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• How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

Published on January 2, 2023 by Shona McCombes . Revised on September 11, 2023.

What is a literature review? A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research that you can later apply to your paper, thesis, or dissertation topic .

There are five key steps to writing a literature review:

• Search for relevant literature
• Evaluate sources
• Identify themes, debates, and gaps
• Outline the structure
• Write your literature review

A good literature review doesn’t just summarize sources—it analyzes, synthesizes , and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

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Table of contents

What is the purpose of a literature review, examples of literature reviews, step 1 – search for relevant literature, step 2 – evaluate and select sources, step 3 – identify themes, debates, and gaps, step 4 – outline your literature review’s structure, step 5 – write your literature review, free lecture slides, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions, introduction.

• Quick Run-through
• Step 1 & 2

When you write a thesis , dissertation , or research paper , you will likely have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:

• Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and its scholarly context
• Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
• Position your work in relation to other researchers and theorists
• Show how your research addresses a gap or contributes to a debate
• Evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of the scholarly debates around your topic.

Writing literature reviews is a particularly important skill if you want to apply for graduate school or pursue a career in research. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below.

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

Writing literature reviews can be quite challenging! A good starting point could be to look at some examples, depending on what kind of literature review you’d like to write.

• Example literature review #1: “Why Do People Migrate? A Review of the Theoretical Literature” ( Theoretical literature review about the development of economic migration theory from the 1950s to today.)
• Example literature review #2: “Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines” ( Methodological literature review about interdisciplinary knowledge acquisition and production.)
• Example literature review #3: “The Use of Technology in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Thematic literature review about the effects of technology on language acquisition.)
• Example literature review #4: “Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Chronological literature review about how the concept of listening skills has changed over time.)

You can also check out our templates with literature review examples and sample outlines at the links below.

Download Word doc Download Google doc

Before you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic .

If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research paper, you will search for literature related to your research problem and questions .

Make a list of keywords

Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research question. Include each of the key concepts or variables you’re interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list as you discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.

• Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
• Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
• Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth

Search for relevant sources

Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some useful databases to search for journals and articles include:

• Your university’s library catalogue
• Google Scholar
• Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
• Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
• EconLit (economics)
• Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)

You can also use boolean operators to help narrow down your search.

Make sure to read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.

You likely won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on your topic, so it will be necessary to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your research question.

For each publication, ask yourself:

• What question or problem is the author addressing?
• What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
• What are the key theories, models, and methods?
• Does the research use established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
• What are the results and conclusions of the study?
• How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?

Make sure the sources you use are credible , and make sure you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.

You can use our template to summarize and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using. Click on either button below to download.

Take notes and cite your sources

As you read, you should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.

It is important to keep track of your sources with citations to avoid plagiarism . It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography , where you compile full citation information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the process.

Receive feedback on language, structure, and formatting

Professional editors proofread and edit your paper by focusing on:

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See an example

To begin organizing your literature review’s argument and structure, be sure you understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:

• Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches become more or less popular over time?
• Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
• Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
• Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
• Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be addressed?

This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.

• Most research has focused on young women.
• There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
• But there is still a lack of robust research on highly visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat—this is a gap that you could address in your own research.

There are various approaches to organizing the body of a literature review. Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).

Chronological

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order.

Try to analyze patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.

If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.

For example, if you are reviewing literature about inequalities in migrant health outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economic access.

Methodological

If you draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a variety of research methods , you might want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from different approaches. For example:

• Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
• Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources

Theoretical

A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework . You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.

You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.

Like any other academic text , your literature review should have an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion . What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.

The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.

Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.

As you write, you can follow these tips:

• Summarize and synthesize: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
• Analyze and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers — add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
• Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
• Write in well-structured paragraphs: use transition words and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts

In the conclusion, you should summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance.

When you’ve finished writing and revising your literature review, don’t forget to proofread thoroughly before submitting. Not a language expert? Check out Scribbr’s professional proofreading services !

This article has been adapted into lecture slides that you can use to teach your students about writing a literature review.

Scribbr slides are free to use, customize, and distribute for educational purposes.

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If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Sampling methods
• Simple random sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Cluster sampling
• Likert scales
• Reproducibility

 Statistics

• Null hypothesis
• Statistical power
• Probability distribution
• Effect size
• Poisson distribution

Research bias

• Optimism bias
• Cognitive bias
• Implicit bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Anchoring bias
• Explicit bias

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .

It is often written as part of a thesis, dissertation , or research paper , in order to situate your work in relation to existing knowledge.

There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:

• To familiarize yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
• To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
• To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
• To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
• To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.

The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your thesis or dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

A literature review is a survey of credible sources on a topic, often used in dissertations , theses, and research papers . Literature reviews give an overview of knowledge on a subject, helping you identify relevant theories and methods, as well as gaps in existing research. Literature reviews are set up similarly to other  academic texts , with an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion .

An  annotated bibliography is a list of  source references that has a short description (called an annotation ) for each of the sources. It is often assigned as part of the research process for a  paper .  

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• Research guides

Writing a Literature Review

Useful guides/tutorials, guides/tutorials.

A search on Google will retrieve numerous guides and tutorials focused on researching and writing literature reviews. Some are general, i.e. not subject nor level-specific while others focus on literature reviews in a specific discipline and/or on a particular level, i.e. undergraduate, or graduate. Below are a few examples:

Literature Reviews: An Overview for Graduate Students  (NCSU Libraries) What is a literature review? What purpose does it serve in research? What should you expect when writing one? Find out here.

Writing the Literature Review in Three Parts (YouTube videos):

Part One: Step-by-Step Tutorial for Graduate Students

Part Two: Step-by-Step Tutorial for Graduate Students

Part Three: Outline and Write the Review of Literature

The Literature Review (Massey University) This video lecture explains how to write a Literature Review, and examines which elements are required in one.

Literature Reviews (The Writing Center, U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) Explains what literature reviews are and offer insights into the form and construction of literature reviews in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.

Literature Review Advice This is a short talk about what should be in an academic literature review such as the one you might produce in a final year project. 

• << Previous: Phase 6: Writing the Literature Review
• Next: Citation Management >>
• Last Updated: Dec 5, 2023 2:26 PM
• Subjects: Education , General
• Tags: literature_review , literature_review_in_education

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

How to Write a Literature Review

Start drafting.

It’s time to start drafting your paper. Follow the structure from your outline and start filling in the missing parts. Get out your notes and remind yourself of the sources you plan to talk about. You don’t have to write your paper from beginning to end in order–you can go to the parts that feel the easiest and start there. Here are some places you can start:

Bullet-Point Draft

With a Bullet-Point draft you take the ideas you’ve been outlining and fill them in with more details but only in bullet-point form. The beauty of bullet points is that they keep you from getting caught up in the language and style and allow you to focus simply on your main points. You can smooth out the sentences and transitions later, but for now, just get your ideas on the page.

Write the Introduction

Another way to get started is to write the Introduction. You already have a thesis statement, so now you can start introducing your topic and its importance, setting up your literature review.

Write a Body Paragraph

Or a third place to start is to jump into writing a body paragraph that synthesizes your sources. Use your notes and outline, and choose one set to talk about in paragraph form.

Don’t think too hard about getting things perfect when you’re drafting–that’s what revision is for. Just focus on getting started. If you get stuck, do some brainstorming activities to get your creative juices flowing. Once you have something written, I suggest seeking feedback to make sure you’re going in the right direction. In fact, I recommend getting as much feedback as possible along the way.

As you create a draft, try to incorporate several sources into each paragraph to be sure that you’re synthesizing and not just summarizing or listing without making connections. Your color-coded notes can help you be sure that you’re synthesizing.

Add Metacommentary

Metacommentary is the key to synthesis. Metacommentary (aka metadiscourse) is a type of commentary that guides your reader and helps them interpret the sources and evidence you’re presenting. Think of it as really powerful transitions.

Transition words act like signposts–they guide your reader through your points. They can also glue your ideas together so they feel more cohesive. Beware that transitions can definitely be overdone, but most students in general could use more transitions in their papers rather than fewer.

You might think you can just stop at transition words, but metacommentary is much more than just sprinkling some “therefores” and “howevers” throughout your paper–metacommentary actually takes your synthesis to the next level. What do you comment on? You can either interpret why a source is important, highlight its significance, or connect it with other sources. This is your chance to point out the answers to the four questions you looked for in your note-taking:

What do researchers agree and disagree about?

How are researchers narrowing or changing their focus to create new information?

What are each study’s limitations and strengths?

What’s the next step in research—what should be studied in the future? (The research gap)

You can think of metacommentary as a sandwich with your name on it. If my student’s name were Alisa, here’s what and Alisa sandwich would look like:

ALISA-SOURCE-ALISA

First, Alisa starts with a claim about what’s happening in the field or about a particular subsection or focus of the field. This could serve as a topic sentence for a paragraph, for example.

Second, she sets up the source with guiding language like transitions and references to her past points or sources.

Third, she writes about the source itself and summarizes pertinent information.

Lastly, Alisa comments on the source and/or connects it to her main point or to next source.

This type of sandwich can occur several times in a paragraph as you synthesize your sources. Here’s a sample paragraph from Chris, a Public Health student, who wrote a paper called “The Causes of a Behavioral Pandemic: Screen-time Addiction and Consequent Depression Among Adolescents.” I’ve bolded the metacommentary Chris included to guide his readers and to connect his points.

Even though there have been far fewer studies on adolescents than adults , adolescent studies have consistently shown that those who are more physically active experience less depressive and associated symptoms, as well as a greater overall state of well-being (Kremer, 2014). These studies have also shown that low levels of vigorous exercise in youth can independently cause depressive symptoms. One longitudinal study revealed that over 30% of children who participate in high levels of screen-time use experience moderate to high levels of depressive symptoms (Kremer, 2014). Additionally, another study of children in the United States demonstrated that those who participated on a sports team were less likely to exceed recommended screen-time limits established by the US Department of Health. This study also demonstrated that as the number of total physical activity sessions increased among youth, both during free time and at organized events, children were less likely to exceed recommended screen-time limits (Carlson, 2010). In this study, children who were more physically active consistently showed lower rates of depression and other emotional disorders. Therefore, evidence across multiple studies suggests that participating in screen-time activity may not be the direct cause of depressive symptoms, but rather the sedentary lifestyle and lack physical activity it causes among youth. With this recent evidence, experts are beginning to search for ways to replace screen-time participation of adolescents with physical activities.

Note how the last few sentences of this paragraph consist entirely of metacommentary–points that connect to the bigger picture of Chris’s literature review. Also notice how Chris uses transition words and phrases to glue his points together so it doesn’t come out of the blue when he brings up a new study. Also, Chris discusses more than one study in this paragraph, demonstrating his ability to synthesize and not just summarize. Without the metacommentary, it would be much harder to see the connections between the studies and how they fit into the bigger picture. Finally, Chris indicates the implications of these studies and points to what researchers are doing next . This has a duel purpose of reminding readers why this topic is important as well as indicating where he will go in his next paragraph (about physical activities). Metacommentary is powerful!

