literature review in phd proposal

• What Is a PhD Literature Review?
• Doing a PhD

A literature review is a critical analysis of published academic literature, mainly peer-reviewed papers and books, on a specific topic. This isn’t just a list of published studies but is a document summarising and critically appraising the main work by researchers in the field, the key findings, limitations and gaps identified in the knowledge.

• The aim of a literature review is to critically assess the literature in your chosen field of research and be able to present an overview of the current knowledge gained from previous work.
• By the conclusion of your literature review, you as a researcher should have identified the gaps in knowledge in your field; i.e. the unanswered research questions which your PhD project will help to answer.
• Quality not quantity is the approach to use when writing a literature review for a PhD but as a general rule of thumb, most are between 6,000 and 12,000 words.

What Is the Purpose of a Literature Review?

First, to be clear on what a PhD literature review is NOT: it is not a ‘paper by paper’ summary of what others have done in your field. All you’re doing here is listing out all the papers and book chapters you’ve found with some text joining things together. This is a common mistake made by PhD students early on in their research project. This is a sign of poor academic writing and if it’s not picked up by your supervisor, it’ll definitely be by your examiners.

The biggest issue your examiners will have here is that you won’t have demonstrated an application of critical thinking when examining existing knowledge from previous research. This is an important part of the research process as a PhD student. It’s needed to show where the gaps in knowledge were, and how then you were able to identify the novelty of each research question and subsequent work.

The five main outcomes from carrying out a good literature review should be:

• An understanding of what has been published in your subject area of research,
• An appreciation of the leading research groups and authors in your field and their key contributions to the research topic,
• Knowledge of the key theories in your field,
• Knowledge of the main research areas within your field of interest,
• A clear understanding of the research gap in knowledge that will help to motivate your PhD research questions .

When assessing the academic papers or books that you’ve come across, you must think about the strengths and weaknesses of them; what was novel about their work and what were the limitations? Are different sources of relevant literature coming to similar conclusions and complementing each other, or are you seeing different outcomes on the same topic by different researchers?

When Should I Write My Literature Review?

In the structure of your PhD thesis , your literature review is effectively your first main chapter. It’s at the start of your thesis and should, therefore, be a task you perform at the start of your research. After all, you need to have reviewed the literature to work out how your research can contribute novel findings to your area of research. Sometimes, however, in particular when you apply for a PhD project with a pre-defined research title and research questions, your supervisor may already know where the gaps in knowledge are.

You may be tempted to skip the literature review and dive straight into tackling the set questions (then completing the review at the end before thesis submission) but we strongly advise against this. Whilst your supervisor will be very familiar with the area, you as a doctoral student will not be and so it is essential that you gain this understanding before getting into the research.

How Long Should the Literature Review Be?

As your literature review will be one of your main thesis chapters, it needs to be a substantial body of work. It’s not a good strategy to have a thesis writing process here based on a specific word count, but know that most reviews are typically between 6,000 and 12,000 words. The length will depend on how much relevant material has previously been published in your field.

A point to remember though is that the review needs to be easy to read and avoid being filled with unnecessary information; in your search of selected literature, consider filtering out publications that don’t appear to add anything novel to the discussion – this might be useful in fields with hundreds of papers.

How Do I Write the Literature Review?

Before you start writing your literature review, you need to be clear on the topic you are researching.

1. Evaluating and Selecting the Publications

After completing your literature search and downloading all the papers you find, you may find that you have a lot of papers to read through ! You may find that you have so many papers that it’s unreasonable to read through all of them in their entirety, so you need to find a way to understand what they’re about and decide if they’re important quickly.

A good starting point is to read the abstract of the paper to gauge if it is useful and, as you do so, consider the following questions in your mind:

• What was the overarching aim of the paper?
• What was the methodology used by the authors?
• Was this an experimental study or was this more theoretical in its approach?
• What were the results and what did the authors conclude in their paper?
• How does the data presented in this paper relate to other publications within this field?
• Does it add new knowledge, does it raise more questions or does it confirm what is already known in your field? What is the key concept that the study described?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of this study, and in particular, what are the limitations?

2. Identifying Themes

To put together the structure of your literature review you need to identify the common themes that emerge from the collective papers and books that you have read. Key things to think about are:

• Are there common methodologies different authors have used or have these changed over time?
• Do the research questions change over time or are the key question’s still unanswered?
• Is there general agreement between different research groups in the main results and outcomes, or do different authors provide differing points of view and different conclusions?
• What are the key papers in your field that have had the biggest impact on the research?
• Have different publications identified similar weaknesses or limitations or gaps in the knowledge that still need to be addressed?

Structuring and Writing Your Literature Review

There are several ways in which you can structure a literature review and this may depend on if, for example, your project is a science or non-science based PhD.

One approach may be to tell a story about how your research area has developed over time. You need to be careful here that you don’t just describe the different papers published in chronological order but that you discuss how different studies have motivated subsequent studies, how the knowledge has developed over time in your field, concluding with what is currently known, and what is currently not understood.

Alternatively, you may find from reading your papers that common themes emerge and it may be easier to develop your review around these, i.e. a thematic review. For example, if you are writing up about bridge design, you may structure the review around the themes of regulation, analysis, and sustainability.

As another approach, you might want to talk about the different research methodologies that have been used. You could then compare and contrast the results and ultimate conclusions that have been drawn from each.

As with all your chapters in your thesis, your literature review will be broken up into three key headings, with the basic structure being the introduction, the main body and conclusion. Within the main body, you will use several subheadings to separate out the topics depending on if you’re structuring it by the time period, the methods used or the common themes that have emerged.

The important thing to think about as you write your main body of text is to summarise the key takeaway messages from each research paper and how they come together to give one or more conclusions. Don’t just stop at summarising the papers though, instead continue on to give your analysis and your opinion on how these previous publications fit into the wider research field and where they have an impact. Emphasise the strengths of the studies you have evaluated also be clear on the limitations of previous work how these may have influenced the results and conclusions of the studies.

In your concluding paragraphs focus your discussion on how your critical evaluation of literature has helped you identify unanswered research questions and how you plan to address these in your PhD project. State the research problem you’re going to address and end with the overarching aim and key objectives of your work .

When writing at a graduate level, you have to take a critical approach when reading existing literature in your field to determine if and how it added value to existing knowledge. You may find that a large number of the papers on your reference list have the right academic context but are essentially saying the same thing. As a graduate student, you’ll need to take a methodological approach to work through this existing research to identify what is relevant literature and what is not.

