. In this post, we’ll discuss what information to include in your literature review and how long it should be.

Keep reading to learn more.

What Is a Literature Review?

A literature review is a critical summary and evaluation of the current resources (e.g., books and journal articles) on a specific topic or research question. It is a crucial part of academic writing, such as dissertations, in all categories and fields. Essentially, literature reviews help contextualize your investigations and show how your work is building on existing research.

No matter how long your literature review is, it should generally:

●  Establish context for your research (i.e., provide relevant background information so your reader understands the historical significance of your study ).

●  Identify gaps in the existing literature (such as unaddressed questions or aspects of your topic).

●  Highlight significant concepts related to your topic.

●  Cite relevant studies.

●  Support your argument.

It’s also essential that a literature review critically analyze the sources cited in your study, considering factors such as sample size, research design, and potential biases. Be sure to structure your literature review using the same referencing style as the rest of your research paper (e.g., APA , Chicago , MLA ).

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The length of your literature review depends on several factors, including the scope and purpose of your research. In general, the length of the review should be proportionate to your overall paper. For example, if you’re writing a fifty-thousand-word dissertation, then your literature review will likely be an entire chapter comprising about 20 pages. If it’s for a 15-page research paper, your literature review may only be a few pages.

Here are several factors that could affect the length of your literature review:

●  Institutional guidelines : Always check the guidelines provided by your institution or journal (such as an APA journal ). There may be a specific length or word count required for publication.

●  Scope : If your research topic is narrow and focused, your literature review may be shorter. Conversely, if your topic is broad and encompasses a large body of literature, your review may need to be longer.

●  Field of study : Different academic fields may have different expectations regarding the length of literature reviews. For example, literature reviews in the humanities might be longer than those in the natural sciences.

Also, consider your audience. If your literature review is for a general audience or a class assignment, it can probably be shorter and less specialized. However, if it’s for an academic audience in your field of study, you may need to be more thorough and provide an extensive review of the existing literature.

Most literature reviews follow the same basic structure of an introduction, body, and conclusion. Most of the time, they are part of a larger work, so the introduction and conclusion paragraphs will be relatively brief.

However, if the review is a standalone piece, then your introduction and conclusion will be longer since you will need to discuss your research objectives, methods, and findings as well as analyze the literature used in your study.

To ensure your literature review makes an impression, have it professionally proofread by our expert literature review editing services . Submit your free sample of 500 words or less to get started today!

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Deciding what to Include and Exclude as you begin to write your Literature Review

By charlesworth author services.

• Charlesworth Author Services
• 06 October, 2021

Once you have completed your literature search , you can start thinking about creating a structure to best explain the literature and to link existing studies to your paper. Having a firm structure provides the foundation for laying out your discussions of the literature and/or the development of your research question(s) or hypothesis. Before that, though, you may still need to make some key decisions regarding what literature or texts should be included and excluded in your paper. This article highlights four essential considerations as you start drafting a structure for your literature review .

Comprehensiveness

There are two types of literature review : one is the literature review section within a paper and the other is a literature review synthesis paper that aims to provide a framework for future studies. For the first, a more focused review of only relevant studies would be more appropriate and useful. For the second type, however, you would usually be expected to provide a much more comprehensive review.

For a literature review section within a paper, a focused review that is more tightly related to your study will help you to build arguments more succinctly, and enable you to link existing studies to your own research more easily. If you find that the literature that is most relevant to your study still falls in large, broad categories, then breaking this section down into different, smaller subsections can be helpful for making sure the various ideas and themes are presented clearly and are easy to follow.

Level of detail

In the literature review, you should be aiming to clearly explain prior and current studies so you can better contextualise your own research within the field. However, the level of detail that you include in this section needs to be carefully considered. 

If several studies are key to your paper or sound similar to your study, you may need to compare and contrast them more closely in order to differentiate them from prior studies, create connections between them or to build on existing literature. 

In addition, if you need to draw from specific papers for your methodology or your theoretical framework , it is a good idea to go into slightly more detail and provide as much information as is reasonably possible, rather than assuming that the reader already knows about these studies.

However, too many detailed descriptions can be distracting and it is important to try to strike a balance between providing enough information for your reader to follow your argument without overwhelming them with too much detail. In some instances therefore, offering a summarised key message can work more effectively. 

In order to better gauge the level of detail needed, go through your writing several times to sharpen your focus, ask your colleagues for feedback or engage professional editing services to check that your structure and overall narrative are clear. 

Online sources and extended quotations

Sometimes, you may want to include online sources in your discussion of the literature. For example, government reports or reputable reports released by major organisations can be quite useful for helping you develop your narrative and arguments. These reports may also provide some initial evidence. However, if you do choose to use such studies, they should be engaged alongside other studies from different sources to make them more plausible. 

In addition, unless really necessary, try to avoid very long or extended quotations. A better practice is to paraphrase and/or summarise the key points that you are trying to make. Drawing from your notes can be useful here and will also help to avoid potential concerns about plagiarism . Using your own words to explain complex issues or to summarise long quotations can also make reading easier for the reader.

The literature review is supposed to comprise a summary of thoughts and findings in prior or existing studies related to the topic that you are addressing in your study. Accordingly, the discussion of these studies should be as objective as possible and should not include your personal opinions, comments or even article preferences. This will help you to describe what has already been done in the field more clearly and use this review as a basis for developing your own research.

Use the above four points to help you stay on track as you write. By being very clear about what your literature review will include or exclude, you will be able to provide an effective, focused overview of existing research, upon which you can build and structure your own study .

Read next (fourth) in series: How to refer to other studies or literature in the different sections of a research paper

Read previous (second) in series: How to structure and write your literature review

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Honours thesis in psychology/Developing a literature review

Guidelines and tips for developing a 4th year Honours thesis in psychology literature review.

• 1 What is a literature review?
• 2.1 Topic development
• 2.2 Guided reading
• 2.4 1st draft
• 2.5 2nd draft
• 2.6 3rd draft
• 2.7 4th draft
• 2.8 Tables and figures
• 3 Marking criteria
• 4 File management
• 5 Word processing
• 6 Citation management
• 7 Relationship to the research article

What is a literature review?

A literature review identifies a unique topic, establishes its importance, and summarises, reviews, and critiques key theory and research. The literature review also weighs the strengths and limitations of the existing literature and recommends future directions.

The task is to present an APA style manuscript which critically reviews key theoretical and research literature about a specific topic/problem and which is ready for submission to a journal for publication.

The literature review should contribute a unique, useful review of theory and research about a particular issue/gap/problem.

Good example literature reviews can be found, among other places, in the Annual Review of Psychology (e.g., [1] ).

Drafting process

Here is a suggested stage-by-stage drafting process:

Topic development

• Brainstorm (cast the net widely initially).
• The literature review may have a broader, narrower, similar, or different focus to a subsequent original research article. Do not necessarily assume that the literature review and research article are going to be about exactly the same topic. Often the literature review has a somewhat broader focus. For more info, see relationship to the research article .
• Sort through, merge, discard, and prioritise the brainstormed ideas.
• Whittle down
• research question
• working title

Guided reading

• Searching and reading can go on forever, so it is important to be strategic.
• Clearly establish the review's scope (i.e., What is relevant? What is not?) so that search terms are well targeted and the relevance of sources can be quickly assessed.
• Develop a bibliography of key references about the topic.
• Major literature reviews (especially recent systematic and meta-analytic reviews).
• Highly cited, peer reviewed, published articles which address relevant psychological theory and major studies.
• Access these references regardless of the difficulties in doing so - e.g., may require inter-library loan/document delivery requests.
• Read these sources, making notes about key points relevant to the literature review topic.

