how to critically analyse literature review

• University of Oregon Libraries
• Research Guides

How to Write a Literature Review

• 5. Critically Analyze and Evaluate
• Literature Reviews: A Recap
• Reading Journal Articles
• Does it Describe a Literature Review?
• 1. Identify the Question
• 2. Review Discipline Styles
• Searching Article Databases
• Finding Full-Text of an Article
• Citation Chaining
• When to Stop Searching
• 4. Manage Your References

Critically analyze and evaluate

Tip: read and annotate pdfs.

• 6. Synthesize
• 7. Write a Literature Review

Ask yourself questions like these about each book or article you include:

• What is the research question?
• What is the primary methodology used?
• How was the data gathered?
• How is the data presented?
• What are the main conclusions?
• Are these conclusions reasonable?
• What theories are used to support the researcher's conclusions?

Take notes on the articles as you read them and identify any themes or concepts that may apply to your research question.

This sample template (below) may also be useful for critically reading and organizing your articles. Or you can use this online form and email yourself a copy .

• Sample Template for Critical Analysis of the Literature

Opening an article in PDF format in Acrobat Reader will allow you to use "sticky notes" and "highlighting" to make notes on the article without printing it out. Make sure to save the edited file so you don't lose your notes!

Some Citation Managers like Mendeley also have highlighting and annotation features.Here's a screen capture of a pdf in Mendeley with highlighting, notes, and various colors:

Screen capture from a UO Librarian's Mendeley Desktop app

• Learn more about citation management software in the previous step: 4. Manage Your References
• << Previous: 4. Manage Your References
• Next: 6. Synthesize >>
• Last Updated: Aug 12, 2024 11:48 AM
• URL: https://researchguides.uoregon.edu/litreview

Contact Us Library Accessibility UO Libraries Privacy Notices and Procedures

1501 Kincaid Street Eugene, OR 97403 P: 541-346-3053 F: 541-346-3485

• Visit us on Facebook
• Visit us on Twitter
• Visit us on Youtube
• Visit us on Instagram
• Report a Concern
• Nondiscrimination and Title IX
• Accessibility
• Privacy Policy
• Find People

• Research Guides

Literature Review: A Self-Guided Tutorial

• 5. Critically analyze and evaluate
• Literature Reviews: A Recap
• Peer Review
• Reading the Literature
• Using Concept Maps
• Developing Research Questions
• Considering Strong Opinions
• 2. Review discipline styles
• Super Searching
• Finding the Full Text
• Citation Searching This link opens in a new window
• When to stop searching
• Citation Management
• Annotating Articles Tip
• How to Review the Literature
• Using a Synthesis Matrix
• 7. Write literature review

Critically analyze and evaluate

Ask yourself questions like these about each book or article you include:

• What is the research question?
• Why is this work significant?
• What are the major themes and main conclusions?
• What research methods were used?
• What are the main conclusions? Are they reasonable?
• What theories are used to support the researcher's conclusions?

Take notes on the books and articles as you read them and identify any themes or concepts that may apply to your research question. Use the template below as a guide for taking notes.

• Critical Analysis of the Literature: Notes Template Use this template to take notes on books and articles you are reading. Choose File|Make a copy to add an editable copy to your Google Drive.
• << Previous: Annotating Articles Tip
• Next: 6. Synthesize >>
• Last Updated: Jul 30, 2024 4:12 PM
• URL: https://libguides.williams.edu/literature-review

What is a Literature Review? How to Write It (with Examples)

A literature review is a critical analysis and synthesis of existing research on a particular topic. It provides an overview of the current state of knowledge, identifies gaps, and highlights key findings in the literature. 1 The purpose of a literature review is to situate your own research within the context of existing scholarship, demonstrating your understanding of the topic and showing how your work contributes to the ongoing conversation in the field. Learning how to write a literature review is a critical tool for successful research. Your ability to summarize and synthesize prior research pertaining to a certain topic demonstrates your grasp on the topic of study, and assists in the learning process. 

Table of Contents

• What is the purpose of literature review? 
• a. Habitat Loss and Species Extinction: 
• b. Range Shifts and Phenological Changes: 
• c. Ocean Acidification and Coral Reefs: 
• d. Adaptive Strategies and Conservation Efforts: 

How to write a good literature review 

• Choose a Topic and Define the Research Question: 
• Decide on the Scope of Your Review: 
• Select Databases for Searches: 
• Conduct Searches and Keep Track: 
• Review the Literature: 
• Organize and Write Your Literature Review: 
• How to write a literature review faster with Paperpal? 
• Frequently asked questions 

What is a literature review?

A well-conducted literature review demonstrates the researcher’s familiarity with the existing literature, establishes the context for their own research, and contributes to scholarly conversations on the topic. One of the purposes of a literature review is also to help researchers avoid duplicating previous work and ensure that their research is informed by and builds upon the existing body of knowledge.

What is the purpose of literature review?

A literature review serves several important purposes within academic and research contexts. Here are some key objectives and functions of a literature review: 2  

1. Contextualizing the Research Problem: The literature review provides a background and context for the research problem under investigation. It helps to situate the study within the existing body of knowledge. 

2. Identifying Gaps in Knowledge: By identifying gaps, contradictions, or areas requiring further research, the researcher can shape the research question and justify the significance of the study. This is crucial for ensuring that the new research contributes something novel to the field. 

Find academic papers related to your research topic faster. Try Research on Paperpal  

3. Understanding Theoretical and Conceptual Frameworks: Literature reviews help researchers gain an understanding of the theoretical and conceptual frameworks used in previous studies. This aids in the development of a theoretical framework for the current research. 

4. Providing Methodological Insights: Another purpose of literature reviews is that it allows researchers to learn about the methodologies employed in previous studies. This can help in choosing appropriate research methods for the current study and avoiding pitfalls that others may have encountered. 

5. Establishing Credibility: A well-conducted literature review demonstrates the researcher’s familiarity with existing scholarship, establishing their credibility and expertise in the field. It also helps in building a solid foundation for the new research. 

6. Informing Hypotheses or Research Questions: The literature review guides the formulation of hypotheses or research questions by highlighting relevant findings and areas of uncertainty in existing literature. 

Literature review example

Let’s delve deeper with a literature review example: Let’s say your literature review is about the impact of climate change on biodiversity. You might format your literature review into sections such as the effects of climate change on habitat loss and species extinction, phenological changes, and marine biodiversity. Each section would then summarize and analyze relevant studies in those areas, highlighting key findings and identifying gaps in the research. The review would conclude by emphasizing the need for further research on specific aspects of the relationship between climate change and biodiversity. The following literature review template provides a glimpse into the recommended literature review structure and content, demonstrating how research findings are organized around specific themes within a broader topic. 

Literature Review on Climate Change Impacts on Biodiversity:

Climate change is a global phenomenon with far-reaching consequences, including significant impacts on biodiversity. This literature review synthesizes key findings from various studies: 

a. Habitat Loss and Species Extinction:

Climate change-induced alterations in temperature and precipitation patterns contribute to habitat loss, affecting numerous species (Thomas et al., 2004). The review discusses how these changes increase the risk of extinction, particularly for species with specific habitat requirements. 

b. Range Shifts and Phenological Changes:

Observations of range shifts and changes in the timing of biological events (phenology) are documented in response to changing climatic conditions (Parmesan & Yohe, 2003). These shifts affect ecosystems and may lead to mismatches between species and their resources. 

c. Ocean Acidification and Coral Reefs:

The review explores the impact of climate change on marine biodiversity, emphasizing ocean acidification’s threat to coral reefs (Hoegh-Guldberg et al., 2007). Changes in pH levels negatively affect coral calcification, disrupting the delicate balance of marine ecosystems. 

d. Adaptive Strategies and Conservation Efforts:

Recognizing the urgency of the situation, the literature review discusses various adaptive strategies adopted by species and conservation efforts aimed at mitigating the impacts of climate change on biodiversity (Hannah et al., 2007). It emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary approaches for effective conservation planning. 

Strengthen your literature review with factual insights. Try Research on Paperpal for free!    

Writing a literature review involves summarizing and synthesizing existing research on a particular topic. A good literature review format should include the following elements. 

Introduction: The introduction sets the stage for your literature review, providing context and introducing the main focus of your review. 

• Opening Statement: Begin with a general statement about the broader topic and its significance in the field. 
• Scope and Purpose: Clearly define the scope of your literature review. Explain the specific research question or objective you aim to address. 
• Organizational Framework: Briefly outline the structure of your literature review, indicating how you will categorize and discuss the existing research. 
• Significance of the Study: Highlight why your literature review is important and how it contributes to the understanding of the chosen topic. 
• Thesis Statement: Conclude the introduction with a concise thesis statement that outlines the main argument or perspective you will develop in the body of the literature review. 

Body: The body of the literature review is where you provide a comprehensive analysis of existing literature, grouping studies based on themes, methodologies, or other relevant criteria. 

• Organize by Theme or Concept: Group studies that share common themes, concepts, or methodologies. Discuss each theme or concept in detail, summarizing key findings and identifying gaps or areas of disagreement. 
• Critical Analysis: Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each study. Discuss the methodologies used, the quality of evidence, and the overall contribution of each work to the understanding of the topic. 
• Synthesis of Findings: Synthesize the information from different studies to highlight trends, patterns, or areas of consensus in the literature. 
• Identification of Gaps: Discuss any gaps or limitations in the existing research and explain how your review contributes to filling these gaps. 
• Transition between Sections: Provide smooth transitions between different themes or concepts to maintain the flow of your literature review. 

Write and Cite as you go with Paperpal Research. Start now for free.   

Conclusion: The conclusion of your literature review should summarize the main findings, highlight the contributions of the review, and suggest avenues for future research. 

• Summary of Key Findings: Recap the main findings from the literature and restate how they contribute to your research question or objective. 
• Contributions to the Field: Discuss the overall contribution of your literature review to the existing knowledge in the field. 
• Implications and Applications: Explore the practical implications of the findings and suggest how they might impact future research or practice. 
• Recommendations for Future Research: Identify areas that require further investigation and propose potential directions for future research in the field. 
• Final Thoughts: Conclude with a final reflection on the importance of your literature review and its relevance to the broader academic community. 

Conducting a literature review

Conducting a literature review is an essential step in research that involves reviewing and analyzing existing literature on a specific topic. It’s important to know how to do a literature review effectively, so here are the steps to follow: 1  

Choose a Topic and Define the Research Question:

• Select a topic that is relevant to your field of study. 
• Clearly define your research question or objective. Determine what specific aspect of the topic do you want to explore? 

Decide on the Scope of Your Review:

• Determine the timeframe for your literature review. Are you focusing on recent developments, or do you want a historical overview? 
• Consider the geographical scope. Is your review global, or are you focusing on a specific region? 
• Define the inclusion and exclusion criteria. What types of sources will you include? Are there specific types of studies or publications you will exclude? 

Select Databases for Searches:

• Identify relevant databases for your field. Examples include PubMed, IEEE Xplore, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. 
• Consider searching in library catalogs, institutional repositories, and specialized databases related to your topic. 

Conduct Searches and Keep Track:

• Develop a systematic search strategy using keywords, Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT), and other search techniques. 
• Record and document your search strategy for transparency and replicability. 
• Keep track of the articles, including publication details, abstracts, and links. Use citation management tools like EndNote, Zotero, or Mendeley to organize your references. 

Review the Literature:

• Evaluate the relevance and quality of each source. Consider the methodology, sample size, and results of studies. 
• Organize the literature by themes or key concepts. Identify patterns, trends, and gaps in the existing research. 
• Summarize key findings and arguments from each source. Compare and contrast different perspectives. 
• Identify areas where there is a consensus in the literature and where there are conflicting opinions. 
• Provide critical analysis and synthesis of the literature. What are the strengths and weaknesses of existing research? 

Organize and Write Your Literature Review:

• Literature review outline should be based on themes, chronological order, or methodological approaches. 
• Write a clear and coherent narrative that synthesizes the information gathered. 
• Use proper citations for each source and ensure consistency in your citation style (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.). 
• Conclude your literature review by summarizing key findings, identifying gaps, and suggesting areas for future research. 

Whether you’re exploring a new research field or finding new angles to develop an existing topic, sifting through hundreds of papers can take more time than you have to spare. But what if you could find science-backed insights with verified citations in seconds? That’s the power of Paperpal’s new Research feature!  

How to write a literature review faster with Paperpal?

Paperpal, an AI writing assistant, integrates powerful academic search capabilities within its writing platform. With the Research feature, you get 100% factual insights, with citations backed by 250M+ verified research articles, directly within your writing interface with the option to save relevant references in your Citation Library. By eliminating the need to switch tabs to find answers to all your research questions, Paperpal saves time and helps you stay focused on your writing.   

Here’s how to use the Research feature:  

• Ask a question: Get started with a new document on paperpal.com. Click on the “Research” feature and type your question in plain English. Paperpal will scour over 250 million research articles, including conference papers and preprints, to provide you with accurate insights and citations. 
• Review and Save: Paperpal summarizes the information, while citing sources and listing relevant reads. You can quickly scan the results to identify relevant references and save these directly to your built-in citations library for later access. 
• Cite with Confidence: Paperpal makes it easy to incorporate relevant citations and references into your writing, ensuring your arguments are well-supported by credible sources. This translates to a polished, well-researched literature review. 

The literature review sample and detailed advice on writing and conducting a review will help you produce a well-structured report. But remember that a good literature review is an ongoing process, and it may be necessary to revisit and update it as your research progresses. By combining effortless research with an easy citation process, Paperpal Research streamlines the literature review process and empowers you to write faster and with more confidence. Try Paperpal Research now and see for yourself.  

Frequently asked questions

A literature review is a critical and comprehensive analysis of existing literature (published and unpublished works) on a specific topic or research question and provides a synthesis of the current state of knowledge in a particular field. A well-conducted literature review is crucial for researchers to build upon existing knowledge, avoid duplication of efforts, and contribute to the advancement of their field. It also helps researchers situate their work within a broader context and facilitates the development of a sound theoretical and conceptual framework for their studies.