Metacommentary takes practice, but you can do it! And it will not only make your points stronger, it will make it easier for your audience to read and understand–which should always be your goal.

If You Get Stuck

Literature reviews can be hard. If you get stuck, I have a little trick I tell my students. For your first draft, try starting every sentence with “Researchers . . .” I know this seems formulaic, but if you can keep your focus on what particular researchers did or what they agree or disagree on, you’ll avoid the most common pitfalls of literature reviews: sounding like a typical argumentative research paper. If your focus is always on what researchers are doing or what they’ve found, then at the very least you’ll stay in the realm of the literature review genre. Later you can go back through and change up your sentence structure, but I’ve found that this is an easy way for students to get through a first draft.

A Word on Verb Tense

The Real Last Step: Revise (and Revise and Revise)

Fantastic BYU Family Science professor Julie Haupt offers the following suggestions for doing four purposeful revisions–two global and two local.

GLOBAL REVISION–The Forest

Level 1: structural review (global).

Purpose: The structural review examines the document as a whole to see if all requirements are met and the document’s organization is sound.

Meet Assignment Requirements. Ask yourself if your paper meets all the requirements of the assignment? Look at your structure and make sure you have all necessary sections such as the following:

• Introduction (with Thesis Statement and/or Organizing Statement)

Body with Headings

Conclusion/Discussion

Include a Thesis and an Organizing Statement. Does the current version of the thesis statement match the tone, scope, and organization of the body text? Does an organizing statement after the thesis introduce the major topics and the order they will appear in the body (e.g., “This review will first discuss . . . then . . . and finally . . .)

Use Headings. Is the body text subdivided in a logical way with evidence-based information located in appropriate sections? Are the major sections roughly symmetrical (in terms of length)? Are the headings brief, yet descriptive? If subheadings are used, does the major section contain at least two? Are all levels of headings separated by text?

Level 2 (Global): Paragraph/Logic Review

Purpose: The Paragraph/Logic Review is designed to review each paragraph for cohesion and compliance to the CEC (Claim/Evidence/Commentary) format.

Sequence Paragraphs Effectively. When reading only the first sentence of each paragraph, does the logical pattern of the paper emerge? Do the claims made in these topic sentences coordinate well with the thesis of the paper?

Check Topic Sentences and Cohesion. Does the topic sentence or claim provide an effective overview of the information that is located in the paragraph? Is the claim supported by several points of synthesized evidence, rather than a single study? Does each paragraph seem well directed and cohesive? Do the sentences build one upon another within the paragraph in a logical way?

Evaluate Paragraph Length. Are any paragraphs too long (longer than approximately ½ page)? Are any paragraphs too short (approximately three sentences or less)? Do paragraphs transition well from one to the next and use transitional words to connect ideas?

LOCAL REVISION–The Tree

Level 3 (local): apa formatting review.

Purpose: The APA Formatting Review is designed to make sure all APA conventions are explicitly followed to help the paper reflect a high level of professionalism.

Check Document Formatting. Do the body text and reference page appear in the correct page formatting as required? (Use the APA Manual if you have questions.)

Examine the Reference List Closely. Are all references in the reference list ordered alphabetically? Is the reference list double spaced entirely (with no extra gaps between paragraphs)? Are all references (e.g., journal articles, internet resources, or books) listed in the correct format? Is every reference on the reference list cited at least once in the body and does each in-text citation have a corresponding reference in the reference list?

Make a Final Check of the In-Text Citations. Is all information properly cited with an in-text citation when needed? Do all in-text citations include the year next to the author(s)? When more than one citation is listed within parentheses are they separated by semi-colons and ordered alphabetically by first author’s last name? If included in parentheses, do studies with multiple authors use ampersands (“&” rather than the word “and”) before listing the last author?

Level 4 (Local): Finishing Review

Purpose: The Finishing Review is an opportunity to look closely at sentence construction, language, hedging , and grammar/punctuation.

Review Phrasing with a Read-Aloud Session. Since having to read a sentence twice to get its meaning or “tripping over” phrasing can be an indication of awkward construction, are all sentences easily read aloud? Are any sentences so long that they have become difficult to comprehend, but could be split without changing the meaning?

Use Non-Biased, Non-Absolute Language. Do all references to people comply with the “people first” designation and avoid inappropriate uses of terms for various groups? Are the findings and summary statements in the review properly “ Hedged ”?

Check Punctuation and Grammar. Are all commas, semicolons, colons, hyphens, and other punctuation used correctly throughout the document (including the reference page)? Are common grammar mistakes, such as parallelism, subject-verb agreement, incorrect misuse of pronouns, and other grammatical issues corrected?

*Bonus Video

If you’re still confused or would like more guidance on writing a literature review, here is an optional 25-minute video that thoroughly goes through the entire process of writing a literature review. As an extra bonus, it’s made by Michael Paye from the University of Dublin who has an awesome Irish accent. Enjoy!

Charles, C.C. (2020). How to write a literature review. In C.C. Charles (ed.), Writing in the Social Sciences. Edtech books. https://edtechbooks.org/writing/literature_review_2

Writing and the Sciences: An Anthology Copyright © 2020 by Sara Rufner is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Literature Review 101

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– What a literature review is (and the purpose it serves) – The 5 critical components of a high-quality proposal – What assessors/supervisors are looking for – How to get started writing your lit review

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The 45-minute webinar is an engaging online workshop covering the basics of literature review development, specifically for dissertations, theses and research projects.

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Introduction

• Welcome to Writing in the Social Sciences!
• Author Biographies
• Acknowledgments
• UNIT 1. WRITING TOOLS
• 1. Writing in the Social Sciences
• 2. Writing Tools
• 3. Writing Processes
• 4. Grammar & Mechanics
• UNIT 2. ACADEMIC AUDIENCES
• 7. Writing for Academic Audiences
• 8. Finding & Evaluating Sources
• 9. Discussing & Citing Sources
• 10. Defining Literature Reviews
• 11. Planning Literature Reviews
• 12. Writing Literature Reviews
• 13. Crafting Proposals
• UNIT 3. GENERAL AUDIENCES
• 14. Writing for General Audiences
• 15. Applying for Jobs & Graduate Schools
• 16. Creating Public Texts
• 17. Presenting
• Translations

Writing Literature Reviews

Choose a sign-in option.

Tools and Settings

Questions and Tasks

Citation and Embed Code

Learning Outcomes

• writing an introduction, body paragraphs, a discussion/conclusion, abstract, and other elements
• drafting and getting feedback
• revising your literature review

Note: Because this chapter involves the steps for writing your Literature Review, the discussion questions in each section will be more involved than in other chapters, so give yourself extra time. But never fear! They will all lead to writing a better paper.

12.1 Draft and Synthesize

First, I want you to watch this 10-minute video because it both reviews what we talked about in the last chapter and provides great ways to get started on the actual writing of your paper. Here are some highlights to pay attention to: 

questions to ask as you take or review your notes that will guide your writing

suggestions for how to organize your notes. (Or actually, I should spell it "organise" with an "s" since the video comes from Australia.)

ways to add interpretation to what you say about your sources

language to use to comment on the studies you're summarizing and synthesizing

examples of literature review synthesis

Video Review

What three strategies or elements from the video do you plan to incorporate into your own Literature Review?

Start Drafting

Now it's time to start drafting your paper. Follow the structure from your outline and start filling in the missing parts. Get out your notes and remind yourself of the sources you plan to talk about. You don't have to write your paper from beginning to end in order—you can go to the parts that feel the easiest and start there. Here are some places you can start:

Bullet-Point Draft

Writing your Bullet Points should be as fast as this Bullet Train. Photo by Fikri Rasyid on Unsplash

I often have my students start with a Bullet-Point draft that takes the ideas they've been outlining and fills them in with more details but only in bullet-point form. The beauty of bullet points is that they keep you from getting caught up in the language and style and allow you to focus simply on your main points. You can smooth out the sentences and transitions later, but for now, just get your ideas on the page.

Write the Introduction

Another way to get started is to just write the Introduction. You already have a thesis statement that can go at the end, so now you can start introducing your topic and its importance, setting up your Literature Review. See below for more specific help with Introductions.

Write a Body Paragraph

Or a third place to start is to jump into writing a body paragraph that synthesizes your sources—the way you did in that synthesis activity earlier. Take your notes and choose one set to talk about in paragraph form.

Don't think too hard about getting things perfect when you're drafting—that's what revision is for. Just focus on getting started and filling in some of the missing pieces. If you get stuck, do some brainstorming activities to get your creative juices flowing. Once you have something written, I suggest seeking feedback to make sure you're going in the right direction. In fact, I recommend getting as much feedback as possible along the way.

Start Writing

Now it's your turn to choose somewhere to start writing—choose either a bullet-point draft, the introduction, a body paragraph or something else. Then write the equivalent of at least one paragraph.

How to Write Each Section

Once you know what your main points will be, you're ready to introduce your ideas. As in any paper, you can't just jump right into your thesis statement and points; you need to set the stage first. Here are the elements of a good introduction to a literature review:

A good introduction

• introduces the topic and indicates its importance (impact on individuals)
• gives a context for the research question
• defines key terms, concepts, and/or theories
• explains what search methods were used and how many and what types of sources were reviewed (this is sometimes optional)
• suggests the organization of the rest of the paper

Remember in some style guides like the APA Manual , you don't need to title your Introduction "Introduction"—you simply center the title of your paper at the top of your page (bolded and in title capitalization format) and then jump right into your first paragraph. 

Tip: You don't always know where you're going when you start a paper, so just get a good draft of an introduction down. Then when you finish writing a first draft of your paper, read your conclusion and consider using some of it in your introduction instead. I often tell my students that conclusions make good introductions because you finally know exactly where you went in your paper. Either way, you'll want to revisit your introduction once your paper's done so you can adjust it to better match where your paper went.

Get a start on your introduction by writing an opening sentence that introduces your topic and/or indicates its importance. Then you can use that to jump start the rest of your introduction.

The body of your paper is where you can develop your points and use your newfound synthesis skills. Remember the synthesis activity with the videos you did in the last chapter? As you create a draft, you can start composing paragraphs using your awesome notes just like you practiced with those videos. Try to incorporate several sources into each paragraph to be sure that you're synthesizing and not just summarizing or listing without making connections. Your color-coded notes can help you be sure that each paragraph contains multiple sources.