You then need to go one step further to interpret and articulate the current state of what is known, based on existing theories, and where the research gaps are. It is these gaps in the literature that you will address in your own research project.

• Decide on a research area and an associated research question.
• Decide on the extent of your scope and start looking for literature.
• Review and evaluate the literature.
• Plan an outline for your literature review and start writing it.

Browse PhDs Now

Join thousands of students.

Join thousands of other students and stay up to date with the latest PhD programmes, funding opportunities and advice.

How to Prepare a Research Proposal and Literature Review

All HDR candidates are required to prepare a research proposal and literature review for their first Research Progress Review. If you are a PhD candidate, this will be your Confirmation Review. 

Your research proposal and literature review should be a comprehensive outline of your research topic and show how you will make an original contribution to knowledge in your field. Your Review panel will use your research proposal and literature review to assess the viability of your research project, and to provide you with valuable feedback on your topic, methodology, research design, timeline and milestones. 

UNSW Academic Skills provides a detailed description of how to develop and structure your research proposal. 

Your Faculty and/or School may have particular requirements, and you should contact your Postgraduate Coordinator or your supervisor if you’re unsure of what is required.  

Additional Resources

All disciplinary areas A guide for writing thesis proposals - UNSW Academic Skills Confirmation – not as big a deal as you think it is? - the Thesis Whisperer

Humanities and Social Sciences Essential ingredients of a good research proposal for undergraduate and postgraduate students in the social sciences – Raymond Talinbe Abdulai and Anthony Owusu-Ansah, SAGE Open, Jul-Sep 2014  Template for writing your PhD Confirmation document in Sociology and Anthropology - S A Hamed Hosseini

Science, Technology, Engineering and Medicine How to prepare a research proposal – Asya Al-Riyami, Oman Medical Journal Writing a scientific research proposal – author unknown

• Find a degree
• Ask a Question
• Getting Started
• International
• Find a Researcher/Area
• Apply for a Higher Degree Research Program
•   UNSW Sydney NSW 2052 Australia
•   Telephone +61 2 9385 5500
•   Maps

Graduate Research School, Level 2, Rupert Myers Building (South Wing), UNSW Sydney NSW 2052 Australia Telephone +61 2 93855500 Dean of Graduate Research, Professor Jonathan Morris. UNSW CRICOS   Provider Code:  00098G  TEQSA Provider ID : PRV12055  ABN:  57 195 873 179

Literature Reviews

• What is a Literature Review?
• Concept Mapping
• Writing a Proposal
• For Faculty

Need help? Ask a librarian

Tools for All Writers

• Reading, Writing, Speaking
• Citing Sources
• Library Searching

Templates for Proposal Writing

• Template 1 from Drew University
• Template 2 from Rutgers University (Saracevic)

Content of a proposal for a thesis or any research project

Full Pdf  from Rutgers University

• What do you call this investigation?
• What problem or area will you investigate in general?
• Why is this problem important to investigate?
• What was previously done in relation to this problem? What were some of the significant studies? (Literature review)
• What theory or model is going to guide your research?
• What will you specifically investigate or do in the framework of that problem? What are your specific research questions or hypotheses?
• How will each research question be addressed ? What methods will you use for each research question?
• How will the results be analyzed?
• What are the deliverables? What can or will be gained by investigation of this problem?

Avoid Patchwriting

• << Previous: Concept Mapping
• Next: For Faculty >>
• Last Updated: Mar 25, 2024 8:48 AM
• URL: https://researchguides.njit.edu/literaturereview

Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Writing a Literature Review

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

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.

• Deutschland
• United Kingdom

• PhD Dissertations
• Master’s Dissertations
• Bachelor’s Dissertations
• Scientific Dissertations
• Medical Dissertations
• Bioscience Dissertations
• Social Sciences Dissertations
• Psychology Dissertations
• Humanities Dissertations
• Engineering Dissertations
• Economics Dissertations
• Service Overview
• Revisión en inglés
• Relecture en anglais
• Revisão em inglês

Manuscript Editing

• Research Paper Editing
• Lektorat Doktorarbeit
• Dissertation Proofreading
• Englisches Lektorat
• Journal Manuscript Editing
• Scientific Manuscript Editing Services
• Book Manuscript Editing
• PhD Thesis Proofreading Services
• Wissenschaftslektorat
• Korektura anglického textu
• Akademisches Lektorat
• Journal Article Editing
• Manuscript Editing Services

PhD Thesis Editing

• Medical Editing Sciences
• Proofreading Rates UK
• Medical Proofreading
• PhD Proofreading
• Academic Proofreading
• PhD Proofreaders
• Best Dissertation Proofreaders
• Masters Dissertation Proofreading
• Proofreading PhD Thesis Price
• PhD Dissertation Editing
• Lektorat Englisch Preise
• Lektorieren Englisch
• Wissenschaftliches Lektorat
• Thesis Proofreading Services
• PhD Thesis Proofreading
• Proofreading Thesis Cost
• Proofreading Thesis
• Thesis Editing Services
• Professional Thesis Editing
• PhD Thesis Editing Services
• Thesis Editing Cost
• Dissertation Proofreading Services
• Proofreading Dissertation

PhD Dissertation Proofreading

• Dissertation Proofreading Cost
• Dissertation Proofreader
• Correção de Artigos Científicos
• Correção de Trabalhos Academicos
• Serviços de Correção de Inglês
• Correção de Dissertação
• Correção de Textos Precos
• Revision en Ingles
• Revision de Textos en Ingles
• Revision de Tesis
• Revision Medica en Ingles
• Revision de Tesis Precio
• Revisão de Artigos Científicos
• Revisão de Trabalhos Academicos
• Serviços de Revisão de Inglês
• Revisão de Dissertação
• Revisão de Textos Precos
• Corrección de Textos en Ingles
• Corrección de Tesis
• Corrección de Tesis Precio
• Corrección Medica en Ingles
• Corrector ingles
• Choosing the right Journal
• Journal Editor’s Feedback
• Dealing with Rejection
• Quantitative Research Examples
• Number of scientific papers published per year
• Acknowledgements Example
• ISO, ANSI, CFR & Other
• Types of Peer Review
• Withdrawing a Paper
• What is a good h-index
• Appendix paper
• Cover Letter Templates
• Writing an Article
• How To Write the Findings
• Abbreviations: ‘Ibid.’ & ‘Id.’
• Sample letter to editor for publication
• Tables and figures in research paper
• Journal Metrics
• Revision Process of Journal Publishing
• JOURNAL GUIDELINES

