Michael Uebel is completely right: it depends on your research question. In history, normally the length is a century: 16th-century Italian literature; 18th-century French literature. In these cases, there is a connection between duration and nation, which means that the nation-state approach is still dominant in most human and social sciences researches even when nation-states didn't exist. Nonetheless, we have larger divisions as Renaissance Literature, Medieval, Baroque, and so forth, which is trivial evidence. Much more important, it is the research problem and from it the methodological options. Quantitative methods mean that all writers in a certain period will be transformed in a value, regardless of their literary and cultural influence. The results can be quite awry. There are several diverse qualitative alternatives that depend on the research problem. If you can specify your research question, we can certainly try to help.

Depends on the topic, number of publications and review type.

Creo que depende de diversas circunstancias

I think it depends on the field and the question. Generally, I get the impression that empirical/statistical studies have shorter time ranges, apart from citation of the original or classical studies of the key variable(s); humanistic studies often require a broader approach. Often, somewhere in the recent literature you will find review articles that do a lot of the work for you. Some journals do a lot of reviews.

One technique to find literature , if you know a classical study where a particular hypothesis or variable was first used, is to use Google Scholar to work forward from that original study to studies citing it.

The time-span you need to consider depends entirely on your research field. I would say that you need to know the important debates in that field before making decisions on which time period you want to consider. Sometimes, older research is still relevant, then it is important to know about this research and how debates have developed from there. Sometimes, a research field has taken a new direction which you might want to focus on. I would look for introductory texts onto a subject matter first, not because you need to stick to what is easy to know, but to have some idea how others have mapped the field. I would personally find it very sad if relevant research is not taken any longer into consideration because people take the short-cut to only look at newer research. Relevance is not the same as publication date.

This depends on your institution, some institutions give range. Ideally, a literature review is those relevant researches done on your area of concern, can trace back from beginning but to the present. The year range depends on your institution as I have said, again depends on the nature of your research and you.

If you are asking for how long it should or will take you, depends on how much time you have for the program, still nature of program and means and availability of resources and your time management.

The next thing I would say to you is speak with your supervisor or coordinator.

Thank you

This is an interesting question for me right now. Sometime during the 2020-2021 academic year, I read two pages of comments made by anonymous reviewers of an article that I wrote which was returned to me (75 days after I submitted it) by the journal, and the decisive suggestion, which determined whether or not I was going to be able to resubmit it in accordance with the specialist reader's constructive criticisms any time soon, is that I should "go back 75 years" to see if the apparently original idea in my article had any precedent. It may help you to see this as a reasonable professional piece of advice after I reveal the name of the subject author, and his work, which is F. Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote The Great Gatsby, which was published 10 April 1925. Still, if the university libraries were open, I would have tried to do a 75-year search motivated by intellectual curiosity and the stipulated requirement to document a concrete, materially accessible verification of my article's originality and / or to document any close approximations of my theoretical hypothesis during the past seventy-five years.

If you are dealing with some remote antiquity, it would be better to deal with even farther long time ago literature.

Amelina Correa Ramón ,

I hope that my translation from Spanish to English meets with your approval!

Amelina Correa added an answer to this ResearchGate discussion thread on May 17, 2021, as follows:

"Creo que depende de diversas circunstancias."

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Here is my translation: "In my opinion, the number of years for a literature review depends on diverse circumstances."

Kind regards and wishes.

I agree with Neil. It depends on the topic and the number of publications that will be consulted for review. The range also depends on the institution and the supervisor, as an expect in the field .

It depends on your area of study and the scope.

Some articles are considered "first", "beginning of the topic" - these can be quoted no matter how many years have passed. The publications most relevant to the topic of the article should be selected. Only if the list of publications were to be larger than typical bibliographies in a given journal, consideration should be given to limiting the number of publications in the bibliography.

i agree with Michael Uebel and Piotr Knyziak

Knowledge-building tends to be iterative and researchers should not fall prey to Goldilocks situations. At any rate, the "age" of the literature under review ought to be a function of the type of review that is embarked upon. In that respect, Jesson, Matheson, and Lacey (2011) distinguished five approaches to scholarly literature:

• Conceptual Reviews. Conceptual reviews synthesize and critically assess literature to see how a particular issue is understood. The purpose of conceptual reviews is to produce a greater understanding of the issue.
• Expert Reviews. Expert reviews, much like state-of-the-art reviews, are undertaken by experts in a particular field and so partial to their interests and contributions. The purpose of expert reviews is to move an agenda forward.
• Scoping Reviews. Scoping reviews document what is known about a topic (e.g., key concepts, theories, questions) and make out gaps, disputes, niches, and (less often) blind spots. The purpose of scoping reviews is to underpin a research question and justify an approach to it.
• State-of-the-Art Reviews. State-of-the-art reviews examine the most recent contributions to a field in light of the history of its research. The purpose of state-of-the-art reviews is to look for trends, agreements, debates, and future directions.
• Traditional Reviews. Traditional reviews resemble scoping reviews but do not mean to create space for research projects. The purpose of traditional reviews is merely to position or locate a study within the corpus.

