Before you start a literature review, you must determine the type of review you need to conduct for your project. Your choice will be influenced by your discipline and the purpose of the review. This page introduces you to four types of literature reviews and recommends resources about and examples of the reviews. The rest of this literature review guide provides general information that applies to most kinds of reviews.

For overviews of all review types, see these readings:

Characteristics:

• Most common type of literature review and used in all disciplines; most frequently a section in a book/article/dissertation/thesis, but can also be a standalone review.
• A selective and critical review of the most important literature related to your research question or hypothesis; creates context for your work and identifies the gaps in knowledge where you can contribute to the scholarly conversation.
• Discussion of the literature may be thematic, methodological, or conceptual, but a chronological treatment is discouraged because it tends to become a summary rather than an evaluation of the literature. 

Resources:

Examples:

Characteristics:

• A review type mainly used in the social sciences and sciences; usually seen as a standalone review article.
• Conducted to determine the scope and coverage of literature on a topic; the methods and sources for gathering the literature are made transparent so that the review can be reproduced. 
• The review identifies definitions and concepts in a field, methods used, and gaps in knowledge; the results are often communicated through tables. 

Resources:

Examples:

For much more information about systematic reviews, visit our Systematic Reviews guide.

Characteristics:

• A review type that originated in medicine (Cochrane Reviews) and has since been adopted by other health sciences and social sciences (Campbell Collaboration); published as a standalone article.
• The review synthesizes knowledge from multiple studies concerning a focused research question and provides an evidence-based conclusion; considered one of the most reliable sources of evidence in medicine.
• Uses transparent criteria for including/excluding literature based on quality. 
• Disciplines have standardized guidelines for conducting and reporting reviews - see Resources.
• Often done by a team composed of experts from the field, information science, and statistics.

Resources:

Examples:

Characteristics:

• A review type that originated in medicine (Cochrane Reviews) and has since been adopted by other health sciences and social sciences (Campbell Collaboration); published as a standalone article or in combination with a systematic review (see box above).
• The review synthesizes the results of multiple studies using statistics to provide an evidence-based answer to a research question; considered one of the most reliable sources of evidence in medicine.
• Knowledge in application of statistics is required.

Resources:

Examples:

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