In the body of your paper, you should

synthesize previous studies to inform the reader of the state of research

“identify relations, contradictions, gaps, and inconsistencies in the literature” ( APA Manual , p. 8)

group your points into major headings and subheadings (You choose the arrangement based on what you’ve found: similar concepts or theories, similar methods, chronological development, controversies, etc.)

support all points with sound reasoning or evidence drawn from sources and in which all borrowed information is documented

summarize sources most of the time, paraphrase sometimes, and use quotations very sparingly—only when specific wording is poignant or can’t be said in any other way.

One way to talk about your sources is known as the CEC Method: Claim-Evidence-Commentary.

Claim + Evidence + Commentary

Just like any paragraph, you should start with a Topic sentence that acts as a mini-Thesis statement or a general claim about your topic. Then you need to give evidence to support that claim. In a literature review, your evidence comes in the form of studies that have been done—all those brilliant notes you've been taking. This is where you can synthesize your sources and show that they are related under the umbrella of a topic. However, just listing or summarizing sources does not make the connection between them and your topic sentence clear. This is where commentary comes in. Your job is also to comment on and interpret the significance of your "evidence" so your audience can understand the connections between them. In synthesis, your language is the key.

In the next chapter, we'll talk more about how to do this, especially how to incorporate metacommentary into your paragraphs.

Add Metacommentary

Metacommentary is the key to synthesis. metacommentary (aka metadiscourse) is a type of commentary that guides your reader and helps them interpret the sources and evidence you're presenting. Think of it as really powerful transitions. First, let's remind ourselves what transitions are. Transition words act like signposts—they guide your reader through your points. They can also glue your ideas together so they feel more cohesive. Beware that transitions can definitely be overdone, but I'd say most students in general could use more transitions in their papers rather than fewer.

Here's an awesome list of transition words (also linked in the frame below) that are grouped by category from the famous Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab—scroll down to see the list). You can also download a great handout from the University of Maryland here .

I always suggest that my students keep a categorized transition list like this handy as they write so that when they know they want to connect ideas in a certain way (e.g. to show contrast), you can easily find a good list of options (e.g. in contrast, conversely, etc.). Not only will transitions help your ideas feel more connected, they will also smooth out your writing style like butter.

You might think you can just stop at transition words, but metacommentary is much more than just sprinkling some "therefores" and "howevers" throughout your paper—metacommentary actually takes your synthesis to the next level. Remember the Claim-Evidence-Commentary pattern I've mentioned? The commentary part of that sandwich is where you should focus right now. What do you comment on? You can either highlight why a source is important or connect it with other sources. This is your chance to point out the answers to the four questions you looked for in your note-taking:

What do researchers agree and disagree about?

How are researchers narrowing or changing their focus to create new information?

What are each study’s limitations and strengths?

What’s the next step in research—what should be studied in the future? (The research gap)

You can think of metacommentary as a sandwich with your name on it. If my student's name were Alisa, here's what an "Alisa sandwich" would look like:

ALISA—SOURCE—ALISA

First, Alisa starts with a claim about what's happening in the field or about a particular subsection or focus of the field. This could serve as a topic sentence for a paragraph, for example.

Second, she sets up the source with guiding language like transitions and references to her past points or sources.

Third, she talks about the source itself and summarizes pertinent information.

Lastly, Alisa comments on the source and/or connects it to her main point or to next source.

This metacommentary is a lot like the interpretation mentioned in the video at the beginning of this chapter. This type of "sandwich" can occur several times in a paragraph as you synthesize your sources. Here's a sample paragraph from Chris, a Public Health student, (check this) who wrote a paper called "The Causes of a Behavioral Pandemic: Screen-time Addiction and Consequent Depression Among Adolescents." I've bolded the metacommentary Chris had added to guide his readers and to connect his points together.

Even though there have been far fewer studies on adolescents than adults , adolescent studies have consistently shown that those who are more physically active experience less depressive and associated symptoms, as well as a greater overall state of well-being (Kremer 2014). These studies have also shown that low levels of vigorous exercise in youth can independently cause depressive symptoms. One longitudinal study revealed that over 30% of children who participate in high levels of screen-time use experience moderate to high levels of depressive symptoms (Kremer 2014). Additionally, another study of children in the United States demonstrated that those who participated on a sports team were less likely to exceed recommended screen-time limits established by the US Department of Health. This study also demonstrated that as the number of total physical activity sessions increased among youth, both during free time and at organized events, children were less likely to exceed recommended screen-time limits (Carlson 2010). In this study, children who were more physically active consistently showed lower rates of depression and other emotional disorders. Therefore, evidence across multiple studies suggests that participating in screen-time activity may not be the direct cause of depressive symptoms, but rather the sedentary lifestyle and lack physical activity it causes among youth. With this recent evidence, experts are beginning to search for ways to replace screen-time participation of adolescents with physical activities.

If You Get Stuck

Literature reviews can be hard. If you get stuck, I have a little trick I tell my students. For your first draft, try starting every sentence with "Researchers . . ." I know this seems formulaic, but if you can keep your focus on what particular researchers did or what they agree or disagree on, you'll avoid the most common pitfalls of literature reviews: sounding like a typical argumentative research paper. If your focus is always on what researchers are doing or what they've found, then at the very least you'll stay in the realm of the literature review genre. Later you can go back through and change up your sentence structure, but I've found that this is an easy way for students to get through a first draft.

A Quick Word on Verb Tense

Verb Tenses to Use in Literature Reviews

Discussion/Conclusion

Your last section will either be called discussion or conclusion (or will possibly not have a heading depending on your teacher's preferences or the style guide you're following). In an effective Discussion (aka Conclusion) section you should

do more than sum up what you have said (though you should do that as well)

explain where there are gaps and limitations in the previous research done

indicate recommendations for future research based on those gaps

At the end of this section,

restate your position (thesis statement)

show the implications of your findings

You must also include a list of your References (also known as a Bibliography or Works Cited page depending on the documentation style) showing all the sources you referred to in your paper. Your references page must be in alphabetical order and formatted according to your chosen style guide (see Chapter 9: Talking About Sources ).

Other Elements

Your teacher might require you to include these other elements in your Literature Review paper. Be sure to follow the format from your style guide .

I've waited until now to talk about titles because it's wise to wait until you have a good draft before you choose a title. Why? Because you often don't know exactly where your paper will go until you've written it out. Your title is your readers' first entry into your paper, so you want it to be interesting and also reflect what's inside. Your title should also include as much information as possible while remaining appropriately short and sweet. For example, the APA Manual recommends not using extraneous words but sticking to the main point of your paper. My student Justin's title follows this model:

Implications of Chinese Involvement on Africa's Economy

He basically summarizes his main point in one succinct statement—the ultimate summary. APA would be proud.

However, depending on your sub-field in the Social Sciences, many scholars like to do what I call a "reverse mullet." As you might know, the rad '80s mullet haircut that's short on top and long in the back has been described as

The Mullet: Business in the front, party in the back

A mullet starts with the serious and ends with the fun. But academic titles often do the reverse: they have an interesting introductory phrase, then a colon, and then the standard, more serious title. That's why I call them the

The Reverse Mullet: Party in the front, Business in back

A reverse mullet title gets the reader's attention before adding the serious explanation. For example, one of my students named Katelyn wrote her Literature Review on how much high school students' perception of their teachers was influenced by their teachers' apparel. Her title included a Reverse Mullet structure:

  Keeping it Class-y: How Formality of Teacher Apparel Affects Student Perceptions of the Teacher in the Classroom

• Your Name (centered)
• Your Teacher's Name (centered on the next line)
• A Page Number (in the top right corner that's continued throughout the paper)
• Optional: the Name of the School or Department
• Optional: the Name/Number of Your Course (e.g., English 315)
• Optional: the Date

You should save writing your abstract until after you've completed your paper because it's a summary of the main points of your paper. You can try writing a preliminary abstract now as a type of outline, but you run the risk of finding out that once you're done with your paper, you actually went in some different directions. My advice is to hold off and wait to write the abstract until the end. You can create a page after the title page where your abstract will go, but to emphasize that you should write this last, we'll wait to cover the details of writing an an abstract until the next section.

If you have tables or figures ( or formulas or other data) that are too big to be added inside the text of your paper, you can put them at the end. If you only have one Appendix , you can call it just that. But if you have more than one, call them Appendix A, Appendix B, etc. and refer to them as such in the text of your paper.

Tables and Figures

One more element that could be helpful to your paper is to include tables and/or figures. You're probably familiar with Tables  (you know, the boxes with lots of horizontal and vertical cells). A Figure is any type of image, graph, or chart besides a table. You can use tables or figures from your sources as long as you cite them properly. You can also create your own table or figure either from existing data or to explain a concept. See Chapter 6: Design for the details of how to create, use, or format tables and figures. Just remember to check your style guide; for example, in APA Format, you need to title and number your tables and figures separately.

I hope you feel like you have a better sense of the structure for your own Literature Review paper. In the next chapter, we'll talk about how to draft and revise your paper.

12.2 Write an Abstract

Not that kind of abstract! As great as abstract art is, what you need now is the abstract of your paper. (Note: some teacher's won't require an abstract, so you can skip this section in that case.) Why do you think we've saved the abstract for last even though it's the first thing your audience will read (after your title)? You guessed it: it's because the abstract is a summary of everything you've talked about in your paper, so if you haven't written your paper yet, it's pretty hard to summarize it.

A lot of students think that the abstract is a preview of your paper that simply invites the reader to learn more. But that's not the purpose of the abstract, that's the purpose of the Introduction . If your paper were a movie, your abstract would not be the movie trailer. A movie trailer is an invitation to see more without giving away too much; that's the point of your Introduction . Instead, your abstract would be the movie plot synopsis. It would have a big SPOILER ALERT sign in front of it because in it you want to give away all the punchlines from your paper. In fact, the more you include your most important points or findings, the better. Because readers might only ever read your abstract, you want the most important information there. Then just like you did in your own database searching, they will decide based on the abstract whether they should open your paper and read more details. Your job is to make sure they have the best information to do that.

An abstract has a few main parts that mirror the parts of your paper but in miniature. First, in 1-2 sentences, you should introduce the topic, its importance, and the problem or question you tried to answer. Then you should succinctly explain your methods (database searching) and the scope of your project. The last and largest part should consist of your main findings such as the main areas of inquiry where researchers are congregating. You should include the major strengths and limitations (gaps) you found in your review. Finally, you should explain any implications of your study and suggest where future research should go. See? A miniature paper. It should be so miniature, that the APA Manual says an abstract should not exceed 250 words. At the end, you can also list a few Keywords to make it easy to search for your paper on databases.

To solidify your understanding of how to write an abstract, watch this 3-minute video from the University of Melbourne that takes you through a good example. Try not to get distracted by their awesome Australian accents.

Now if you would like more details, you can refer to this explanation.

12.3 The Real Last Step: Revise (and Revise and Revise)

The best writers revise (and revise and revise). Think back to Chapter 3: Writing Processes and the section on Revision. You need to think like your audience, which means you have to get out of your own head and think mindfully. One way to do this is to revise with purpose or in other words, with specific goals in mind.

