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Literature reviews

Whether you're writing your dissertation, an annotated bibliography or a research proposal, this guide covers everything you need to know in order to structure and write an expert literature review.

Structuring your review

Finding the gap

A photograph showing the phrase 'Mind the Gap' painted on a railway platform.
 

You might have heard about finding the gap in your literature review - but what does this mean?

Looking for the gap in the literature means finding an aspect of your topic that hasn't been fully explored by researchers. This might be because you are researching a new technique or technology, or that your method or approach hasn't been used before in your field of study. You don't always need to find a gap, but it is a good way of demonstrating your literature searching skills and ability to compare a wide range of different sources. If you are able to find one, introduce the gap towards the end of the literature review, so that the reader can trace your path through the evidence first.

Top tip: Writing with subheadings
Use subheadings to structure your writing – more is better! Every time you find yourself moving onto a different theme or a new link you’ve found in the literature, add a subheading. Then, when you've finished writing your literature review, you can decide which subheadings are still helpful and which can be deleted.

 

Literature review structure: A three-tier model

Imagine you are explaining your dissertation topic to a friend for the first time. Even for someone on the same degree course, they would need some context on the topic before you introduced more detail and complex examples.

A literature review follows the same ‘funnel’ narrative, moving from general themes to more specific detail:

An upside down triangle, showing that a lite

 

Top tip: Sticky note shuffle
To check the flow of your literature review, write the topic or theme of each paragraph on a post-it note and line them up. Does the order make sense? Can you explain how to move from one post-it note to the next? If you jump between very different ideas, go back to your writing and make sure you explain the link in your paragraph, or think about moving the paragraphs around into a more logical order.

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