To wit, a literature review can involve a combination of two or more of the five approaches that Jesson, Matheson, and Lacey (2011) particularized. A study featuring an exploratory design, for instance, might not call for thorough scoping and traditional reviews but could warrant conceptual and state-of-the-art reviews, with implications for the "recency" of the literature.

Reference

Jesson, J., Matheson, L., & Lacey, F. (2011). Doing your literature review: Traditional and systematic techniques. Sage.

It depends on the topic in the majority ...

Entre los requisitos q debes cumplir q revisa un oponente se exige que el 50% de la bibliografía sea de la última década, hay otros requisitos como consultar fuentes en otros idiomas, fuentes en internet y los clásicos que aportan a su investigación.

A literature review can take anywhere from 2-6 months depending on how many hours a day you work on it.

Generally, it depends on the area of research, some areas have rich literature, in that case, five years review is sufficient, but in areas where no much literature is available, ten years or more is sufficient.

In conclusion, it depends on the guideline of the school in which you're writing the thesis/dissertation or the journal/conference body in which you're sending the article to.

The more recent years the better it is for the sake of quality of ur work.

Atiqur Rahman

Dear Professor,

Thank you for the interesting question.

Usually in all my researches, I review literature of 20 years. But that may not be always a necessity. This is because everything is changing very fast in today's world. That is why, older literature may not be needed to be reviewed. I have seen around me that these days most scientists and researchers are talking about reviewing literature of the last 10 years only.

Best regards,

Anamitra.

It depends on the fields of the study and fit is generally flast five years

Personally, I don't set time limits.

However, many journals specifically ask that the literature be limited to the past 10 years or less.

Usually with in ten years . See the link : https://libanswers.snhu.edu/faq/215024

Even though very recent ones are better, it depends on the availability and importance of the literature.

Thanks!

This depends on the nature of the research. Most relevant materials are what are needed. If it's historical, you trace literature, relevant literature. And again you have to come to date, where the discussion presently is.

Dear Atiqur,

many thanks for asking this interesting technical question which is certainly of broad general interest to many other RG members as well. During my 40+ years of chemical research I wrote some 70+ literature review articles as you can see from the list cited below. The writing took me normally somewhere in th range between 2 months and 1 year. It just depends on what type of review article you are writing and how organized you are. Nowadays it's very easy to have all the relevant literature availablle in your computer. You should start with shorter review to get used to this work. Many journals publish Mini Reviews, Tutorial Reviews, or Critical reviews, which are normally reasonably short.

The time you want to cover in your review strongly depends on the topic. Moreover, it is important to know when the last review on this research topic has been published. Some journals even publish so-called Annual Reviews in which the development of the research of last year is covered.

List of Review Articles by Frank T. Edelmann

Research List of Review Articles by Frank T. Edelmann

Depends on the topic. Many reviews look at the past 20 years, as this fact is a norm and justifies itself. To justify a review made only on the last 10 years, we could refer to a time chart where we note a net increase in publications over the last 10 years. At least I did that

It is very interesting question, I agree with professor Frank T. Edelmann.

If this question was posed couple of decades back, I would say it's good to carryout a literature study going to 20 to 25 years back would be sufficient. But at the current rapid rate of development of science and technology, now I feel literature study going back to a maximum of 15 years would be sufficient, and going beyond would be probably out dated and of no significance in current context.

I fully agree and support the opinion of our distinguished colleague Michael Uebel. Thanks a lot for the extensive information!

I fully agree with the scholars above, who says it depends on your focus topic.

The review of literature should be dynamic in terms of considering the inclusion of related articles depending on their date of publication. The factors determining this point are the type, nature and details of the scientific paper.

Studies that involve historical aspects require references published long ago. In addition, some scientific methods, chemical or mathematical equations in various scientific disciplines require reference to their sources despite their publishing dates. On the other hand, there are studies dealing with other scientific aspects of research , for example, review articles, meta-analysis, experimental, analytical, statistical and comparative studies should include the latest relevant research and scientific articles.

It all depends on the discipline or subject matter. Generally speaking, the most recent texts are always preferred.

It depends upon your area of study, no hard and fast rule for literature review.

Depends upon the topic and availability of the literature

This is a very topical question. But the answer is not so simple: it all depends on the topic and the availability of literature!

Impressive suggestions above by all the experts. Of course there is no hard and fast rule for the duration period of literature review BUT as a generally accepted rule for PHD students is to include maximum literature from last 5 years. It will establish the fact that the topic of interest in still trending and has significant value even currently. However, fundamental literature of the topic is must even it is from decades ago publications. Tq.