Develop an outline of the chapter and discuss with the thesis supervisor:

• clarify the focus of the review
• ensure a balanced review which fits into the overall word count
• "chunk" the drafting process into smaller sections
• Title (working)
• Abstract and keywords (as headings)
• ~2-3 pages or 300-500 words
• Introduce and describe the topic/problem/question, establish its importance, familiarise the reader with key terminology/concepts, show familiarity with the key literature, and orient the reader to the structure and direction of the review.
• Include major citations
• By the end of this section a reader should be clear about the purpose, need for, and focus of the review.
• Headings (likely to cover critical review of key theory and research): Aim for approx. 3 to 7 main headings. Sub-headings are optional (each main heading should have 0 or 2 to 5 sub-headings)
• Conclusion (includes future directions/recommendations)
• Word-count: Allocate an estimated word count to each of the major sections and overall. Note that the literature review is worth 40% of the 10,000 to 12,000 word thesis; so, on a proportional basis, aim for approximately 4,000 to 4,800 words, but often the literature review may be longer, up to perhaps ~6,500 words.
• Questions about the plan which you'd like to flag for discussion.
• It can be helpful to model the literature review on a favourite article (or thesis) - have a close look at the heading structure of some example literature reviews.
• Consider using the " writing funnel " in which the review starts broadly and gradually narrows down to focus on a specific problem.
• Seek feedback about the plan from the thesis supervisor, discuss, and revise the plan.
• Turn the plan into a first draft by fleshing out the dot points into sentences and paragraphs.
• Aim roughly for a "Pass" standard.
• Sometimes people get "stuck" producing a first draft because they try to produce top-quality work. Quality can be addressed later. The goal for a first draft is to get a rough draft out for early feedback.
• Include any specific comments or questions for the supervisor.
• Seek feedback from the supervisor (including in-text Comments, Tracked Changes/Suggestions, and verbal discussion).
• Turn the 1st draft into a 2nd draft by rewriting to address supervisor feedback.
• Often the second draft involves greater integration of concepts; it may also involve some re-organisation of the structure.
• Work on linking between sections as well as tying together the key themes through the general introduction and conclusion.
• Aim for a "Credit" standard.
• Seek supervisor feedback (including via in-text Comments, Tracked Changes/Suggestions, and discussion).
• Turn the 2nd draft into a 3rd draft by rewriting, addressing supervisor feedback.
• Aim for a "Distinction" standard.
• Seek peer/stakeholder/other feedback (e.g., much can be learnt from reading and commenting on each other's work).
• Turn the 3rd draft into a 4th draft by rewriting, addressing peer/other feedback.
• Aim for a "High Distinction" standard.
• This draft (or a subsequent draft) might be best completed after leaving the 3rd draft for a while and completing the 1st draft of the research article.

Tables and figures

Tables and figures can be a powerful way to communicate theories or conceptual ideas (e.g., see Figure 3).

Marking criteria

Consider the draft against the marking criteria:

• Clear and appropriate title
• Abstract - fluent explanation and summary of the content and purpose
• Importance of topic area and LR is established with definitions of important constructs
• Overview of theoretical or conceptual framework and literature to be used
• Clear explanation of content and direction of LR
• Explanation of appropriate theoretical or conceptual framework
• Integration of theoretical or conceptual framework throughout review
• Appropriate range of current, major, original (not reviews) sources used
• Thorough and detailed descriptions and synthesis of all aspects about the the research literature
• Critical interpretation of the research and its implications
• Synthesis and links within the material that reaches original and thoughtful conclusions
• Integration of diverse viewpoints
• Clear and thoughtful summary of ideas/topics within the review
• Quality of written expression, spelling, punctuation, and grammar

File management

• Smart word-processing techniques from the outset will pay off down the track.
• 00 Proposal
• 10 Literature review
• 11 Research article
• 20 Appendices
• 30 Final version
• Literature review 1.docx or Literature review_2022_03_21
• Literature review 2.docx or Literature review_2022_04_04 etc.
• Make sure a regular, reliable back-up system is in place (e.g., use automated cloud-based backup storage or manually email your latest versions to peers and/or supervisor). Electronic data corruption, loss of files etc. is insufficient grounds for extension.

Word processing

• Using Heading 1, 2, 3 etc. styles that match APA style. This will facilitate consistent styling and allow auto-generation of Tables of Contents.
• Style-based captions for Tables and Figures can also be used.

Citation management

• Citations and reference lists can be managed manually or by using citation management software (such as EndNote, Zotero, RefWorks etc.).
• Regardless of approach, be organised and systematic from the outset in collecting, storing, citing, and referencing key sources.

Relationship to the research article

• The literature review provides a critical review of theory and research about a specific topic and makes recommendations about future directions.
• The research article identifies a gap in the literature and reports about an original study designed to address this gap.
• The literature review will be longer than the introduction to the research article.
• The literature review may be broader in scope than the introduction to the research article.
• The introduction to the research article should state specific research question(s) and/or hypotheses to guide the study.
• Avoid presenting duplicate sentences in the literature review and introduction to the research article (self-plagiarism).
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• GETTING STARTED
• Introduction
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Getting to the main article

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CONSIDERATION ONE

Word count issues.

Most students run out of words when writing up. At the start of the process, especially if you're an undergraduate doing a dissertation for the first time, 10,000, 12,000, or 15,000 words (and up) sound like a lot, but they soon get eaten up. Worst still, they get eaten up in the wrong places, so you have a lop-sided dissertation, with some chapters receiving more focus than they should, whilst others are relatively neglected. Your dissertation guidelines might provide some instructions or recommendations on word count per chapter, but this is not always the case. Since you're likely to run out of words at some point during the writing up process, we'd recommend the following:

Always leave extra words for your Results chapter. This chapter can be concisely written, especially when you know how to summarize data well and make good use of Appendices . However, more often than not, too much is included and it becomes excessively large. The problem is that you can suddenly find the Results chapter becoming 1,000 to 2,000 words too long (sometimes more), and it's very hard to either shorten the chapter or reduce the word count in other chapters. Leaving a little extra in terms of word count for this chapter is advisable, but when it comes down to it, knowing how to write up the Results chapter properly is important and will help you get this right first time.

Don't waste words on peripheral sections within chapters. Every chapter has a number of sections that are useful, and often have to be included to some extent, but (a) can eat into your word count and (b) won't give you lots of extra marks by themselves. Obvious examples include the Chapter Summaries section within the Introduction chapter, as well as necessary components such as Acknowledgements . In the case of Acknowledgements , this is sometimes even included in your word count, despite having no influence on the mark you are awarded, even though you would be expected to include it.

Don't waste words (a) waffling or (b) going off-point in your Literature Review , Research Strategy and Results chapters. Now there is a difference between waffling and going off-point:

Going off-point When writing a dissertation as a student, as opposed to a conference paper or journal as an academic, you have to provide a lot more explanation of possible choices you could have made, rather than simply justifying the choices you made. For example, in the Research Strategy chapter, you'll often be expected to explain the differences between research designs, research methods or sampling strategies that could have been used. This is sometimes the result of a marker needing to know that you have read up about the available options and can demonstrate this by briefly summarising these different components of research strategy. This is what we mean by going off-point , and it can be a real word hog, eating into your available word count. You need to try and avoid this by keeping these sections short, but also focusing on justifications (i.e., why you are using one research method or sampling strategy over another), which when written well, demonstrate your understanding of different components of research strategy, without having to waste words explaining each component in turn.

Waffling Ignoring waffling that comes from laziness - we know this happens! - waffling is often a problem of the Literature Review and Results chapters. Waffling is simply similar to dumping everything you know on the page, which can happen when (a) you don't know the material very well or (b) you're struggling to gauge which content is important and which can be left out, something that is a real challenge for the first-time dissertation student. As a result, you add too much content. This happens a lot in the Literature Review chapter because it is hard to be selective and critical, and in the Results chapter when you don't know (a) what analysis should be included, (b) what can be omitted entirely, and (c) what can be removed and put into the Appendix . In these chapters within the Route #1: Chapter-by-Chapter section of Lærd Dissertation, we help you to avoid this kind of waffling, which not only saves words, but makes your argument much more coherent.

Finally, there can be an obsession with word count when doing marked work. You're doing an essay of 1,500 words or 3,000 words, and you try to use every single word available. This can make sense when you have a small word count and lots of worthwhile things to say in such a small space. However, when taking on a much larger document (i.e., 10,000 words or more), it is not only important what is being said, but also what you leave out. Rather than thinking too hard about word count, focus on making sure that everything being said is worthwhile. All chapters, but especially your Literature Review and Results chapter can lose a lot of quality simply because of three or four unnecessary paragraphs that disrupt the flow and logic of your arguments and results. Despite the added word count of dissertations compared with essays, less can be more.

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Answered by: ros sykes last updated: dec 13, 2023     views: 14136.

The word count usually includes everything in the main body of the text including citations, quotations and tables. Everything before the main text (e.g. abstract, acknowledgements, contents, executive summaries) and everything after the main text (e.g. references, bibliographies, appendices) are not included in the word count limit.

There are exceptions to this, but if there is an exception it should be explained in your assessment brief.  For more information see the University Assessment Policy .

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• ah...well...that's 772 words off my word count...I may need to request an extension to my project submission date. by Abdullah Qadri on May 02, 2024

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Open Access

Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliations Centre for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology (CEFE), CNRS, Montpellier, France, Centre for Biodiversity Synthesis and Analysis (CESAB), FRB, Aix-en-Provence, France

• Marco Pautasso

Published: July 18, 2013

• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003149
• Reader Comments

Citation: Pautasso M (2013) Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review. PLoS Comput Biol 9(7): e1003149. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003149

Editor: Philip E. Bourne, University of California San Diego, United States of America

Copyright: © 2013 Marco Pautasso. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: This work was funded by the French Foundation for Research on Biodiversity (FRB) through its Centre for Synthesis and Analysis of Biodiversity data (CESAB), as part of the NETSEED research project. The funders had no role in the preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The author has declared that no competing interests exist.

