 | This articleduplicates the scope of other articles, specificallysystematic review andsurvey article andmeta-analysis. Pleasediscuss this issue and help introduce asummary style to the article.(May 2014) |
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Aliterature review is an overview of previously published works on a particular topic. The term can refer to a fullscholarly paper or a section of a scholarly work such as books or articles. Either way, a literature review provides theresearcher/author and the audiences with general information of an existing knowledge of a particular topic. A good literature review has a proper research question, a proper theoretical framework, and/or a chosen researchmethodology. It serves to situate the current study within the body of the relevant literature and provides context for the reader. In such cases, the review usually precedes the methodology and results sections of the work.
Producing a literature review is often part of a graduate and post-graduate requirement, included in the preparation of athesis,dissertation, or a journal article. Literature reviews are also common in aresearch proposal or prospectus (the document approved before a student formally begins a dissertation or thesis).[1]
A literature review can be a type of areview article. In this sense, it is ascholarly paper that presents the current knowledge including substantive findings as well as theoretical and methodological contributions to a particular topic. Literature reviews aresecondary sources and do not report new or original experimental work. Most often associated with academic-oriented literature, such reviews are found inacademic journals and are not to be confused withbook reviews, which may also appear in the same publication. Literature reviews are a basis for research in nearly every academic field.
Since the concept of asystematic review was formalized in the 1970s, a basic division among types of reviews is the dichotomy of narrative reviews versus systematic reviews.[verification needed] The main types of narrative reviews areevaluative,exploratory, andinstrumental.[2]
A fourth type of review of literature (thescientific literature) is thesystematic review but it is not called aliterature review, which absent further specification, conventionally refers to narrative reviews. A systematic review focuses on a specific research question to identify, appraise, select, and synthesize all high-quality research evidence and arguments relevant to that question. Ameta-analysis is typically a systematic review using statistical methods to effectively combine the data used on all selected studies to produce a more reliable result.[3]
Torraco (2016)[4] describes an integrative literature review. The purpose of an integrative literature review is to generate new knowledge on a topic through the process of review, critique, and synthesis of the literature under investigation.
George et al (2023)[5] offer an extensive overview of review approaches. They also propose a model for selecting an approach by looking at the purpose, object, subject, community, and practices of the review. They describe six different types of review, each with their own unique purposes:
Shields and Rangarajan (2013) distinguish between theprocess of reviewing the literature and a finished work orproduct known as a literature review.[6]: 193–229 Theprocess of reviewing the literature is often ongoing and informs many aspects of theempirical research project.
The process of reviewing the literature requires different kinds of activities and ways of thinking.[7] Shields and Rangarajan (2013) and Granello (2001) link the activities of doing a literature review withBenjamin Bloom's revised taxonomy of the cognitive domain (ways of thinking: remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating).[6][8]
Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping traditional literature reviews across various disciplines.[9]Generative pre-trained transformers, such asChatGPT, are often used by students[10] and academics for review purposes.[11] Since 2023, an increasing number of tools powered bylarge language models and other artificial intelligence technologies have been developed to assist, automate, or generate literature reviews.[12]Nevertheless, the employment of ChatGPT in academic reviews is problematic due to ChatGPT's propensity to "hallucinate".[13] In response, efforts are being made to mitigate these hallucinations through the integration of plugins. For instance, Rad et al. (2023) used ScholarAI for review incardiothoracic surgery.[14][example needed]