Literature review is a crucial component of research writing, providing a solid background for a research paper’s investigation. The aim is to keep professionals up to date by providing an understanding of ongoing developments within a specific field, including research methods, and experimental techniques used in that field, and present that knowledge in the form of a written report. Also, the depth and breadth of the literature review emphasizes the credibility of the scholar in his or her field.  

Before writing a literature review, it’s essential to undertake several preparatory steps to ensure that your review is well-researched, organized, and focused. This includes choosing a topic of general interest to you and doing exploratory research on that topic, writing an annotated bibliography, and noting major points, especially those that relate to the position you have taken on the topic. 

Literature reviews and academic research papers are essential components of scholarly work but serve different purposes within the academic realm. 3 A literature review aims to provide a foundation for understanding the current state of research on a particular topic, identify gaps or controversies, and lay the groundwork for future research. Therefore, it draws heavily from existing academic sources, including books, journal articles, and other scholarly publications. In contrast, an academic research paper aims to present new knowledge, contribute to the academic discourse, and advance the understanding of a specific research question. Therefore, it involves a mix of existing literature (in the introduction and literature review sections) and original data or findings obtained through research methods. 

Literature reviews are essential components of academic and research papers, and various strategies can be employed to conduct them effectively. If you want to know how to write a literature review for a research paper, here are four common approaches that are often used by researchers.  Chronological Review: This strategy involves organizing the literature based on the chronological order of publication. It helps to trace the development of a topic over time, showing how ideas, theories, and research have evolved.  Thematic Review: Thematic reviews focus on identifying and analyzing themes or topics that cut across different studies. Instead of organizing the literature chronologically, it is grouped by key themes or concepts, allowing for a comprehensive exploration of various aspects of the topic.  Methodological Review: This strategy involves organizing the literature based on the research methods employed in different studies. It helps to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of various methodologies and allows the reader to evaluate the reliability and validity of the research findings.  Theoretical Review: A theoretical review examines the literature based on the theoretical frameworks used in different studies. This approach helps to identify the key theories that have been applied to the topic and assess their contributions to the understanding of the subject.  It’s important to note that these strategies are not mutually exclusive, and a literature review may combine elements of more than one approach. The choice of strategy depends on the research question, the nature of the literature available, and the goals of the review. Additionally, other strategies, such as integrative reviews or systematic reviews, may be employed depending on the specific requirements of the research.

The literature review format can vary depending on the specific publication guidelines. However, there are some common elements and structures that are often followed. Here is a general guideline for the format of a literature review:  Introduction:   Provide an overview of the topic.  Define the scope and purpose of the literature review.  State the research question or objective.  Body:   Organize the literature by themes, concepts, or chronology.  Critically analyze and evaluate each source.  Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the studies.  Highlight any methodological limitations or biases.  Identify patterns, connections, or contradictions in the existing research.  Conclusion:   Summarize the key points discussed in the literature review.  Highlight the research gap.  Address the research question or objective stated in the introduction.  Highlight the contributions of the review and suggest directions for future research.

Both annotated bibliographies and literature reviews involve the examination of scholarly sources. While annotated bibliographies focus on individual sources with brief annotations, literature reviews provide a more in-depth, integrated, and comprehensive analysis of existing literature on a specific topic. The key differences are as follows: 

References 

• Denney, A. S., & Tewksbury, R. (2013). How to write a literature review.  Journal of criminal justice education ,  24 (2), 218-234. 
• Pan, M. L. (2016).  Preparing literature reviews: Qualitative and quantitative approaches . Taylor & Francis. 
• Cantero, C. (2019). How to write a literature review.  San José State University Writing Center . 

Paperpal is an AI writing assistant that help academics write better, faster with real-time suggestions for in-depth language and grammar correction. Trained on millions of research manuscripts enhanced by professional academic editors, Paperpal delivers human precision at machine speed.  

Try it for free or upgrade to  Paperpal Prime , which unlocks unlimited access to premium features like academic translation, paraphrasing, contextual synonyms, consistency checks and more. It’s like always having a professional academic editor by your side! Go beyond limitations and experience the future of academic writing.  Get Paperpal Prime now at just US$19 a month!

Related Reads:

• Empirical Research: A Comprehensive Guide for Academics 
• How to Write a Scientific Paper in 10 Steps 
• How Long Should a Chapter Be?
• How to Use Paperpal to Generate Emails & Cover Letters?

6 Tips for Post-Doc Researchers to Take Their Career to the Next Level

Self-plagiarism in research: what it is and how to avoid it, you may also like, academic integrity vs academic dishonesty: types & examples, dissertation printing and binding | types & comparison , what is a dissertation preface definition and examples , the ai revolution: authors’ role in upholding academic..., the future of academia: how ai tools are..., how to write a research proposal: (with examples..., how to write your research paper in apa..., how to choose a dissertation topic, how to write a phd research proposal, how to write an academic paragraph (step-by-step guide).

Have a language expert improve your writing

Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, generate accurate citations for free.

• Knowledge Base

Methodology

• How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

Published on January 2, 2023 by Shona McCombes . Revised on September 11, 2023.

What is a literature review? A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research that you can later apply to your paper, thesis, or dissertation topic .

There are five key steps to writing a literature review:

• Search for relevant literature
• Evaluate sources
• Identify themes, debates, and gaps
• Outline the structure
• Write your literature review

A good literature review doesn’t just summarize sources—it analyzes, synthesizes , and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

Instantly correct all language mistakes in your text

Upload your document to correct all your mistakes in minutes

Table of contents

What is the purpose of a literature review, examples of literature reviews, step 1 – search for relevant literature, step 2 – evaluate and select sources, step 3 – identify themes, debates, and gaps, step 4 – outline your literature review’s structure, step 5 – write your literature review, free lecture slides, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions, introduction.

• Quick Run-through
• Step 1 & 2

When you write a thesis , dissertation , or research paper , you will likely have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:

• Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and its scholarly context
• Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
• Position your work in relation to other researchers and theorists
• Show how your research addresses a gap or contributes to a debate
• Evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of the scholarly debates around your topic.

Writing literature reviews is a particularly important skill if you want to apply for graduate school or pursue a career in research. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below.

Don't submit your assignments before you do this

The academic proofreading tool has been trained on 1000s of academic texts. Making it the most accurate and reliable proofreading tool for students. Free citation check included.

Try for free

Writing literature reviews can be quite challenging! A good starting point could be to look at some examples, depending on what kind of literature review you’d like to write.

• Example literature review #1: “Why Do People Migrate? A Review of the Theoretical Literature” ( Theoretical literature review about the development of economic migration theory from the 1950s to today.)
• Example literature review #2: “Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines” ( Methodological literature review about interdisciplinary knowledge acquisition and production.)
• Example literature review #3: “The Use of Technology in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Thematic literature review about the effects of technology on language acquisition.)
• Example literature review #4: “Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Chronological literature review about how the concept of listening skills has changed over time.)

You can also check out our templates with literature review examples and sample outlines at the links below.

Download Word doc Download Google doc

Before you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic .

If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research paper, you will search for literature related to your research problem and questions .

Make a list of keywords

Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research question. Include each of the key concepts or variables you’re interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list as you discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.

• Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
• Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
• Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth

Search for relevant sources

Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some useful databases to search for journals and articles include:

• Your university’s library catalogue
• Google Scholar
• Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
• Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
• EconLit (economics)
• Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)

You can also use boolean operators to help narrow down your search.

Make sure to read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.

You likely won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on your topic, so it will be necessary to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your research question.

For each publication, ask yourself:

• What question or problem is the author addressing?
• What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
• What are the key theories, models, and methods?
• Does the research use established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
• What are the results and conclusions of the study?
• How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?

Make sure the sources you use are credible , and make sure you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.

You can use our template to summarize and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using. Click on either button below to download.

Take notes and cite your sources

As you read, you should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.

It is important to keep track of your sources with citations to avoid plagiarism . It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography , where you compile full citation information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the process.

To begin organizing your literature review’s argument and structure, be sure you understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:

• Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches become more or less popular over time?
• Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
• Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
• Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
• Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be addressed?

This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.

• Most research has focused on young women.
• There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
• But there is still a lack of robust research on highly visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat—this is a gap that you could address in your own research.

There are various approaches to organizing the body of a literature review. Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).

Chronological

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order.

Try to analyze patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.

If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.

For example, if you are reviewing literature about inequalities in migrant health outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economic access.

Methodological

If you draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a variety of research methods , you might want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from different approaches. For example:

• Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
• Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources

Theoretical

A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework . You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.

You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.

Like any other academic text , your literature review should have an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion . What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.

The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.

Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.

As you write, you can follow these tips:

• Summarize and synthesize: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
• Analyze and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers — add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
• Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
• Write in well-structured paragraphs: use transition words and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts

In the conclusion, you should summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance.

When you’ve finished writing and revising your literature review, don’t forget to proofread thoroughly before submitting. Not a language expert? Check out Scribbr’s professional proofreading services !

This article has been adapted into lecture slides that you can use to teach your students about writing a literature review.

Scribbr slides are free to use, customize, and distribute for educational purposes.

Open Google Slides Download PowerPoint

If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Sampling methods
• Simple random sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Cluster sampling
• Likert scales
• Reproducibility

 Statistics

• Null hypothesis
• Statistical power
• Probability distribution
• Effect size
• Poisson distribution

Research bias

• Optimism bias
• Cognitive bias
• Implicit bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Anchoring bias
• Explicit bias

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .

It is often written as part of a thesis, dissertation , or research paper , in order to situate your work in relation to existing knowledge.

There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:

• To familiarize yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
• To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
• To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
• To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
• To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.

The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your thesis or dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

A literature review is a survey of credible sources on a topic, often used in dissertations , theses, and research papers . Literature reviews give an overview of knowledge on a subject, helping you identify relevant theories and methods, as well as gaps in existing research. Literature reviews are set up similarly to other  academic texts , with an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion .

An  annotated bibliography is a list of  source references that has a short description (called an annotation ) for each of the sources. It is often assigned as part of the research process for a  paper .  

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

McCombes, S. (2023, September 11). How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates. Scribbr. Retrieved August 21, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/dissertation/literature-review/

Is this article helpful?

Shona McCombes

Other students also liked, what is a theoretical framework | guide to organizing, what is a research methodology | steps & tips, how to write a research proposal | examples & templates, get unlimited documents corrected.

✔ Free APA citation check included ✔ Unlimited document corrections ✔ Specialized in correcting academic texts

Literature reviews

• Introduction
• Conduct your search
• Store and organise the literature

Evaluate the information you have found

Critique the literature.

• Different subject areas
• Find literature reviews

When conducting your searches you may find many references that will not be suitable to use in your literature review.

• Skim through the resource. A quick read through the table of contents, the introductory paragraph or the abstract should indicate whether you need to read further or whether you can immediately discard the result.
• Evaluate the quality and reliability of the references you find. Our evaluating information  page outlines what you need to consider when evaluating the books, journal articles, news and websites you find to ensure they are suitable for use in your literature review.

Critiquing the literature involves looking at the strength and weaknesses of the paper and evaluating the statements made by the author/s.

Books and resources on reading critically

• CASP Checklists Critical appraisal tools designed to be used when reading research. Includes tools for Qualitative studies, Systematic Reviews, Randomised Controlled Trials, Cohort Studies, Case Control Studies, Economic Evaluations, Diagnostic Studies and Clinical Prediction Rule.
• How to read critically - business and management From Postgraduate research in business - the aim of this chapter is to show you how to become a critical reader of typical academic literature in business and management.
• Learning to read critically in language and literacy Aims to develop skills of critical analysis and research design. It presents a series of examples of `best practice' in language and literacy education research.
• Critical appraisal in health sciences See tools for critically appraising health science research.

• << Previous: Store and organise the literature
• Next: Different subject areas >>
• Last Updated: Aug 9, 2024 8:34 AM
• URL: https://guides.library.uq.edu.au/research-techniques/literature-reviews

• Help and Support
• Research Guides

Literature reviews - research guide

• Critical reading and analysis
• Literature reviews home
• Planning your Review & EBP
• Searching for literature
• Managing your results
• Writing your review
• Systematic literature reviews

Critical reading & analysis

• Critical reading
• Analysing sources

Author analysis

• Journal analysis
• Note taking

A critical reader:​ ​

• Does not believe everything they read​ ​
• Questions what they read​ ​
• Rereads if necessary​ ​
• Understands the influence of style​ ​
• Analyses arguments​ ​
• Discounts arguments that are unsupported or based on faulty reasoning

When reading critically, focus on the purpose of your literature review:

• Think about what you expect from the article or chapter, before reading it
• Skim the abstract, headings, conclusion, and the first sentence of each paragraph
• Focus on the arguments presented rather than facts
• Take notes as you read and start to organise your review around themes and ideas
• Consider using a table, matrix or concept map to identify how the different sources relate to each other
• Note four to six points for each study that summarises the main points and conclusions
• Be as objective as possible

Critical appraisal

Critical appraisal is the process of carefully and syst ematically examining research to judge its credibility, its value and its relevance in a specific context.

The aim of critical appraisal is to understand the strengths, weaknesses, and potential for bias in the research. Validity, applicability, and clinical importance should be considered during critical appraisal to ensure that research evidence is used reliably and efficiently and false conclusions are not drawn.

Why do we need to critically appraise the literature?

Critical appraisal is necessary to:

• Assess benefits and strengths for research against flaws and weaknesses
• Decide whether studies have been undertaken in a way that makes their findings reliable
• Make sense of the result
• Know what these results mean in the context of the clinical decision being made
• Assess the usefulness of  the evidence for clinical decisions

Elements of sources

• Abstract: this is what the author wants the reader to take away from their article - what is the starting point? ​ ​
• Introduction:  provides background and a starting point - how does it guide the reader?​ ​
• Materials and methods:  often overlooked but very important - is the methodology understandable, reproducible, direct and robust?
• What do the tables, figures and legends actually report? ​ ​
• What do you think the data means? Decide before reading the discussion​.
• Discussion:  author draws conclusions – how does this correlate with your conclusions?