Literature reviews are in great demand in most scientific fields. Their need stems from the ever-increasing output of scientific publications [1] . For example, compared to 1991, in 2008 three, eight, and forty times more papers were indexed in Web of Science on malaria, obesity, and biodiversity, respectively [2] . Given such mountains of papers, scientists cannot be expected to examine in detail every single new paper relevant to their interests [3] . Thus, it is both advantageous and necessary to rely on regular summaries of the recent literature. Although recognition for scientists mainly comes from primary research, timely literature reviews can lead to new synthetic insights and are often widely read [4] . For such summaries to be useful, however, they need to be compiled in a professional way [5] .

When starting from scratch, reviewing the literature can require a titanic amount of work. That is why researchers who have spent their career working on a certain research issue are in a perfect position to review that literature. Some graduate schools are now offering courses in reviewing the literature, given that most research students start their project by producing an overview of what has already been done on their research issue [6] . However, it is likely that most scientists have not thought in detail about how to approach and carry out a literature review.

Reviewing the literature requires the ability to juggle multiple tasks, from finding and evaluating relevant material to synthesising information from various sources, from critical thinking to paraphrasing, evaluating, and citation skills [7] . In this contribution, I share ten simple rules I learned working on about 25 literature reviews as a PhD and postdoctoral student. Ideas and insights also come from discussions with coauthors and colleagues, as well as feedback from reviewers and editors.

Rule 1: Define a Topic and Audience

How to choose which topic to review? There are so many issues in contemporary science that you could spend a lifetime of attending conferences and reading the literature just pondering what to review. On the one hand, if you take several years to choose, several other people may have had the same idea in the meantime. On the other hand, only a well-considered topic is likely to lead to a brilliant literature review [8] . The topic must at least be:

• interesting to you (ideally, you should have come across a series of recent papers related to your line of work that call for a critical summary),
• an important aspect of the field (so that many readers will be interested in the review and there will be enough material to write it), and
• a well-defined issue (otherwise you could potentially include thousands of publications, which would make the review unhelpful).

Ideas for potential reviews may come from papers providing lists of key research questions to be answered [9] , but also from serendipitous moments during desultory reading and discussions. In addition to choosing your topic, you should also select a target audience. In many cases, the topic (e.g., web services in computational biology) will automatically define an audience (e.g., computational biologists), but that same topic may also be of interest to neighbouring fields (e.g., computer science, biology, etc.).

Rule 2: Search and Re-search the Literature

After having chosen your topic and audience, start by checking the literature and downloading relevant papers. Five pieces of advice here:

• keep track of the search items you use (so that your search can be replicated [10] ),
• keep a list of papers whose pdfs you cannot access immediately (so as to retrieve them later with alternative strategies),
• use a paper management system (e.g., Mendeley, Papers, Qiqqa, Sente),
• define early in the process some criteria for exclusion of irrelevant papers (these criteria can then be described in the review to help define its scope), and
• do not just look for research papers in the area you wish to review, but also seek previous reviews.

The chances are high that someone will already have published a literature review ( Figure 1 ), if not exactly on the issue you are planning to tackle, at least on a related topic. If there are already a few or several reviews of the literature on your issue, my advice is not to give up, but to carry on with your own literature review,

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The bottom-right situation (many literature reviews but few research papers) is not just a theoretical situation; it applies, for example, to the study of the impacts of climate change on plant diseases, where there appear to be more literature reviews than research studies [33] .

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003149.g001

• discussing in your review the approaches, limitations, and conclusions of past reviews,
• trying to find a new angle that has not been covered adequately in the previous reviews, and
• incorporating new material that has inevitably accumulated since their appearance.

When searching the literature for pertinent papers and reviews, the usual rules apply:

• be thorough,
• use different keywords and database sources (e.g., DBLP, Google Scholar, ISI Proceedings, JSTOR Search, Medline, Scopus, Web of Science), and
• look at who has cited past relevant papers and book chapters.

Rule 3: Take Notes While Reading

If you read the papers first, and only afterwards start writing the review, you will need a very good memory to remember who wrote what, and what your impressions and associations were while reading each single paper. My advice is, while reading, to start writing down interesting pieces of information, insights about how to organize the review, and thoughts on what to write. This way, by the time you have read the literature you selected, you will already have a rough draft of the review.

Of course, this draft will still need much rewriting, restructuring, and rethinking to obtain a text with a coherent argument [11] , but you will have avoided the danger posed by staring at a blank document. Be careful when taking notes to use quotation marks if you are provisionally copying verbatim from the literature. It is advisable then to reformulate such quotes with your own words in the final draft. It is important to be careful in noting the references already at this stage, so as to avoid misattributions. Using referencing software from the very beginning of your endeavour will save you time.

Rule 4: Choose the Type of Review You Wish to Write

After having taken notes while reading the literature, you will have a rough idea of the amount of material available for the review. This is probably a good time to decide whether to go for a mini- or a full review. Some journals are now favouring the publication of rather short reviews focusing on the last few years, with a limit on the number of words and citations. A mini-review is not necessarily a minor review: it may well attract more attention from busy readers, although it will inevitably simplify some issues and leave out some relevant material due to space limitations. A full review will have the advantage of more freedom to cover in detail the complexities of a particular scientific development, but may then be left in the pile of the very important papers “to be read” by readers with little time to spare for major monographs.

There is probably a continuum between mini- and full reviews. The same point applies to the dichotomy of descriptive vs. integrative reviews. While descriptive reviews focus on the methodology, findings, and interpretation of each reviewed study, integrative reviews attempt to find common ideas and concepts from the reviewed material [12] . A similar distinction exists between narrative and systematic reviews: while narrative reviews are qualitative, systematic reviews attempt to test a hypothesis based on the published evidence, which is gathered using a predefined protocol to reduce bias [13] , [14] . When systematic reviews analyse quantitative results in a quantitative way, they become meta-analyses. The choice between different review types will have to be made on a case-by-case basis, depending not just on the nature of the material found and the preferences of the target journal(s), but also on the time available to write the review and the number of coauthors [15] .

Rule 5: Keep the Review Focused, but Make It of Broad Interest

Whether your plan is to write a mini- or a full review, it is good advice to keep it focused 16 , 17 . Including material just for the sake of it can easily lead to reviews that are trying to do too many things at once. The need to keep a review focused can be problematic for interdisciplinary reviews, where the aim is to bridge the gap between fields [18] . If you are writing a review on, for example, how epidemiological approaches are used in modelling the spread of ideas, you may be inclined to include material from both parent fields, epidemiology and the study of cultural diffusion. This may be necessary to some extent, but in this case a focused review would only deal in detail with those studies at the interface between epidemiology and the spread of ideas.

While focus is an important feature of a successful review, this requirement has to be balanced with the need to make the review relevant to a broad audience. This square may be circled by discussing the wider implications of the reviewed topic for other disciplines.

Rule 6: Be Critical and Consistent

Reviewing the literature is not stamp collecting. A good review does not just summarize the literature, but discusses it critically, identifies methodological problems, and points out research gaps [19] . After having read a review of the literature, a reader should have a rough idea of:

• the major achievements in the reviewed field,
• the main areas of debate, and
• the outstanding research questions.

It is challenging to achieve a successful review on all these fronts. A solution can be to involve a set of complementary coauthors: some people are excellent at mapping what has been achieved, some others are very good at identifying dark clouds on the horizon, and some have instead a knack at predicting where solutions are going to come from. If your journal club has exactly this sort of team, then you should definitely write a review of the literature! In addition to critical thinking, a literature review needs consistency, for example in the choice of passive vs. active voice and present vs. past tense.

Rule 7: Find a Logical Structure

Like a well-baked cake, a good review has a number of telling features: it is worth the reader's time, timely, systematic, well written, focused, and critical. It also needs a good structure. With reviews, the usual subdivision of research papers into introduction, methods, results, and discussion does not work or is rarely used. However, a general introduction of the context and, toward the end, a recapitulation of the main points covered and take-home messages make sense also in the case of reviews. For systematic reviews, there is a trend towards including information about how the literature was searched (database, keywords, time limits) [20] .

How can you organize the flow of the main body of the review so that the reader will be drawn into and guided through it? It is generally helpful to draw a conceptual scheme of the review, e.g., with mind-mapping techniques. Such diagrams can help recognize a logical way to order and link the various sections of a review [21] . This is the case not just at the writing stage, but also for readers if the diagram is included in the review as a figure. A careful selection of diagrams and figures relevant to the reviewed topic can be very helpful to structure the text too [22] .