Select Page

Writing the Literature Review for the Proposal

Posted by Rene Tetzner | Oct 11, 2021 | PhD Success | 0 |

3.2 Writing the Literature Review for the Proposal

The literature review you write for your proposal should be a more formal document than the preliminary reviews you may have written as you first read your key sources (see Section 2.1.3), although you can certainly make use of those initial reviews as you draft the formal review. The literature review for your proposal will in most cases also be the first draft of the literature review that will serve as the second chapter of your completed thesis (see Section 1.2.2 and Section 4.3). The review can instead be combined with other parts of the thesis (the introduction, for instance) or be presented more gradually throughout the thesis in association with relevant ideas, methods and results as they arise. In some cases, a student’s engagement with previous research can be established very briefly in a short section of the thesis that provides some background on what has already been done in an area and simply clarifies why the student’s topic and approach are valuable and interesting.

If a separate chapter is required, which will be the case for many theses, the chapter should give readers an accurate and thorough idea of previous scholarship on the topic, problem or phenomenon under investigation; it should summarise and interpret the content of each relevant source; it should evaluate each source critically with regard to the methods used, results achieved and conclusions reached by its author(s); it should reveal what you believe to be the gaps, misconceptions and limitations associated with the existing scholarship as a whole; and it should indicate how your research will provide what is lacking, establish new perspectives and move beyond the traditional limitations. Some of this may have been mentioned briefly in your proposal introduction, but in the literature review you need to discuss these matters in greater detail, make it absolutely clear where your work fits into the larger picture and set the stage for using key sources later in the thesis.

Even a chapter-length literature review for a doctoral thesis often does not need to be completely comprehensive – including, that is, every piece of scholarship ever written on your topic – unless your university, department or thesis committee insists on this or one of the goals of your thesis is specifically to provide a complete review of all scholarship in the area. You should, however, be familiar with all the scholarship dealing with the topic, problem or phenomenon you explore, and if very little has previously been written on it, you should no doubt include all the available scholarship in your review and perhaps even go beyond that to related areas that might enhance your research. Yet it is more likely that you will have to narrow your scope rather than broadening it, since most effective literature reviews are at least somewhat selective.

The criteria for selection vary from thesis to thesis because they are based not only on the specific research topic, but on the aims and objectives of the thesis, as well as on any research questions and hypotheses formulated and used in the thesis. So there will probably be one or more key themes that form the backbone of your discussion, providing both structure and direction, with each of the sources you review considered specifically and often exclusively in terms of those themes and your own thoughts about them. Without key ideas and a focus of this sort to guide your journey through numerous different sources, a literature review can quickly become an excessively long and disorganised trail of summaries and critiques that are more or less relevant to your thesis.

Although approaches to writing a literature review vary enormously depending on the thesis topic and methodology, a practical way to start is with a brief explanation of the topic, problem or phenomenon and a general statement about scholarship in the area (abundant, scarce, outdated, recent, limited in origin and approach, and so on) before moving on to particular sources. The first source you review should be a key one, whether it is the first piece written on the topic or simply the first one relevant to your thesis, and it should establish a position from which you can proceed. Let us say, for instance, that the thesis topic focuses on the ability of marginal commentary in medieval manuscripts to teach the researcher something about the readers of those manuscripts.

The first source reviewed will likely (and ideally should) take a strong position on or establish a tradition of thought about the topic, which in early scholarship on manuscripts would probably be to dismiss the importance of marginal annotations altogether (the Victorians, for instance, simply trimmed them off to ‘clean up’ medieval manuscripts when rebinding them). The sources reviewed after this initial source might trace a chronological path of the development of approaches to marginalia and their usefulness in research on readership and reception until arriving at works published in the twenty-first century that take the comments of medieval readers very seriously indeed and explore via those comments medieval conceptions of education, self-knowledge, heresy, gender and many other fascinating topics.

A chronological approach of the kind I have just described can often be effective in providing an extra layer of organisation or, perhaps more accurately, in tracing a meaningful route through complicated and sometimes slippery territory (the distinction between primary and secondary sources might also prove useful, on which see Section 7.1, as might that between theoretical and experimental studies). In the sciences, recent publications (usually those published within the last decade or two) are often prioritised, and some thesis committees will want the literature review to focus on recent scholarship only. No source is too old to be considered if it is important to your research, however, and if you are tracing the history of an idea or approach (one may, for example, want to go all the way back to medieval texts to see what they had to say about marginalia) or if very early sources are central because they establish a long tradition of thought relevant to your topic, they should definitely be included in your review. You need not treat every source you review in the same detail: some might require thorough summaries and a considerable amount of interpretation and discussion (those that significantly overlap your own research should receive such treatment, for instance), whereas others can simply be mentioned in passing or in groups or by focussing only on a couple of key points. The members of your thesis committee, your supervisor in particular, will almost certainly be able to assist you in deciding which sources should or should not be included and which among them might or might not require detailed treatment, as well as suggesting sources of which you may not be aware.

How you might best deal with each source may also change, however, as the results of your research mount up and you discover that you need to emphasise slightly different ideas and approaches than you originally envisioned. Remember that the literature review for the proposal is a draft that can be revisited and revised as necessary, which is not to say that it should be written or presented in an informal way. Like all parts of the proposal, it should be written in correct scholarly English and make consistent use of the editorial guidelines or style guide your department recommends or you and your supervisor have agreed upon, including complete and accurate references (for more information on formal English, formatting and style, and references, see Chapters 5–7). A literature review often closes with a brief summary, especially if the review is a long one, and a statement (or restatement) regarding how your thesis will contribute to the body of scholarship on the topic, problem or phenomenon. Finally, please note that neither ‘the literatures’ nor ‘the researches’ is an appropriate way of referring to the body of literature or scholarship dedicated to a particular topic, problem or phenomenon; ‘articles,’ ‘studies,’ ‘conferences,’ ‘papers’ and ‘books’ are all acceptable in the plural, but when using ‘the literature’ or ‘the research’ to describe such a body of work, the singular is the correct form.

Why PhD Success?

