How to work with different literature for crafting the Literature Review?

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In an attempt to create a successful Literature Review, most of the researchers target to connect their work to the diverse literature that they read. That diverse literature could be as varied as, from research papers, policy documents, blogs, websites, articles, books etc. Scholars, sometimes even go further and incorporate cartoons and films. So literature … Continue reading “How to work with different literature for crafting the Literature Review?”

In an attempt to create a successful Literature Review, most of the researchers target to connect their work to the diverse literature that they read. That diverse literature could be as varied as, from research papers, policy documents, blogs, websites, articles, books etc. Scholars, sometimes even go further and incorporate cartoons and films. So literature should be considered as something plural, because, though it is a single entity but it couldn’t be created without compiling content from multiple ends and directions.

The primary objective behind reading a literature is, to gather lots of relevant information about a topic. It helps to confirm ones opinions about what he already knows. When you read varied literature on a particular topic, you categorically come to know what is known to you and what is not. The researcher, who is in the process, or at the stage of evaluating existing literature, gets an open perspective and looks at it from a critical point of view, so that beneath the knowledge on the surface of the literature, what is the view point, can also be understood. Eventually, when you have lots of literature with you, you are able to compare, contrast and then ultimately develop a perspective, which can be combined as common characteristics or approaches.

Researchers who don’t have an in-depth understanding of what is the core objective of creating the Literature Review, create it with the only sole purpose of text summarization, making lists of results and arguments. You must remember, this is just the first step in the creation of the literature review. You must rather have an evaluative perspective and not just listing down or compiling content. The job of Literature Review should be completed, to do justice to your research, as well as, to all the effort you make in collecting information and compiling it. The task is complete only when you have mapped the entire field. You should be able to clarify what has been the explicit contribution of the research, and its relationship with the prior research that has already been done.

Once you have done that, you unambiguously bring out the gap that is unfilled and still needs research. So you can end your Literature Review highlighting very clearly, that thorough analysis of existing literature brings out some gaps, and filling of those gaps is the objective of your research