Evaluation of sources

Consider the following criteria:

• Is the source up-to-date?​
• Does it consider the latest research on your topic?​
• Is the article relevant to your topic?​
• Is the research methodology comprehensively described?​
• Does the work ultimately contribute in any significant way to an understanding of the subject?
• How reputable is the source?​
• Is the source peer-reviewed?​
• What is the source's impact factor ?
• Is the author from a reputable institution?​
• Have you seen the author cited in other sources?​
• Does the data support the conclusions drawn?​
• Are the author's opinions and conclusions convincing? 
• Are the author's arguments supported by evidence (primary material, case studies, narratives, statistics, recent findings)?​ ​
• Is the article properly referenced?​
• What is the purpose of the article and its intended audience?​
• Can you detect any bias in the content?​
• Is the reporting objective?​
• Is contrary data considered or is certain pertinent information ignored to prove the author's point?
• Which of the author's arguments are most/least convincing?​ ​
• Were the objectives achieved? ​ ​
• Hypotheses tested? ​ ​
• How do these results relate to other studies you have found?​ ​
• Do the authors openly discuss any limitations of their study?​ ​
• What else needs be studied in the future?

Interpretation

• Read critically​ ​
• Note 2-4 bullet points for each study that summarises the main points and conclusions​ ​
• Use matrix to analyse findings, relevance and importance of each text​ ​
• Draw attention to studies that are important, influential or that bring a new understanding or method of studying your area of research
• Literature Analysis Worksheet
• Literature Review Matrix

Databases such as Scopus and Web of Science can be used to:

• Locate the papers of a specific author
• Compare the research output of more than one author

The h -index

The h -index is a metric that allows you to compare the publications or research output of authors. This metric is calculated by determining the number of articles (n) written by an author, in the database, that have received the same number or more (n) citations over time. The h -index is a useful metric for comparing rates of publication, as the value is not skewed by a single highly cited paper, nor by a large number of poorly cited papers.

• The h -index is not a static value – if discussing an author’s h-index, you need to specify the date on which the h -index was calculated.
• The h -index is also calculated by other databases/resources and may vary from the h -index given by Scopus – if discussing an author’s h -index, you need to specify the source of the h-index.

See the example below of how an author's  h -index may appear in Scopus.

To locate papers of an author in  Scopus :

• Go to the default Scopus search screen and select Authors tab.
• Enter the author details and affiliation (university). Only include author surname for a comprehensive search. If the author has a common surname, include the first name's initial only.
• The author’s details and the documents that they have written, and which are indexed by Scopus, will be retrieved. Click on the author’s name to see a full list of their publications.

The information about the author will also tell you:

• How many of their publications have been indexed by Scopus
• How many times their publications have been cited
• Which of their publications are most highly cited
• Who they have co-authored papers with
• Their publication and citation trends for the past nine years
• Their h -index

See the Scopus resources below for more help:

• How to search for authors by topic
• How to assess an author's impact
• How to keep track of an author
• How to create citation overviews in Scopus

Web of Science Core Collection

To locate papers of an author in Web of Science Core Collection (WoS CC):

• Go to the default WoS CC search screen and select Researchers tab.
• Enter the author's surname and first name's initial.

The author’s details and the papers that they have written, and which are indexed by WoS CC, will be retrieved. Click on the Publications tab to see a full list of their publications.

• How many of their publications have been indexed by WoS CC

The author's citation report will tell you:

The Measuring research quality and impact guide has more detailed information on author analytics:

• Measuring research quality and impact

Source/journal analysis

Databases such as Scopus and Web of Science  (including CAB Abstracts ) can be used to determine the quality of journals in a discipline or field of research. For more information on journal analytics, please see the relevant section of our guide on Measuring Research Quality & Impact:

• Journal quality & impact (in Measuring research quality & impact guide)

Taking clear, legible notes will help to focus your critical reading and analysis of your literature review sources. When taking notes, avoid plagiarism by:

•  Keeping track of the difference between information from your sources and from your own ideas
•  Providing clear references, including page numbers

Note taking methods

Some effective methods of note-taking include:

• Outlining method. Use headings, sub-headings and bullet points to organize topics
• Cornell method. Use two columns - in one column write your summary of the authors' conclusions and evidence, and in the other column write down your own analysis and other comments
• Charting method. Create a list of topics or points you want to write about - use a column for each one. As you read, add references and make notes in the appropriate column
• Sentence method. Simply write down new ideas and bits of information as a numbered  sentence
• Mapping method. Write down key concepts and terms, with related ideas radiating out from these

You may consider using the matrix below for your note taking and analysis:

Critical reading & analysis checklist

• Does your literature review highlight flaws, gaps, or shortcomings of specific texts or groups of texts?
• Have you identified areas that have not yet been researched or have not yet been researched sufficiently?
• Does the literature demonstrate a change over time or recent developments that make your research relevant now?
• Are you able to discuss research methods used to study this topic and/or related topics?
• Can you clearly state why your research is necessary?
• << Previous: Managing your results
• Next: Writing your review >>
• Last Updated: Mar 8, 2024 1:16 PM
• URL: https://libguides.murdoch.edu.au/LitReview

• Link to facebook
• Link to linkedin
• Link to twitter
• Link to youtube
• Writing Tips

Critical Analysis in a Literature Review

• 3-minute read
• 29th June 2015

A literature review is vital to any in-depth research , providing a foundation your work will build upon. Familiarizing yourself with the existing literature allows you to identify current debates in the field, ensuring that your work is up-to-date and addresses significant questions.

But a good literature review will require reading critically. This means deciding whether you agree or disagree with certain viewpoints, arguments and theories, rather than simply describing them.

It also requires being able to spot the flaws and strengths of particular studies, which can in turn help when developing your own ideas. To make sure you do this effectively, it’s worth looking for the following things.

1. Overgeneralizations

One common issue in research is the scope of its application, especially when dealing with limited sample sizes or when a study is generalized too broadly.

The conclusions of a psychological study conducted with all male participants, for instance, may not be applicable in the same way to female subjects.

2. Methodological Limitations

When writing a literature review, ask yourself whether the methods used for particular studies were appropriate.

For example, whether the study used a quantitative, qualitative or mixed-methods research design can make a big difference to the conclusions reached.

3. How Well Explained is the Research?

When reading for a critical literature review, it is important to consider how well written the studies you examine are.

Find this useful?

Subscribe to our newsletter and get writing tips from our editors straight to your inbox.

Does the author explain their methods? Is enough detail provided for any experiments to be replicated? Are sampling, data collection and analysis techniques clearly identified? Does the conclusion follow from the results?

Asking these and similar questions will help you discern between good and bad research.

4. Identify Biases

Another important factor is to consider whether implicit biases might have influenced the research.

The term “confirmation bias,” for example, refers to the tendency to focus on evidence which supports one’s existing beliefs, which can lead to overlooking alternative hypotheses.

5. Challenge Your Own Assumptions

If you come across a study which seems to oppose your hypothesis, consider whether it presents good counterarguments to your own position. If it does, ask yourself whether this affects how you conduct the rest of your research.

The final point here is important because conducting a literature review serves two purposes . The finished literature review will help your reader to understand the background of your research, so critical analysis helps to clarify what your work contributes to the debate.

But comparing different studies and theories for a literature review will also help you to develop a research approach. The better your critical analysis, then, the better prepared you’ll be.

Share this article:

Post A New Comment

Got content that needs a quick turnaround? Let us polish your work. Explore our editorial business services.

5-minute read

Free Email Newsletter Template (2024)

Promoting a brand means sharing valuable insights to connect more deeply with your audience, and...

6-minute read

How to Write a Nonprofit Grant Proposal

If you’re seeking funding to support your charitable endeavors as a nonprofit organization, you’ll need...

9-minute read

How to Use Infographics to Boost Your Presentation

Is your content getting noticed? Capturing and maintaining an audience’s attention is a challenge when...

8-minute read

Why Interactive PDFs Are Better for Engagement

Are you looking to enhance engagement and captivate your audience through your professional documents? Interactive...

7-minute read

Seven Key Strategies for Voice Search Optimization

Voice search optimization is rapidly shaping the digital landscape, requiring content professionals to adapt their...

4-minute read

Five Creative Ways to Showcase Your Digital Portfolio

Are you a creative freelancer looking to make a lasting impression on potential clients or...

Make sure your writing is the best it can be with our expert English proofreading and editing.

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• PLoS Comput Biol
• v.9(7); 2013 Jul

Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review

Marco pautasso.

1 Centre for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology (CEFE), CNRS, Montpellier, France

2 Centre for Biodiversity Synthesis and Analysis (CESAB), FRB, Aix-en-Provence, France

Literature reviews are in great demand in most scientific fields. Their need stems from the ever-increasing output of scientific publications [1] . For example, compared to 1991, in 2008 three, eight, and forty times more papers were indexed in Web of Science on malaria, obesity, and biodiversity, respectively [2] . Given such mountains of papers, scientists cannot be expected to examine in detail every single new paper relevant to their interests [3] . Thus, it is both advantageous and necessary to rely on regular summaries of the recent literature. Although recognition for scientists mainly comes from primary research, timely literature reviews can lead to new synthetic insights and are often widely read [4] . For such summaries to be useful, however, they need to be compiled in a professional way [5] .

When starting from scratch, reviewing the literature can require a titanic amount of work. That is why researchers who have spent their career working on a certain research issue are in a perfect position to review that literature. Some graduate schools are now offering courses in reviewing the literature, given that most research students start their project by producing an overview of what has already been done on their research issue [6] . However, it is likely that most scientists have not thought in detail about how to approach and carry out a literature review.

Reviewing the literature requires the ability to juggle multiple tasks, from finding and evaluating relevant material to synthesising information from various sources, from critical thinking to paraphrasing, evaluating, and citation skills [7] . In this contribution, I share ten simple rules I learned working on about 25 literature reviews as a PhD and postdoctoral student. Ideas and insights also come from discussions with coauthors and colleagues, as well as feedback from reviewers and editors.

Rule 1: Define a Topic and Audience

How to choose which topic to review? There are so many issues in contemporary science that you could spend a lifetime of attending conferences and reading the literature just pondering what to review. On the one hand, if you take several years to choose, several other people may have had the same idea in the meantime. On the other hand, only a well-considered topic is likely to lead to a brilliant literature review [8] . The topic must at least be:

• interesting to you (ideally, you should have come across a series of recent papers related to your line of work that call for a critical summary),
• an important aspect of the field (so that many readers will be interested in the review and there will be enough material to write it), and
• a well-defined issue (otherwise you could potentially include thousands of publications, which would make the review unhelpful).

Ideas for potential reviews may come from papers providing lists of key research questions to be answered [9] , but also from serendipitous moments during desultory reading and discussions. In addition to choosing your topic, you should also select a target audience. In many cases, the topic (e.g., web services in computational biology) will automatically define an audience (e.g., computational biologists), but that same topic may also be of interest to neighbouring fields (e.g., computer science, biology, etc.).

Rule 2: Search and Re-search the Literature

After having chosen your topic and audience, start by checking the literature and downloading relevant papers. Five pieces of advice here:

• keep track of the search items you use (so that your search can be replicated [10] ),
• keep a list of papers whose pdfs you cannot access immediately (so as to retrieve them later with alternative strategies),
• use a paper management system (e.g., Mendeley, Papers, Qiqqa, Sente),
• define early in the process some criteria for exclusion of irrelevant papers (these criteria can then be described in the review to help define its scope), and
• do not just look for research papers in the area you wish to review, but also seek previous reviews.

The chances are high that someone will already have published a literature review ( Figure 1 ), if not exactly on the issue you are planning to tackle, at least on a related topic. If there are already a few or several reviews of the literature on your issue, my advice is not to give up, but to carry on with your own literature review,

The bottom-right situation (many literature reviews but few research papers) is not just a theoretical situation; it applies, for example, to the study of the impacts of climate change on plant diseases, where there appear to be more literature reviews than research studies [33] .

• discussing in your review the approaches, limitations, and conclusions of past reviews,
• trying to find a new angle that has not been covered adequately in the previous reviews, and
• incorporating new material that has inevitably accumulated since their appearance.

When searching the literature for pertinent papers and reviews, the usual rules apply:

• be thorough,
• use different keywords and database sources (e.g., DBLP, Google Scholar, ISI Proceedings, JSTOR Search, Medline, Scopus, Web of Science), and
• look at who has cited past relevant papers and book chapters.

Rule 3: Take Notes While Reading

If you read the papers first, and only afterwards start writing the review, you will need a very good memory to remember who wrote what, and what your impressions and associations were while reading each single paper. My advice is, while reading, to start writing down interesting pieces of information, insights about how to organize the review, and thoughts on what to write. This way, by the time you have read the literature you selected, you will already have a rough draft of the review.

Of course, this draft will still need much rewriting, restructuring, and rethinking to obtain a text with a coherent argument [11] , but you will have avoided the danger posed by staring at a blank document. Be careful when taking notes to use quotation marks if you are provisionally copying verbatim from the literature. It is advisable then to reformulate such quotes with your own words in the final draft. It is important to be careful in noting the references already at this stage, so as to avoid misattributions. Using referencing software from the very beginning of your endeavour will save you time.

Rule 4: Choose the Type of Review You Wish to Write

After having taken notes while reading the literature, you will have a rough idea of the amount of material available for the review. This is probably a good time to decide whether to go for a mini- or a full review. Some journals are now favouring the publication of rather short reviews focusing on the last few years, with a limit on the number of words and citations. A mini-review is not necessarily a minor review: it may well attract more attention from busy readers, although it will inevitably simplify some issues and leave out some relevant material due to space limitations. A full review will have the advantage of more freedom to cover in detail the complexities of a particular scientific development, but may then be left in the pile of the very important papers “to be read” by readers with little time to spare for major monographs.