To Graduate Successfully

This article is part of a book called "PhD Success" which focuses on the writing process of a phd thesis, with its aim being to provide sound practices and principles for reporting and formatting in text the methods, results and discussion of even the most innovative and unique research in ways that are clear, correct, professional and persuasive.

The assumption of the book is that the doctoral candidate reading it is both eager to write and more than capable of doing so, but nonetheless requires information and guidance on exactly what he or she should be writing and how best to approach the task. The basic components of a doctoral thesis are outlined and described, as are the elements of complete and accurate scholarly references, and detailed descriptions of writing practices are clarified through the use of numerous examples.

The basic components of a doctoral thesis are outlined and described, as are the elements of complete and accurate scholarly references, and detailed descriptions of writing practices are clarified through the use of numerous examples. PhD Success provides guidance for students familiar with English and the procedures of English universities, but it also acknowledges that many theses in the English language are now written by candidates whose first language is not English, so it carefully explains the scholarly styles, conventions and standards expected of a successful doctoral thesis in the English language.

Individual chapters of this book address reflective and critical writing early in the thesis process; working successfully with thesis supervisors and benefiting from commentary and criticism; drafting and revising effective thesis chapters and developing an academic or scientific argument; writing and formatting a thesis in clear and correct scholarly English; citing, quoting and documenting sources thoroughly and accurately; and preparing for and excelling in thesis meetings and examinations. 

Completing a doctoral thesis successfully requires long and penetrating thought, intellectual rigour and creativity, original research and sound methods (whether established or innovative), precision in recording detail and a wide-ranging thoroughness, as much perseverance and mental toughness as insight and brilliance, and, no matter how many helpful writing guides are consulted, a great deal of hard work over a significant period of time. Writing a thesis can be an enjoyable as well as a challenging experience, however, and even if it is not always so, the personal and professional rewards of achieving such an enormous goal are considerable, as all doctoral candidates no doubt realise, and will last a great deal longer than any problems that may be encountered during the process.

Interested in Proofreading your PhD Thesis? Get in Touch with us

If you are interested in proofreading your PhD thesis or dissertation, please explore our expert dissertation proofreading services.

Rene Tetzner

Rene Tetzner's blog posts dedicated to academic writing. Although the focus is on How To Write a Doctoral Thesis, many other important aspects of research-based writing, editing and publishing are addressed in helpful detail.

Related Posts

PhD Success – How To Write a Doctoral Thesis

October 1, 2021

Table of Contents – PhD Success

October 2, 2021

The Essential – Preliminary Matter

October 3, 2021

The Main Body of the Thesis

October 4, 2021

Literature Review Example/Sample

Detailed Walkthrough + Free Literature Review Template

If you’re working on a dissertation or thesis and are looking for an example of a strong literature review chapter , you’ve come to the right place.

In this video, we walk you through an A-grade literature review from a dissertation that earned full distinction . We start off by discussing the five core sections of a literature review chapter by unpacking our free literature review template . This includes:

• The literature review opening/ introduction section
• The theoretical framework (or foundation of theory)
• The empirical research
• The research gap
• The closing section

We then progress to the sample literature review (from an A-grade Master’s-level dissertation) to show how these concepts are applied in the literature review chapter. You can access the free resources mentioned in this video below.

FAQ: Literature Review Example

Literature review example: frequently asked questions, is the sample literature review real.

Yes. The literature review example is an extract from a Master’s-level dissertation for an MBA program. It has not been edited in any way.

Can I replicate this literature review for my dissertation?

As we discuss in the video, every literature review will be slightly different, depending on the university’s unique requirements, as well as the nature of the research itself. Therefore, you’ll need to tailor your literature review to suit your specific context.

You can learn more about the basics of writing a literature review here .

Where can I find more examples of literature reviews?

The best place to find more examples of literature review chapters would be within dissertation/thesis databases. These databases include dissertations, theses and research projects that have successfully passed the assessment criteria for the respective university, meaning that you have at least some sort of quality assurance. 

The Open Access Thesis Database (OATD) is a good starting point. 

How do I get the literature review template?

You can access our free literature review chapter template here .

Is the template really free?

Yes. There is no cost for the template and you are free to use it as you wish. 

Psst… there’s more!

This post is an extract from our bestselling Udemy Course, Literature Review Bootcamp . If you want to work smart, you don't want to miss this .

You Might Also Like:

What will it take for you to guide me in my Ph.D research work?

Submit a Comment Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

• Print Friendly

Have a language expert improve your writing

Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, generate accurate citations for free.

• Knowledge Base
• Starting the research process
• How to Write a Research Proposal | Examples & Templates

How to Write a Research Proposal | Examples & Templates

Published on October 12, 2022 by Shona McCombes and Tegan George. Revised on November 21, 2023.

A research proposal describes what you will investigate, why it’s important, and how you will conduct your research.

The format of a research proposal varies between fields, but most proposals will contain at least these elements:

Introduction

Literature review.

• Research design

Reference list

While the sections may vary, the overall objective is always the same. A research proposal serves as a blueprint and guide for your research plan, helping you get organized and feel confident in the path forward you choose to take.

Table of contents

Research proposal purpose, research proposal examples, research design and methods, contribution to knowledge, research schedule, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about research proposals.

Academics often have to write research proposals to get funding for their projects. As a student, you might have to write a research proposal as part of a grad school application , or prior to starting your thesis or dissertation .

In addition to helping you figure out what your research can look like, a proposal can also serve to demonstrate why your project is worth pursuing to a funder, educational institution, or supervisor.

Research proposal length

The length of a research proposal can vary quite a bit. A bachelor’s or master’s thesis proposal can be just a few pages, while proposals for PhD dissertations or research funding are usually much longer and more detailed. Your supervisor can help you determine the best length for your work.

One trick to get started is to think of your proposal’s structure as a shorter version of your thesis or dissertation , only without the results , conclusion and discussion sections.

Download our research proposal template

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

Writing a research proposal can be quite challenging, but a good starting point could be to look at some examples. We’ve included a few for you below.

• Example research proposal #1: “A Conceptual Framework for Scheduling Constraint Management”
• Example research proposal #2: “Medical Students as Mediators of Change in Tobacco Use”

Like your dissertation or thesis, the proposal will usually have a title page that includes:

• The proposed title of your project
• Your supervisor’s name
• Your institution and department

The first part of your proposal is the initial pitch for your project. Make sure it succinctly explains what you want to do and why.

