No problem Sadatoshi - what I mean is that if you are citing the 'overall' literature review and the 'essence' or overview of its finding (or a large part of what it infers) - then bst to cite the authors/s of that review. If, however, you are referring to a small or singular part of the review (that relates to perhaps one or two of the included citations) - I think that it is best to access those full 'original' articles and cite them instead.

Not sure if that helps?

Dean

Usually you should refer to original study, because there maybe difference between yours and the one which reviewed by that article in terms of methodology or circumstances. Whether or not, you should cite the original article.

How you cite the literature review depends on your usage. Ehsan's suggestion of citing the original study is good, if and only if the data from the original work will be used in a meta-analysis. But for a research paper on a related subject, it isn't necessary to cite the original study. Why? Because the literature review is exactly that: a review of multiple studies, rather than a single study. Under this logic, the bibliography sections of scientific papers would increase in length at an exponential rate. Obviously, this is the scientific methods of "synthesis" and "analysis" meet. If you are building upon the ideas of a synthesis (a literature review) to begin a new analysis (your specific research paper), then citing the synthetic conclusions of the literature review will be the best bet.

That said, it is also advisable to have some familiarity with the analysis papers that constitute the synthetic paper that you're citing.

Both good answers so far. Sadatoshi - if you think that the literature review is a credible one and you are citing it on the basis of its evaluation of the reviewed literature - then you should give full credit to it. If you are only relating to parts of it - you should refer to the original material and then decide if the interpretation is correct or not - or expand your own review to include that material.

Thank you everyone for your useful answers.

I would like to ask a question to Dean. What do you mean by "If you are only relating to parts of it "?

Sadatoshi,

Well, you are thinking of publishing a paper of literature review related to your topic! then you want to reference your paper! if my understanding is right - this totally depends how and where you wish to use this new work of yours... and self-referencing is a very sensitive issue... thus, you might wish to use a combination of both! but you need to be very careful of not over using your own work in your future work... !

No problem Sadatoshi - what I mean is that if you are citing the 'overall' literature review and the 'essence' or overview of its finding (or a large part of what it infers) - then bst to cite the authors/s of that review. If, however, you are referring to a small or singular part of the review (that relates to perhaps one or two of the included citations) - I think that it is best to access those full 'original' articles and cite them instead.

Not sure if that helps?

Dean

Hi Sadatoshi - thank you for asking this question - it is an interesting one as I think the responses so far show. I'm quite interested in literature reviews as meta-studies because I think they're really useful for springboarding original work. You might be interested in a text I found useful: Light, RJ & Pillemer, DB 1984, Summing Up - The Science of Reviewing Research, Harvard University Press, London, England.

Thanks a lot, Dean. I think I am clear about how I cite the literature review.

Thank you, Kristoffer for your useful information.

You can take Literature reviews as a reference for your research but you follow your new views other than past research, and explain your new views, thoughts, and method also in your research.because will be new research.