There is probably a continuum between mini- and full reviews. The same point applies to the dichotomy of descriptive vs. integrative reviews. While descriptive reviews focus on the methodology, findings, and interpretation of each reviewed study, integrative reviews attempt to find common ideas and concepts from the reviewed material [12] . A similar distinction exists between narrative and systematic reviews: while narrative reviews are qualitative, systematic reviews attempt to test a hypothesis based on the published evidence, which is gathered using a predefined protocol to reduce bias [13] , [14] . When systematic reviews analyse quantitative results in a quantitative way, they become meta-analyses. The choice between different review types will have to be made on a case-by-case basis, depending not just on the nature of the material found and the preferences of the target journal(s), but also on the time available to write the review and the number of coauthors [15] .

Rule 5: Keep the Review Focused, but Make It of Broad Interest

Whether your plan is to write a mini- or a full review, it is good advice to keep it focused 16 , 17 . Including material just for the sake of it can easily lead to reviews that are trying to do too many things at once. The need to keep a review focused can be problematic for interdisciplinary reviews, where the aim is to bridge the gap between fields [18] . If you are writing a review on, for example, how epidemiological approaches are used in modelling the spread of ideas, you may be inclined to include material from both parent fields, epidemiology and the study of cultural diffusion. This may be necessary to some extent, but in this case a focused review would only deal in detail with those studies at the interface between epidemiology and the spread of ideas.

While focus is an important feature of a successful review, this requirement has to be balanced with the need to make the review relevant to a broad audience. This square may be circled by discussing the wider implications of the reviewed topic for other disciplines.

Rule 6: Be Critical and Consistent

Reviewing the literature is not stamp collecting. A good review does not just summarize the literature, but discusses it critically, identifies methodological problems, and points out research gaps [19] . After having read a review of the literature, a reader should have a rough idea of:

• the major achievements in the reviewed field,
• the main areas of debate, and
• the outstanding research questions.

It is challenging to achieve a successful review on all these fronts. A solution can be to involve a set of complementary coauthors: some people are excellent at mapping what has been achieved, some others are very good at identifying dark clouds on the horizon, and some have instead a knack at predicting where solutions are going to come from. If your journal club has exactly this sort of team, then you should definitely write a review of the literature! In addition to critical thinking, a literature review needs consistency, for example in the choice of passive vs. active voice and present vs. past tense.

Rule 7: Find a Logical Structure

Like a well-baked cake, a good review has a number of telling features: it is worth the reader's time, timely, systematic, well written, focused, and critical. It also needs a good structure. With reviews, the usual subdivision of research papers into introduction, methods, results, and discussion does not work or is rarely used. However, a general introduction of the context and, toward the end, a recapitulation of the main points covered and take-home messages make sense also in the case of reviews. For systematic reviews, there is a trend towards including information about how the literature was searched (database, keywords, time limits) [20] .

How can you organize the flow of the main body of the review so that the reader will be drawn into and guided through it? It is generally helpful to draw a conceptual scheme of the review, e.g., with mind-mapping techniques. Such diagrams can help recognize a logical way to order and link the various sections of a review [21] . This is the case not just at the writing stage, but also for readers if the diagram is included in the review as a figure. A careful selection of diagrams and figures relevant to the reviewed topic can be very helpful to structure the text too [22] .

Rule 8: Make Use of Feedback

Reviews of the literature are normally peer-reviewed in the same way as research papers, and rightly so [23] . As a rule, incorporating feedback from reviewers greatly helps improve a review draft. Having read the review with a fresh mind, reviewers may spot inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and ambiguities that had not been noticed by the writers due to rereading the typescript too many times. It is however advisable to reread the draft one more time before submission, as a last-minute correction of typos, leaps, and muddled sentences may enable the reviewers to focus on providing advice on the content rather than the form.

Feedback is vital to writing a good review, and should be sought from a variety of colleagues, so as to obtain a diversity of views on the draft. This may lead in some cases to conflicting views on the merits of the paper, and on how to improve it, but such a situation is better than the absence of feedback. A diversity of feedback perspectives on a literature review can help identify where the consensus view stands in the landscape of the current scientific understanding of an issue [24] .

Rule 9: Include Your Own Relevant Research, but Be Objective

In many cases, reviewers of the literature will have published studies relevant to the review they are writing. This could create a conflict of interest: how can reviewers report objectively on their own work [25] ? Some scientists may be overly enthusiastic about what they have published, and thus risk giving too much importance to their own findings in the review. However, bias could also occur in the other direction: some scientists may be unduly dismissive of their own achievements, so that they will tend to downplay their contribution (if any) to a field when reviewing it.

In general, a review of the literature should neither be a public relations brochure nor an exercise in competitive self-denial. If a reviewer is up to the job of producing a well-organized and methodical review, which flows well and provides a service to the readership, then it should be possible to be objective in reviewing one's own relevant findings. In reviews written by multiple authors, this may be achieved by assigning the review of the results of a coauthor to different coauthors.

Rule 10: Be Up-to-Date, but Do Not Forget Older Studies

Given the progressive acceleration in the publication of scientific papers, today's reviews of the literature need awareness not just of the overall direction and achievements of a field of inquiry, but also of the latest studies, so as not to become out-of-date before they have been published. Ideally, a literature review should not identify as a major research gap an issue that has just been addressed in a series of papers in press (the same applies, of course, to older, overlooked studies (“sleeping beauties” [26] )). This implies that literature reviewers would do well to keep an eye on electronic lists of papers in press, given that it can take months before these appear in scientific databases. Some reviews declare that they have scanned the literature up to a certain point in time, but given that peer review can be a rather lengthy process, a full search for newly appeared literature at the revision stage may be worthwhile. Assessing the contribution of papers that have just appeared is particularly challenging, because there is little perspective with which to gauge their significance and impact on further research and society.

Inevitably, new papers on the reviewed topic (including independently written literature reviews) will appear from all quarters after the review has been published, so that there may soon be the need for an updated review. But this is the nature of science [27] – [32] . I wish everybody good luck with writing a review of the literature.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to M. Barbosa, K. Dehnen-Schmutz, T. Döring, D. Fontaneto, M. Garbelotto, O. Holdenrieder, M. Jeger, D. Lonsdale, A. MacLeod, P. Mills, M. Moslonka-Lefebvre, G. Stancanelli, P. Weisberg, and X. Xu for insights and discussions, and to P. Bourne, T. Matoni, and D. Smith for helpful comments on a previous draft.

Funding Statement

This work was funded by the French Foundation for Research on Biodiversity (FRB) through its Centre for Synthesis and Analysis of Biodiversity data (CESAB), as part of the NETSEED research project. The funders had no role in the preparation of the manuscript.

Literature Review - what is a Literature Review, why it is important and how it is done

• Strategies to Find Sources

Evaluating Literature Reviews and Sources

Reading critically, tips to evaluate sources.

• Tips for Writing Literature Reviews
• Writing Literature Review: Useful Sites
• Citation Resources
• Other Academic Writings
• Useful Resources

A good literature review evaluates a wide variety of sources (academic articles, scholarly books, government/NGO reports). It also evaluates literature reviews that study similar topics. This page offers you a list of resources and tips on how to evaluate the sources that you may use to write your review.

• A Closer Look at Evaluating Literature Reviews Excerpt from the book chapter, “Evaluating Introductions and Literature Reviews” in Fred Pyrczak’s Evaluating Research in Academic Journals: A Practical Guide to Realistic Evaluation , (Chapter 4 and 5). This PDF discusses and offers great advice on how to evaluate "Introductions" and "Literature Reviews" by listing questions and tips. First part focus on Introductions and in page 10 in the PDF, 37 in the text, it focus on "literature reviews".
• Tips for Evaluating Sources (Print vs. Internet Sources) Excellent page that will guide you on what to ask to determine if your source is a reliable one. Check the other topics in the guide: Evaluating Bibliographic Citations and Evaluation During Reading on the left side menu.

To be able to write a good Literature Review, you need to be able to read critically. Below are some tips that will help you evaluate the sources for your paper.

Reading critically (summary from How to Read Academic Texts Critically)

• Who is the author? What is his/her standing in the field.
• What is the author’s purpose? To offer advice, make practical suggestions, solve a specific problem, to critique or clarify?
• Note the experts in the field: are there specific names/labs that are frequently cited?
• Pay attention to methodology: is it sound? what testing procedures, subjects, materials were used?
• Note conflicting theories, methodologies and results. Are there any assumptions being made by most/some researchers?
• Theories: have they evolved overtime?
• Evaluate and synthesize the findings and conclusions. How does this study contribute to your project?

Useful links:

• How to Read a Paper (University of Waterloo, Canada) This is an excellent paper that teach you how to read an academic paper, how to determine if it is something to set aside, or something to read deeply. Good advice to organize your literature for the Literature Review or just reading for classes.

Criteria to evaluate sources:

• Authority : Who is the author? what is his/her credentials--what university he/she is affliliated? Is his/her area of expertise?
• Usefulness : How this source related to your topic? How current or relevant it is to your topic?
• Reliability : Does the information comes from a reliable, trusted source such as an academic journal?

Useful site - Critically Analyzing Information Sources (Cornell University Library)

• << Previous: Strategies to Find Sources
• Next: Tips for Writing Literature Reviews >>
• Last Updated: Jul 3, 2024 10:56 AM
• URL: https://lit.libguides.com/Literature-Review

The Library, Technological University of the Shannon: Midwest

Literature Reviews

• Getting started

What is a literature review?

Why conduct a literature review, stages of a literature review, lit reviews: an overview (video), check out these books.

• Types of reviews
• 1. Define your research question
• 2. Plan your search
• 3. Search the literature
• 4. Organize your results
• 5. Synthesize your findings
• 6. Write the review
• Artificial intelligence (AI) tools
• Thompson Writing Studio This link opens in a new window
• Need to write a systematic review? This link opens in a new window

Guide Owner

Contact a Librarian

Ask a Librarian

Definition: A literature review is a systematic examination and synthesis of existing scholarly research on a specific topic or subject.

Purpose: It serves to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of knowledge within a particular field.

Analysis: Involves critically evaluating and summarizing key findings, methodologies, and debates found in academic literature.

Identifying Gaps: Aims to pinpoint areas where there is a lack of research or unresolved questions, highlighting opportunities for further investigation.

Contextualization: Enables researchers to understand how their work fits into the broader academic conversation and contributes to the existing body of knowledge.

tl;dr  A literature review critically examines and synthesizes existing scholarly research and publications on a specific topic to provide a comprehensive understanding of the current state of knowledge in the field.

What is a literature review NOT?

❌ An annotated bibliography

❌ Original research

❌ A summary

❌ Something to be conducted at the end of your research

❌ An opinion piece

❌ A chronological compilation of studies

The reason for conducting a literature review is to:

Literature Reviews: An Overview for Graduate Students

While this 9-minute video from NCSU is geared toward graduate students, it is useful for anyone conducting a literature review.

Writing the literature review: A practical guide

Available 3rd floor of Perkins

Writing literature reviews: A guide for students of the social and behavioral sciences

Available online!

So, you have to write a literature review: A guided workbook for engineers

Telling a research story: Writing a literature review

The literature review: Six steps to success

Systematic approaches to a successful literature review

Request from Duke Medical Center Library

Doing a systematic review: A student's guide

• Next: Types of reviews >>
• Last Updated: Aug 20, 2024 3:37 PM
• URL: https://guides.library.duke.edu/litreviews

Services for...

• Faculty & Instructors
• Graduate Students
• Undergraduate Students
• International Students
• Patrons with Disabilities

• Harmful Language Statement
• Re-use & Attribution / Privacy
• Support the Libraries

• UConn Library
• Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide
• Introduction

Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide — Introduction

• Getting Started
• How to Pick a Topic
• Strategies to Find Sources
• Evaluating Sources & Lit. Reviews
• Tips for Writing Literature Reviews
• Writing Literature Review: Useful Sites
• Citation Resources
• Other Academic Writings

What are Literature Reviews?

So, what is a literature review? "A literature review is an account of what has been published on a topic by accredited scholars and researchers. In writing the literature review, your purpose is to convey to your reader what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. As a piece of writing, the literature review must be defined by a guiding concept (e.g., your research objective, the problem or issue you are discussing, or your argumentative thesis). It is not just a descriptive list of the material available, or a set of summaries." Taylor, D.  The literature review: A few tips on conducting it . University of Toronto Health Sciences Writing Centre.

Goals of Literature Reviews

What are the goals of creating a Literature Review?  A literature could be written to accomplish different aims:

• To develop a theory or evaluate an existing theory
• To summarize the historical or existing state of a research topic
• Identify a problem in a field of research 

Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1997). Writing narrative literature reviews .  Review of General Psychology , 1 (3), 311-320.

What kinds of sources require a Literature Review?

• A research paper assigned in a course
• A thesis or dissertation
• A grant proposal
• An article intended for publication in a journal

All these instances require you to collect what has been written about your research topic so that you can demonstrate how your own research sheds new light on the topic.

Types of Literature Reviews

What kinds of literature reviews are written?

Narrative review: The purpose of this type of review is to describe the current state of the research on a specific topic/research and to offer a critical analysis of the literature reviewed. Studies are grouped by research/theoretical categories, and themes and trends, strengths and weakness, and gaps are identified. The review ends with a conclusion section which summarizes the findings regarding the state of the research of the specific study, the gaps identify and if applicable, explains how the author's research will address gaps identify in the review and expand the knowledge on the topic reviewed.