Your introduction should:

• Introduce your topic
• Give necessary background and context
• Outline your  problem statement  and research questions

To guide your introduction , include information about:

• Who could have an interest in the topic (e.g., scientists, policymakers)
• How much is already known about the topic
• What is missing from this current knowledge
• What new insights your research will contribute
• Why you believe this research is worth doing

As you get started, it’s important to demonstrate that you’re familiar with the most important research on your topic. A strong literature review  shows your reader that your project has a solid foundation in existing knowledge or theory. It also shows that you’re not simply repeating what other people have already done or said, but rather using existing research as a jumping-off point for your own.

In this section, share exactly how your project will contribute to ongoing conversations in the field by:

• Comparing and contrasting the main theories, methods, and debates
• Examining the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches
• Explaining how will you build on, challenge, or synthesize prior scholarship

Following the literature review, restate your main  objectives . This brings the focus back to your own project. Next, your research design or methodology section will describe your overall approach, and the practical steps you will take to answer your research questions.

To finish your proposal on a strong note, explore the potential implications of your research for your field. Emphasize again what you aim to contribute and why it matters.

For example, your results might have implications for:

• Improving best practices
• Informing policymaking decisions
• Strengthening a theory or model
• Challenging popular or scientific beliefs
• Creating a basis for future research

Last but not least, your research proposal must include correct citations for every source you have used, compiled in a reference list . To create citations quickly and easily, you can use our free APA citation generator .

Some institutions or funders require a detailed timeline of the project, asking you to forecast what you will do at each stage and how long it may take. While not always required, be sure to check the requirements of your project.

Here’s an example schedule to help you get started. You can also download a template at the button below.

Download our research schedule template

If you are applying for research funding, chances are you will have to include a detailed budget. This shows your estimates of how much each part of your project will cost.

Make sure to check what type of costs the funding body will agree to cover. For each item, include:

• Cost : exactly how much money do you need?
• Justification : why is this cost necessary to complete the research?
• Source : how did you calculate the amount?

To determine your budget, think about:

• Travel costs : do you need to go somewhere to collect your data? How will you get there, and how much time will you need? What will you do there (e.g., interviews, archival research)?
• Materials : do you need access to any tools or technologies?
• Help : do you need to hire any research assistants for the project? What will they do, and how much will you pay them?

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.

Methodology

• 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

Once you’ve decided on your research objectives , you need to explain them in your paper, at the end of your problem statement .

Keep your research objectives clear and concise, and use appropriate verbs to accurately convey the work that you will carry out for each one.

I will compare …

A research aim is a broad statement indicating the general purpose of your research project. It should appear in your introduction at the end of your problem statement , before your research objectives.

Research objectives are more specific than your research aim. They indicate the specific ways you’ll address the overarching aim.

A PhD, which is short for philosophiae doctor (doctor of philosophy in Latin), is the highest university degree that can be obtained. In a PhD, students spend 3–5 years writing a dissertation , which aims to make a significant, original contribution to current knowledge.

A PhD is intended to prepare students for a career as a researcher, whether that be in academia, the public sector, or the private sector.

A master’s is a 1- or 2-year graduate degree that can prepare you for a variety of careers.

All master’s involve graduate-level coursework. Some are research-intensive and intend to prepare students for further study in a PhD; these usually require their students to write a master’s thesis . Others focus on professional training for a specific career.

Critical thinking refers to the ability to evaluate information and to be aware of biases or assumptions, including your own.

Like information literacy , it involves evaluating arguments, identifying and solving problems in an objective and systematic way, and clearly communicating your ideas.

The best way to remember the difference between a research plan and a research proposal is that they have fundamentally different audiences. A research plan helps you, the researcher, organize your thoughts. On the other hand, a dissertation proposal or research proposal aims to convince others (e.g., a supervisor, a funding body, or a dissertation committee) that your research topic is relevant and worthy of being conducted.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

McCombes, S. & George, T. (2023, November 21). How to Write a Research Proposal | Examples & Templates. Scribbr. Retrieved April 9, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/research-process/research-proposal/

Is this article helpful?

Shona McCombes

Other students also liked, how to write a problem statement | guide & examples, writing strong research questions | criteria & examples, how to write a literature review | guide, examples, & templates, "i thought ai proofreading was useless but..".

I've been using Scribbr for years now and I know it's a service that won't disappoint. It does a good job spotting mistakes”

• Log in
• Site search

How to write a successful research proposal

As the competition for PhD places is incredibly fierce, your research proposal can have a strong bearing on the success of your application - so discover how to make the best impression

What is a research proposal?

Research proposals are used to persuade potential supervisors and funders that your work is worthy of their support. These documents setting out your proposed research that will result in a Doctoral thesis are typically between 1,500 and 3,000 words in length.

Your PhD research proposal must passionately articulate what you want to research and why, convey your understanding of existing literature, and clearly define at least one research question that could lead to new or original knowledge and how you propose to answer it.

Professor Leigh Wilson, director of the graduate school at the University of Westminster, explains that while the research proposal is about work that hasn't been done yet, what prospective supervisors and funders are focusing on just as strongly is evidence of what you've done - how well you know existing literature in the area, including very recent publications and debates, and how clearly you've seen what's missing from this and so what your research can do that's new. Giving a strong sense of this background or frame for the proposed work is crucial.

'Although it's tempting to make large claims and propose research that sweeps across time and space, narrower, more focused research is much more convincing,' she adds. 'To be thorough and rigorous in the way that academic work needs to be, even something as long as a PhD thesis can only cover a fairly narrow topic. Depth not breadth is called for.'

The structure of your research proposal is therefore important to achieving this goal, yet it should still retain sufficient flexibility to comfortably accommodate any changes you need to make as your PhD progresses.

Layout and formats vary, so it's advisable to consult your potential PhD supervisor before you begin. Here's what to bear in mind when writing a research proposal.

Your provisional title should be around ten words in length, and clearly and accurately indicate your area of study and/or proposed approach. It should be catchy, informative and interesting.

The title page should also include personal information, such as your name, academic title, date of birth, nationality and contact details.

Aims and objectives

This is a short summary of your project. Your aims should be two or three broad statements that emphasise what you ultimately want to achieve, complemented by several focused, feasible and measurable objectives - the steps that you'll take to answer each of your research questions. This involves clearly and briefly outlining:

• how your research addresses a gap in, or builds upon, existing knowledge
• how your research links to the department that you're applying to
• the academic, cultural, political and/or social significance of your research questions.