Rule 8: Make Use of Feedback

Reviews of the literature are normally peer-reviewed in the same way as research papers, and rightly so [23] . As a rule, incorporating feedback from reviewers greatly helps improve a review draft. Having read the review with a fresh mind, reviewers may spot inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and ambiguities that had not been noticed by the writers due to rereading the typescript too many times. It is however advisable to reread the draft one more time before submission, as a last-minute correction of typos, leaps, and muddled sentences may enable the reviewers to focus on providing advice on the content rather than the form.

Feedback is vital to writing a good review, and should be sought from a variety of colleagues, so as to obtain a diversity of views on the draft. This may lead in some cases to conflicting views on the merits of the paper, and on how to improve it, but such a situation is better than the absence of feedback. A diversity of feedback perspectives on a literature review can help identify where the consensus view stands in the landscape of the current scientific understanding of an issue [24] .

Rule 9: Include Your Own Relevant Research, but Be Objective

In many cases, reviewers of the literature will have published studies relevant to the review they are writing. This could create a conflict of interest: how can reviewers report objectively on their own work [25] ? Some scientists may be overly enthusiastic about what they have published, and thus risk giving too much importance to their own findings in the review. However, bias could also occur in the other direction: some scientists may be unduly dismissive of their own achievements, so that they will tend to downplay their contribution (if any) to a field when reviewing it.

In general, a review of the literature should neither be a public relations brochure nor an exercise in competitive self-denial. If a reviewer is up to the job of producing a well-organized and methodical review, which flows well and provides a service to the readership, then it should be possible to be objective in reviewing one's own relevant findings. In reviews written by multiple authors, this may be achieved by assigning the review of the results of a coauthor to different coauthors.

Rule 10: Be Up-to-Date, but Do Not Forget Older Studies

Given the progressive acceleration in the publication of scientific papers, today's reviews of the literature need awareness not just of the overall direction and achievements of a field of inquiry, but also of the latest studies, so as not to become out-of-date before they have been published. Ideally, a literature review should not identify as a major research gap an issue that has just been addressed in a series of papers in press (the same applies, of course, to older, overlooked studies (“sleeping beauties” [26] )). This implies that literature reviewers would do well to keep an eye on electronic lists of papers in press, given that it can take months before these appear in scientific databases. Some reviews declare that they have scanned the literature up to a certain point in time, but given that peer review can be a rather lengthy process, a full search for newly appeared literature at the revision stage may be worthwhile. Assessing the contribution of papers that have just appeared is particularly challenging, because there is little perspective with which to gauge their significance and impact on further research and society.

Inevitably, new papers on the reviewed topic (including independently written literature reviews) will appear from all quarters after the review has been published, so that there may soon be the need for an updated review. But this is the nature of science [27] – [32] . I wish everybody good luck with writing a review of the literature.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to M. Barbosa, K. Dehnen-Schmutz, T. Döring, D. Fontaneto, M. Garbelotto, O. Holdenrieder, M. Jeger, D. Lonsdale, A. MacLeod, P. Mills, M. Moslonka-Lefebvre, G. Stancanelli, P. Weisberg, and X. Xu for insights and discussions, and to P. Bourne, T. Matoni, and D. Smith for helpful comments on a previous draft.

• 1. Rapple C (2011) The role of the critical review article in alleviating information overload. Annual Reviews White Paper. Available: http://www.annualreviews.org/userimages/ContentEditor/1300384004941/Annual_Reviews_WhitePaper_Web_2011.pdf . Accessed May 2013.
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• 7. Budgen D, Brereton P (2006) Performing systematic literature reviews in software engineering. Proc 28th Int Conf Software Engineering, ACM New York, NY, USA, pp. 1051–1052. doi: https://doi.org/10.1145/1134285.1134500 .
• 16. Eco U (1977) Come si fa una tesi di laurea. Milan: Bompiani.
• 17. Hart C (1998) Doing a literature review: releasing the social science research imagination. London: SAGE.
• 21. Ridley D (2008) The literature review: a step-by-step guide for students. London: SAGE.

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Are bibliographies/reference lists generally included in page/word counts?

I regularly assign my undergraduate students papers with a range of expected page/word length (e.g. 10-12 pages or 2500-3000 words). Is there any sort of rule as to whether or not to count a works cited page(s0 (and its equivalent in the other citation styles) in determining if a paper meets this limit? I've discussed this with colleagues and heard varying answers.

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• 1 The general rule I have always seen is only intro+body+conclusion counts. Appendixes, reference lists, tables of contents/figures/etc. do not count. –  earthling Commented Dec 2, 2014 at 22:54
• 3 I don't understand what sort of rule you mean. If you are setting the assignment, you can choose whether to count the references towards the page limit. It really doesn't matter whether you make the same choice as others, as long as you make it clear to the students (which you should do anyway, since they won't necessarily know what's common). Are you asking instead which choice is better educationally? For example, regarding incentives to pad the bibliography. If so, it would help to clarify the question. –  Anonymous Mathematician Commented Dec 2, 2014 at 22:56
• Agreed, it's your call. If you have your own expectations then just be as specific as possible in the assignment as to whether or not the bibliography counts towards the page count. It's also a good idea to be clear about how many sources you expect them to cite, and where you expect the source material to come from (e. g. "...at least ten sources and no more than three of them can be Web sites..."). –  Raydot Commented Dec 3, 2014 at 0:05

2 Answers 2

In the scientific world, whether citations count against length limits or not varies wildly by publication, including hybrid models like AAAI which allows six pages text and up to one page of citations.

I think that which way you go depends on what you want the students to learn. Some examples that would push you one way or another:

If you want them to focus on prose, don't count citations in the length.

If you want them to learn to express complicated thoughts concisely, use a short page limit and count citations (e.g., the IEEE six-page format)

If you want them to focus on referencing, count citations and text separately.

Either way it shouldn't matter too much, because you're using a range and probably have some flexibility in how you apply your rubric, so you can adjust for common sense.

Should not count.

A six-line main text can pack more convincing arguments compared to a one-line main text. That's why it's important to make sure all students have an equal share of area or real property to build upon.

A six-line citation does not necessarily bring any advantage compared to a one-line citation. For that reason, I don't see why we should penalize students who had identified some information with more authors or a longer title; that is not how we teach them to examine the credibility of a paper.

If you're concerned about them citing too many things or citing mindlessly, you may put a limit on the number of citations like some journals do. However, I wouldn't include them in the word count.

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Systematic Review Reporting - Writing concisely and precisely

Patrick fw chien.

1 Patrick FW Chien, FRCOGm, Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, RCSI & UCD Malaysia Campus, 10450 Penang, Malaysia

Khalid S Khan

2 Khalid S Khan, FRCOG, Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health, University of Granada, Faculty of Medicine, Granada, Spain. CIBER Epidemiology and Public Health, Madrid, Spain

Systematic reviews rank at the top of the evidence hierarchy. Concise writing implies drafting the systematic review article succinctly, i.e. using as few words to express as full an extent of the research effort as possible. Precise writing means drafting the text with accuracy especially with respect to the methodological and statistical aspects. The Abstract ought to be succinct and structured to allow for editors, peer reviewers and readers to get the gist of the key aspects of the systematic review with a quick read. The readership needs to be able to critically appraisal systematic reviews for their internal and external validity rapidly. The Abstract also needs to be standalone, representing an independent summary that can be fully understood without the need for reading the full paper. The standard structure of the main text of a scientific article called IMRaD (Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion) applies equally to systematic reviews in the same way as it does to any other kinds of research manuscripts whether related to laboratory experiments or clinical trials. Restricting the word count limits to those imposed by journals may at first seem difficult, even unfair, to systematic reviewers. However, with the availability of online appendices to transparently and fully report the details of the methods, results and other aspects of the work undertaken allows for a succinct print or PDF article. Writing a shorter manuscript is more effortful than writing a longer report. This commentary is aimed at novice systematic reviewers to help them learn the written and unwritten writing rules in order to assist them in producing impactful publications to support evidence-based medicine.

INTRODUCTION

Information generated from a well conducted systematic review provides the highest level of evidence to guide clinical practice. 1 There has been an increased number of systematic reviews being published in biomedical journals in recent times (according to PubMed, over 40,000 last year). 2 , 3 Hence, it is important that such manuscripts are written in an easily understandable style to allow the clinical effectiveness information to be disseminated effectively. Besides the use of clear and understandable language, manuscripts of systematic reviews also need to be written in a structured manner in the same way as an original research article is drafted for easier comprehension. 4 - 6

Journal editors are keen for systematic review papers to be written as concisely and precisely as possible. Manuscripts of systematic reviews can be lengthy due to the enormous amount of information generated in this type of research. The tables summarising the included and excluded studies and the figures showing the study quality and forest plots of meta-analyses can be extensive, taking up many print pages of a journal. It is also important that relevant information pertaining to the design and conduct of a systematic review is reported in the manuscript in order for the internal validity of the findings to be accepted.

