How to write a literature review

A literature review is not a summary of what you read. It is an argument that a gap exists and that your question addresses it. Almost every weak review fails at the same point: it is organised by source rather than by idea.

Here is the test. If your review could be reordered without losing anything, it is a list. If moving a paragraph breaks the logic, it is a review.

Stage 1: search systematically

Record what you did. Even where a formal systematic review is not required, being able to state your search strategy demonstrates rigour and takes ten minutes.

Google Scholar is a good place to get a feel for a field, but subject databases let you record and repeat a search exactly. For a clinical question, the PICO framework turns the question into search terms.

Three techniques worth using:

• Truncation. adolescen* catches adolescent, adolescents, adolescence.
• Backward chaining. Mine the reference lists of the best papers you find.
• Forward chaining. Use "cited by" to find what came after a key paper. Most students skip this and miss the recent work.

Stage 2: read for position, not content

You are not trying to remember what each paper says. You are working out where it sits in a debate. For every source, record five things.

Stage 3: build a synthesis matrix

A spreadsheet with sources down the side and themes across the top. Tick where each source speaks to each theme. It sounds mechanical and it is the single most useful thing you can do.

The matrix does two jobs at once. Densely populated columns become your sections. Empty columns are your gap, visible rather than guessed at: in this example, nobody has looked at community settings.

Stage 4: structure by theme

Three workable structures, and one to avoid.

• Thematic. One section per issue. The default, and right for most dissertations.
• Methodological. Group by how studies were conducted. Useful when method is itself the debate.
• Chronological. Only when the field genuinely developed in stages and that development is your point.
• By source. One paragraph per paper. This is the structure that loses marks.

Stage 5: write synthesis, not summary

This is the whole skill, and it shows in every paragraph.

Same three sources. The second version groups them, notes what they share, and identifies what none of them covers. The final sentence is the gap, and it is yours.

Paragraph shape

1. Topic sentence stating the idea, not naming a source
2. Evidence from two or more sources
3. Analysis: agreement, tension, or limitation
4. Link to the next idea

If a paragraph opens with an author's name, check it. Sometimes that is right. Usually it means the paragraph is about a paper rather than about an idea.

Finding the gap

Gaps come in five recognisable shapes:

The fastest route to a gap is the "further research" section of the three most recent papers in your area. Researchers state explicitly what needs doing next, and remarkably few students read it.

Five ways reviews lose marks

• One paragraph per source. The commonest fault by a distance.
• No disagreement. If every source agrees, you have not read widely enough.
• Nothing recent. A review with nothing from the last three years looks incomplete regardless of quality.
• A gap that appears from nowhere. The gap must follow from what you reviewed.
• Overrunning the word count. A review at 40% of the dissertation is summarising.

Get the synthesis matrix right and most of these solve themselves, because the structure emerges from the evidence rather than from the order you read it in.

Last updated: 30 July 2026 · Written by the AssignWise editorial team ·Spotted something wrong?