You can't revise without a decent draft, so don't blow off the first draft deadline. The better your first draft, the better your paper will be in the end because you'll have enough time to really look at your paper. Actually re-look at your paper, or in other words, re-vise. Get it? Re-vision?

So how can you get out of your own head? Two ways: people and levels. The first way to get a fresh perspective is audience-oriented revision: peer review, teacher conferences, writing center appointments, and other outside feedback from real, live people.

Get Feedback!

When you find out how other people react to your paper, it will give you invaluable perspective into what's working and what's not. This is feedback and is extremely valuable. Your teacher should help you do these kinds of peer reviews and revisions in class.

Feedback can also come from anyone—friends, teachers, relatives, Writing Center tutors, roommates—just be sure to choose someone you trust who also knows about good writing and won't hesitate to tell you where you can improve. I don't know your grandma, but if she's the type of grandma who will tell you your paper is great no matter what's in it because you're just so nice, then run away! Okay, don't really run away from your grandma—she's probably very loving and supportive. Give her a hug instead. However, don't give your paper to your grandma to critique in that case. My grandma is actually a fantastic writer and wouldn't be afraid to tell me where I can improve. Do give your paper to someone like my grandma.

Here's a tip: Most universities have a Writing Center where you can take your paper to a Writing Tutor for help and feedback for free. Do it! It's free! And they can even meet with you online.

We're lucky at BYU that we even have our very own Social Science-specific Writing Center: the FHSS Writing Lab . They know Literature Reviews well and can help you with any stage of the writing process from selecting a topic to citing sources to synthesis. If you have more general writing questions (or if you need an appointment after 5pm), you can also go to the main BYU Research & Writing Center . They also offer online appointments. If you're not on our campus, look up your school's writing center.

As an undergrad, my husband didn't start out with the best writing skills, so he used to take his papers to the BYU Writing Center over and over and over. I think they made the rule that you can only go once a day because of him. And guess what? It helped! His grades went up! That was his secret to success that I'm passing on to you. Your teacher doesn't have time to personally meet with each student over and over and over, but the Writing Tutors are literally paid to do just that. Well, maybe keep your visits to only one per day, but you get what I mean. Take advantage! Make an appointment right now! Did I mention that it's free? 

If you need more motivation to just do it, watch this "motivational" video by Shia Le Boeuf.

Revise by Levels

The second way to improve your paper is to go through a layered revision process focusing on global and then local issues. As you re-see your paper, take my advice and tackle Global Revision   before you focus on Local Revision .  What do I mean by that? Let me tell you a quick story.

A Revision Story Involving Cats

When my family and I were moving to our town, we looked at a lot of houses online. We fell in love with a beautiful old house that had been totally renovated but was selling at a shockingly low price. When we finally visited the house with our realtor, we discovered why it had been on the market for so long: it smelled like cat pee. Like really, really smelled. It turns out the house had been occupied by what many people would call a "crazy cat lady"—an older woman who lived with at least 50 cats. Then tragically, a fire completely destroyed the house (I'm pretty sure the woman and her cats survived).

The home owner used $400,000 of insurance money to beautifully restore the house. They rebuilt the intricate wooden staircase, restored the stately crown molding, installed lush carpet, and added upgrades to a gorgeous kitchen. The only problem was that they did their restoration in the wrong order—they took care of the local issues of paint color and carpet thickness while ignoring the more global issue of the smell. Eventually, they had to rip up all their work in the basement in order to treat the floor with a special enzyme that combated cat urine. If they'd just treated the cat smell first, then they could have saved themselves thousands of dollars, hours of work, and could have sold their house for a much higher price.

The Moral of the Story

What does all this have to do with revision? You've got it—treat the g lobal issues first! Get rid of the cat pee! Don't worry about local issues like flowery language or sentences that connect perfectly to each other if you're just going to have to completely renovate that section later. Work on the global issues like ideas, logical order, and evidence first and wait until those are intact before focusing on the details. Put another way, whole-paper and paragraph-level revisions should come before sentence-level and word-level changes.

As a final gift, fantastic BYU Family Science professor Julie Haupt offers the following path for doing four purposeful revisions—two global revisions and two local revisions. If you really want to improve your literature review, follow these steps.

GLOBAL REVISION—The Forest

Level 1: Structural Review (Global)

Purpose: The structural review examines the document as a whole to see if all requirements are met and the document’s organization is sound.

Meet Assignment Requirements. Ask yourself if your paper meets all the requirements of the assignment? Look at your structure and make sure you have all necessary sections such as the following:

Introduction (with Thesis Statement and/or Organizing Statement)

Body with Headings

Conclusion/Discussion

Include a Thesis and an Organizing Statement. Does the current version of the thesis statement match the tone, scope, and organization of the body text? Does an organizing statement after the thesis introduce the major topics and the order they will appear in the body (e.g., “In this review, I will first discuss . . . then . . . and finally . . .)

Use Headings. Is the body text subdivided in a logical way with evidence-based information located in appropriate sections? Are the major sections roughly symmetrical (in terms of length)? Are the headings brief, yet descriptive? If subheadings are used, does the major section contain at least two? Are all levels of headings separated by text?

Level 2 (Global): Paragraph/Logic Review

Purpose: The Paragraph/Logic Review is designed to review each paragraph for cohesion and compliance to the CEC (Claim-Evidence-Commentary) format.

Sequence Paragraphs Effectively. When reading only the first sentence of each paragraph, does the logical pattern of the paper emerge? Do the claims made in these topic sentences coordinate well with the thesis of the paper?

LOCAL REVISION—The Tree

Level 3 (Local): APA Formatting Review

Purpose: The APA Formatting Review is designed to make sure all APA conventions are explicitly followed to help the paper reflect a high level of professionalism.

Check Document Formatting. Do the title page, abstract, body text, and reference page appear in the correct page formatting as required? (Use the APA Manual if you have questions.)

Examine the Reference List Closely. Are all references in the reference list ordered alphabetically? Is the reference list double spaced entirely (with no extra gaps between paragraphs)? Are all references (e.g., journal articles, internet resources, or books) listed in the correct format? Is every reference on the reference list cited at least once in the body and does each in-text citation have a corresponding reference in the reference list?

Make a Final Check of the In-Text Citations. Is all information properly cited with an in-text citation when needed? Do all in-text citations include the year next to the author(s)? When more than one citation is listed within parentheses are they separated by semi-colons and ordered alphabetically by first author’s last name? If included in parentheses, do studies with multiple authors use ampersands ("&" rather than the word "and") before listing the last author?

Use “et al.” Correctly. If a study has three or more authors, do you include only the first author’s last name + et al. + publication year in in-text citations? Do you include all authors up to 20 in the References page? For any publications with 21 or more authors, do you include the first 19 authors' name, then insert an ellipsis ( . . . ), and then the last author's name? 

Level 4 (Local): Finishing Review

Purpose: The Finishing Review is an opportunity to look closely at sentence construction, language, hedging  (qualifying statements), and grammar/punctuation.

Review Phrasing with a Read-Aloud Session. Read your paper aloud. Since having to read a sentence twice to get its meaning or “tripping over” phrasing can be an indication of awkward construction, are all sentences easily read aloud? Are any sentences so long that they have become difficult to comprehend, but could be split without changing the meaning?

Use Non-Biased, Non-Absolute Language. Do all references to people comply with the “people first” designation and avoid inappropriate uses of terms for various groups? Are the findings and summary statements in the review properly “ hedged ”?

Check Punctuation and Grammar. Are all commas, semicolons, colons, hyphens, and other punctuation used correctly throughout the document (including the reference page)? Are common grammar mistakes, such as parallelism, subject-verb agreement, incorrect misuse of pronouns, and other grammatical issues corrected?

I know Literature Reviews can be daunting, but I hope that after reading this chapter you feel better prepared to tackle this bodacious writing assignment. As you practice writing, you'll find that it'll get easier and easier until it's as intuitive as riding a hoverboard.

*Bonus Video

If you're still confused or would like more guidance on writing a literature review, here is an optional 25-minute video that thoroughly goes through the entire process of writing a literature review. As an extra bonus, it's made by Michael Paye from the University of Dublin who has an awesome Irish accent. Enjoy!

Brigham Young University

Cristie Cowles Charles teaches writing and literature courses at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. She enjoys sparking a love for writing in her students--or at least a love for having had written (it's always worth it in the end, right?). She thinks pumpkin pie counts as a vegetable, is married to a super hot mechanical engineering and neuroscience professor (yes, they exist), and adores her five magnificent children.

This content is provided to you freely by EdTech Books.

Access it online or download it at https://edtechbooks.org/writing/literature_review_2 .

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Writing a Literature Review

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A literature review is a document or section of a document that collects key sources on a topic and discusses those sources in conversation with each other (also called synthesis ). The lit review is an important genre in many disciplines, not just literature (i.e., the study of works of literature such as novels and plays). When we say “literature review” or refer to “the literature,” we are talking about the research ( scholarship ) in a given field. You will often see the terms “the research,” “the scholarship,” and “the literature” used mostly interchangeably.

Where, when, and why would I write a lit review?

There are a number of different situations where you might write a literature review, each with slightly different expectations; different disciplines, too, have field-specific expectations for what a literature review is and does. For instance, in the humanities, authors might include more overt argumentation and interpretation of source material in their literature reviews, whereas in the sciences, authors are more likely to report study designs and results in their literature reviews; these differences reflect these disciplines’ purposes and conventions in scholarship. You should always look at examples from your own discipline and talk to professors or mentors in your field to be sure you understand your discipline’s conventions, for literature reviews as well as for any other genre.

A literature review can be a part of a research paper or scholarly article, usually falling after the introduction and before the research methods sections. In these cases, the lit review just needs to cover scholarship that is important to the issue you are writing about; sometimes it will also cover key sources that informed your research methodology.

Lit reviews can also be standalone pieces, either as assignments in a class or as publications. In a class, a lit review may be assigned to help students familiarize themselves with a topic and with scholarship in their field, get an idea of the other researchers working on the topic they’re interested in, find gaps in existing research in order to propose new projects, and/or develop a theoretical framework and methodology for later research. As a publication, a lit review usually is meant to help make other scholars’ lives easier by collecting and summarizing, synthesizing, and analyzing existing research on a topic. This can be especially helpful for students or scholars getting into a new research area, or for directing an entire community of scholars toward questions that have not yet been answered.

What are the parts of a lit review?

Most lit reviews use a basic introduction-body-conclusion structure; if your lit review is part of a larger paper, the introduction and conclusion pieces may be just a few sentences while you focus most of your attention on the body. If your lit review is a standalone piece, the introduction and conclusion take up more space and give you a place to discuss your goals, research methods, and conclusions separately from where you discuss the literature itself.