Hence, the challenge here is for these articles to provide the relevant information documenting accurately with as little print space as possible. Concise writing implies drafting the systematic review article succinctly, i.e. using few words to express the full extent of the research effort. Precise writing means drafting the text with accuracy especially with respect to the methodological and statistical aspects. For concise and precise writing, scientific terms should be used with specific meaning as shown in Table-I . For example, the term ‘meta-analysis’, which is merely a statistical analysis, should not be conflated with the term ‘systematic review’, which may or may not include meta-analysis. Lack of this precision in drafting text makes for confusion and misinterpretation. 7

Understanding basic research terminology deployed in writing systematic reviews precisely.

Terms and precise meanings taken from: Khan KS, Zamora J. Systematic Reviews to support Evidence-Based Medicine. How to appraise conduct and publish reviews. 3rd Edition. (ISBN 9781032114675) London: Taylor & Francis Publishing 2022.

At the present moment, some of the systematic review articles are too long, with important information omitted or irrelevant data reported or even inaccurate titles. 7 There may also be a lack of universally agreed structure in the reporting of such articles, as there are misperceptions about the originality of systematic reviews. 8 The journals also differ in their word count limitations, e.g. the Cochrane Library reviews can be lengthy but the traditional journal article does not permit such excessive length. It is common for young researchers to undertake the systematic reviews as part of their postgraduate theses and these are also often reported in a peer review journal.

Such articles are sometimes submitted to journals in a version similar to that in the thesis chapter without taking into consideration that the readership for the version published in a biomedical journal is different to that for a postgraduate thesis. Writing a shorter article takes more effort than writing a longer manuscript, and it takes longer. The additional effort made by systematic review authors in drafting their manuscripts concisely and precisely is going to be appreciated by editors, peer reviewers and readers alike.

The purpose of this commentary is to provide some advice and guidance to novice researchers on the reporting of the findings of a systematic review for publication in a biomedical journal. Hopefully, new systematic reviewers can gain awareness of the written and unwritten publication rules we provide here in order to make it easier for their manuscripts to be accepted for publication on the first submission, reducing the time wasted in the rejection-resubmission cycle.

Converting a thesis chapter into a journal article the initial steps:

The initial step is to adhere to the instructions to authors of the journal where the article is to be submitted. Different biomedical journals have different manuscript formatting requirements and word count limits on the manuscript length. There may also be limitations on the number of tables and figures which are permitted to be used in the print manuscript, these days produced as a PDF file. In this manner, publishers wish to ensure that the relevant information is provided at the minimum cost related to printing and electronic production. They are quite happy for the information that is not available in the printed manuscript to be provided as supplementary materials in appendices.

Prospective registration:

Ideally, all systematic reviews should be prospectively registered in order to avoid unnecessary duplication of the same work by different research groups. 6 , 9 Such registration is also encouraged to allow verification that the original systematic review protocol has been followed and any subsequent deviation from this protocol are fully reported with justifications in the published manuscript for the purpose of transparency. 10 Hence, details of the registration should also be provided in the manuscript. There are many registration platforms e.g. Prospero ( https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/ ) and OSF ( https://accounts.osf.io/ ).

Avoiding plagiarism:

There is also a need to avoid plagiarism, i.e. presenting text as your own that is not an identical copy of previously published text. This is important given that the issues discussed in the systematic review manuscript may be similar to those in the included primary studies. 11 You may be able to carry out an electronic plagiarism check to ensure that the similarity index is acceptably low before the manuscript is submitted for publication. 12 Paraphrasing and using quotations with references to the original sources protect against allegation of plagiarism. Most journals would carry out automated plagiarism checks, using artificial intelligence software programmes such as CrossCheck or iThenticate, and reject manuscript without peer review if large chunks of text are copied from other sources.

Reporting checklists:

Journals also require submission of reporting checklists describing how the manuscript has been complied with guidance on transparent reporting. There are many checklists used to report systematic reviews and quality assessment tools, e.g. PRISMA 6 , MOOSE 13 , PRISMA-P 14 , GRIPP-2 15 , PRIOR 16 , AMSTAR 17 , ROBIS 18 , etc. We have provided a summary of these in Table-II . These checklists are intended to improve the quality of reporting of systematic reviews and peer reviewers often refer to these resources when assessing your papers.

Checklists for transparent reporting, appraisal and concise of systematic reviews.

The Abstract of a systematic review:

The most important section of the manuscript is the Abstract as editors and peer reviewers as well as most general readership tend to scrutinise this part of the manuscript in the first instance. As the adage goes ‘a good first impression makes a lasting impression’. The Abstract is such an important element of the manuscript that we would advise not to leave writing the Abstract to the last moment before submission; we advise you to write it first and keep on revising it as you write the main text of your manuscript. Nowadays, it is common to employ a structured abstract with different subheadings on the Objective, Methods, Results and Conclusion. 6

This is complementary to the structure of the main text and allows for the initially drafted Abstract to serve as a building block for the writing of the main text. Only the main findings and conclusion should be reported in the Abstract in order to the core message to be understood easily and quickly. Prospective registration details should also be provided in the Abstract. Beware that the Abstract needs to be able to standalone, being fully interpretable without the need for referring to the main article text.

Structured manuscript of a systematic review:

Generally, the main text for such manuscripts should be written with the same structure as that used for original articles, i.e. Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion, or IMRaD for short. 19 You can include subheadings in the Methods, Results and Discussion sections in order to write systematically, avoiding duplications ( Table-III ).

A systematic review manuscript structure.

Adpated from: Khan KS, Zamora J. Systematic Reviews to support Evidence-Based Medicine. How to appraise conduct and publish reviews. 3rd Edition. (ISBN 9781032114675) London: Taylor & Francis Publishing 2022.

The Introduction should describe the clinical problem being addressed in the article and its importance. A paragraph to justify the rationale for undertaking the systematic review should be presented here. If a similar review has been published previously, the Introduction should explain the need for an update, e.g. there may have been new, large studies published since the last review. There may be many reviews published on the topic, so inevitably previous reviews would need to be critically appraised. The Introduction doesn’t really permit a detailed appraisal description, so an appendix tabulating the critique of the previous reviews using e.g. AMSTAR-2 or ROBIS tools can be supplemented.

To end the Introduction section, the authors should explicitly state the research question based on a structured format with the health outcomes defined a priori. Core outcomes, the minimum set of critical and important outcomes on which there is consensus regarding clinical relevance among patients and practitioners 20 , offer a focus for the main article, leaving non-core outcome data for reporting in appendices. Editors use the information provided in the Introduction to determine if the submission should be given priority over other manuscripts they have in front of them.

The Methods should start by giving the prospective registration details and the reporting checklists used. The structured question forms the basis of the search strategy. The search term combination and the databases searched with dates need to be reported in a reproducible manner. 21 The inclusion and exclusion criteria for articles to be used in or omitted from the systematic review should be also reported. 6 The instrument used for the assessment of study quality and the method of data extraction should be reported as well as the assessment on how any disagreement between the systematic reviewers was resolved. 6

The level of agreement between the systematic reviewers should also be assessed and reported. The statistical method for pooling data, subgroup analysis, sensitivity analysis and assessment of publication bias also have to be reported in the manuscript. 6 If there has been public involvement 24 in the review, this should also be reported in the Methods. Importantly, if there have been modifications to the systematic review since its registration, e.g. if the nature changed to scoping review in light of the emerging findings during the review work, these should be justified in the Methods section openly.

The descriptions of the literature searches, the lists of included and excluded articles along with the reasons for such decisions, the details of data extraction methods and study quality assessment can take up too much space. This is where supplementary appendices giving the search strategy, excluded studies with reasons, the data extraction and quality assessment checklist help with completeness of reporting. Peer reviewers and readers can further scrutinise these details if they wish.

The Results section should incorporate a flow chart on the search and subsequent inclusion and exclusion of articles into the systematic review with a brief description of the included articles. The information on the included studies allows the peer reviewers and readers to determine the comprehensiveness of the literature search and also the level of external validity of the findings from the review. The findings of the study quality assessment should be then described in order for the peer reviewers and readers to determine the robustness of the evidence from the review. These can be succinctly presented in a figure using 100% stacked bar chart, providing the actual number of studies with particular features within the bars (easily constructed in a spreadsheet).

To conserve space, tables of individual study characteristics and quality can be provided in appendices. The main findings on the primary outcome(s) should be reported followed by the findings based on the secondary outcomes. Forrest plots should be provided for at least the primary outcome(s) together with assessment on possible heterogeneity in the pooled data. Results of any sensitivity or subgroup analyses together with the assessment of possible publication bias also should be briefly reported. 6

Again, all the outputs from such analyses should be provided as appendices so that they can be scrutinised by those who wish to ensure integrity of the review. Appendices, tables and figures should have titles with sufficient details to permit them to standalone and assist in understanding their contents without the need to refer to the Abstract or the main text. Any additional results tables and figures which may not be permitted to be published in the PDF version of the manuscript should be available as supplementary material. In this way, the systematic review can be fully presented without taking up an unacceptably high amount print space for the accepted article.