I think it depends on time limits. If the literature review is for a PhD research project, as already acknowledged, the amount of time available for this would link to the time allowed for the research, or if it was for a commissioned publication, then time is sometimes time in the essence.

I would have thought that if a literature review was extended to a long period of time, then some of the earlier references would be quite old. However, if they were the primary reference to a concept, that is also important.

I feel this period will depend on the study you are conducting. If the area is a very new one, maybe review of 10 years would be sufficient. Generally 20 years or a bit more would be satisfactory for most of the studies. But if it's an area like history, culture, archaeology etc. one might have to go much further.

Verily, every scientific paper has its own related case.

I think it depends on the conducted study, hot and new research area may suited by short period.

In general, the length of a literature review should make up 10-20% of your research paper, thesis or dissertation and have its own chapter. For a thesis, this means a literature review should be approximately 6,000 to 12,000 words long, with the actual length varying based on your subject.

A literature review from the past 5-20 years is good enough. But depending on the, one may go beyond this range.

15 to 20 years is the most appropriate time period. But I will suggest about 10% of the literature of any old period, even 50 years or above.

It depends on the topic approached and how much has been written on that topic. If it is a very common topic, often addressed by scientists, then a few years (at least five, however) for a systematic literature review article should be enough, if it is a less common topic in scientific journals, then the period should be longer, at least over ten years, if not more decades.

It should be quick, if the work is not vast.

In the late years,the better is for the sake of good quality of work u can achieve.

All depends on nature of your research and questions raised. It also depends whether you are writing an article or a PhD.

There is no standard specific number and this is due to the novelty of the topic or its history and developments, but the goal is always to

summarizes and evaluates some sources and study researches about a literature review topic. These sources that a literature review document summarize must be related and around a particular topic.

Depence of the field of the research. There are not a act rules, but some habits say 5 and more years...

5 to 10 years

It all depends on the direction of scientific research.

Creo que dependerá del campo de investigación.

I think 5 to 10 years

اتفق مع الدكتورة بيداء فكلما كان الموضوع يتسم بالحداثة كلما قلت المراجع

It depends on the type of research that you are carrying out. For surveys, the literature review may be for an extended duration compared with a technical paper on current technology, for instance.

Miaad Hameed Ali added an answer to this ResearchGate discussion thread question 2 days ago on December 24, 2021, as follows:

"اتفق مع الدكتورة بيداء فكلما كان الموضوع يتسم بالحداثة كلما قلت المراجع"

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This is the transliteration of the Arabic characters:

"aitafaq mae aldukturat biada' fakulama kan almawdue yatasim bialhadathat kulama qult almarajie"

This is the translation into the English language of the answer given in the Arabic language:

"I agree with Dr. Baida, the more modern the topic is, the fewer references there are"

Source: Internet Artificially-Intelligent Translator

Best regards.

بيداء عبد السلام مهدي added an answer to this ResearchGate discussion thread question on November 18, 2021, as follows:

"حسب حداثة الموضوع كلما كان حديثا احتاجة اكثر وقتا

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This is the transliteration of the Arabic characters:

"hasab hadathat almawdue kulama kan hadithan aihtajatan akthur waqtan"

This is the English translation of the answer given in Arabic:

"According to the novelty of the topic, the more recent it is, the more time it takes"

Source: Internet Artificially-Intelligent Translator

Best regards.

This is dependent on the topic being addressed and the relevance , novelty and uniqueness of the area under review

Since the literature review should demonstrate that the relevant literature is included (to avoid the re-invention of the wheel and to make sure that better solutions are not missed), it obvioulsy needs to include the newest sources (meaning, depending on the topic, something like 5-10 years). However, stopping there would be wrong in many cases: often seminal sources are (perhaps even much) older, and it would not be right to praise the epigones for something that has been invented/found by other people before (who would then be neglected). Instead, honour must be given to whom honour belongs, i.e. in particular to the originators of a thought/solution/invention. Therefore, the question should refer less to the aspect which minimum or maximum time range is relevant. Rather, the author must make sure that they cite the RELEVANT literature for a topic, honouring the right people. Depending on the aspects of novelty and uniqueness (as mentioned by other answers to this question above), this may be a quite short time in some cases, while in others it would be a very long one... Nevertheless, to avoid overboarding literature reviews in the latter, sometimes it helps to refer to a source that has done parts of this already (e.g. one could write that a certain source already reports the history/development of an aspect over the time and that it also mentions the relevant/most important authors for this respective period).

Good morning

It depends on what you are doing. Thesis, paper, communication.

I did my thesis and I research for many years, the legal review

It depends also on the kind of research, for example in a bibliometric study you took, or you select the years you consider most important in your issue

Best regards

Ph.D. Ingrid del Valle García Carreno

A good rule of thumb is to use sources published in the past 10 years for research in the arts, humanities, literature, history, etc.