• Example : Predictors and Outcomes of U.S. Quality Maternity Leave: A Review and Conceptual Framework:  10.1177/08948453211037398  

Systematic review : "The authors of a systematic review use a specific procedure to search the research literature, select the studies to include in their review, and critically evaluate the studies they find." (p. 139). Nelson, L. K. (2013). Research in Communication Sciences and Disorders . Plural Publishing.

• Example : The effect of leave policies on increasing fertility: a systematic review:  10.1057/s41599-022-01270-w

Meta-analysis : "Meta-analysis is a method of reviewing research findings in a quantitative fashion by transforming the data from individual studies into what is called an effect size and then pooling and analyzing this information. The basic goal in meta-analysis is to explain why different outcomes have occurred in different studies." (p. 197). Roberts, M. C., & Ilardi, S. S. (2003). Handbook of Research Methods in Clinical Psychology . Blackwell Publishing.

• Example : Employment Instability and Fertility in Europe: A Meta-Analysis:  10.1215/00703370-9164737

Meta-synthesis : "Qualitative meta-synthesis is a type of qualitative study that uses as data the findings from other qualitative studies linked by the same or related topic." (p.312). Zimmer, L. (2006). Qualitative meta-synthesis: A question of dialoguing with texts .  Journal of Advanced Nursing , 53 (3), 311-318.

• Example : Women’s perspectives on career successes and barriers: A qualitative meta-synthesis:  10.1177/05390184221113735

Literature Reviews in the Health Sciences

• UConn Health subject guide on systematic reviews Explanation of the different review types used in health sciences literature as well as tools to help you find the right review type
• << Previous: Getting Started
• Next: How to Pick a Topic >>
• Last Updated: Sep 21, 2022 2:16 PM
• URL: https://guides.lib.uconn.edu/literaturereview

• Link to facebook
• Link to linkedin
• Link to twitter
• Link to youtube
• Writing Tips

Reading Critically for a Literature Review (5 Considerations)

• 3-minute read
• 14th August 2016

The literature review is an essential part of any thesis or dissertation , providing valuable background information related to your work and demonstrating your understanding of the subject.

But writing a good literature review requires more than simply listing and summarising other studies; you need to engage with them critically , considering how they relate to your own work.

Here are some things to consider when reading for a literature review.

1. Strengths and Weaknesses

One thing to remember is that reading ‘critically’ isn’t the same as simply criticising something. Consider the strengths and weaknesses of studies you examine, including how they were conducted and the conclusions drawn.

2. Theoretical Assumptions

Another important factor when reading critically is to bring out any theoretical assumptions made by the authors you’re reviewing.

These assumptions shape a study and can be taken for granted, so understanding the concepts behind research can help you see its significance and how it relates to your work.

3. Methodology and Evidence

A fundamental part of critical reading in a literature review is considering the methodology used in the studies you examine, as well as the strength of the evidence gathered.

Find this useful?

Subscribe to our newsletter and get writing tips from our editors straight to your inbox.

This involves asking various questions: Were the methods used appropriate? What alternatives might there have been? Was the sample size adequate? Has the data gathered been analysed and interpreted correctly? Does it justify the conclusions drawn?

Answering these will help you assess the strength of different studies.

4. Limitations and Biases

No study is free from limitations and bias . This might simply be a matter of application (a study in one country can’t always be applied to other settings) or funding, but it’s vital to identify these all the same.

A good study will set out its own limitations and potential sources of bias in the report, but you might have to think about other things left out by the original researchers.

5. How the Research Relates to Your Own Work

The most important thing when writing a literature review is drawing a connection between the studies you review and your own research. Reading critically therefore involves discussing how past research has influenced your own thinking, as well as summarising the methods and findings.

As well as helping the reader understand the significance of the studies in your literature review, this will help them follow the arguments made in the rest of your dissertation.

Share this article:

Post A New Comment

Get help from a language expert. Try our proofreading services for free.

5-minute read

Free Email Newsletter Template (2024)

Promoting a brand means sharing valuable insights to connect more deeply with your audience, and...

6-minute read

How to Write a Nonprofit Grant Proposal

If you’re seeking funding to support your charitable endeavors as a nonprofit organization, you’ll need...

9-minute read

How to Use Infographics to Boost Your Presentation

Is your content getting noticed? Capturing and maintaining an audience’s attention is a challenge when...

8-minute read

Why Interactive PDFs Are Better for Engagement

Are you looking to enhance engagement and captivate your audience through your professional documents? Interactive...

7-minute read

Seven Key Strategies for Voice Search Optimization

Voice search optimization is rapidly shaping the digital landscape, requiring content professionals to adapt their...

How to Ace Slack Messaging for Contractors and Freelancers

Effective professional communication is an important skill for contractors and freelancers navigating remote work environments....

Make sure your writing is the best it can be with our expert English proofreading and editing.

Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library

• Collections
• Research Help

YSN Doctoral Programs: Steps in Conducting a Literature Review

• Biomedical Databases
• Global (Public Health) Databases
• Soc. Sci., History, and Law Databases
• Grey Literature
• Trials Registers
• Data and Statistics
• Public Policy
• Google Tips
• Recommended Books
• Steps in Conducting a Literature Review

What is a literature review?

A literature review is an integrated analysis -- not just a summary-- of scholarly writings and other relevant evidence related directly to your research question.  That is, it represents a synthesis of the evidence that provides background information on your topic and shows a association between the evidence and your research question.

A literature review may be a stand alone work or the introduction to a larger research paper, depending on the assignment.  Rely heavily on the guidelines your instructor has given you.

Why is it important?

A literature review is important because it:

• Explains the background of research on a topic.
• Demonstrates why a topic is significant to a subject area.
• Discovers relationships between research studies/ideas.
• Identifies major themes, concepts, and researchers on a topic.
• Identifies critical gaps and points of disagreement.
• Discusses further research questions that logically come out of the previous studies.

APA7 Style resources

APA Style Blog - for those harder to find answers

1. Choose a topic. Define your research question.

Your literature review should be guided by your central research question.  The literature represents background and research developments related to a specific research question, interpreted and analyzed by you in a synthesized way.

• Make sure your research question is not too broad or too narrow.  Is it manageable?
• Begin writing down terms that are related to your question. These will be useful for searches later.
• If you have the opportunity, discuss your topic with your professor and your class mates.

2. Decide on the scope of your review

How many studies do you need to look at? How comprehensive should it be? How many years should it cover? 

• This may depend on your assignment.  How many sources does the assignment require?

3. Select the databases you will use to conduct your searches.

Make a list of the databases you will search. 

Where to find databases:

• use the tabs on this guide
• Find other databases in the Nursing Information Resources web page
• More on the Medical Library web page
• ... and more on the Yale University Library web page

4. Conduct your searches to find the evidence. Keep track of your searches.

• Use the key words in your question, as well as synonyms for those words, as terms in your search. Use the database tutorials for help.
• Save the searches in the databases. This saves time when you want to redo, or modify, the searches. It is also helpful to use as a guide is the searches are not finding any useful results.
• Review the abstracts of research studies carefully. This will save you time.
• Use the bibliographies and references of research studies you find to locate others.
• Check with your professor, or a subject expert in the field, if you are missing any key works in the field.
• Ask your librarian for help at any time.
• Use a citation manager, such as EndNote as the repository for your citations. See the EndNote tutorials for help.

Review the literature

Some questions to help you analyze the research:

• What was the research question of the study you are reviewing? What were the authors trying to discover?
• Was the research funded by a source that could influence the findings?
• What were the research methodologies? Analyze its literature review, the samples and variables used, the results, and the conclusions.
• Does the research seem to be complete? Could it have been conducted more soundly? What further questions does it raise?
• If there are conflicting studies, why do you think that is?
• How are the authors viewed in the field? Has this study been cited? If so, how has it been analyzed?

Tips: 

• Review the abstracts carefully.  
• Keep careful notes so that you may track your thought processes during the research process.
• Create a matrix of the studies for easy analysis, and synthesis, across all of the studies.
• << Previous: Recommended Books
• Last Updated: Jun 20, 2024 9:08 AM
• URL: https://guides.library.yale.edu/YSNDoctoral

Systematic Reviews

• Review Types
• Scoping Review Steps
• Before You Begin

P = Plan: decide on your search methods

I = identify: search for studies that match your criteria, e = evaluate: exclude or include studies, c = collect: extract and synthesize key data, e = explain: give context and rate the strength of the studies, s = summarize: write and publish your final report.

• Biomedical & Public Health Reviews

Congratulations!

You've decided to conduct a Systematic Review! Please see the associated steps below. You can follow the  P-I-E-C-E-S = Plan, Identify, Evaluate, Collect, Explain, Summarize  system or any number of systematic review processes available  (Foster & Jewell, 2017) .

P =   Plan: decide on your search methods

Determine your Research Question 

By now you should have identified gaps in the field and have a specific question you are seeking to answer. This will likely have taken several iterations and is the most important part of the Systematic Review process. 

Identify Relevant Systematic Reviews 

Once you've finalized a research question, you should be able to locate existing systematic reviews on or similar to your topic. existing systematic reviews will be your clues to mine for keywords, sample searches in various databases, and will help your team finalize your review question and develop your  inclusion and exclusion criteria. , decide on a protocol and reporting standard, your  protocol  is essentially a project plan and data management strategy for an objective, reproducible, sound methodology for peer review. the  reporting standard or guidelines  are not a protocols, but rather a set of standards to guide the development of your systematic review. often they include checklists. it is not required, but highly recommended to follow a reporting standard. .

Protocol registry:   Reviewing existing systematic reviews and registering your protocol will increase transparency, minimize bias, and reduce the redundancy of groups working on the same topics ( PLoS Medicine Editors, 2011 ). Protocols can serve as internal or external documents. Protocols can be made public prior to the review. Some registries allow for keeping a protocol private for a set period of time.

Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (UGA Login)  (Health Sciences)

A collection of regularly updated, systematic reviews of the effects of health care. New reviews are added with each issue of The Cochrane Library Reviews mainly of randomized controlled trials. All reviews have protocols.

PROSPERO  (General)

This is an international register of systematic reviews and is public. 

Campbell Corporation  (Education & Social Sciences)

Topics covered include Ageing; Business and Management; Climate Solutions; Crime and Justice; Disability;  Education; International Development; Knowledge Translation and Implementation; Methods; Nutrition and Food Security; Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity; Social Welfare; and Training.

Systematic Review for Animals and Food  (Vet Med & Animal Science)

Reporting Standards:  

Campbell MECCIR Standards  (Education & Social Sciences)

Cochrane Guides & Handbooks  (Health & Medical Sciences)

Institute of Medicine of the National Academies: Finding What Works in Healthcare: Standards for Systematic Reviews  (healthcare)

• PRISMA for Systematic Review Protocols  (General)
• PRISMA Checklist  (General)
• PRISMA for Scoping Reviews  (General)

Decide on Databases and Grey Literature for Systematic Review Research

Because the purpose of a SR is to find all studies related to your research question, you will need to search multiple databases. You should be able to name the databases you are already familiar with using. Your librarian will be able to recommend additional databases, including some of the following: 

• PubMed  (Health Sciences)
• Web of Science  
• Cochrane Database  (Biomedical)
• National and Regional Databases (i.e. WHO LILACS scientific health information from Latin America and the Caribbean countries)
• CINAHL  (Health Sciences)
• PsycINFO  (Psychology)

Depending on your topic, you may want to search clinical trials and grey literature. See this  guide  for more on grey literature.

Develop Keywords and Write a Search Strategy

Go   here for help with writing your search strategy  

Translate Search Strategies

Each database you use will have different methods of searching and resulting search strings, including syntax. ideally you will create one master keyword list and translate it for each database. below are tools to assist with translating search strings. .

Includes syntax for Cochrane Library, EBSCO, ProQuest, Ovid, and POPLINE.

The IEBH SR-Accelerator is a suite of tools to assist in speeding up portions of the Systematic Review process, including the Polyglot tool which translates searches across databases. 

University of Michigan Search 101 - SR Database Cheat Sheet

Storing, Screening and Full-Text Screening of Your Citations

Because systematic review literature searches may produce thousands of citations and abstracts, the research team will be screening and systematically reviewing large amounts of results. During  screening , you will remove duplicates and remove studies that are not relevant to your topic based on a review of titles and abstracts. Of what remains, the  full-text screening  of the studies will then need to be conducted to confirm that they fit within your  inclusion/exclusion criteria.   

The results of the literature review and screening processes are best managed by various tools and software. You can also use a simple form or table to log the relevant information from each study. Consider whether you will be coding your data during the extraction process in your decision on which tool or software to use. Your librarian can consult on which of these is best suited to your research needs.

• EndNote  Guide (UGA supported citation tracking software) - great for storing, organizing, and de-duplication
• RefWorks  Guide (UGA supported citation tracking software) - great for storing, organizing, and de-duplication
• Rayyan  (free service) - great for initial title/abstract screening OR full-text screening as cannot differentiate; not ideal for de-duplication
• Covidence  (requires a subscription) - full suite of systematic review tools including meta-analysis
• Combining Software  (EndNote, Google Forms, Excel) 
• Forms such as  Qualtrics  (UGA EITS software) can note who the coder is, creates charts and tables, good when have a review of multiple types of studies

Data Extraction

Data extraction processes differ between qualitative and quantitative evidence syntheses. In both cases, you must provide the reader with a clear overview of the studies you have included, their similarities and differences, and the findings. Extraction should be done in accordance to pre-established guidelines, such as PRISMA. 

Some systematic reviews contain meta-analysis of the quantitative findings of the results. Consider including a statistician on your team to complete the analysis of all individual study results. Meta-analysis will tell you how much or what the actual results is across the studies and explains results in a measure of variance, typically called a forest plot.

Systematic review price models have changed over the years. Previously, you had to depend on departmental access to software that would cost several hundred dollars. Now that the software is cloud-based, tiered payment systems are now available. Sometimes there is a free tier level, but costs go up for functionality, number or users, or both. Depending on the organization's model, payments may be monthly, annual or per project/review.