Literature review

This section of your PhD proposal discusses the most important theories, models and texts that surround and influence your research questions, conveying your understanding and awareness of the key issues and debates.

It should focus on the theoretical and practical knowledge gaps that your work aims to address, as this ultimately justifies and provides the motivation for your project.

Methodology

Here, you're expected to outline how you'll answer each of your research questions. A strong, well-written methodology is crucial, but especially so if your project involves extensive collection and significant analysis of primary data.

In disciplines such as humanities the research proposal methodology identifies the data collection and analytical techniques available to you, before justifying the ones you'll use in greater detail. You'll also define the population that you're intending to examine.

You should also show that you're aware of the limitations of your research, qualifying the parameters that you plan to introduce. Remember, it's more impressive to do a fantastic job of exploring a narrower topic than a decent job of exploring a wider one.

Concluding or following on from your methodology, your timetable should identify how long you'll need to complete each step - perhaps using bi-weekly or monthly timeslots. This helps the reader to evaluate the feasibility of your project and shows that you've considered how you'll go about putting the PhD proposal into practice.

Bibliography

Finally, you'll provide a list of the most significant texts, plus any attachments such as your academic CV . Demonstrate your skills in critical reflection by selecting only those resources that are most appropriate.

Final checks

Before submitting this document along with your PhD application, you'll need to ensure that you've adhered to the research proposal format. This means that:

• every page is numbered
• it's professional, interesting and informative
• the research proposal has been proofread by both an experienced academic (to confirm that it conforms to academic standards) and a layman (to correct any grammatical or spelling errors)
• it has a contents page
• you've used a clear and easy-to-read structure, with appropriate headings.

Research proposal examples

To get a better idea of how your PhD proposal may look, some universities have provided examples of research proposals for specific subjects:

• The Open University - Social Policy and Criminology
• University of Sheffield - Sociological Studies
• University of Sussex
• University of York - Politics

Find out more

• Explore PhD studentships .
• For tips on writing a thesis, see 7 steps to writing a dissertation .
• Read more about PhD study .

How would you rate this page?

On a scale where 1 is dislike and 5 is like

• Dislike 1 unhappy-very
• Like 5 happy-very

Thank you for rating the page

• Schools & departments

Writing a research proposal for the PhD in English Literature

You apply for the PhD in English Literature through the University’s online Degree Finder. Here is our guidance on how to write an effective application.

The two elements of an application that are most useful to us when we consider a candidate for the PhD in English Literature are the sample of written work and the research proposal.

You will probably choose your sample of written work from an already-completed undergraduate or masters-level dissertation or term-paper.

Your research proposal will be something new. It will describe the project that you want to complete for your PhD.

Your research proposal

Take your time in composing your research proposal, carefully considering the requirements outlined below. Your proposal should not be more than 2,000 words .

PhD degrees are awarded on the basis of a thesis of up to 100,000 words. The ‘Summary of roles and responsibilities’ in the University’s Code of Practice for Supervisors and Research Students stipulates what a research thesis must do. 

Take me to the Code of Practice for Supervisors and Research Students (August 2020)

It is in the nature of research that, when you begin, you don’t know what you’ll find. This means that your project is bound to change over the time that you spend on it.

In submitting your research proposal, you are not committing yourself absolutely to completing exactly the project it describes in the event that you are accepted. Nevertheless, with the above points in mind, your research proposal should include the following elements, though not necessarily in this order:

1. An account of the body of primary texts that your thesis will examine. This may be work by one author, or several, or many, depending on the nature of the project. It is very unlikely to consist of a single text, however, unless that text is unusually compendious (The Canterbury Tales) or unusually demanding (Finnegans Wake). Unless your range of texts consists in the complete oeuvre of a single writer, you should explain why these texts are the ones that need to be examined in order to make your particular argument.

2. An identification of the existing field or fields of criticism and scholarship of which you will need to gain an ‘adequate knowledge’ in order to complete your thesis. This must include work in existing literary criticism, broadly understood. Usually this will consist of criticism or scholarship on the works or author(s) in question. In the case of very recent writing, or writing marginal to the established literary canon, on which there may be little or no existing critical work, it might include literary criticism written on other works or authors in the same period, or related work in the same mode or genre, or some other exercise of literary criticism that can serve as a reference point for your engagement with this new material.

The areas of scholarship on which you draw are also likely to include work in other disciplines, however. Most usually, these will be arguments in philosophy or critical theory that have informed, or could inform, the critical debate around your primary texts, or may have informed the texts themselves; and/or the historiography of the period in which your texts were written or received. But we are ready to consider the possible relevance of any other body of knowledge to literary criticism, as long as it is one with which you are sufficiently familiar, or could become sufficiently familiar within the period of your degree, for it to serve a meaningful role in your argument.

3. The questions or problems that the argument of your thesis will address; the methods you will adopt to answer those questions or explain those problems; and some explanation of why this particular methodology is the appropriate means of doing so. The problem could take many forms: a simple gap in the existing scholarship that you will fill; a misleading approach to the primary material that you will correct; or a difficulty in the relation of the existing scholarship to theoretical/philosophical, historiographical, or other disciplinary contexts, for example. But in any case, your thesis must engage critically with the scholarship of others by mounting an original argument in relation to the existing work in your field or fields. In this way your project must go beyond the summarising of already-existing knowledge.

4. Finally, your proposal should include a provisional timetable , describing the stages through which you hope your research will move over the course of your degree. It is crucial that, on the one hand, your chosen topic should be substantial enough to require around 80,000 words for its full exploration; and, on the other hand, that it has clear limits which would allow it to be completed in three years.

When drawing up this timetable, keep in mind that these word limits, and these time constraints, will require you to complete 25–30,000 words of your thesis in each of the years of your degree. If you intend to undertake your degree on a part-time basis, the amount of time available simply doubles.

In composing your research proposal you are already beginning the work that could lead, if you are accepted, to the award of a PhD degree. Regard it, then, as a chance to refine and focus your ideas, so that you can set immediately to work in an efficient manner on entry to university. But it bears repeating that that your project is bound to evolve beyond the project described in your proposal in ways that you cannot at this stage predict. No-one can know, when they begin any research work, where exactly it will take them. That provides much of the pleasure of research, for the most distinguished professor as much as for the first-year PhD student. If you are accepted as a candidate in this department, you will be joining a community of scholars still motivated by the thrill of finding and saying something new.

