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Literature Reviews

How to understand and write a literature review for an academic paper or research article.

Analyzing As You Go: Tracking Methods

 

The Who/What/Why/How Literature Searching Spreadsheet Template

Here is a review matrix Vicky developed to track articles for a research article literature review. Your needs may vary, but attached below is a template of this spreadsheet for you to use yourself, if it works for you.

Author(s)
Year
Article
Source
Context, Issues
Demographic
Methodology
Problem(s)
Conclusions
Other
Research Question
                     
                     
How to Use It

  • Author to Source

    • These columns allow you to sort by any of the components, and can also be used to create your bibliography. Move the columns around if necessary to ensure the formatting is correct for the citation style you're using.

  • Context, Issues

    • Why was this study done? What is it trying to address?

  • Demographic (if applicable)

    • Who was being studied? Can be changed to something more applicable to your area of study, or deleted.

  • Methodology

    • What research method or methods were used in this study?

  • Problem(s)

    • What problems with the study did the author(s) observe?

  • Conclusions

    • What did this study show? What remains to be learned in this subject?

  • Other

    • Anything else that came up. If you find yourself adding the same type of information to the Other field, consider creating a new column for it.

  • RQ (Research Question)

    • Potential areas of future study, if you think of any. Do you notice a gap in the research that you might fill?...

 

See it in action (click image to enlarge):

License: CC0 (public domain)

A Matrix for Engineering Research

The Summary-Comparison Matrix: A Tool for Writing the Literature Review

A literature searching matrix with an engineering focus.

Reference
Tools & Technologies
Approaches & Algorithms
Standards, Risk & Safety   
Application & End Use
Relevance
           

By M. K. S. Sastry and C. Mohammed (2013)

The Position Matrix

As you collect articles and book chapters and blog posts and other sources, it's important to understand not just what they're saying but where they're coming from.

This matrix helps you organize the works you find as well as identify why they were written.

Title, Author, Source

(or you can use the full citation and then have a ready-made bibliography!)
Publication Year

If you do include the full citation in the first column, it can still be useful to include the year of publication here as well so you can sort them chronologically.
Purpose

Why was this article/chapter/blog post/tweet/etc. written? What's it trying to get across to you the reader?
Position

How does the author (or authors) feel about the topic? Is their bias obvious or subtle? Who are they trying to convince (if anyone)?
       

Adapted by the WCC (and subsequently the Library) from Health Sciences Literature Review Made Easy: The Matrix Method by Judith Garrard