Introduction:

• An introductory paragraph that explains what your working topic and thesis is
• A forecast of key topics or texts that will appear in the review
• Potentially, a description of how you found sources and how you analyzed them for inclusion and discussion in the review (more often found in published, standalone literature reviews than in lit review sections in an article or research paper)
• Summarize and synthesize: Give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
• Analyze and interpret: Don’t just paraphrase other researchers – add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
• Critically Evaluate: Mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
• Write in well-structured paragraphs: Use transition words and topic sentence to draw connections, comparisons, and contrasts.

Conclusion:

• Summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance
• Connect it back to your primary research question

How should I organize my lit review?

Lit reviews can take many different organizational patterns depending on what you are trying to accomplish with the review. Here are some examples:

• Chronological : The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time, which helps familiarize the audience with the topic (for instance if you are introducing something that is not commonly known in your field). If you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order. Try to analyze the patterns, turning points, and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred (as mentioned previously, this may not be appropriate in your discipline — check with a teacher or mentor if you’re unsure).
• Thematic : If you have found some recurring central themes that you will continue working with throughout your piece, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic. For example, if you are reviewing literature about women and religion, key themes can include the role of women in churches and the religious attitude towards women.
• Qualitative versus quantitative research
• Empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the research by sociological, historical, or cultural sources
• Theoretical : In many humanities articles, the literature review is the foundation for the theoretical framework. You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts. You can argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach or combine various theorical concepts to create a framework for your research.

What are some strategies or tips I can use while writing my lit review?

Any lit review is only as good as the research it discusses; make sure your sources are well-chosen and your research is thorough. Don’t be afraid to do more research if you discover a new thread as you’re writing. More info on the research process is available in our "Conducting Research" resources .

As you’re doing your research, create an annotated bibliography ( see our page on the this type of document ). Much of the information used in an annotated bibliography can be used also in a literature review, so you’ll be not only partially drafting your lit review as you research, but also developing your sense of the larger conversation going on among scholars, professionals, and any other stakeholders in your topic.

Usually you will need to synthesize research rather than just summarizing it. This means drawing connections between sources to create a picture of the scholarly conversation on a topic over time. Many student writers struggle to synthesize because they feel they don’t have anything to add to the scholars they are citing; here are some strategies to help you:

• It often helps to remember that the point of these kinds of syntheses is to show your readers how you understand your research, to help them read the rest of your paper.
• Writing teachers often say synthesis is like hosting a dinner party: imagine all your sources are together in a room, discussing your topic. What are they saying to each other?
• Look at the in-text citations in each paragraph. Are you citing just one source for each paragraph? This usually indicates summary only. When you have multiple sources cited in a paragraph, you are more likely to be synthesizing them (not always, but often
• Read more about synthesis here.

The most interesting literature reviews are often written as arguments (again, as mentioned at the beginning of the page, this is discipline-specific and doesn’t work for all situations). Often, the literature review is where you can establish your research as filling a particular gap or as relevant in a particular way. You have some chance to do this in your introduction in an article, but the literature review section gives a more extended opportunity to establish the conversation in the way you would like your readers to see it. You can choose the intellectual lineage you would like to be part of and whose definitions matter most to your thinking (mostly humanities-specific, but this goes for sciences as well). In addressing these points, you argue for your place in the conversation, which tends to make the lit review more compelling than a simple reporting of other sources.

How to Write a Literature Review

• Writing a Review of Literature Superb introduction from the University of Wisconsin at Madison
• Outline for Comprehensive Science Literature Reviews Written by a librarian, so the focus is on efficient searching. From Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship . For further details, see the full document .
• Literature Reviews: An Overview for Graduate Students From North Carolina State University Libraries
• Tips on Conducting the Literature Review From the Health Sciences Writing Centre at the University of Toronto
• Literature Review Demystified From the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library. Overview of the literature review including its purpose, research strategies, help for keeping track of your work, examples of published lit reviews, and books on graduate-level (and beyond) writing.

How to Write a Literature Review - A Self-Guided Tutorial

• Literature Reviews: A Recap
• Reading Journal Articles
• Does it describe a Literature Review?
• 1. Identify the question
• 2. Review discipline styles
• Searching article databases - video
• Finding the article full-text
• Citation trails
• When to stop searching
• Citation Managers
• 5. Critically analyze and evaluate
• 6. Synthesize
• 7. Write literature review
• Additional Resources

You can meet with a librarian to talk about your literature review, or other library-related topics.

Literature Review - A Self-Guided Tutorial was created by Kathleen Hanna, with contributions from Sara Lowe and Ted Polley, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License .

Content used in this tutorial adapted from Writing at the University of Toronto's "The Literature Review: A Few Tips On Conducting It"  and The Writing Center at UNC-Chapel Hill's "Literature Reviews."

This guide will help you to:

• Define a literature review.
• Recognize that different fields of study have their own way to perform and write literature reviews.
• Prepare to search the literature.
• Read critically -- analyze and synthesize.
• Prepare to write a literature review.

At the end of the tutorial, you will find a quiz that you can submit through Canvas for course credit. 

Graphic from Literature Review (2009) by Machi and McEvoy.

Detailed description of, Literature Review Process  from IUPUI Library

Attribution

This guide was adapted from the Literature Review: A Self-Guided Tutorial at IUPUI Library.

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• Presenting Research and Data: Tutorial: Synthesizing Information This CREDO Instruct tutorial is a granular, multi-step tutorial addressing the synthesis of information. It details annotated bibliographies, outlines, and literature reviews as part of the process.

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Video Tutorials from Other Universities

• Western Universities | Lit Review Tutorial This 43-second tutorial provides a brief description on literature reviews and how they might fit into a thesis or dissertation. The transcript is available below the embedded tutorial.
• NC State | Literature Reviews: A Guide for Graduate Students This longer tutorial (9:38 minutes) is intended for graduate students. It covers the purpose and types of literature reviews, defines "the literature," and describes the process of reviewing and writing. A transcript of the video is available.
• University of West Florida | What is a Literature Review?: A Tutorial This quick-paced 3:26 minute video explains what a literature review IS and what it IS NOT. Covers relevant concepts like synthesis and perspective.

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Literature Reviews and Annotated Bibliographies

• What is a Literature Review?

Best Practices: Components, Resources Sites

Best practices: quoting, paraphrasing, etc..

• Graduate Research and the Literature Review
• What is an Annotated Bibliography?
• How to Evaluate Sources?
• Citation & Avoiding Plagiarism

How to write a Literature Review?

Components:

• Introduction: State your research topic
• Body/Presentation of Sources Used: A research topic have different angles/viariables/themes. Organize your finding based of those categories.
• Discussion/Analysis of Literature: Summarize/synthesize major literature that deal with your research topic. Discuss common themes, gaps, etc...
• Conclusion: Re-state your topic and explain if it has changed after the review and what are the next steps for your research
• Do not over "quote." If you only quote from every single author you found, then you are not showing any original thinking or analysis. Use quotes judiciously. Use quotes to highlight a particular passages or thought that is exemplary of the research, theory or topic you are researching.
• Instead use paraphrasing to report, in your own words, what the author was reporting or theorizing.
• Summarize findings, important sections or a whole article--this is different from paraphrasing since you are not re-stating the author words but identifying the main points of what you are reading in a concise matter for your readers.
• When synthesizing your findings for the literature review (this is when make comparison, establish relationships between authors' works, point out weakness, strenghts and gaps among the literature review, you still need to give credit to these sources.

Definitions:

Quoting* : "(a) to speak or write (a passage) from another usually with credit acknowledgment. (b) to repeat a passage from especially in substantiation or illustration."

Paraphrasing* : Paraphrase is the “ restatement of a text, passage, or work giving the meaning in another form.”  

Summarize *: It’s the process of summarizing a text or paragraph to its the main points succinctly.

Synthesize *: “1. (a) the composition or combination of parts or elements so as to form a whole."

*Definitions from Merriam Webster Dictionary Online, http://www.m-w.com <Accessed September 1 st , 2011>

   Useful sites with tips on how to write a Literature Review :

• Write a Literature Review (UC Santa Cruz)
• Online Tutorial (North Carolina State University Libraries)
• Write a Literature Review ( Virginia Commonwealth University)
• The Literature Review: A Few Tips on Conducting it (University of Toronto)
• Write a Review of Literature (UW-Madison's Writing Center)
• Write a Literature Review (Johns Hopkins University)
• Doing your Undergraduate Project: The Literature Review (ASU Access only): Sage Research Methods
• << Previous: What is a Literature Review?
• Next: Graduate Research and the Literature Review >>
• Last updated: Jan 8, 2024 2:52 PM
• URL: https://libguides.asu.edu/LiteratureReviews

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10 Easy Steps for Writing a Literature Review

A literature review is one of the essential steps in the research process . A literature review tells your readers what others have researched on your topic and helps to demonstrate why your topic is both original and essential to the field of research. However, a literature review isn’t as simple as merely listing the material you’ve found and expecting the reader to connect the dots. A well-written literature review is an art form in and of itself. 

In this article, we’ll take a look at ten steps for writing a literature review in order to see the right way to develop a literature review to show your readers why your project is new, meaningful, and worth their time to read and understand. 

So, where should you start when it comes to a literature review? Consider these ten essential steps and expert tips for writing an excellent literature review:

Read the Assignment

The first and most crucial step in writing a literature review is to read the assignment and make sure that you understand all of its parts. This might seem like an obvious step, but you would be surprised how many people skip over this most essential step. To know what literature you will need to review, you need to understand precisely what you are being asked to do in your paper. Even if you are creating a literature review for a journal article, you still need to be sure that you have defined the parameters of what you are doing to make sure that you have defined the scope of your literature review properly. 

Narrow Your Topic

In order to choose the suitable literature to review, you need a specific topic, not just a general idea. Based on your preliminary research, you should be able to produce a narrow, tailored thesis statement that you can then use to guide your literature review. The more specific your topic, the easier it will be to search only for the most relevant literature to your issue. In many cases, a general topic will simply be too broad to effectively research. For example, the literature on World War II is overwhelmingly vast, but the literature on the role of women in the French resistance is much more manageable.

Define Your Audience

A literature review will be different depending on the audience you are trying to reach. An academic essay is written for a scholarly audience. It will need a deeper, more critical, and more intellectual approach to evaluating sources than a review written for a popular audience. An academic literature review will focus on scholarly sources, while a popular one may look at a broader class of sources.  

Begin the Literature Research Process

There is no getting around the most challenging part of the literature review process, which is researching the literature. You will need to visit your school’s library, either in person or virtually, to research material about your topic. Craft a list of search terms to use to identify likely sources. When you have found sources that look relevant, use their bibliographies to help identify additional sources. It’s also a good idea to take advantage of the help your school’s librarians can offer. They are familiar with research tools and databases and can often direct you to sources you may not have found on your own.

