A literature review or narrative review is a type of review article. A literature review is a scholarly paper that presents the current knowledge including substantive findings as well as theoretical and methodological contributions to a particular topic. Literature reviews are secondary sources and do not report new or original experimental work. Most often associated with academic-oriented literature, such reviews are found in academic journals and are not to be confused with book reviews, which may also appear in the same publication. Literature reviews are a basis for research in nearly every academic field. A narrow-scope literature review may be included as part of a peer-reviewedjournal articlepresenting new research, serving to situate the current study within the body of the relevant literature and to provide context for the reader. In such a case, the review usually precedes the methodology and results sections of the work. Producing a literature review may also be part of graduate and post-graduate student work, including in the preparation of a thesis, dissertation, or a journal article. Literature reviews are also common in a research proposal or prospectus.
Types
The main types of literature reviews are: evaluative, exploratory, and instrumental. A fourth type, the systematic review, is often classified separately, but is essentially a literature review focused on a research question, trying to identify, appraise, select and synthesize all high-quality research evidence and arguments relevant to that question. A meta-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. Torraco 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 then synthesis of the literature under investigation.
Process and product
Shields and Rangarajan distinguish between the process of reviewing the literature and a finished work or product known as a literature review. The process of reviewing the literature is often ongoing and informs many aspects of the empirical research project. The process of reviewing the literature requires different kinds of activities and ways of thinking. Shields and Rangarajan and Granello link the activities of doing a literature review with Benjamin Bloom’s revised taxonomy of the cognitive domain.