The Discussion section should generally consist of no more than 4-5 paragraphs. The main findings of the systematic review and any clinical implications to clinical practice should be summarised in the first paragraph (without repeating the numerical data presented in the Results section). This is followed by a discussion of the strengths and limitations of the systematic review in the next paragraphs. The subsequent paragraph should address the interpretation of the findings in relation to other previously published reviews on the same topic. Any interpretation of findings may cover the issue of cost effectiveness briefly even though this may not be the main focus of the systematic review.

The implications for clinical practice and future research should then be described here as well. The last paragraph should provide the conclusion of the systematic review based only on the findings concerning the primary outcome(s) determined a priori as stated in the Introduction section. Authors should avoid overstating the conclusion of the review, especially e.g. in situations when data from observational studies are pooled together with randomised trials and there is significant heterogeneity in the results.

Integrity and transparency:

The roles and contributions of the authors 22 , all potential conflicts of interest 6 , acknowledgement(s), sources of funding 23 , etc. should also be reported to meet the openness agenda that is critical to public trust in science. The interest of transparency in reporting is served by providing the above in full detail using the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors criteria and forms (ICMJE; http://www.icmje.org ), supplied as appendices if required. Reporting checklists should be provided as an appendix to explicitly demonstrate how and where the article complies, or justifiably not comply, with the requirements for transparent reporting.

Dealing with peer review comments:

In dealing with peer review comments, it is important that responses should be submitted within the time period given by the editors dealing with the submission. If this is not possible for any reason, authors should contact the journal office to request for time extension. The request should be justified. Frequently the need to respond to peer review may require update searches and the editors will understand and accept if this was the reason for the extension requested. Each comment will need to be itemised with an appropriate response and any change in the manuscript highlighted in order for the editor to be able to be easily assess and track the changes made to the manuscript. Editors may request the original peer reviewers to address the responses you provide.

It is important to candidly acknowledge any limitations of the systematic review highlighted by the peer reviewers and to include (where possible) any additional information into the manuscript. If there are too many comments, as is the case when there are many peer reviewers, tabulation of responses is most helpful in demonstrating that that critique received has been addressed in a structured and comprehensive manner. 25 Beware that the response to editors’ and peer reviewers’ comments need to be detailed in order for it to be convincing. The arguments made may have to be backed by references and scientific explanations.

There may be difference of opinion over how particular issues should be handled, e.g. heterogeneity is not always easily explained and there may be unexplained heterogeneity that is unavoidable. It may require you to write quite a long table of responses. The response document may in fact be longer than the manuscript itself in some circumstances. Authors need to be concise and precise in responding too but there are not rigid word limits applied in the same way as those applied to manuscripts. In the future it is likely the peer review will be openly published to maximise transparency, and going forward responses to peer review comments and the original and revised manuscripts will all be publicly available. 26

Writing concisely and precisely is effortful and time-consuming. Editors, peer reviewers and readers need to be able to critically appraisal systematic reviews for their internal and external validity rapidly. It is important that systematic reviews, even when written within word count limits, can be fully understood so that the data from such work can be used to shape clinical practice and policy. A structured Abstract, mimicking the main text structure, is the key to writing convincingly. The standard structure of the main text of a paper, abbreviated in the acronym IMRaD, applies equally to systematic reviews as it does to any other kinds of research types including laboratory experiments and clinical trials. By reporting the systematic review findings in a succinct manuscript, accompanied with details transparently and completely presented in supplementary files, the data collated can be accurately presented to ensure that critical appraisal and assimilation of evidence into practice is facilitated.

Authors’ Contribution:

PFWC: Wrote, edited and approved the manuscript.

KSK: Edited and approved the manuscript.

Grant Support & Financial Disclosures: None for PFWC. KSK is a distinguished investigator at the University of Granada funded by the Beatriz Galindo (senior modality) program of the Spanish Ministry of Education.

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America is obsessed with narcissists. Is Trump to blame?

The year was 2016. “Hamilton” had taken Broadway by storm, “Closer” by The Chainsmokers blared at parties across the nation, and nearly every media outlet seemed to ask a different version of the same question: Was Donald Trump , then a candidate for president, a narcissist ?

“Is Donald Trump a textbook narcissist?” asked The Washington Post . “Is Donald Trump Actually a Narcissist? Therapists Weigh In!” added Vanity Fair . Others took a more definitive approach, like Harvard Business Review . “Why People Are Drawn to Narcissists Like Donald Trump,” the magazine wrote.

If you’ve been online, you’ve probably heard of narcissism − and, unless your social circle is extremely limited, you probably know a narcissist . That’s at least what Ramani Durvasula − an expert who's famous online as Dr. Ramani − told me when I interviewed her for the first time in 2021. Even though only about 5% of people are diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder, this represents only the most extreme cases; she says many, many more people have narcissistic traits and fall somewhere on the spectrum of narcissism. In all likelihood, each of us will cross paths with a narcissist or two or several in our lifetimes.

Perhaps more ubiquitous than narcissists are the articles written about them. I know, because I’ve written several.

OK, more than several.

In the years after my first heartbreak (more on that later), my stories have included how to spot a narcissist on a first date, how narcissists are made , how narcissists treat their children , how narcissists behave during the holidays − the list goes on.

But if narcissists are indeed everywhere − and have been everywhere, long before Trump ran for office − why did I, and the rest of the world, catch on to them only in the past five to 10 years? How did the word “narcissist” − now lobbed at everyone from serial killers to presidential candidates to the guy who cut you off in traffic this morning − become the main topic of our culture’s entire conversation around relationships, dating and mental health? And is this obsession good for us?

“When I first started out, people would come in with these bits and pieces, kind of like we’re putting together a puzzle,” says  Chelsey Cole , a psychotherapist specializing in narcissistic abuse and author of "If Only I'd Known: How to Outsmart Narcissists, Set Guilt-Free Boundaries, and Create Unshakeable Self-Worth.” “So, they might come in and say: ‘My partner is cheating. I never feel good enough. None of the communication strategies are working for me.’"

Now, "people come in, and even when they first contact me, they’ll say, ‘I think my spouse is a narcissist.’”

Barely anyone was talking about narcissism. Then Trump ran for president.

Narcissism discourse around Trump didn’t stay in the realm of politics. Instead, experts say, it sparked a public awareness about narcissism that grew into a national curiosity.

Google Trends data reflect this: Web searches for “narcissism” skyrocketed between September 2016 and January 2017, just as Trump was elected and took office.

“I'm going to pin a lot of this to the presidential election in 2016, because more journalists were using the term,” says Durvasula, a clinical psychologist and bestselling author. “That word and ‘gaslighting’ − all those words started bubbling up more into sort of national news.”

The truth is, if Trump is a narcissist, he’s probably not the first to run for office. Experts say narcissists often seek positions of power to fuel their grandiose sense of self and mask their insecurity. Their entitlement, charisma, charm and lack of empathy come in handy for these pursuits, which are often successful. Narcissists have almost certainly at some point been on your local school board, in your church’s leadership and, yes, in the highest halls of government.

Is narcissism genetic? Narcissists are made, not born. How to keep your kid from becoming one.

The way the media covered Trump isn’t entirely to blame for the explosion of narcissism talk in our culture. Durvasula says there are some other things that got people interested in the topic, too: social media and reality television, which reward self-centeredness, as well as the true-crime genre, which stokes fascination with the psychology of criminals.

The #MeToo movement of 2017, which spotlighted sexual abuse, also played a major role. Faced with horrific, high-profile stories of misconduct, Cole says, “people wonder, ‘How does this happen?’ ”

“I think we did get into more narcissism and gaslighting, coercive control, psychological abuse, talking about what these concepts look like, because people were trying to make sense of some of those awful things that happened,” she says.

Google searches for narcissism dipped after January 2017 but sharply rose again in mid-2020, reaching an all-time high in July 2022. Narcissism searches have remained at that peak ever since.

Cole suspects much of this has been fueled by the pandemic. After all, if diagnosed narcissists make up 5% of the population − and that doesn’t even scratch the surface of the third of people who, by Durvasula's estimation, have narcissistic traits − then that means many people live with narcissists.

When the world shut down in 2020, people couldn't escape their relationships − and many likely turned to the internet for ways to cope.

“I definitely think in 2020 people were … googling more, 'Why does my partner treat me this way?’ Cole says. “ 'Why do I feel so depressed?' 'Why can't I ever relax? Why does my partner lie all the time?’ “

When they googled, many likely found their answers delivered by none other than the internet’s first narcissism celebrity.

The narcissism doctor is in: How Ramani Durvasula found fame

Perhaps no other expert has become more synonymous with narcissism education than Dr. Ramani.