• Always check your departmental resources before making a purchase.
• View all training videos and other resources before starting your project.
• If your access is limited to a specific amount of time, wait to purchase until the appropriate work stage

Software list

Tool created by Brown University to assist with screening for systematic reviews.

• Cochrane's RevMan

Review Manager (RevMan) is the software used for preparing and maintaining Cochrane Reviews.

Systematic review tool intended to assist with the screening and extraction process. (Requires subscription)

• Distiller SR

DistillerSR is an online application designed specifically for the screening and data extraction phases of a systematic review (Requires subscription) Student and Faculty tiers have monthly pricing with a three month minimum. Number of projects is limited by pricing.

• EPPI Reviewer  (requires subscription, free trial)

It includes features such as text mining, data clustering, classification and term extraction

Rayyan is a free web-based application that can be used to screen titles, abstracts, and full text. Allows for multiple simultaneous users.

• AHRQ's  SRDR tool  (free) which is web-based and has a training environment, tutorials, and example templates of systematic review data extraction forms

"System for the Unified Management, Assessment and Review of Information, the Joanna Briggs Institutes premier software for the systematic review of literature."

• Syras Pricing is based on both number of abstracts and number of collaborators. The free tier is limited to 300 abstracts and two collaborators. Rather than monthly pricing, the payment is one-time per project.

Evidence Synthesis or Critical Appraisal

PRISMA guidelines suggest including critical appraisal of the included studies to assess the risk of bias and to include the assessment in your final manuscripts. There are several appraisal tools available depending on your discipline and area of research.

Simple overview of risk of bias assessment, including examples of how to assess and present your conclusions.

CASP is an organization that provides resources for healthcare professionals, but their appraisal tools can be used for varying study types across disciplines.

From the Joanna Briggs Institute: "JBI’s critical appraisal tools assist in assessing the trustworthiness, relevance and results of published papers."

Johns Hopkins Evidence-Based Practice Model  (health sciences)

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Document the search; 5.1.6. Include a methods section

List  of additional critical appraisal tools from Cardiff University. 

Synthesize, Map, or Describe the Results

Prepare your process and findings in a final manuscript. Be sure to check your PRISMA checklist or other reporting standard. You will want to include the full formatted search strategy for the appendix, as well as include documentation of your search methodology. A convenient way to illustrate this process is through a  PRISMA  Flow Diagram. 

Attribution: Unless noted otherwise, this section of the guide was adapted from Texas A&M's "Systematic Reviews and Related Evidence Syntheses" 

• << Previous: Before You Begin
• Next: Biomedical & Public Health Reviews >>
• Last Updated: Aug 23, 2024 1:53 PM
• URL: https://guides.libs.uga.edu/SystematicReview

Understanding Literature Reviews & Critical Reading

• Search Menu

Sign in through your institution

• Advance articles
• Themed Collections
• Editor's Choice
• Ilona Kickbusch Award
• Supplements
• Author Guidelines
• Submission Online
• Open Access Option
• Self-Archiving Policy
• About Health Promotion International
• Editorial Board
• Advertising and Corporate Services
• Journals on Oxford Academic
• Books on Oxford Academic

• < Previous

Ethics in Patients’ Health Literacy: a scoping review and a critical discussion

• Article contents
• Figures & tables
• Supplementary Data

Melina Evripidou, Areti Efthymiou, Venetia Velonaki, Athina Kalokairinou, Evridiki Papastavrou, Ethics in Patients’ Health Literacy: a scoping review and a critical discussion, Health Promotion International , Volume 39, Issue 4, August 2024, daae100, https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/daae100

• Permissions Icon Permissions

A growing body of literature has acknowledged that a high number of populations with low Health Literacy (HL) is related to poor health outcomes, inequities in healthcare and high economic costs. Those findings have formulated the research questions of this review: (i) what ethical issues arise within the context of patients’ HL and (ii) What is the relationship between HL and quality of life? This review followed the guidelines of Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) and the Preferred Reporting Items for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) and it was conducted in five databases: PubMed, CINAHL, MEDLINE, Scopus and Science Direct between June 2022 and December 2023. Out of the 3164 titles retrieved, 285 abstracts were eligible to proceed. Following a thorough examination of the full text of 61 papers, 45 sources were identified that met the inclusion criteria. The data analysis process was guided by the research questions, employing a thematic approach. Four themes were identified: the use of language and patient understanding, human rights, the principlism approach (justice, beneficence, non-maleficence and autonomy) and quality of life. The first theme mainly focused on the relation of HL with the notion of consent forms and national action plans. Human rights in relation to HL were discussed as a minor issue. The bioethical framework by Beauchamp and Childress (Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 6th edn. Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 2009), was addressed by several studies, with a particular focus on justice and the loss of autonomy. Quality of life indicated a positive correlation with HL by most of the authors, while few studies revealed a moderate correlation.

Personal account

• Sign in with email/username & password
• Get email alerts
• Save searches
• Purchase content
• Activate your purchase/trial code
• Add your ORCID iD

Institutional access

Sign in with a library card.

• Sign in with username/password
• Recommend to your librarian
• Institutional account management
• Get help with access

Access to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. If you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways:

IP based access

Typically, access is provided across an institutional network to a range of IP addresses. This authentication occurs automatically, and it is not possible to sign out of an IP authenticated account.

Choose this option to get remote access when outside your institution. Shibboleth/Open Athens technology is used to provide single sign-on between your institution’s website and Oxford Academic.

• Click Sign in through your institution.
• Select your institution from the list provided, which will take you to your institution's website to sign in.
• When on the institution site, please use the credentials provided by your institution. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.
• Following successful sign in, you will be returned to Oxford Academic.

If your institution is not listed or you cannot sign in to your institution’s website, please contact your librarian or administrator.

Enter your library card number to sign in. If you cannot sign in, please contact your librarian.

Society Members

Society member access to a journal is achieved in one of the following ways:

Sign in through society site

Many societies offer single sign-on between the society website and Oxford Academic. If you see ‘Sign in through society site’ in the sign in pane within a journal:

• Click Sign in through society site.
• When on the society site, please use the credentials provided by that society. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.

If you do not have a society account or have forgotten your username or password, please contact your society.

Sign in using a personal account

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members. See below.

A personal account can be used to get email alerts, save searches, purchase content, and activate subscriptions.

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members.

Viewing your signed in accounts

Click the account icon in the top right to:

• View your signed in personal account and access account management features.
• View the institutional accounts that are providing access.

Signed in but can't access content

Oxford Academic is home to a wide variety of products. The institutional subscription may not cover the content that you are trying to access. If you believe you should have access to that content, please contact your librarian.

For librarians and administrators, your personal account also provides access to institutional account management. Here you will find options to view and activate subscriptions, manage institutional settings and access options, access usage statistics, and more.

Short-term Access

To purchase short-term access, please sign in to your personal account above.

Don't already have a personal account? Register

Email alerts

Citing articles via.

• Recommend to Your Librarian
• Journals Career Network

Affiliations

• Online ISSN 1460-2245
• Print ISSN 0957-4824
• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Rights and permissions
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

• Research article
• Open access
• Published: 21 August 2024

Endpoints and outcomes for localized scleroderma/morphea: a scoping literature review

• Alexy Hernandez 1 ,
• Leslie Zapata Leiva 2 ,
• Maria Mutka 3 ,
• Kathryn S. Torok 4 ,
• Leila Ledbetter 5 &
• Christina K. Zigler 6  

Pediatric Rheumatology volume  22 , Article number:  77 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

119 Accesses

Metrics details

Current treatment for localized scleroderma (LS) has been shown to halt disease activity, but little is still known about patient experiences with these treatments, nor is there consensus about optimal measurement strategies for future clinical trials.

Conduct a scoping review of the literature for the types of outcomes and measures (i.e. clinician-, patient-, and caregiver-reported) utilized in published treatment studies of LS.

Online databases were searched for articles related to the evaluation of treatment efficacy in LS with a special focus on pediatrics.

Of the 168 studies, the most common outcomes used were cutaneous disease activity and damage measured via clinician-reported assessments. The most frequently cited measure was the Localized Scleroderma Cutaneous Assessment Tool (LoSCAT). Few patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) were used.

Limitations

Some studies only vaguely reported the measures utilized, and the review yielded a low number of clinical trials.

In addition to evaluating disease activity with clinician-reported measures, the field could obtain critical knowledge on the patient experience by including high-quality PROMs of symptoms and functioning. More clinical trials using a variety of outcomes and measures are necessary to determine the most suitable course of treatment for LS patients.

Capsule summary

Existing treatments for localized scleroderma halt disease activity but little is known about patient experiences with these treatments.

Clinician-reported measures are over represented in published trials. Better integration of patient-reported measures, alongside clinical outcomes, would more completely evaluate treatment efficacy in future trials by incorporating the patient perspective.

Localized scleroderma (LS) or morphea is a rare rheumatic condition that causes atrophy, fibrosis, and sclerosis of the skin and underlying tissues [ 1 ]. Morbidity is common for individuals with LS, who can be adversely impacted via skin damage, physical deformity and dysfunction (especially during childhood onset), permanent cosmetic issues, and extracutaneous manifestations [ 2 , 3 ].

The conduct of clinical trials for LS encounters a number of challenges common for rare diseases, including hard to reach patient populations, low sample sizes, and a lack of consensus regarding clinical outcome assessments (COAs). Currently, there are no FDA approved treatments for LS, although consensus-based groups have started compiling evidence across clinical sites. Current regimens have been shown to be efficacious at halting disease activity, [ 4 ] but recent qualitative work has shed light on the negative experiences of patients under treatment, including side effects and overall burden [ 5 , 6 ]. Further, recent attempts at meta-analyses have been unsuccessful due to the wide variation in how successful treatment efficacy has been defined across studies, clinics, and registries [ 7 ].

Much needed clinical trials to find efficacious treatments or comparable treatments with lower burden cannot occur without the identification of relevant patient-centered outcomes and high-quality clinical outcome assessments (COAs; i.e. the measures themselves). This study aims to explore and catalogue the current and past outcomes and COAs used to evaluate treatment efficacy in children and adults diagnosed with LS, with particular focus on pediatric patients who have a higher cumulative disease burden, [ 8 ] and the use of patient-reported outcomes (PROs). We expect this review to spur important clinical research into this population and identify new areas for measurement developers to pursue. We also expect to be able to discuss and provide recommendations for researchers on best practices for citing quality evidence supporting outcome/endpoint choices.

This work is a scoping review. It was carried out using the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions [ 9 ] and was reported following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2020 statement: an updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews [ 10 ]. The search was developed and conducted by a professional medical librarian in consultation with the author team and included a mix of keywords and subject headings representing localized scleroderma, morphea, and pediatrics. Search hedges or database filters were used to remove publication types such as editorials, case reports, comments and animal-only studies as was appropriate for each database. The databases searched included MEDLINE (PubMed), Embase (Elsevier), and Web of Science (Clarivate). The search was conducted on September 19, 2019 and updated on April 20, 2022 and found 3,212 citations. Complete reproducible search strategies, including date ranges and search filters are detailed in the Supplementary Materials.

Eligibility criteria

To be included in the review, studies had to meet all inclusion criteria as follows (1) the inclusion of human subjects, (2) at least some participants were diagnosed with LS, (3) reported on the treatment of patients, (4) reported at least one outcome that was linked to treatment, and (5) were available in English. Studies also were required to be primary data sources. Eligible studies included observational cohorts, case studies with 3 or more individuals, randomized clinical trials, and reports on large registries. The focus of the study was on juvenile LS, with the expectation that most studies would be have at least some pediatric patients, however, studies that included only adults with LS were not excluded to maximize the number of relevant articles.

Study selection

After the search, all identified studies were uploaded into Covidence (Veritas Health Innovation, Melbourne, Australia). The duplicates were removed by the software ( n  = 1,190) and a final set of 2,022 citations were left to be screened in the title/abstract phase. Study selection was carried out independently by two authors. The article selection is presented by flowchart as per PRISMA guidelines (Figure  1 ). For the full-text screening stage, papers were also reviewed in detail by two independent reviewers and were excluded if they did not meet the inclusion criteria. At any stage, all disagreements were resolved by discussion, consensus, and later on by the study investigator.

PRISMA Flow Diagram for the scoping review detailing the number of studies screened, reviewed, excluded, and the number of full text articles included in data extraction

Data extraction

Data elements of interest included general study information (i.e. year of publication, type of study), quality of study, sample size/number of LS patients, age of patients, types and subtypes of morphea/LS, treatment, and information on outcomes and COAs. As per the National Institutes of Health Biomarkers, Endpoints, and other Tools (BEST) glossary, [ 11 ] an ‘outcome’ was defined as the domains of symptoms and functioning defined by the authors of the included articles (e.g. ‘disease activity’), while the COA was defined as the overall system of measurement including the survey/questions, the method for obtaining measurement, and the method of interpretation. Of particular interest, the type of COA was recorded and results are reported separately for different types of clinical outcome measures as defined in Table  1 .

Quality assessment

To assess the methodological quality of the cited evidence for the COAs being utilized, we intended to take a modified COnsensus-based Standards for the selection of health Measurement Instruments (COSMIN) approach [ 12 , 13 ] However, due to general lack of details included in the articles, the quality assessment of the validity evidence cited was binary (yes - any reliability or validity information was cited in the methods to support use of the measure, or no – no support was cited). Further, quality at the study level was evaluated using the following criteria: (1) the research question was clearly stated, (2) the sample size was justified, (3) the treatment protocol was standardized, (4) there was a control/placebo group, and (5) blinding of the treatment condition was present.

Synthesis methods

Specific variables were catalogued across studies using pre-specified definitions. Additionally, for each outcome and COA, specific characteristics were extracted and tabulated for each category. For example, studies could and often did include multiple outcomes, meaning that the frequencies and percentages for reported outcome categories add up to more than 100%. Due to inconsistencies across articles in how outcomes and COAs were reported, we also include descriptive narratives of our findings for each type of COA.

