The literature review is an issue that is always left to the end or given no importance from the beginning. Although in some ways it is always done, because you have to be documented first, writing a good review is not easy, it takes time, your need imagination and telling a credible story to justify your research and conclusions.
But who taught you to do a good literature review? How did you wish to be taught? What is the best way to teach to do it?
http://howtopublishinjournals.com/2013/11/24/book-review-the-literature-review-six-steps-to-success/
Writing a literature review needs to have as much as possible experince in writing articles tn journals and experience in the field. However, may be writing a scientific article is much easier to have limited data and guidelines (instructions) of the journal to follow and simply done but a review, in my openion, usually is invited by editors and no standard guidelines needed (instructions) but to analyze the point and summarize the exist data and propose the conclusion. so, experince in writing and field is major points (I can say like given good lecture for professional scientists).
It is easier to write a literature review to your empirical paper if you already know the field well or if you manage to find a competent co-author. If not, you can start from reading some review articles - then you will understand who are the main authors in your field, which are the main topics people have studied before and what they have achieved - then you can start thinking what your results will add to the field (if you do not understand that, your paper will be most probably rejected, especially from good journals). This helps you to understand which articles you should cite. Also, sometimes, to find older articles you should cite it is helpful to search from Scopus and other databases: you can search by keywords and find out which papers have been cited the most.
When I wrote my Literature review for my M Sc thesis, I had no publications. I think of Review as the history of my research area until the time I take it up. As I read the many articles i try to visualize its significance and how much each researcher has done to bring the knowledge forward. I ponder on which area I can contribute so that the knowledge is advanced by just a step forward.
I thank the many supervisors (formal and informal) and people who gave me advice including MINNI, Dr Chan CJ, Dr. Rawlings, Dr. Bahaman, A. LeBlanc, S. Eysenck and Dr. Jack. I learnt from them and by observing some of them at work. [They are just too many to name!]
No one taught me, but I am trying to teach my PhD students:
1. Collect sources (Google Scholar, databases)
2. Then see what is readily available - pdf or text, or on the web
3. Collect these
4. If you think you need those not available (by summary), ask author, or use other means to obtain
5. Make list of sources in the format you need, add up to 5 sentences as summary.
6. distribute this list accorting structure of your Thesis (for Introduction; than in chapters according Discussion)
7. Kick out not relevant ones (if you have too many sources)
8. Mark those most important
9. Then do your job :)
Linas, I like your points. I would add a few additional notes however.
1) Start in the obvious place which is your institutional library. They will have access to databases, depending on the topic, that will encompass all the published literature in any field, including conference papers. SCOPUS and WOK have been mentioned, but you Librarian will be aware of specialist databases in your area of research.
2) Don't rely only on what you can find in full text on the net. Again your library will have additional subscriptions to pay for view journals and access to full text databases, or inter-library loan. In a well organised research library all the literature you need is available by one route or another.
3) Take time to understand the structure of the literature. You save time by seeking out publications that provide summaries first before doing your specialist search, or getting your Librarian to help you do it. As a broad generalisation, start with scholarly encyclopeadias, handbooks and annual reviews. Then seek out reviews published in the journal literature, then do your database search for journal articles and conference papers.
4) Use bibliographic software like Mendeley. It enables you to capture and sort large volumes of references and tag them with subject headings to group articles you find into themes that you find useful. You can do simple things in seconds. For example sort by date of publication to get a profile of publication across time. Sort by author to find key authors. Sort by keyword etc.
These actions will save you time and ensure that you start from a good place in terms of locating all relevant literature. No secrets here. Talk to your Librarian.
A good book to read on this topic in the Social Sciences is
Hart, C., 1999. Doing a literature review. London: Sage. [ http://www.amazon.com/Doing-Literature-Review-Releasing-Imagination/dp/0761959750 ]
Best Wishes
Matt
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