Keep Both New and Old Sources in Mind

It’s essential for a literature review to be current, so you’ll want to explore what’s been said recently, but don’t neglect key older sources. You want to show your readers that you have a good understanding of essential touchstones in the field.

Consider Literature Review Writing Help

Developing your literature review can be a challenge, and professional help from an expert writer can often make the difference between a decent paper and one that has an exceptional literature review. 

It may benefit you to get support from a  literature review writing service  to obtain a complete, professional literature review formatted in APA style as a guideline to show you the right way to review any and all research sources included in it. It also does the hard work of identifying the best quality literature for you to move through the writing process faster.

Read the Literature You Selected

When you have researched your sources, you will need to read and evaluate each of them in order to conduct the literature review. That means that you will have to be able to summarize each source and evaluate the quality of each source, the assumptions each author made, and the value of their data and conclusions. Pay special attention to methodologies so you can explain how they are similar to or different from your own.

Organize the Research Sources Logically

To present your literature to your audience, you will need to be able to organize it in a way they will understand. For example, you may want to take a chronological approach to show changes over time for very similar literature. However, organizing thematically may be more appropriate for literature covering a more comprehensive range of topics.

Look for Gaps in the Literature

As you evaluate the literature, try to look for gaps in your sources, areas where no one has yet researched an aspect of your topic. It can be difficult in a saturated field to find many areas that have not yet been covered, but when you do, it will be much easier to explain why your topic and approach are essential and original. 

Writing the Literature Review

The final step is to finally write the paper from scratch! As you write your literature review for your essay, research paper or dissertation, you will want to be sure that you are making connections between the sources you are reviewing and your main idea and/or conclusions. The reader should understand the purpose of the review and how the sources connect to the point you are making.

How the world's press rated Paris's Olympics Opening Ceremony

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Review: Olympics opening ceremony shined with best of Paris and France, but failed as TV

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France took the opening ceremony of the Olympics out of the customary arena and onto the River Seine — and into the rain — Friday in what was undeniably a bold, unprecedented and, given the security nightmare, crazy take on the event . An Olympics whose motto is “Games Wide Open” ironically came with fences, checkpoints and police and soldiers numbering in the many tens of thousands. But they remained practically invisible through the broadcast, once again from NBC and also streaming on Peacock.

Almost nothing was revealed about the program ahead of time, past a few facts and figures — 300,000 spectators expected, a 3.7-mile route running west downriver from the Pont d’Austerlitz to the Eiffel Tower and Trocadéro, some 90 boats carrying 10,000 athletes, 12 thematic “scenes.” With little to go on, it was tempting to imagine what those scenes might encompass. Bearded existentialists drinking apricot cocktails? A nude descending a staircase? Jean-Pierre Léaud making one last appearance as Antoine Doinel? Striking railway workers? The band Telephone reunited? I was hoping to see at least one performer dressed as Jacques Tati’s M. Hulot, though I would have made it 100. Would there be mimes?

2024 Paris Olympics

Paris shines through summer storm in spectacular Olympic opening ceremony

Pouring rain can’t derail a bold a Paris Olympic opening ceremony that featured athletes on the Seine and performances from Lady Gaga and Celine Dion.

July 26, 2024

The answer to all those questions was no. Working with a team that included a historian, novelist, screenwriter and playwright, to say nothing of the choreographers and costumers, director Thomas Jolly — known for a 24-hour marathon staging of Shakespeare’s three “Henry VI” plays plus “Richard III” — cooked up something at once stranger and more appropriate: daffy, sexy, occasionally alarming — I would not have expected the decapitated Marie Antoinettes — and, one would say, quintessentially French. Even the rain, which, having arrived, stayed to enjoy itself, had a sort of Parisian quality, adding drama and romance. Though, of course, that part wasn’t scripted.

Taking the Games into the city center and putting the ceremony onto the river was a smart idea to begin with. You don’t go to Paris to stay indoors unless it’s to look at art or eat things cooked in butter; and if you’ve seen the inside of one over-lit stadium, you’ve seen them all. The Seine put the athletes, riding on their larger and smaller bateaux mouches, within spitting distance of Notre Dame, the Louvre, the Tuileries, Place Concorde, the Grand Palais and the Eiffel Tower.

There had been a few performers mentioned beforehand, including French Malian superstar Aya Nakamura; the “eco-metal” band Gojira, which, with its frequent collaborator the Franco-Swiss opera singer Marina Viotti, represented the Revolution; and the never publicly confirmed Celine Dion — who, in the event, did close the show, with a powerful rendition of Edith Piaf’s “L’Hymne à l’amour,” sung from high upon the Eiffel Tower. Lady Gaga, whose presence in the city had been noted, opened it — if you don’t count the winged accordion player on what I assume was the Austerlitz bridge — with a glamorous cabaret production of Zizi Jeanmaire’s ‘60s hit “Mon truc en plumes” set on gilded steps leading down to the river. That translates as “my thing with feathers,” and there were feathers, indeed — big pink fans, pink being the hue associated with that leg of the color-coded program.

Jolly mixed filmed pieces into the live performance. Most provocatively there was a gender-bending love story told through book titles that wound toward a suggested threesome — the show contained a decent amount of queer content. There was a dance in the scaffolding around Notre Dame. More crucial to the narrative, such as it was, were segments surrounding a masked and hooded torch bearer who would also be glimpsed in person along (and zip-lining above) the route. This bit included trips through the Metro, the catacombs — undoubtedly this was the first and surely the last opening ceremony to feature human skulls — and alligator-inhabited sewers, as well as the Louis Vuitton atelier (where they made the trunks that held the torch on its travels) and the Louvre, where figures left their paintings, later to emerge as giant heads in the river.

Olympics 2024: Celine Dion closes dazzling opening ceremony atop the Eiffel Tower

Read analysis of the Paris Olympics opening ceremony from our television writers, who weighed in on the spectacle held on the Seine.

Behind the clock in the Musée d’Orsay, we got a clip from the Lumière brothers’ seminal film of a train arriving in a station and a puppet animation that nodded to Georges Méliès‘ “A Trip to the Moon,” “The Little Prince” and “The Planet of the Apes,” which, of course, featured that statue the French made us. I did find this part particularly delightful.

This operatic mix of mediums, spread out across the city, could only make complete sense as television — anyone present would have only seen what was in front of them. And yet, as television, it mostly failed — further fragmenting a fragmented event, which alternated between the parade and the show over some four hours, with commentary and cutaways and, after the first hour, commercials. It spoke only of the banality of TV and to remind you that this is not an ad-free world. (The insertion of a “Despicable Me” short, from NBC’s parent company, Universal, had corporate cross-promotion written all over it.)

The commentary, by Mike Tirico, Kelly Clarkson and Peyton Manning, had the effect of people talking during a play, or that jarring feeling when you’re in a foreign country and you suddenly hear American voices. They were perhaps working at a disadvantage, given the secrecy that had surrounded the production and a less-than-native understanding of French culture and history. But apart from the sort of sports statistics that no viewer will keep in their head longer than it takes to say them, they spoke largely of how they felt and how they imagined the athletes must feel. It turned the parade of athletes into the Macy’s parade.

I say “mostly” failed. Often enough the grandeur, audacity and nuttiness of the event shone through the screen — mezzo-soprano Axelle Saint-Cirel singing “La Marseillaise” from the top of the Grand Palais, a silver chevalier on a robot horse skimming along the river to carry the Olympic flag to the Trocadéro, where the athletes had finally debarked, and where speeches from International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach and Games President Tony Estanguet made one feel there might be something more to the Olympic spirit than winning medals.

And there was the genuinely moving finale, with Dion coming across like Liberty Leading the People in Delacroix’s famous painting and the Eiffel Tower putting on its laser show. White-clad athletes from many years passed the torch and became a crowd as they jogged together to the Louvre and back to the Tuileries, where a giant gold hot air balloon — the French invented it — was tethered. It became the Olympic cauldron, and then rose into the air, where I assume it will stay until the closing ceremony comes to tell us its story.

More to Read

Photos: Paris is the backdrop for a colorful Olympics opening ceremony

Unique Olympics opening ceremony keeps Paris on high alert over security

July 25, 2024

There’s reason for Olympic cynicism. The opening ceremony was a much-needed cure

July 23, 2021

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Torsed retroperitoneal leiomyomas: A case report and review of literature

Department of Gynecology, Hangzhou Women’s Hospital, Hangzhou 310000, Zhejiang Province, China

Yi-Yi Zhu-Ge

Kai-qing lin.

Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Affiliated Hangzhou Chest Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou 310000, Zhejiang Province, China. nc.ude.ujz@gniqiaknil

Supported by Medical and Health Science and Technology Project of Zhejiang Province of China, No. 2022KY274 .

Corresponding author: Kai-Qing Lin, PhD, Chairman, Surgeon, Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Affiliated Hangzhou Chest Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, No. 208 East Huancheng Road, Hangzhou 310000, Zhejiang Province, China. nc.ude.ujz@gniqiaknil

Retroperitoneal leiomyomas (RLs) are rare benign tumours that can occur in the pelvic and/or abdominal parietal retroperitoneum. Once torsion occurs, it causes acute abdominal pain and can even lead to serious consequences such as gangrene, peritonitis, haemoperitoneum and shock if not identified and treated promptly. Therefore, a better understanding of the characteristics of RL torsion is needed. Here, we present a case of acute pedicle torsion of an RL in the posterior peritoneum followed by a literature review.

CASE SUMMARY

Herein, we report the case of a 42-year-old woman with RL torsion. The patient visited our hospital complaining of lower abdominal pain for 6 d. Pelvic examination revealed a tender mass superior to the uterus. Pelvic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revealed an anterior uterine mass, multiple uterine fibroids and slight pelvic effusion. MRI suggested the possibility of a subserosal myoma of the anterior uterine wall with degeneration. Intraoperative exploration revealed a 10 cm pedunculated mass arising from the posterior peritoneum, with the pedicle torsed two times. Pathological examination confirmed a torsed RL.

In the case of a pelvic mass complicated with acute abdomen, the possibility of torsion should be considered.

Core Tip: Retroperitoneal leiomyoma torsion is extremely rare. We report a case of acute pedicular torsion of a leiomyoma in the posterior peritoneum, followed by a literature review. The review suggested that RL torsion mainly occurs in female patients, and the most prominent clinical symptom is abdominal pain. The possible imaging features of torsed retroperitoneal leiomyomas include a well-circumscribed mass separate from the uterus and adnexa, no enhancement, a torsed pedicle, and ascites. If the diagnosis is unclear, surgical exploration should be considered to confirm the diagnosis in a timely manner to reduce the risk of other complications.