Study characteristics and quality assessment

The 168 studies in the final evaluation sample were conducted in a total of 35 countries (~ 30% of studies conducted in the United States). Almost half (78/168) of studies were retrospective, i.e. medical chart reviews. As such, in terms of study quality, 90% of articles stated the research question, but the majority of articles did not include a sample size justification (93%), a control group (92%), or any masking of the treatment effect (76%). Further, only 46% of articles reported on efficacy of a standardized treatment regimen. Further detail on study characteristics can be found in Supplemental Materials.

Patients included in the studies comprised all subtypes, with craniofacial scleroderma and generalized morphea being the most commonly reported (Table  2 ). The majority of treatments evaluated in the studies were systemic medications, followed by phototherapy/UV therapy, topical creams, or reconstructive surgery (Table  2 ). More than half of studies (56%) reported on multiple treatments.

Outcomes and endpoints

Treatment outcomes.

The most common outcome reported across all articles was “disease activity” (111/168), although the operationalization of this term varied across studies (Table  3 ). Other outcomes names by authors to determine treatment efficacy included “disease damage”, “skin thickness”, “lesion size”, “surgical outcomes”, and “clinician satisfaction”. Outcomes utilized to evaluate other aspects of treatment from the patient perspective commonly included “health-related quality of life” and “patient satisfaction/success” (Table  3 ).

Types of COAs

The most common way treatment outcomes were measured were via clinical assessments that were both informal and formal/standardized (59%) along with other measures of health (40%; blood tests, imaging; Table  1 ). Patient- or observer-reported measures (like those completed by a parent) were used more infrequently (26%).

Clinical assessment of treatment outcomes. Almost 59% percent of articles (99/168) included some type of clinical assessment of treatment benefit that was commonly conceptualized as improvement, progression, and/or change in disease status (e.g. activity or damage). Disease progression typically included the appearance of new lesions or the expansion of pre-existing lesions over a specific period of time. Disease improvement typically was defined as lesions getting smaller or disappearing. Change in disease status was often conceptualized as a “halt” in disease activity or progression.

The clinical assessments within this category included clinical evaluations that both did and did not explicitly utilize a COA. Some clinical assessments were described as being less formal in nature and did not utilize specific criteria or time frame when reporting on the clinical evaluation.

Other clinical assessments for disease activity were more formal and did include specific criteria that was utilized to categorize patients. For example, one study [ 14 ] evaluated defined clinical improvement in activity as the absence of the criteria suggested by Careta and Romiti: appearance of new lesions in the last 3 months, expansion of the pre-existing lesion in the last 3 months, moderate or severe erythema or skin lesions with erythematous borders, violaceous lesion or lesion border, increased induration of the lesion border, and worsening of the hair loss on the scalp, eyebrows or eyelashes. Other clinical assessments described in the articles included the evaluation of surgical outcomes or general clinician satisfaction/success by assessing facial symmetry, complications, and need for surgical revisions.

Clinician-reported outcome measures. The most frequently named ClinRO(s) across studies was the Localized Scleroderma Assessment Tool (LoSCAT) [ 15 , 16 ] and/or its components (18.5%; 31/168), the modified Localized Skin Severity Index (mLoSSI), which measures disease activity, and the Localized Scleroderma Damage Index (LoSDI), which measures disease damage. All studies that utilized the LoSCAT or its components cited validity and/or reliability information in the article, including general PRO measure development, content validity, reliability, and responsiveness. The LoSCAT was most often used in association with disease activity.

Physician-global assessments (PGAs) [ 15 , 16 ] were utilized in 10.7% of studies (18/168), and often together with the LoSCAT, focused on disease activity. Other named ClinROs included skin scores (7.1%; 12/168), such as the modified Rodnan Skin Score (mRSS), most often utilized to assess skin thickness, and other clinical activity scores (e.g. ‘CAS’ or LS Cutaneous Activity Measure; 1.8%; 3/168). Other named ClinROs that were utilized infrequently were the Quantitative facial symmetry score and the Derriford Appearance Scale (both n = 1) which were linked to surgical outcomes.

Patient-reported/Observer-reported outcome measures. Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) and/or observer-reported outcomes (ObsROs; typically a child’s caregiver) were included in about 26% of the manuscripts (43/168). PROs were most often used to evaluate treatment outcomes described as ‘health-related quality of life’ (HRQOL) and ‘patient satisfaction/success’. Some of the PROs/ObsROs utilized to evaluate HRQOL were listed as the World Health Organization Quality of Life (WHOQOL-110) [ 17 ], the Children’s Dermatology Life Quality Index (CDLQI), [ 18 ] the Scleroderma Health Assessment Questionnaire (SHAQ), [ 19 ] Child Health Assessment Questionnaire (CHAQ), [ 20 ] Pediatric Quality of Life (family impact, generic, rheumatology module), [ 21 , 22 ] and visual analog scales (VAS) for symptoms.

Many of the patient satisfaction outcomes were linked to patient satisfaction with surgery and did not utilize specific PROs, but instead noted if the patient was satisfied. For example, one study had patients rate their satisfaction using [ 1 ] very good/very satisfied, [ 2 ] good/satisfied, [ 3 ] bad/not satisfied, and [ 4 ] very bad/very dissatisfied [ 23 ]. Some studies used unnamed ObsROs and PROs to assess if the patient (or caregiver) noticed an improvement, no change, or worsening of the disease.

Performance-based outcome measures. Performance-based outcome measures (PerfOs) were infrequently utilized to evaluate treatment benefit (5.4%; 9/168), and when included, typically were related to measuring joint mobility/range of motion before and after treatment.

Other measures of health

Other measures of health were included in about 40% of articles (67/168). The most frequent external equipment used to assess outcomes were magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), ultrasound, thermography, and photographs. In one study [ 24 ], MRI was used before and after 6 months of treatment to evaluate the depth and thickness of the soft-tissue structures and the degree of inflammation and edema. The MRI images were graded from 0 to 10 by an experienced and blinded radiologist. The MRI scores were also compared and scored from 0 (no improvement) to 10 (total healing) by investigators. These outcome measures were often used as a supplement to other COAs. Additionally, authors commonly reported using photographs when evaluating surgical outcomes.

While the field of LS research has been historically limited to case studies and retrospective chart reviews, with the development of large, multi-site research registries and coordination among international clinical experts, our understanding of the molecular basis of LS/morphea and the efficacy of treatments has grown. The more recent studies have started to recognize the importance of switching our focus from only inclusion of traditional clinical outcomes (i.e. disease activity) to clinical outcomes alongside complementary and critical patient experience data. As stated in the U.S. Food & Drug Administration’s new Patient-Focused Drug Development Guidances, patient-reported outcome measures are “useful for assessment of symptoms, functioning, events, or other aspects of health from the patient’s perspective” [ 25 , 26 ]. As our knowledge of LS continues to be refined, we hope that additional patient data will also be captured including tolerability of novel and legacy treatments and treatment impact on the presence and severity of extracutaneous manifestations.

Further, as new research studies are planned and executed, the field can improve in terms of the published justifications to support use of a specific COA. Quite a few published studies in this review did not report use of existing COAs, and thus, there is little record of their thought process when conceptualizing these important outcomes. Additionally, the field is starting to gather information on the reliability and validity of outcome measures used in this population, with the LoSCAT and the Localized Scleroderma Quality of Life Instrument (LoSQI) [ 27 , 28 , 29 ] being two measures with support specifically gathered from patients with LS.

While PerfOs were the least utilized COA, a large number of studies used other measures of health as part of their evaluation. Although the intention of using equipment is to provide a more objective evaluation of treatment, some of these measures (e.g. MRIs and photographs) required the output to be graded by a rater, perhaps giving the illusion of objectivity, but having the same possibility for error as other types of subjective measures.

One limitation of this review is publication bias, in which investigators might have used certain outcome measures, but chose not to report on them. We also did not include articles published in languages other than English, which may have contained useful information. Some manuscripts in this review were vague and could not be reproduced due to lack of reporting on how exactly they assessed treatment. Most importantly, our review did not yield many randomized clinical trials, which supports the low utilization of control groups and blinding. This reveals more clinical trials evaluating treatment efficacy for this population are needed.

This review demonstrates a critical need for high quality, well-designed randomized clinical trials and comparative effectiveness studies to evaluate treatment efficacy of new and legacy treatments in patients with LS. Past and current studies have focused primarily on secondary data collection, and when prospective studies are conducted, patient-reported outcomes or other measures collected from patients and families are less of a focus, although important strides have been made recently. As the field moves forward, it is imperative to use validated and high quality COAs to evaluate meaningful aspects of treatment and for publishing authors to include stronger justifications and support for their choice of measures. The inclusion of complementary ClinROs, PROs, and ObsROs will go a long way to ensure future research and clinical care is patient-centered, and that we are able to compare treatments on their ability to control disease activity but also to improve (and not worsen) patient symptoms and negative side effects.

Data availability

The datasets created and analysed during the current study available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Abbreviations

Cutaneous Activity measure

Children’s Dermatology Life Quality Index

Child Health Assessment Questionnaire

Clinician–reported outcome measures

Clinical outcome assessments

COnsensus–based Standards for the selection of health Measurement Instruments

Health–related quality of life

Localized Scleroderma Assessment Tool

Localized Scleroderma Damage Index

Localized Scleroderma Quality of Life Instrument

• Localized scleroderma

Modified Localized Skin Severity index

Magnetic resonance imaging

Modified Rodnan Skin Score

Observer–reported outcome

Patient–reported outcomes

Performance–based outcome measures

Physician global assessment

Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta–Analyses

Scleroderma Health Assessment Questionnaire

World Health Organization Quality of Life

Visual analog scale

Laxer RM, Zulian F. Localized scleroderma. Curr Opin Rheumatol. 2006;18(6):606–13.

Article   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Li SC, Higgins GC, Chen M, Torok KS, Rabinovich CE, Stewart K, et al. Extracutaneous involvement is common and associated with prolonged disease activity and greater impact in juvenile localized scleroderma. Rheumatol. 2021;60(12):5724–33.

Article   CAS   Google Scholar  

Zigler CK, Ardalan K, Lane S, Torok KL. A novel patient-reported outcome for paediatric localized scleroderma: a qualitative assessment of content validity. BJD. 2019;182(3):625–35.

Article   Google Scholar  

Li SC, Torok KS, Rabinovich CE, Dedeoglu F, Becker ML, Ferguson PJ, et al. Initial results from a pilot comparative effectiveness study of 3 methotrexate-based Consensus Treatment Plans for Juvenile Localized Scleroderma. J Rheumatol. 2020;47(8):1242–52.

Article   CAS   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Zigler CK, Ardalan K, Hernandez A, Caliendo AE, Magee KE, Terry MA, et al. Exploring the impact of paediatric localized scleroderma on health-related quality of life: focus groups with youth and caregivers. BJD. 2020;183(4):692–701.

Stasiulis E, Gladstone B, Boydell K, O’Brien C, Laxer EPRM. Children with facial morphoea managing everyday life: a qualitative study. BJD. 2018;179(2):353–61.

CAS   Google Scholar  

Abduelmula A, Rankin BD, Riaz S, Ross N, Luca NJ, Prajapati VH. Management of morphea with systemic immunosuppressive therapies: an evidence-based review. J Am Acad Dermatol. 2022;88(2):467–9.

Li SC, Higgins GC, Chen M, Torok KS, Rabinovich CE, Stewart K, et al. Extracutaneous involvement is common and associated with prolonged disease activity and greater impact in juvenile localized scleroderma. Rheumatol (Oxford). 2021;60(12):5724–33.

Higgins JPTTJ, Chandler J, Cumpston M, Li T, Page MJ, Welch VA, editors. Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions version 6.4 (updated August 2023). Cochrane; 2023. Available from: www.training.cochrane.org/handbook

Page MJ, McKenzie JE, Bossuyt PM, Boutron I, Hoffmann TC, Mulrow CD, et al. The PRISMA 2020 statement: an updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews. BMJ. 2021;372:n71.

Article   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

FDA-NIH Biomarker Working Group. BEST (Biomarkers E, and other Tools) Resource [Internet]. Silver Spring (MD): Food and Drug Administration (US); 2016-. Glossary. 2016 Jan 28 [Updated 2021 Nov 29]. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK338448/ Co-published by National Institutes of Health (US), Bethesda (MD).

Prinsen CA, Mokkink LB, Bouter LM, Alonso J, Patrick DL, Vet HC, et al. COSMIN guideline for systematic reviews of patient-reported outcome measures. Qual Life Res. 2018;27(5):1171–9.

Terwee CB, Prinsen CA, Chiarotto A, Vet HC, Westerman MJ, Patrick DL, et al. COSMIN methodology for evaluating the content validity of patient-reported outcome measures: a Delphi study. Qual Life Res. 2018;27(5):1159–70.

Article   CAS   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Bulur I, Erdoan HK, Karapnar T, Saracoglu ZN. Morphea in Middle Anatolia, Turkey: a 5-year single-center experience. Postepy Dermatol Alergol. 2017;34(4):334–8.

Arkachaisri T, Vilaiyuk S, Li S, O’Neil KM, Pope E, Higgins GC, et al. The localized scleroderma skin severity index and physician global assessment of disease activity: a work in progress toward development of localized scleroderma outcome measures. J Rheumatol. 2009;36(12):2819–29.

Arkachaisri T, Vilaiyuk S, Torok KS, Medsger TA. Jr. Development and initial validation of the localized scleroderma skin damage index and physician global assessment of disease damage: a proof-of-concept study. Rheumatol (Oxford). 2010;49(2):373–81.

The World Health Organization quality of life assessment (WHOQOL). Position paper from the World Health Organization. Soc Sci Med. 1995;41(10):1403–9.

