Writing the literature review chapter

From search to draft in six steps

Nobody writes a good literature review from memory. You need notes, and the notes need some order. Most of our scholars, in any field, end up doing these six steps in this order.

1. Start the search from your objectives

   Take each objective and make two or three search strings from it. Run them in Scopus or Web of Science if your library has access, and in Google Scholar also. For Indian theses on your topic, search in Shodhganga. Save every useful paper in Zotero or Mendeley from the first day itself, with the PDF attached.

2. Screen quickly, then read properly

   For each study, first look at the title and abstract only. Drop it if it has nothing to do with your objectives. The remaining ones, read fully, mainly the method, sample, setting and main result. Most theses finally cite somewhere between 100 and 250 sources, but this number changes a lot from one field to another.

3. Fill the matrix while you read

   Keep one row for each study. Columns can be author and year, country or state, sample, method, variables and main finding. Keep the last column for your own remarks. Even short notes are enough there, for example “agrees with Kumar 2019” or “only urban, small sample”. Later you write the chapter from this matrix, not from the PDFs.

4. Group the rows into themes

   Sort the matrix by variable or by research question. Sorting by year will not help here. The groups that come out become your sub-headings. For a PhD literature review, four to seven themes is typical.

5. Write every theme as an argument

   Begin each theme with a few lines on what the studies show together. After that, give the evidence. Then write where the studies disagree with each other, or where they fall short.

6. End the chapter with the gap

   In the last section of the literature review, collect the gaps from every theme and write them as one statement. When the examiner reads your objectives after this, he should feel they are coming straight out of that statement.

Step 3, the matrix, will take most of your time, but it is worth doing properly. If you want a ready format, our literature review matrix gives the columns in a sheet you can fill as you read.

One paragraph, written two ways

One example will make this clear. Say your theme is teacher burnout in government schools, and you have read three studies. We made up these studies for this guide only.

Summary style. “Rao (2017) studied 300 teachers in Telangana and found high burnout. Menon (2019) studied 180 teachers in Kerala and found that workload was linked to burnout. Selvi (2021) studied 250 teachers in Tamil Nadu and found that principal support reduced burnout.”

Each sentence here is correct. Still, what the three studies mean together is not said anywhere, and the examiner has to guess it. That is your work as the writer.

Synthesis style. “Studies across three southern states agree that burnout among government school teachers is high (Menon, 2019; Rao, 2017; Selvi, 2021). They differ on the cause. Menon sees workload as the main reason. For Selvi, how much the principal supports the teacher counts for more than the number of hours worked. None of the three studies measured administrative duties, such as data entry for state portals, which teachers in all three states report as a growing load.”

The three studies are the same. Now the paragraph makes a claim, it shows where the authors disagree, and it points to a gap. The gap is coming out of the studies only. You have not added it as a separate announcement at the end of chapter.

How to structure the literature review chapter

In India a PhD literature review commonly runs 30 to 60 pages. Social science and management theses mostly go towards the longer side. Many engineering theses keep it near 20 or 25 pages, because every later chapter also reviews its own narrow literature. Ask what length your guide expects before you write 80 pages.

In most fields the chapter comprises of the parts listed here.

• A short opening of about one page. Say what the review covers, which databases and years you searched, and how the chapter is arranged.
• Theory or conceptual base, only if your study uses one. Put only the theories you actually use later, not every theory in the area.
• The themes, each one in its own section, in an order where one leads into the next. Many times this is the same order as your objectives.
• Studies in the Indian context. Either give them a section of their own or put them inside each theme, as you and your guide prefer. Committees in India many times ask for this specifically.
• The research gap, as the last section, in one or two pages.

Some departments still ask for separate parts on “foreign studies” and “Indian studies”. If your department wants that, follow it. Inside each part also, arrange the studies by theme.

What committees and examiners look for

Members of the doctoral committee mostly don’t read every page of the literature review. They check a few things quickly and ask questions from that.

“How recent is this?” When most of your citations are older than ten years, expect a comment on it. In the final year, run your search again and add the new studies. A review that stops at 2021 will look old by 2026.

“Where are the key studies?” Every field has a few studies that everyone cites. When even those are not there in your chapter, naturally the examiner starts doubting how much more you have left out. Mostly your guide can name them in five minutes, so ask.

“What is the gap, exactly?” A gap like “no study has been done in Tirunelveli district” is the weakest type. Examiners want a gap in what is known about the topic, not only in the place of study. Our guide to the research gap and problem statement explains the stronger types of gap.

“Did you read these, or copy the citations?” Examiners can make out. A wrong year in a citation gives it away, and so does a finding that is misread, or the same five studies coming in the same order as in some other thesis.

Keeping similarity down while you write

Mostly the literature review gets the highest similarity score, because the whole chapter describes other people’s work. Controlling it starts at the reading stage itself.

Keep the PDF closed when you are filling the matrix. Write the finding of each study as one line in your own words. After that, write the chapter from the matrix. When you write with the PDF open, the author’s wording slowly enters into your sentences, and the plagiarism software catch it.

Use quotations only a little. If you need a definition word for word, put it in quotation marks with the page number. As per the UGC 2018 plagiarism regulations, a quotation given with proper attribution is not counted in the similarity. But a chapter full of quotes makes the examiner feel you have nothing of your own to say.

Be careful with your own earlier writing also. If you already published a review paper from this chapter, ask your guide how your university treats overlap with your own published work, because the rule is different in different universities.

Five mistakes that cost scholars a round of revisions

1. The year-by-year list. One paragraph for each study, arranged by date. Regroup the studies by theme.
2. No voice of your own. In the whole chapter you are only reporting what other people found. Put your own reading in between. Say which study is stronger, for example, or mention that the sample was small in two of them.
3. Theories you never use. Three pages on Maslow, and after that Maslow never comes again. If a theory is not shaping your variables or your analysis, remove it.
4. Reference list and in-text citations not matching. Use a reference manager from the beginning itself. Otherwise you will be sitting in the last month correcting 200 references one by one, and nobody enjoys that work.
5. A gap that comes from nowhere. If your themes never pointed towards the gap, the closing section looks like it was fixed on separately. To avoid this, finish every theme with one or two lines on what is still not answered.

Suppose the literature review is the chapter that is holding up all the others. Our literature review support can help you with the search, the matrix and the structure. The reading and the argument will still be yours.