Ready to apply?

If you have read the guidance above and are ready to apply for your PhD in English Literature, you can do so online through the University of Edinburgh's Degree Finder.

Take me to the Degree Finder entry for the PhD in English Literature

If you've got any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Dr Aaron Kelly by email in the first instance.

Email Dr Aaron Kelly

• UWF Libraries

Literature Review: Conducting & Writing

• Sample Literature Reviews
• Steps for Conducting a Lit Review
• Finding "The Literature"
• Organizing/Writing
• APA Style This link opens in a new window
• Chicago: Notes Bibliography This link opens in a new window
• MLA Style This link opens in a new window

Sample Lit Reviews from Communication Arts

Have an exemplary literature review.

• Literature Review Sample 1
• Literature Review Sample 2
• Literature Review Sample 3

Have you written a stellar literature review you care to share for teaching purposes?

Are you an instructor who has received an exemplary literature review and have permission from the student to post?

Please contact Britt McGowan at [email protected] for inclusion in this guide. All disciplines welcome and encouraged.

• << Previous: MLA Style
• Next: Get Help! >>
• Last Updated: Mar 22, 2024 9:37 AM
• URL: https://libguides.uwf.edu/litreview

Drowning in a sea of authors – How to be critical in a PhD literature review.

Feb 10, 2019

One of the problems I see often when I proofread PhDs is people being too descriptive and not being critical enough. This is most often the case in the literature review.

Critical thinking is one of the hardest skills to master in the entire PhD. Yet, it’s frustrating that many supervisors and doctoral training programs assume that PhD students are already capable critical thinkers.

To be critical in your PhD literature review doesn’t just mean describing what others have written. Instead, it means evaluating and analysing what it is that is being said.

Easy, right?

In this post we explain how to master the art of being critical in your literature review. If you haven’t already, check out our post on how to conduct a literature review.

We’ve also made an infographic. Simply click on the image below to download it.

So many questions…

When we say ‘you must be critical’, we mean that you must critically evaluate whatever it is you are discussing. Your job when critically evaluating is to think analytically, rather than descriptively.

However, being critical doesn’t mean criticising. Instead it means evaluating.

We saw in our post on how to write a literature review and in the PhD Writing Template that the literature review serves three purposes.

• To provide sufficient background information so that your own research problem can be contextualised
• To discuss how, how well, or even if, others have solved similar problems
• To outline the methods used by others when discussing similar problems

It is the first and second purposes that require critical thinking skills, because you want to be evaluating each work you read and act as an investigator.

A quick and easy way to do so is to ask five standard questions of each thing you read:

1. Who? 2. Where? 3. What? 4. When? 5. Why?

Asking these questions means we don’t just take what is written at face value. Instead, we evaluate, interpret, explain, analyse and comment on the text. These questions are a starting point for you to do that.

You’ll need to expand on these questions in order to go into more depth. You can do this by asking (you’ll find these questions in your PhD Writing Template ):

• Who wrote this and why?
• What are the authors trying to say?
• On what basis are they forming their judgements and arguments?
• Are they convincing?
• What theories or perspectives have been used? What alternative ones may have been used instead?
• What perspective are they coming from? What research tradition? What methods do they use? Are they appropriate?
• How does this work relate to others in the field?
• What are others arguing about the same topic?
• How does it relate to your research question or problem?

Ultimately, you’re asking: so what?

Don’t drown in a sea of authors

Let’s take an example of what not to do. Consider the following paragraph, from my very own PhD, on a theory of environmental politics known as ecological modernisation (that’s what the EM stands for):

We can see that I’ve become lost in the literature. All I’m really doing is listing various different studies. I’ve failed to think analytically and instead I’m just thinking descriptively.

I’m drowning in authors, navigating complex ideas and theories with little care for critically thinking about each of them. Instead I am piling up layers of ‘this person said this’ in order to showcase the field.

I – the academic – do not appear in this text at all. I offer no insight into my own critical reflection on any of the concepts, authors or ideas that I have listed. I have become invisible. I have not used the literature to put forward my own argument about the state of the discipline or to make the case for my own study.

There are two things to take from this:

• You need to speak with authority. Avoid falling into the trap of ‘he said, she said’, simply listing scholars and becoming invisible in the process.
• Avoid being overwhelmed by the literature.

How could I have improved my own literature review, using what I know now after years of working as an academic, proofreader and a literature review writer?

Consider the following excerpt from a literature review a colleague and I wrote as part of a journal article we had published . Notice how we aren’t invisible in a sea of authors and a sea of ‘he said, she said’.

Instead, we offer our own voice and put forward our own analysis of the literature. The sentence, ’this article argues, however, that all institutional formations are characterised by a combination or formal rules…’ is just one example of this.

Read, read, read, then write, write, write

Counterintuitively, when you are reading something for the first time, you should do so uncritically. Get a sense of what the writer is trying to do and whether the problem that they are tackling is in itself interesting.

We’ve written a guide about how to find content for your literature review. Check it out here .

You want to understand at this stage the ‘how’ and the ‘what’.

Once you have read the chapter, article, or book, and once you have a good sense of what it is about, you can then ask the when, why and how.

You can begin to unpack whether the conclusions are valid, whether the methods are appropriate, whether alternative theories or concepts could have been applied, and so on.

It is also at this stage that you can judge the validity of the paper as a whole. You need to ask yourself:

• Is it an incremental increase in the knowledge in your field, or is it game-changing?
• Is it a classic, or does it just add a little to what we knew before?

The answer to these questions can impact the significance the article or book plays in your literature review when you come to write.

As you write, you are forced to tackle what might seem like a wide range of literature. You are forced to relate different articles and books to one another and to explain the who, where, what, when and why.

But, you need a filter; much of what you read won’t be relevant to the study you are trying to develop or may be of poor quality.

It is these five questions above that act as your filter and which serve as your guide, against which you relate one piece of literature with another.

Master your lit review & theory framework.

Learn what goes where (and why), and how it all fit together with this free, interactive guide to the PhD literature review and theory framework.

Conclusion: Don’t be mean

So, thinking critically involves thinking like a detective in order to understand what others have written, why, and how it relates to that which came before and to your thesis. It involves not taking things at face value and questioning everything.