Lewis-Jones M, Finlay AJ. The children’s Dermatology Life Quality Index (CDLQI): initial validation and practical use. BJD. 1995;132(6):942–9.

Johnson SR, Hawker GA, Davis AM. The health assessment questionnaire disability index and scleroderma health assessment questionnaire in scleroderma trials: an evaluation of their measurement properties. Arthritis Care Res. 2005;53(2):256–62.

Klepper SE. Measures of pediatric function: the Child Health Assessment Questionnaire (CHAQ), Juvenile Arthritis Functional Assessment Report (JAFAR), Juvenile Arthritis Functional Assessment Scale (JAFAS), Juvenile Arthritis Functional Status Index (JASI), and Pediatric Orthopedic surgeons of North America (POSNA) Pediatric Musculoskeletal Functional Health Questionnaire. Arthritis Care Res. 2003;49(S5):S5–14.

Varni JW, Seid M, Smith Knight T, Burwinkle T, Brown J, Szer IS. The PedsQL in pediatric rheumatology: reliability, validity, and responsiveness of the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory Generic Core Scales and Rheumatology Module. Arthritis Rheum. 2002;46(3):714–25.

Varni JW, Sherman SA, Burwinkle TM, Dickinson PE, Dixon P. The PedsQL Family Impact Module: preliminary reliability and validity. Health Qual Life Outcomes. 2004;2:55.

Vaienti L, Soresina M, Menozzi A. Parascapular free flap and fat grafts: combined surgical methods in morphological restoration of hemifacial progressive atrophy. Plast Reconstr Surg. 2005;116(3):699–711.

Shahidi-Dadras M, Abdollahimajd F, Jahangard R, Javinani A, Ashraf-Ganjouei A, Toossi P. Magnetic Resonance Imaging Evaluation in patients with Linear Morphea treated with methotrexate and high-dose corticosteroid. Dermatol Res Pract. 2018.

Patient-Focused FDAFDA. Drug Development Guidance Series for Enhancing the Incorporation of the Patient’s Voice in Medical Product Development and Regulatory Decision Making. 2018.

Patient-Focued Drug Development. Incorporating Clinical Outcome Assessments into Endpoints for Regulatory Decision Making: Guidance for Industry, Food and Drug Administration Staff, and Other Stakeholders (Draft). In: Services USDoHaH, Administration FaD, (CDER) CfDEaR, (CBER) CfBEaR, (CDRH) CfDaRH, editors. 2023.

Zigler CK, Ardalan K, Lane S, Schollaert KL, Torok KS. A novel patient-reported outcome for paediatric localized scleroderma: a qualitative assessment of content validity. BJD. 2019.

Zigler CK, Ardalan K, Hernandez A, Calliendo AE, Magee K, Mann CM et al. Exploring the impact of paediatric localized scleroderma on health-related quality of life: focus groups with youth and caregivers. BJD. 2020.

Zigler CK, Lin L, Ardalan K, Jacobe H, Lane S, Li SC, et al. Cross-sectional quantitative validation of the paediatric localized Scleroderma Quality of Life Instrument (LoSQI): a disease-specific patient-reported outcome measure. J Eur Acad Dermatol Venereol. 2023;37(7):1406–14.

Download references

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the contributions of Courtney Mann, Kirsten Bahnson, and Ashley Wilson.

Manuscript word count: 2596.

Abstract word count: 199.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Center for Health Measurement, Department of Population Health Sciences, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC, USA

Alexy Hernandez

Center for Communication Science, RTI International, Research Triangle Park, USA

Leslie Zapata Leiva

Smith College, Northampton, MA, USA

Maria Mutka

Division of Rheumatology, Department of Pediatrics, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center - Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA

Kathryn S. Torok

Medical Center Library & Archives, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC, USA

Leila Ledbetter

Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, 4401 Penn Ave, Pittsburgh, PA, 15224, United States

Christina K. Zigler

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Contributions

All authors contributed towards the design of the study. AH, LLP, LL, and CKZ performed the literature search and data extraction. AH, LZL, CKZ, and KT contributed to the analysis of the data. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christina K. Zigler .

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate.

Not applicable.

Consent for publication

Conflict of interest.

Drs. Zigler & Torok developed the Localized Scleroderma Quality of Life Instrument, and if it is commercially successful in the future, they may benefit financially.

Additional information

Publisher’s note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Electronic Supplementary Material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary Material 1

Rights and permissions.

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ .

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Hernandez, A., Zapata Leiva, L., Mutka, M. et al. Endpoints and outcomes for localized scleroderma/morphea: a scoping literature review. Pediatr Rheumatol 22 , 77 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12969-024-01014-x

Download citation

Received : 04 April 2024

Accepted : 01 August 2024

Published : 21 August 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s12969-024-01014-x

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Juvenile localized scleroderma
• Scleroderma
• Rheumatic condition

Pediatric Rheumatology

ISSN: 1546-0096

• Submission enquiries: Access here and click Contact Us
• General enquiries: [email protected]

Information

• Author Services

Initiatives

You are accessing a machine-readable page. In order to be human-readable, please install an RSS reader.

All articles published by MDPI are made immediately available worldwide under an open access license. No special permission is required to reuse all or part of the article published by MDPI, including figures and tables. For articles published under an open access Creative Common CC BY license, any part of the article may be reused without permission provided that the original article is clearly cited. For more information, please refer to https://www.mdpi.com/openaccess .

Feature papers represent the most advanced research with significant potential for high impact in the field. A Feature Paper should be a substantial original Article that involves several techniques or approaches, provides an outlook for future research directions and describes possible research applications.

Feature papers are submitted upon individual invitation or recommendation by the scientific editors and must receive positive feedback from the reviewers.

Editor’s Choice articles are based on recommendations by the scientific editors of MDPI journals from around the world. Editors select a small number of articles recently published in the journal that they believe will be particularly interesting to readers, or important in the respective research area. The aim is to provide a snapshot of some of the most exciting work published in the various research areas of the journal.

Original Submission Date Received: .

• Active Journals
• Find a Journal
• Proceedings Series
• For Authors
• For Reviewers
• For Editors
• For Librarians
• For Publishers
• For Societies
• For Conference Organizers
• Open Access Policy
• Institutional Open Access Program
• Special Issues Guidelines
• Editorial Process
• Research and Publication Ethics
• Article Processing Charges
• Testimonials
• Preprints.org
• SciProfiles
• Encyclopedia

Article Menu

• Subscribe SciFeed
• Recommended Articles
• Google Scholar
• on Google Scholar
• Table of Contents

Find support for a specific problem in the support section of our website.

Please let us know what you think of our products and services.

Visit our dedicated information section to learn more about MDPI.

JSmol Viewer

Unilateral hearing loss and auditory asymmetry in mitochondrial disease: a scoping review.

1. Introduction

2. materials and methods, 4. discussion, 5. conclusions, author contributions, conflicts of interest.

• Joo, S.Y.; Jang, S.H.; Kim, J.A.; Kim, S.J.; Kim, B.; Kim, H.Y.; Choi, J.Y.; Gee, H.Y.; Jung, J. Prevalence and Clinical Characteristics of Mitochondrial DNA Mutations in Korean Patients With Sensorineural Hearing Loss. J. Korean Med. Sci. 2023 , 38 , e355. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ]
• Chennupati, S.K.; Levi, J.; Loftus, P.; Jornlin, C.; Morlet, T.; O’reilly, R.C. Hearing loss in children with mitochondrial disorders. Int. J. Pediatr. Otorhinolaryngol. 2011 , 75 , 1519–1524. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ]
• Zhang, D.; Wu, J.; Yuan, Y.; Li, X.; Gao, X.; Kang, D.; Zhang, X.; Huang, S.S.; Dai, P. Mitochondrial tRNASer(UCN) mutations associated non-syndromic sensorineural hearing loss in Chinese families. Heliyon 2024 , 10 , e27041. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ]
• Zwirner, P.; Wilichowski, E. Progressive sensorineural hearing loss in children with mitochondrial encephalomyopathies. Laryngoscope 2001 , 111 , 515–521. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ]
• Chinnery, P.F.; Elliott, C.; Green, G.R.; Rees, A.; Coulthard, A.; Turnbull, D.M.; Griffiths, T.D. The spectrum of hearing loss due to mitochondrial DNA defects. Brain 2000 , 123 , 82–92. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ]
• Tricco, A.C.; Lillie, E.; Zarin, W.; O’Brien, K.K.; Colquhoun, H.; Levac, D.; Moher, D.; Peters, M.D.; Horsley, T.; Weeks, L.; et al. PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR): Checklist and Explanation. Ann. Intern. Med. 2018 , 169 , 467–473. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Liberati, A.; Altman, D.G.; Tetzlaff, J.; Mulrow, C.; Gøtzsche, P.C.; Ioannidis, J.P.; Clarke, M.; Devereaux, P.J.; Kleijnen, J.; Moher, D. The PRISMA statement for reporting systematic reviews and meta-analyses of studies that evaluate healthcare interventions: Explanation and elaboration. BMJ 2009 , 339 , b2700. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• British Society of Audiology. Recommended procedure for taking an aural impression. Br. J. Audiol. 1986 , 20 , 315–316. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Leruez, S.; Milea, D.; Defoort-Dhellemmes, S.; Colin, E.; Crochet, M.; Procaccio, V.; Ferré, M.; Lamblin, J.; Drouin, V.; Vincent-Delorme, C.; et al. Sensorineural hearing loss in OPA1-linked disorders. Brain 2013 , 136 , e236. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ]
• Sakai, Y.; Kaga, K.; Kodama, K.; Higuchi, A.; Miyamoto, J. Hearing evaluation in two sisters with a T8993G point mutation of mitochondrial DNA. Int. J. Pediatr. Otorhinolaryngol. 2004 , 68 , 1115–1119. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Sue, C.M.; Lipsett, L.J.; Crimmins, D.S.; DipAud, C.S.T.; Boyages, S.C.; Presgrave, C.M.; Gibson, W.P.R.; Byrne, E.; Morris, J.G.L. Cochlear origin of hearing loss in MELAS syndrome. Ann. Neurol. 1998 , 43 , 350–359. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ]
• Roubertie, A.; Leboucq, N.; Picot, M.C.; Nogue, E.; Brunel, H.; Le Bars, E.; Manes, G.; Prouteau, C.A.; Blanchet, C.; Mondain, M.; et al. Neuroradiological findings expand the phenotype of OPA1-related mitochondrial dysfunction. J. Neurol. Sci. 2015 , 349 , 154–160. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ]
• Forli, F.; Passetti, S.; Mancuso, M.; Seccia, V.; Siciliano, G.; Nesti, C.; Berrettini, S. Mitochondrial syndromic sensorineural hearing loss. Biosci. Rep. 2007 , 27 , 113–123. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Roesch, S.; O’Sullivan, A.; Zimmermann, G.; Mair, A.; Lipuš, C.; Mayr, J.A.; Wortmann, S.B.; Rasp, G. Mitochondrial Disease and Hearing Loss in Children: A Systematic Review. Laryngoscope 2022 , 132 , 2459–2472. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ]
• van Kempen, C.M.A.; Beynon, A.J.; Smits, J.J.; Janssen, M.C.H. A retrospective cohort study exploring the association between different mitochondrial diseases and hearing loss. Mol. Genet. Metab. 2022 , 135 , 333–341. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ]
• Shemesh, A.; Margolin, E. Kearns-Sayre Syndrome. In StatPearls [Internet] ; StatPearls Publishing: Treasure Island, FL, USA, 2024. [ Google Scholar ]
• El-Hattab, A.W.; Adesina, A.M.; Jones, J.; Scaglia, F. MELAS syndrome: Clinical manifestations, pathogenesis, and treatment options. Mol. Genet. Metab. 2015 , 116 , 4–12. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ]
• Fischel-Ghodsian, N. Mitochondrial deafness. Ear Heart 2003 , 24 , 303–313. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ]
• Hameed, S.; Tadi, P. Myoclonic Epilepsy and Ragged Red Fibers. In StatPearls [Internet] ; StatPearls Publishing: Treasure Island, FL, USA, 2024. [ Google Scholar ]
• Yamamoto, N.; Okuyama, H.; Hiraumi, H.; Sakamoto, T.; Matsuura, H.; Ito, J. The Outcome of Cochlear Implantation for Mitochondrial Disease Patients With Syndromic Hearing Loss. Otol. Neurotol. 2015 , 36 , e129–e133. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ]
• Koleilat, A.; Poling, G.L.; Schimmenti, L.A.; Hasadsri, L. The Importance of Mitochondrial Disease Testing in Young Adults with New Onset Sensorineural Hearing Loss. Ear Heart 2024 , 45 , 517–521. [ Google Scholar ]

Click here to enlarge figure

Share and Cite

Manuelli, M.; Migliorelli, A.; Bianchini, C.; Stomeo, F.; Pelucchi, S.; Genovese, E.; Monzani, D.; Palma, S.; Ciorba, A. Unilateral Hearing Loss and Auditory Asymmetry in Mitochondrial Disease: A Scoping Review. J. Clin. Med. 2024 , 13 , 5044. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm13175044

Manuelli M, Migliorelli A, Bianchini C, Stomeo F, Pelucchi S, Genovese E, Monzani D, Palma S, Ciorba A. Unilateral Hearing Loss and Auditory Asymmetry in Mitochondrial Disease: A Scoping Review. Journal of Clinical Medicine . 2024; 13(17):5044. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm13175044

Manuelli, Marianna, Andrea Migliorelli, Chiara Bianchini, Francesco Stomeo, Stefano Pelucchi, Elisabetta Genovese, Daniele Monzani, Silvia Palma, and Andrea Ciorba. 2024. "Unilateral Hearing Loss and Auditory Asymmetry in Mitochondrial Disease: A Scoping Review" Journal of Clinical Medicine 13, no. 17: 5044. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm13175044

Article Metrics

Further information, mdpi initiatives, follow mdpi.

Subscribe to receive issue release notifications and newsletters from MDPI journals