INTRODUCTION

Retroperitoneal leiomyomas (RLs) are rare benign tumours that can occur in the pelvic and/or abdominal parietal retroperitoneum. These tumours are characterized by smooth muscle differentiation and can be primary lesions or metastases from other sources[ 1 ]. Because of their rarity and uneventful clinical course, limited information is available about RLs.

RL torsion is extremely rare; once torsion occurs, it can cause acute abdominal pain and even lead to serious consequences, such as gangrene, peritonitis, haemoperitoneum and shock, if not identified and treated promptly[ 2 - 5 ]. Therefore, a better understanding of the characteristics of RL torsion is needed. Here, we present a case of acute pedicle torsion of an RL in the posterior peritoneum, followed by a literature review.

CASE PRESENTATION

Chief complaints.

A 42-year-old woman (gravida 1, para 1) visited our hospital complaining of lower abdominal pain that started 6 d prior.

History of present illness

The patient came to our hospital complaining of severe, sudden-onset and constant dysmenorrhea-like pain localized to the lower abdomen 6 d prior. Her pain occurred while she was doing housework and was associated with loss of appetite but was not accompanied with fever, nausea, vomiting, or diarrhoea. The pain had nothing to do with food or body position. After 5 d of oral cefuroxime anti-inflammatory treatment, the pain gradually decreased, but there was still dull pain in the lower abdomen with no other discomfort.

History of past illness

She was first diagnosed with fibroids 6 years prior and underwent a Caesarean section 17 years prior and right mammary fibroma resection 1 year prior.

Personal and family history

The patient denied having any relevant family history.

Physical examination

Her body temperature was normal. Pelvic examination revealed a tender mass superior to the uterus that was well circumscribed, medium in texture and approximately 10 cm × 10 cm × 10 cm in size.

Laboratory examinations

The level of oncologic marker antigen 125 was 48.7 U/L, which was slightly greater than normal. No other abnormalities were found in routine blood analyses.

Imaging examinations

Ultrasonography revealed a hypoechoic mass in front of the uterus. Pelvic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revealed an anterior uterine mass, multiple uterine fibroids and slight pelvic effusion (Figure ​ (Figure1). 1 ). No other pelvic abnormalities were found. MRI suggested the possibility of a subserosal myoma of the anterior uterine wall with degeneration.

Pelvic magnetic resonance imaging showing an anterior uterine mass, multiple uterine fibroids and slight pelvic effusion.

FINAL DIAGNOSIS

The final diagnosis was RL torsion.

Based on her symptoms and age and the size of the mass, exploratory laparoscopy was performed. Intraoperative exploration revealed that part of the greater omentum was adhered to the anterior abdominal wall, and a large pedicled mass was observed in the pelvic cavity in front of the uterus, surrounded by and loosely adhered to the small intestine. The mass was 10 cm × 10 cm × 10 cm in size, greyish-red in colour, smooth on the surface and of medium quality (Figure ​ (Figure2). 2 ). The pedicle was located 2 cm from the posterior peritoneum to the left of the rectum and was torsed 2 times (Figure ​ (Figure3). 3 ). The upper and lower abdomens were explored, and no abdominal masses or enlarged lymph nodes were found. Pathological examination confirmed a retroperitoneal leiomyoma with a large area of haemorrhage and infarction. Immunohistochemical tests revealed positivity for desmin and smooth muscle actin, focal positivity for oestrogen receptor, individual positivity for Ki-67, and negativity for CD34 and S-100. The mass was removed laparoscopically, then placed in a specimen extraction bag and morcellated without spillage.

Retroperitoneal leiomyoma removed and morcellated by laparoscopic surgery.

The pedicle of the retroperitoneal leiomyoma was located 2 cm from the posterior peritoneum to the left of the rectum and was torsed two times.

OUTCOME AND FOLLOW-UP

The patient recovered well and was discharged on postoperative day 5. After 2 years of follow-up, no tumour recurrence was observed.

A literature review identified 14 cases[ 2 , 6 - 18 ] of RL torsion in the PubMed database from 1960 through 2023 (Table ​ (Table1). 1 ). The PubMed database was searched with the following search terms or keywords: “torsion AND (fibroid OR myoma OR leiomyoma) AND (English[Language]) AND (("1960"[Date-Publication]: "2023"[Date-Publication]))”, yielding 188 results. Among these, 175 studies were excluded: 40 were reviews or guidelines only; 18 were retrospective or prospective articles not related to RL torsion; 19 were case reports not related to torsion; 36 were case reports of uterine torsion; 22 were case reports of adnexal torsion; 37 were case reports of uterine myoma torsion; 1 was a case report of testis torsion; 1 was a case report of appendix torsion; and 1 was case report of primary omental torsion, leaving 13 publications for review[ 2 , 6 , 8 - 18 ]. One article was found through a search of the bibliographies of the other articles[ 7 ], for a total of 14 English reports of RL torsion found via the PubMed database.

Comparison and review of reported cases of torsed retroperitoneal leiomyomas

The ages of the 15 patients, including ours, ranged from 33 years to 59 years, and the average age was 40.91 years. Eleven of the fifteen patients had a history of uterine leiomyoma surgery or were diagnosed intraoperatively with uterine leiomyomas.

The size of the fibroids was not recorded in 2 patients; the diameter of the fibroids of the other 13 patients was 4.5-25 cm, with a median of 10 cm and an average of 12.6 cm. The tumours mainly originated from the pelvic cavity, including the greater omentum in patients, the round ligament in 2 patients, the mesentery in 2 patients, the broad ligamentum in 1 patient, the anterior wall of the rectum in 1 patient, the intestinal tube in 1 patient, the bladder peritoneum in 1 patient and the posterior peritoneum in 1 patient. Only one tumour originated from the antrum of the upper abdomen.

Seven of the fifteen patients also presented with uterine leiomyomas that were identified intraoperatively, and three did not have complications. Complication information for the other 5 patients was not provided.

Six patients had a previous history of uterine fibroid surgery, including abdominal myomectomy in two patients, laparoscopic hysterectomy in one patient and laparoscopic myomectomy in three patients, while six patients had no surgical history. For all patients who underwent laparoscopic surgery, a morcellator was used. The surgical history of 3 patients was not indicated.

The aetiology of RL is unclear, but it mainly occurs in female patients, especially in perimenopausal or postmenopausal patients, and more than 40% of female patients with RL also have previous or concurrent uterine leiomyoma[ 1 , 19 ].

Subserous leiomyoma detachment and implantation may be a characteristic of RL. When the pedicle is narrower than the tumour diameter, a pedicled subserous fibroid may occasionally detach from the uterus and derive its blood supply from the adhesive tissue[ 20 ]. In another 2 patients with RL torsion[ 6 , 11 ], no uterine leiomyoma was found via preoperative ultrasound or intraoperative operation, but a subserous leiomyoma had been previously detected on ultrasound. It was speculated that the subserous fibroid had exfoliated from the uterus and reimplanted as an RL. A small area on the serosa was found intraoperatively in 1 patient and was presumed to be where the leiomyoma was once attached[ 6 ].

The seeding hypothesis is also considered an important pathogeny of the RL. Parasitic fibroids are thought to account for a large proportion of RLs. It is believed that parasitic leiomyomas can develop after surgery on uterine fibroids by seeding residual tissue fragments in the abdominal cavity[ 6 , 16 , 21 - 25 ]. The duration of steroid exposure after surgery might be a risk factor for the development of parasitic myomas[ 26 ]. Among the 15 patients with RL torsion, 6 had a previous history of leiomyoma surgery, including laparoscopic hysterectomy for 1 patient, laparoscopic myomectomy for 3 patients, and abdominal myomectomy for 2 patients. Three, two, three and six parasitic leiomyomas were detected intraoperatively in the 4 patients among these with a history of morcellation[ 8 , 10 , 15 , 18 ], while only one fibroid was found in the 2 patients with a history of abdominal myomectomy[ 9 , 12 ]. A greater number of parasitic leiomyomas were detected intraoperatively in patients with a history of morcellation, suggesting that laparoscopic morcellation may be more likely to lead to the development of parasitic leiomyomas. The use of a containment bag for decreasing the burden of tissue dissemination may mitigate the risk of tissue spread during morcellation[ 26 ]. Therefore, in patients with abdominal or pelvic pain, if there is a history of uterine fibroid surgery, especially hysterectomy or myomectomy with morcellation, torsion of parasitic myomas should be considered.

It is assumed that Caesarean section can also lead to the seeding of leiomyoma cells[ 16 ]. When Caesarean section is performed, uterine leiomyomas may be breached and seeded during the opening and closure of the uterine cavity. Among the 15 patients with RL torsion, 3 had undergone neither previous laparoscopic morcellation nor abdominal myomectomy but did have a history of Caesarean section[ 14 , 16 ]. The patient described by Stebbings et al [ 16 ], who had three elective Caesarean section deliveries but no other surgical history, was confirmed to have RL torsion complicated with uterine leiomyomas.

However, the seed and soil hypothesis cannot explain all of the cases. In the case reported by Bajis et al [ 14 ], the uterus was confirmed to be normal intraoperatively, which indicated that the torsed myoma may not have been a parasitic tumour. Our patient, whose case was confirmed to have RL torsion complicated by uterine leiomyomas intraoperatively, had no other uterine surgery history but underwent a Caesarean section 17 years prior to identification of the torsion. However, given the long time between the Caesarean section and the RL torsion, there may be other causes for the development of the RL. These findings suggest that these RLs may be primary RLs.

Most RLs are positive for oestrogen receptor or progesterone receptor and have pathological and histological characteristics similar to those of uterine leiomyomas[ 1 , 19 ], which suggests that these two types of leiomyomas may have the same aetiological basis. Stutterecker et al [ 27 ] speculated that the origins of RL may be embryonal remnants ( e.g. , the tubes of Müller and Wolff) or local vessel musculature. Pathologic and immunohistochemical findings of most RLs are similar to those of uterine fibroids but still cannot explain the origins of nonpelvic RLs, receptor-negative RLs, or RLs in males[ 1 , 19 ]. The pathogenesis of RL may involve multiple mechanisms and be related to multiple factors.

Given the rarity of RLs, RL torsion is exceptionally rare. Leiomyoma torsion, a known cause of acute abdominal pain, occasionally occurs in pedicled subserous uterine fibroids. The incidence of leiomyoma torsion has been reported to be less than 0.25% in patients who undergo surgical treatment for subserous uterine leiomyomas[ 28 ]. Factors associated with leiomyoma torsion include the presence of a pedicle, a larger size and weight, the size of the vascular pedicles of the leiomyoma, and pregnancy[ 3 , 28 ]. Like uterine leiomyoma torsion, a larger size and pediculation are associated with RL torsion. The 15 torsed RLs were all pedicled. Except for 2 patients whose tumour size was unknown, all the tumours were no less than 4.5 cm in size, and 6 of them were no less than 10 cm in size.