But, it’s not your job to be mean to other scholars. It’s your job to understand how well something was written and how relevant it is to your purposes. If you just list articles in a descriptive way, you won’t be doing this. You need instead to be critical, to ask questions, to probe the words.

Doing so will give you a voice and avoid you getting lost in sources.

Hello, Doctor…

Sounds good, doesn’t it?  Be able to call yourself Doctor sooner with our five-star rated How to Write A PhD email-course. Learn everything your supervisor should have taught you about planning and completing a PhD.

Now half price. Join hundreds of other students and become a better thesis writer, or your money back. 

Share this:

32 comments.

Thanks this was useful!

Great! Glad you found it useful.

I am yet to write a Ph.D. literature review in English Literature on Kazuo Ishiguro. This article boosted me up to the importance of Critical and analytical thinking rather than descriptive thinking. I am also a blogger of Ph.D. https://phdstudytips.com But this information I have not written anywhere on my blog. Thanks for all efforts Dr.Max Lempriere

Thanks for the kind words. Critical thinking is so important, but so hard! I hope this article helped you in your academic journey.

Do you have any tips on how to approach a research proposal regarding structure and the do’s and don’ts ?

Thank you David

Sure – you can check out a guide we’ve written here: https://www.thephdproofreaders.com/writing/how-to-write-a-phd-proposal/

Hope this helps,

Hey Max.. This is very helpful for me. Thank u for writing this blog, i am now confident to start my review

I’m glad you are finding it useful. Good luck!

Really helpful. Thank you.

You’re welcome. I’m glad you found it useful.

Hi Dr Max, I’m about to write my Literature review. Your blog helps me a lot. However could you share with me some samples of Literature reviews in Phd?

Hi Sachin. Thanks for your kind words. I’m glad you’re finding the blog useful. I can’t offer any specific examples of literature reviews. It depends on your discipline. My advice would be to read similar PhDs in your discipline for inspiration. If in doubt, ask your supervisor or colleagues for their suggestions of particularly good examples. I hope this helps! Good luck!

Hello Dr. Max. I must say that I enjoyed in this guide to literature review, and while I initially made the same mistake about just listing different studies, I have corrected that thanks to your guide.

There is one thing that I would like to ask you. How to approach to a thesis that is rarely documented, with very small number of published and relevant papers. Obviously, future PhD. thesis is going to offer better understanding of the matter that is about to be explored by experimental study, but what to do when very small number of researchers is dealing with this subject, or all of the available literature is of old date, but there is nothing new or better than this literature from the 60’s or 70’s.

Wish you all the best, and once again thank you for this guide.

Hi Faruk, thanks for the kind words. Your struggle is a common one. If there isn’t much literature to review, your literature review will necessarily be shorter than average and that’s okay. Make sure you thoroughly review the literature that goes exist, even if it is old, and make sure that your argument in the literature review chapter is built upon this idea that the literature is poorly developed. In some ways this makes your life easier, as the gap in your literature is so large that it will be easier for you to fill it. Hope this helps!

Hello again,

Thank you for the prompt response. Yes, this definitely helps. It gives hope 🙂

Thanks for this article. My thesis is on a specific artist about whom very little has been written, relative to other artists. On the other hand, my general approach to the questions I am asking about this artist is interdisciplinary, which means there is a massive literature from about five different fields to review. Do you have any advice about how to manage this. I’ve written about 17,000 words, but my supervisor keeps telling me it’s not enough.

Hi! Without knowing more about your topic it’s hard to say, but I know from my own PhD that blending various literatures together in a review is tough. If you find yourself getting stuck and tied in knots, step away from the chapter/review for a few days and come back with a fresh set of eyes.

Very Very helpful Sir. I am about to start my PhD.

Welcome to the club! Good luck on your amazing PhD journey.

Dear Dr Max

I just started this course and would like to say that its contents are very useful to my current confused state of mind. Thank you for making me see the clearer picture so as not be overwhelmed by the PhD thesis writing. I was at the brink of giving up few years of work, and am so glad I came across your website and registered for the course. Thank you.

I’m glad you’re finding it useful. It’s my mission to make other students’ lives easier than mine was when I was doing my PhD, so I’m glad to see it is having the desired effect.

Thank you so much Dr. Max. It is very helpful, I joined PhD in this year 2020 in January.

You’re welcome. Thanks for reading.

Dear Dr Max ,

Good day sir and thanks for all your good work trying to make sure we get it easier than you did . am not yet in PHD class yet but in DR class .Please how soon can i start my Thesis Writing ? and how do i chose topic to write on ? Please i need help . Thanks again and God bless. Osy

Hi Osy, I’m afraid I can’t offer any advice to help you choose a topic. Have you approach any potential supervisors and asked them? They’ll be better placed to help.

This was very useful. However, I find it difficult to articulate some complex thoughts (English is not my first language). Developing a discursive writing style is my greatest challenge in doing a Ph.D. I am only able to recognize them when someone else has written them,

You might want to work with a proofreader. Check out our website for more info.

Very good pointers shared. thanks for this post.

No problem.

Thank you very much for your article. It addresses some of the many struggles PhD students seem to face. Knowing that I am not alone is a good start. I have finished my methodology and currently writing my literature review. I thought I would have enjoyed it more… but it’s a tough one! I must say I am finding it quite overwhelming particularly to organize the chapter. The first part contexualising the research is fine and done, but trying to critique the main text that acted as a springboard to my research is tough.

I am not quite sure whether I should engage with recent research that has adopted the same main text/research I am using and critically discuss those or else fuse the said recent existing research with other broader themes (which I still need to include as part of the lit review).

Getting my head around this is overwhelming!

Thanks again!

When it gets too tough, remind yourself that this stuff is meant to be difficult.

Thank you, Dr. Max. This blog is a booster for me. I am a research scholar in agribusiness I cover green marketing in agro-based industries. This blog helps me a lot.

Submit a Comment Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Search The PhD Knowledge Base

Most popular articles from the phd knowlege base.

The PhD Knowledge Base Categories

• Your PhD and Covid
• Mastering your theory and literature review chapters
• How to structure and write every chapter of the PhD
• How to stay motivated and productive
• Techniques to improve your writing and fluency
• Advice on maintaining good mental health
• Resources designed for non-native English speakers
• PhD Writing Template
• Explore our back-catalogue of motivational advice