Lit review how long

A literature review is written in essay format. It is not an annotated bibliography, because it groups related works together and discusses trends and developments rather than focusing on one item at a time.

A Literature Review is more than an Annotated Bibliography or a summary, because you are organizing and presenting your sources in terms of their overall relationship to your own project. A literature review is written to highlight specific arguments and ideas in a field of study. By highlighting these arguments, the writer attempts to show what has been studied in the field, and also where the weaknesses, gaps, or areas needing further study are.

Literature reviews can have different types of audiences, so consider why and for whom you are writing your review. For example, a lot of literature reviews are written as a chapter for a thesis or dissertation, so the audience will want to know in what way your research is important and original. Highlighting the gap in knowledge which your research aims to fill is particularly important in this instance because you need to convince the reader that there is an opening in the area of study.

A literature review in a proposal will similarly try to convince the audience of the significance and worthiness of the proposed project. In contrast, when you are writing a literature review for a course, your professor may want you to show that you understand what research has been done, giving you a base of knowledge.

In this case, you may not need to focus as much on proving where the gaps in knowledge lie, but rather, that you know what the major areas of study and key ideas are.

Asking questions such as the following will help you sift through your sources and organize your literature review. Remember, the literature review organizes the previous research in the light of what you are planning to do in your own project. The length of a literature review varies depending on its purpose and audience. In a thesis or dissertation, the review is usually a full chapter at least 20 pages , but for an assignment it may only be a few pages. There are several ways to organize and structure a literature review.

Two common ways are chronologically and thematically. If your literature study is about arts study, humanities study, literature and history studies.

Then use that researches resources that published in the past ten years. In the other side, if your literature study is about fields of medical, healthcare, engineering and technologies.

Then you need to use researches resources and studies resources that published in the last two or three years. In this paragraph, you will deal with how many resources you have to include in your literature review document. The number of resources needed for a written literature review document depends on many factors such as the research topic itself.

Also, it depends on the field of research and other factors. To select the number of resources you have two cases of literature review document:.

The body pages here not include title page, references, appendices and abstract. For example, if your written literature review document has 15 pages of body content which excludes title page, abstract, references and appendices. Then the minimum number of sources needed equal 15 sources for your written literature review document.

The structure of a written literature review document should contain three major parts which are introduction, body and conclusion.

Introduction is the first section in literature review document. In introduction part of a written literature review document, you write an overview about your literature. And explain your point of view and your reasons to choose your topic of research and give a quick idea about this research topic. How long should a literature review be for a Phd?

How old can APA references be? What is considered outdated research? Why is using old research bad? Why is it important to use up to date research? Why is it important to use up to date literature? Is the literature review comprehensive and up to date? Why is the date of a source important? What should you consider before determining if a source is worth your attention?

How do you know if a source is current? How do you evaluate a literature review? What are the 3 basic questions you would ask when evaluating your source? What questions should you ask when evaluating a research study? What questions should be asked when assessing a literature review?