The most prominent clinical symptom of RL torsion was abdominal pain, which was present in all 15 patients. Once RL torsion occurs, in addition to the similar symptoms of uterine leiomyoma torsion, such as abdominal pain, nausea, and fatigue[ 9 , 12 , 16 , 17 , 28 ], different symptoms may also occur depending on the site of the lesion. Sofoudis et al [ 15 ] reported on a 43-year-old woman with intestinal parasitic myoma torsion who presented with diffuse abdominal pain, gastrointestinal disturbance and constipation.

As in cases of appendicular torsion and uterine fibroid torsion, in cases of RL torsion, the most common clinical signs are tender masses in the pelvis and abdominal cavity, followed by peritoneal irritation, distress and fever.

Although RLs do not seem to have any specific imaging features, imaging examinations, including ultrasound, computed tomography (CT) and MRI, are valuable for the preoperative diagnosis of RL torsion. These methods can aid in detecting pelvic or abdominal boundary masses and also help to explore the relationship between the masses and the uterus[ 3 , 7 , 29 , 30 ].

The possible imaging features of RLs include a well-circumscribed mass separate from the uterus and adnexa, no enhancement, a torsed pedicle, and ascites. Torsed RLs are often separate from both the uterus and adnexa. However, when the RL is adjacent to or even adhered to the uterus, as with the RLs observed in our study and in three other studies[ 7 , 16 , 17 ], it is more likely to be misdiagnosed as a uterine fibroid.

Torsed tissues, such as the adnexa, may not demonstrate any enhancement compared to normal tissues on CT and MRI[ 3 ], and the torsed RL demonstrated the same characteristics[ 10 , 11 ]. On ultrasound, the spectral Doppler flow within the vascular pedicle and the mass itself is sometimes absent[ 3 ].

A torsed pedicle can yield a more confident diagnosis of torsion. The “whirlpool sign” and “swirl sign”, indicating the appearance of vascular pedicular torsion, can be demonstrated on cross-sectional images[ 3 , 17 ]. When omental torsion occurs, a whirling pattern of fatty streaks within the omentum, which is considered a relatively characteristic feature of omental torsion, can be observed on coronal views[ 12 ].

Ascites is another sign of RL torsion[ 7 ]. Among the 15 patients identified here and in the review, effusion was found in our study and 5 others[ 7 , 8 , 12 , 14 , 16 ]. Ascites may first be caused by obstruction of the venous return; then, gangrene, inflammation and even bleeding can occur in torsed RLs[ 3 - 5 ], as can exudation of the surrounding tissues.

Notably, when the mass is outside or high within the pelvis, transvaginal ultrasonography may not visualize the area well[ 7 ], and transabdominal ultrasonography or CT or MRI scans are necessary. This was demonstrated in the case reported by Park et al [ 9 ], in which transvaginal ultrasonography was the only imaging examination performed before surgery, revealing that the torsed mass was in the right paracolic gutter and was not detected preoperatively.

Due to the lack of specific clinical and imaging features, it is difficult to make a preoperative diagnosis of leiomyoma torsion[ 3 , 28 ]. Moreover, the rarity and uncertain location of the RL increase the difficulty of preoperatively diagnosing RL torsion. However, imaging techniques are important and useful for diagnosis, not only because they can help to define the location and nature of the mass but also because they can be used to exclude other intraperitoneal lesions[ 4 ].

The main treatment for RL torsion is surgery, most commonly involving myomectomy. If the torsion is not relieved in time, it may be followed by gangrene, peritonitis, haemoperitoneum, or even shock[ 2 - 5 ]. Therefore, the possibility of RL torsion should be considered in patients with pelvic masses associated with acute abdominal pain and other related symptoms. In addition, if the diagnosis is unclear, surgical exploration should be considered to confirm the diagnosis in a timely manner to reduce the risk of other complications. Laparoscopic exploration may be a good option for making a clear diagnosis and excision.

Overall, the findings of this case suggest that when a patient presents with a pelvic mass complicated with acute abdomen, even if the mass is far from the uterus and accessory organs, the possibility of torsion should still be considered. Laparoscopic exploration may be a good option for making a clear diagnosis and excision.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors would like to thank Dr. Chen Hao for his contribution to the pathological examination.

Informed consent statement: The patient provided informed written consent prior to study enrolment.

Conflict-of-interest statement: None of the authors have any conflicts of interest to declare. There are no conflicts of interest in this study. None of the authors has a financial interest in any of the products, devices, or drugs mentioned in this manuscript.

CARE Checklist (2016) statement: The authors have read the CARE Checklist (2016), and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the CARE Checklist (2016).

Provenance and peer review: Unsolicited article; Externally peer reviewed.

Peer-review model: Single blind

Specialty type: Obstetrics and gynecology

Country of origin: China

Peer-review report’s classification

Scientific Quality: Grade B

Novelty: Grade B

Creativity or Innovation: Grade C

Scientific Significance: Grade C

P-Reviewer: Bou Sanayeh E, United States S-Editor: Liu JH L-Editor: Filipodia P-Editor: Wang WB

Contributor Information

Jin Li, Department of Gynecology, Hangzhou Women’s Hospital, Hangzhou 310000, Zhejiang Province, China.

Yi-Yi Zhu-Ge, Department of Gynecology, Hangzhou Women’s Hospital, Hangzhou 310000, Zhejiang Province, China.

Kai-Qing Lin, Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Affiliated Hangzhou Chest Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou 310000, Zhejiang Province, China. nc.ude.ujz@gniqiaknil .

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Book review: ‘Four Thousand Paws’ is a welcome addition to the growing library of Iditarod literature

“Four Thousand Paws: Caring for the Dogs of the Iditarod: A Veterinarian’s Story”

By Lee Morgan; Liveright, 2024; 304 pages; $27.99.

So many books have been written about the Iditarod that it’s fair to ask if any new angles can be found. Histories, personal memoirs and accounts by reporters who have covered the race abound. But until now, one aspect has escaped literary notice, and it’s an important one.

“At the risk of sounding a little egotistical,” volunteer Iditarod veterinarian Lee Morgan writes, “the trail vet is one of the most critical roles, in large part because we’re the ones who support the dogs themselves.”

Veterinarians are found at every checkpoint along the roughly 1,000-mile-long course, tasked with examining each dog upon arrival for injury, illness or previously undetected medical conditions. None can proceed without approval from one of the volunteer vets who have the final say on whether the animal can continue toward Nome or catch the next flight back to Anchorage. It’s a huge undertaking and a tremendous responsibility. Some years, more than 1,000 dogs arrive at the starting line, and seeing to the individual safety of each one at each stop is not an easy job.

Morgan, a veterinarian from Washington, D.C., has volunteered with the Iditarod nearly every year since 2012, and in his recent book “Four Thousand Paws” he tells the story of how he became involved and what some of his experiences have been.

Morgan writes that he was aware of calls for vets to work the race for several years before taking the bait. He mostly worked with domestic animals, so canine athletes were a bit out of his normal practice. Even after applying, he had to attend a class in Anchorage before being accepted, a class not every applicant is successful in. That first year he made the cut, and from there it was off to the race.

Morgan’s love for dogs is evident right out of the gate. He tells a great story of a pre-race vet check where he was befriended by a dog that clandestinely got her snout into his pocket and absconded with all of his treats. It’s not the only tale found here of a conniving husky that outsmarted him and sated its appetite while not being carefully supervised. Humorous anecdotes about the personalities of these critters surface repeatedly as this lively book progresses.

After the official start in Willow, Morgan tells his story through chapters set in each successive checkpoint rather than attempting a chronological memoir, a move that well serves the book’s clarity. Readers follow him up the trail, hopscotching from one stop to the next. He gets to know mushers and fellow volunteers, as well as locals if there are any (some of the stops are devoid of residents). Along the way, he experiences some of the most remote places in Alaska while checking the welfare of arriving dogs before sending them onward or ordering them pulled from the race.

Veterinarian Lee Morgan of Washington, D.C., examines a sled dog at the Iditarod checkpoint on Finger Lake on March 4, 2013. (Bill Roth / ADN archive)

Veterinarians, we quickly learn, don’t get special treatment. In addition to their medical duties, they’re expected to help with setting up tents and other equipment at checkpoints and assisting with all the tasks required to prepare the stops for the incoming teams. It’s a lot of hard work in sometimes exceedingly frigid conditions, and sometimes things go wrong. A stove fire in Finger Lake was a particularly memorable mishap, and one that fortunately didn’t lead to injuries.

Yet even as he found himself doing a lot more than veterinary work, Morgan discovered along the trail a sense of freedom from the bureaucratic hassles of running an urban animal clinic in the nation’s capital. “I liked it here,” he writes. “No board reviews, no hospital inspections, no ringing phones. My job had become far more elemental. I got up in the morning and examined dogs all day long. There were no substantive arguments or conflicts. People took me at my word, and the dogs were better off for it.”

Another thing readers will learn here is what happens to dogs that are withdrawn from the competition. Ultimately all are flown back to Anchorage, but veterinarians have set up a three-tiered color code system for determining the order of necessity for sending them out. White implies minor medical issues and the dog is cared for at the checkpoint until transportation as part of a group can be easily arranged. Red means the dog is in critical condition, and is rushed back to Anchorage as soon as possible. Blue lies somewhere in between and these dogs are taken away on the next available plane.

As Morgan works his way up the trail, he provides brief details about each checkpoint that give readers a feel for what the places they read about in news reports are like. It’s a nice touch. Most books focus on the race itself and the difficulties of the trail. The stops get rushed through. Here we spend a bit of time in Skwentna, McGrath, Takotna, Shaktoolik and other locales. Morgan offers insight on these remote outposts that’s rarely found in other Iditarod books.

Morgan was on hand for some of the more dramatic events that have occurred during recent Iditarods, including the 2016 attacks on Aliy Zirkle and Jeff King, who were deliberately and repeatedly struck by a snowmachine rider, and the onset of the pandemic in 2020, which swept across the country and into Alaska as the race was underway. Curiously, he never discusses dog deaths, which do still occasionally occur. The omission of a veterinarian’s perspective on this unfortunate element of the race, and what can be done to further reduce such incidents, is the sole shortcoming of this book.

That said, Morgan does do a fine job of detailing the role of veterinarians in the race while conveying the importance both mushers and officials place on dog welfare in a book that’s fun to read. He’s the kind of author you want to meet in person. “Four Thousand Paws” is an excellent and much-needed addition to the always-growing library of Iditarod literature.

[ Book review: ‘The Hope ‘91 Sled Dog Race’ brings an audacious but improbable event to life on the page ]

[ Book review: A new history of sled dogs in North America is vast and intriguing read ]

[ Book review: Lingit language and kinship shine in Twitchell’s first book of poetry ]

David James

David A. James is a Fairbanks-based freelance writer, and editor of the Alaska literary collection “Writing on the Edge.” He can be reached at [email protected].