Introduction

Well-conducted scientific research requires a sound groundwork to extend the existing limitations of human knowledge (Stroud, 2019). While research dissertation is one of the first things a budding researcher learns to write, literature review acts as the pillar which support the entire research process. A literature review writing service analyses the materials (books) the researcher has acquired and read on the topic critically and then determines a “gap” that the study will try to fill in. Given that a dissertation literature review can take many different forms, there are many misconceptions regarding what exactly it includes.

A dissertation chapter help services review the chapters of literature occasionally just to have a brief synopsis of key sources, it usually necessitates critical analysis of the source material in order to express the ideas in the text. Whenever conducting a detailed scientific study, authors are required to summarise their entire study, including the methods, background, as well as outcomes (disserationwritinghelp, 2021). A well-formulated literature review enables the researcher to form their personal interpretation of a particular scientific paper. It also allows for a comparative analysis of researcher’s own opinion with those found in other related studies in the literature. With this coordinated approach, a literature review engages both the researcher as well as the reader with the wider context of the specific study.

A literature review is anticipated to go beyond a summary, which most usually just includes a quick recap of the key points stated by the source(s). A literature review may present an updated opinion on a well-known research subject or it may combine both new and old. A literature review can also give a thorough and critical assessment of the intellectual developments in a field, with an emphasis on significant and occasionally heated disagreements. In other instances, a literature review could provide the reader with a summary of a source and an explanation of its validity, applicability, and relevance to the study’s subject.

Quality of the dissertation is closely dependent upon the quality of the literature studied. A dissertation might fail for a variety of reasons, one of which is writing a poor literature review. Because “a researcher cannot do meaningful research without first comprehending the literature in the subject,” if the literature review is flawed, the rest of the dissertation can also be thought to be defective.

Purpose of a literature review

A scientific study in modern times requires specific context to be understood by a target readership. Since dissertation is an extensive piece of scientific writing, literature review serves the purpose of familiarising the reader with underlying context of the study. Due to this, the author has responsibility to narrowing down the basis of the study. A literature review helps in this regard by acting as the foundation of knowledge used in the research. By identifying prior scholarship in the subject, it prevents the risk of duplication of research, and also provides credit to the original source of idea. Moreover, as the author starts to build the knowledge bank on pertinent aspects related to their research, they also start to realise conflicts in previous studies, identify gaps in existing body of science, realise inconsistencies, and highlight pertinent questions that need to be answered.

Science is an interesting mix of theory and practical, which opens up new horizons of discovery to humanity. For this, importance of theory is as much as that of practical experimentations.  It is the literature review where the researcher gets tremendous opportunity to delve in the interesting theories that explain a natural phenomenon. By engaging with theory, the researcher creates a crucial link with the existing body of knowledge. Although selection of right theory relevant to the investigation is of utmost importance here, because incorrect selection of theory could derail the entire research direction.

How to conduct a literature review

While talking about literature review, one must also familiarise himself or herself with the methods of it. The following steps would guide the reader in conducting literature review without much hassle:

Step 01: Selection of a coherent research topic and research question

Most of the times, research topic contains all the relevant key terms and dimensions upon which the research was conducted. On one hand, selection of precise topic helps the reader in gaining the gist of what is the study about, on the other hand, it also helps the researcher in keeping inline with the main themes of the investigation. So, the researcher should roughly pen down the main ideas and form them into a topic sentence at this stage.

Step 02: Determining the scope of the review

Breadth of science has become too broad in recent decades, with various main domains of science further branching into subdomains like physics branching out into atomic physics and then in quantum physics etc. In such a case, it is contingent upon the researcher to specify the type of studies they will review to form the basis of their research. For example, a study in the psychology of infants’ minds usually should not include literature regarding psychology of adults.

Step 03: Selection of data sources and extraction of studies

Once the scope is decided, the researcher should decide the databases they will extract scientific papers from. This could include ScienceDirect, Ebsco Host, Emerald, PubMed, and Google Scholar etc. One must be aware of the pitfalls here, as selection of incredible database could introduce inconsistencies in the dissertation. So, one must select only those databases that have peer-reviewed system of publishing papers. Alternatively, the researcher could also select specific journals which are peer-reviewed with high impact factor.

Step 04: Start searching for literature

First, enter keywords of the topic in the search tabs of data sources and search for all the relevant papers. To speed up the process here, researcher could only consult with the abstract of studies to check whether the research even contains what they want or not. In case that it does, download that paper or save it online for in-depth study in future. The researcher could also locate more similar studies easily by reviewing the bibliography of the selected papers. Once a sizeable body of papers is collected, start studying them and pen down every important aspect discussed in it.

Conclusion

A holistic literature review forms the groundwork for current and future research by identifying gaps in existing body of knowledge. Through a careful selection of studies regarding a precise topic, the dissertation author becomes capable of furthering human knowledge without getting stuck in substantial variety of information found on any given topic.

References

disserationwritinghelp. (2021, July 31). How To Write a Dissertation Abstract. https://dissertationwritinghelp.uk/how-to-write-a-dissertation-abstract/.

Stroud, B. (2019). Understanding human knowledge in general.” Knowledge and skepticism. Routledge, 2019. 31-50.