Literature Review Tips

• Select a topic you're interested in.
• Be flexible with search terms- look in textbooks, Wikipedia, subject headings, or articles you already have to find the language researchers are using to describe your topic.
• Be persistent with your searching- keep trying, but also...
• Ask for help if you're getting stuck! Reach out to a librarian, your instructor, or your classmates.
• Read the abstract before committing to reading an entire research article.
• Take lots of notes!
• Any citation style, like APA, takes practice. Use database "draft" citations as a guide, but ensure you know how to locate errors.
• Have fun! You're exploring something new and will get to "connect the dots" between existing research for your readers!

Literature reviews are absolutely research projects! They include the following processes:

• Identifying an appropriate scope for the research topic
• Explaining the context and importance of the problem being researched
• Locating information to answer research questions
• Analyzing existing research to identify strengths, weaknesses, and any consensus found so far
• Summarizing others' research
• Synthesizing several sources and ideas into a single paper/project
• Determining what "next steps" are needed
• Citing existing information
• Sharing your findings with an audience! (Your classmates, your instructors, even those at the Undergraduate Projects & Research Conference.)

While you don't follow a standard scientific method to conduct a literature review, you are still combining existing research to answer your unique question. That's hard work!