Her career has included viral interviews on MedCircle , “Red Table Talk” and “The Jetty Shetty Podcast.” She has written three books on narcissism, the most recent of which, “It’s Not You: Identifying and Healing from Narcissistic People,” came out in February and landed at No. 3 on the New York Times' Advice, How-To & Miscellaneous best-seller list . Recently, Durvasula launched “The Dr. Ramani Network,” an interactive mental health and wellness community on Mark Cuban’s platform Fireside.

In a wellness landscape dominated by feel-good language like “self-care,” “mindfulness” and “just do the work,” Durvasula’s refreshing bluntness hits like a splash of ice water to the face.

I understood the appeal. In the months after my first heartbreak, Dr. Ramani became my resource. If she wrote a book, I read it. If she gave a three-hour interview, I watched it. Hell, I would even pause and rewind, just to make sure I didn’t misunderstand a drop of the wisdom she shared.

Narcissists don’t change, she repeats on her YouTube channel , where she uploads daily videos to her 1.7 million subscribers. They don’t feel empathy − or, if they do, it’s not enough to sustain an intimate relationship. If you choose to keep one in your life, that’s fine − many do, but don’t kid yourself into thinking the narcissist will ever get better. They can’t. Instead, arm yourself with the cold, hard facts − and know exactly what it is you’re dealing with.

“I've never heard this behavior explained so clearly!! I've wasted way too much life energy trying to figure this out, and now that burden can be lifted,” wrote one YouTube commenter. “You are an angel to us all!” wrote another. “Dr. Ramani saved my life!” said another.

Her straightforward message resonated with me, too. Durvasula’s videos both jolted and brought me back to earth. I could always count on her to tell me the truth, even if it hurt. 

For Durvasula, her rise from unknown university professor, therapist and researcher to pseudo-celebrity has been strange and, at times, unsettling. To hear her tell it herself sounds like the plot of a movie.

Five years ago, Durvasula lived a normal life. She had done some TV news hits on narcissism, but it wasn’t a regular occurrence. She had written two books, but neither was flying off shelves.

Then, after a few of her interviews went viral on YouTube, some students approached her with an idea: Why not make videos on her own channel? She filmed her first video on an iPhone, removing the shade off a nearby lamp for improved lighting.

Her channel grew steadily − and so did her profile. Her 5,000 subscribers soon became 100,000. On April 30, 2022, she hit 1 million.

Her rising star also made her the target of some nasty characters. Narcissists, offended by her content, started coming out of the woodwork. Some made concerning threats.

“I don't feel as safe in public in the same way,” Durvasula says of her life now compared with just a few years ago, before narcissism, and her work, blew up. “I go through the world very differently than I once did.”

Still, she says, it has been worth it to see how much her information has helped people.

The mainstreaming of narcissism has been a double-edged sword, and even Durvasula has some reservations about it. Narcissism is a complex issue, she says, and its nuance often gets lost on social media, where short-form content reigns supreme.

The growing buzz around narcissism has also inspired creators to jump on the bandwagon, even if they know nothing about it. Faux experts chasing views, she says, have only further muddied the waters around an already complicated topic.

“People are taking a very simplistic view of it,” Durvasula says. “People will go online and say, 'All narcissists cheat,' or, 'You've got to leave your narcissistic relationship now.' And the vast majority of us can't leave every narcissistic relationship we're in. It doesn't work that way. So I think there's a simplification of advice and feedback, which can sometimes shame people and confuse people.”

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By oversimplifying narcissism, these creators, Durvasula says, also risk undoing the progress legitimate experts have worked so hard to achieve. After all, if people become oversaturated with narcissism content, they may become skeptical of the topic entirely.

“When the nuance gets lost, then you get pushback of, 'Oh, people who are talking about narcissistic abuse are whiners or they're acting like victims,’ “ Durvasula says. “And so then you see this new shaming of people who are going through something very real.”

Has our culture's narcissism obsession gone too far?

Therapists agree wider awareness of narcissism has, overall, been a good thing: Narcissism probably has always been prevalent, but now, people have language to make sense of it. Most importantly, more people know not to blame themselves.

But can too much narcissism content be bad?

Danielle Arias was working the front desk at a hotel when she met the narcissist who sent her down her research rabbit hole. She remembers the day she met him in 2016. Well-known in the community, he scoffed when she didn’t recognize him.

“I remember he came over to me, and I didn't know who he was,” Arias recalls. “I don't watch a lot of news. And he came over to me basically, like, 'Do you know who I am?’”

What followed, she says, was a tumultuous, three-year situationship that weighed heavily on her mental health. He gaslit her about his dates with other women. In public, he was dignified and respectable; in private, entitled and cruel.

When Arias pulled back, he hoovered − a term referring to a narcissist’s attempts at winning someone back.

“When I tried to assert a boundary, he would come to work and stand and just stare at me, sometimes for 40 minutes. One time he was looking through a window at me,” Arias says. “I was just thinking: ‘What is it? What is it that you want from me?’ And then, as I come to realize, it was probably power or control or something like that.”

The experience disturbed her − and ultimately inspired her to consult the internet for answers. Her search led to narcissism and, eventually, gray rocking , a technique that involves becoming bland and uninteresting so a narcissist leaves you alone.

She gave it a try. It worked.

What is 'gray rocking'? How to set boundaries with the narcissist in your life.

But even after he left, the anxiety lingered. She was terrified of getting into a situation like that again, of getting close to another narcissist.

Researching narcissism became a ritual.

“A lot of people go through obsessiveness about it, because you want to understand it,” Arias says. “How did I get here? What is real?”

Cole says this is common for those hurt by narcissists − and she sees it with clients all the time.

"There's definitely this phase where people first find out about narcissism, and they cannot get enough,” she says. “They’re listening to every podcast, researching every article, every video, reading every book. They saturate themselves with it, because it is like: 'This is it. This is the key. This is what I've been dealing with. This explains everything.' And we are desperate to make sense of what we've been through.”

I know exactly what she means.

Narcissism changed how I see people. It's been good and bad

I fell in love for the first time when I was 23. Or, at least I thought I did.

I won’t say much about the relationship itself, because, quite frankly, most of the details are too blurry, too tedious or too embarrassing for print. And what really matters is what happened after.

When it all came to a dizzying end, I wandered for weeks in what felt like a fog of confusion. What just happened? How could someone place me on a pedestal only to callously disparage and toss me aside weeks later? What changed? Was anything we shared real − or was it all a lie?

Then, one night digging on YouTube, I found Dr. Ramani − and everything about the past few months suddenly made sense.

It was as if I was fumbling in a dark room, and someone had turned on a light switch. I saw my brief relationship for what it was. I learned about love-bombing and devaluing and discarding. Most importantly, I learned they don’t change: While a narcissist can make conscious choices to treat people differently, their underlying personality style will always be self-centered, grandiose, entitled and lacking empathy.

But I wanted to learn something else: I wanted to learn how never to get in a relationship like that again.

Researchers have apparently wanted to learn this as well. A 2018 study claimed people could reliably spot grandiose narcissists by the shape of their eyebrows . A 2022 study said it found a link between narcissism and belief in astrology.

It makes sense why narcissism red flags have become hot topics of recent research. Imagine the time, energy and tears that could be saved if people knew immediately the person sitting across from them on a first date, at a job interview or around the family dinner table was a narcissist.

These studies, however, are flawed for multiple reasons. No, you can’t tell someone’s a narcissist based solely off appearances or hobbies.

“In fact, I'll even say a therapist might take six to eight months to say, 'Oh, I see what I'm dealing with here,’ “ Durvasula says. “There is no red-flag model here. There's no easy way to figure this out.”

Perhaps a better use of research, she says, would be turning our attention away from narcissists and onto those hurt by them. What is life like on the other side of narcissistic abuse? What are the people up all night Googling narcissism going through?

“We have spent most of the literature in this field, 99% of it, analyzing narcissism,” Durvasula says. “We have almost no literature on what happens to people in these relationships.”

What does our narcissism obsession say about us?

In the absence of studies, however, we have experiences. Arias, for one, is doing much better. So am I, but it took time to get here.

For a while, I kept my guard up higher than Mount Everest. I looked for red flags like Sherlock Holmes looks for clues.

I learned that if you look hard enough for something, you’ll probably find it − or at least think you do. This person dresses well? Clearly they're attention-seeking, I would think. This person complimented me? Love bombing. This one's funny? Just deceptive charm at work.

My narcissistic relationship lasted three months − light stuff compared with others. Ryley Sell, who has been married twice to narcissists, says she still struggles to feel safe, even after plenty of healing work.

“I have this underlying fear that I am going to draw somebody to me like that again, and it scares me and it worries me,” she says. “Even in my relationship now, even though he's very good to me, I still have this fear. What if tomorrow he flips and something crazy happens? It's just always an unsettling feeling.”

