The goal of a literature review is to explore and gather scholarly work to identify gaps in previously conducted research and justification for conducting new research. In general, there are two common ways to conduct and present literature review:

• An exploratory way to discover the conceptual development of a topic or technique. The trends, patterns, or gaps identified from the review may be presented in a thematic, theoretical, or chronological way.
• An analytical way to analyze interventions or outcomes from prior work to synthesize evidence (for example, a systematic review, meta-analysis, or meta-synthesis). This type of literature review is often published as a complete study.

The UNT Libraries provides several library guides on literature reviews, either in general or within a discipline: