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Research Support : The Literature Review

An introduction to library services and resources available to support researchers at UTAS.

Types of Literature Review

There are various types of literature reviews, including

This article describes fourteen different review types and associated methodologies (scroll down to Table 1 on p94/95):

Grant, MJ & Booth, A 2009, 'A typology of reviews: an analysis of 14 review types and associated methodologies', Health Information & Libraries Journal, vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 91-108.

Sources for the Literature Review

Consider these:

Theses

  • UTAS, Australian, international
  • topics & content
  • methodologies & structure

Review Articles

Bibliographies

Journal Articles

  • "journal" "serial" "periodical"
  • Primary literature (in sciences); reported research
  • current, specific & scholarly
  • citation data

Lit. Review - Hot Tip!

When starting a literature review, a "review article" may provide a handy shortcut.  Usually, review articles identify literature in a field or on a topic up to a certain date, offering analysis of the value and contribution of each article to that field of research and specifying key articles.  Many databases enable you to limit your search results to reviews.