My overthinking about narcissism lasted until yet another Dr. Ramani sound bite gave me a much-needed reality check.

This time, she said something I never thought she’d say: Many times, it doesn’t really matter if you know someone’s a narcissist. Huh?

Her point? If you know someone’s mistreating you − and it’s a long-standing pattern that’s not going to change − why bother scrutinizing the ins and outs of their personality? Your choice remains the same either way: Stay or go.

"I tell people it doesn't matter,” Durvasula tells me over the phone. “What matters is that week over week, month after month, year over year, you have told me that this person has manipulated you. This person has invalidated you. This person has betrayed you, that you're carrying the disproportionate emotional load in this relationship. You're chronically confused in this relationship. That's not OK.”

Instead of overanalyzing narcissists, Durvasula says, what if we paid more attention to ourselves? It's a surprising proposition coming from someone who has made a lucrative career out of raising awareness about narcissists, but it's an important point. Rather than hunt for red flags, try asking yourself: How does this person make me feel? And why?

They’re not questions Google can answer − and that’s OK. Maybe it’s time I start trusting myself more than the internet for once. Maybe it's time we all did.

“It’s a pendulum, right?” Durvasula says. “At one point, the pendulum was almost underguarded, or at least uninformed. They didn't know what they were dealing with, and so they got pulled into very harmful relationships. Then they learned, and then there's an overcorrection. … Healing is about finding the gray.”

At least now my guard is finally down enough to give it a try.

What Is the Ideal Word Count for Articles and Other Pieces of Content?

The ideal word count for your web page depends on the type of piece, your audience, and many other factors.

Ask three different writers what the best word count is for an article, blog post, or web page and you may get three different answers. Ask Google and you will get 245 million results.

With so much ambiguity, how can content writers, media publishers, and other content professionals know the best number of words to use in their content?

Well, it turns out, Google results do have helpful advice. Consider these stats from various sources :

• The average first result on Google has a length of 1,500 words . Ok, so 1,500 words should be my target. Good.
• Longer posts, 2,000 words or more, tend to rank higher and are more likely to appear in the top 10 . Ok, ranking higher on Google is definitely a goal… 2,000 words it is…
• Content longer than 7,000 words gets more than three times the number of shares and links . Oh wow, that’s beastly… ok, I’ll go for 10,000 just to be safe…
• Content longer than 10,000 words can actually hurt your rankings, especially if it’s not on point and doesn’t nail search intent for users . Wait… huh?
• To rank within the first five positions in Google, i.e, on page one, shorter content length appears to be the key. I quit.

We know. It all seems overwhelming, but don’t give up just yet.

The best-selling manuscript of all time had a word count of more than 700,000 words. On the other hand, one of Time Magazine’s best-ranked blogs was under 200 words. The lesson here is that there is no one-length-fits-all answer. But what is clear is that word count matters and depends on your objective for a particular piece of content. 

Different objectives call for different word counts

If backlinks and shares are your focus, consider writing no less than 7,000 words.

If Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) are more your speed, don’t stop writing until you’ve written at least 2,000 words. 

If reaching the masses is important to you, well, maybe you should get started on those 700,000 words.

With your objectives in mind, you’re ready to follow general rules of thumb for deciding the ideal word count for different types of content. But first, let’s consider a few best practices. 

How to determine the best word count for your web content

Whether you’re writing a new manuscript, academic journal, or a set of blog articles, there are best practices to follow to ensure you’re creating content that meets your objectives and gives your audience the right answers to their problems and search queries. 

Consider your audience

Prioritize quality over quantity, focus on on-page elements besides copy, provide different value with different lengths.

What you write isn’t nearly as important as whom you’re writing it for. Different audiences respond to different types of content. For example, technical buyers want in-depth pieces to  help them make purchasing decisions, while a busy parent may want quick information about a new bottle for their child.

E verything begins and ends with your audience. Keeping a pulse on what they’re doing and where they’re spending their time will produce better outcomes than guessing or relying on gut instinct.

Begin by asking yourself questions like: 

• Which of our content pieces are they already most engaged with?
• What is the average length of those posts? 
• What type of content are our competitors producing and how is it performing?

Answer these by team brainstorming sessions and using analytics tools to examine how your content is performing. 

Also consider emerging technology such as voice search that rely on more natural queries for online search. For example, ask, “What is the best word count for articles” vs. “What is the required length for articles?” Or, “number of words for a blog post” vs. “optimal word count for blog posts.”

A Google search of “what is the best word count for a blog” might yield a quarter billion results or more, but the results that will show up on SERPs in the wake of Google’s 2024 helpful content update are those that demonstrate experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness ( EEAT ) :

• Experience : Have real people with relevant experiences (not AI) write your content.
• Expertise : Focus on the depth and accuracy of your content, and cite your sources.
• Authoritativeness : Earn coverage, backlinks, and mentions from reputable website.
• Trustworthiness : Build and maintain trust with your audience through transparency and consistency.

Ask yourself and those outside your organization how your content measures up. Even better, survey your target market. Answers will help you optimize your content across platforms.

“A picture is worth a thousand words.” 

This phrase –originally, one look is worth a thousand words–is no less true today than when it was first coined by advertising exec Frederick R. Bernard more than a century ago.

Now, marketers have more ways than ever to engage audiences with imaging, beyond photos and video. Think GIFs, static or animated memes, and infographics. 

Perhaps the best definition of memes comes from Saint Hoax via the New York Times : “[They] are basically editorial cartoons for the Internet age.” These often take on a life of their own due to high shares and engagement. 

Infographics are more visually striking, updated versions of charts, diagrams, or illustrations—a visual way of representing a lot of information in a shareable format. 

Other ideas include making your content searchable within an article or blog post, adding a table of contents with links to sections, and offering a downloadable version of the article in .pdf format. 

Consider adopting one or more of these elements to complement your copy. 

Some content lengths resonate with specific audiences more than others. Consider a study by Neil Patel and his team about 10,000+ articles on the Internet. They found there are nuances to word count based on type of industry, type of content, and social media platform.

To rank in the top 10% of traffic, backlinks, and social media shares in your industry, the report concluded that average word count for articles should be between 500 and 1,500 words.  

Keeping in mind that word count will vary depending on your specific industry and objectives, here are rules of thumb for different types of content. 

Blog posts | 2,100 to 2,400 words

Blog posts between 2,100 and 2,400 words tend to perform the best for SEO ranking, according to SEO Journal . This word count further varies depending on your objective. For example, if you’re aiming to increase social media shares, your article can run between 300 and 10,000 words. Introductory posts tend to perform better at 300 to 500 words. Learn more about word count for SEO .

Whitepapers | 1,250 to 3,000 words

Whitepaper expert Gordon Graham defines whitepapes as persuasive essays that help readers understand an issue, solve a problem, or perform better at their jobs. To develop an argument and enough supporting detail, Graham suggests writing at least five pages, about 1,250 words. 

Social posts | 5 to 25 words 

Word count for social posts varies by platform. For example, the ideal LinkedIn post performs best at 25 words. Paid posts on Facebook are best at five to 19 words. Some users have found clever workarounds to expand their posts by using images with text, posting longer content in comments, or including external links to a continuation of the post. 

Core web pages | 300 to 500 words

Your About Us, Contact, and other core web pages are usually the first pages seen by your target audience. Word count matters here. To improve your search engine ranking, the optimal word count for a web page is about 500 words. SEOptimizer’s website word count tool can tell you if you need to boost (or decrease) your word count to start ranking higher in Google search results. 

Final words of advice

Length does matter. But arriving at the ideal word count for your content starts with a clear understanding of your industry, target audience, channels, and marketing objectives—and the value that quality, on-point content brings to readers.

Here, everything from brainstorming and use of analytics tools to doing self-assessments based on Google’s EEAT requirements. 

Word count is relative and will create different value for readers on different channels. A light, easy read for social is likely to have a much different length than a detailed, technical thought leadership piece meant to increase your search rankings on Google. 

Finally, consider breaking out of the “words-only” mindset—experiment with adding video, GIFs, memes, and infographics to your existing content to see if that drives higher engagement. 

And always prioritize quality of quantity. 

Get clarity on ideal word count for your content with VIP Parse.ly Analytics

Parse.ly, part of the WordPress VIP platform , has a feature that filters content by word count, which lets you compare the performance of longer- to shorter-length pieces through various metric, channel, author, and tag lenses (see image below). 

This is critical feedback that will help you plan and optimize your content strategy. For example, find out what word count works best for search or the sweet spot for bringing readers to your site from a newsletter.

Unlike other analytics solutions, Parse.ly makes working with data easy for writers, editors, and content marketers, giving them the insights they need to focus their content strategy and prove ROI.

Andrew Butler, Content Strategist, WordPress VIP

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