what is the literature review of an article

Get science-backed answers as you write with Paperpal's Research feature

What is a Literature Review? How to Write It (with Examples)

A literature review is a critical analysis and synthesis of existing research on a particular topic. It provides an overview of the current state of knowledge, identifies gaps, and highlights key findings in the literature. 1 The purpose of a literature review is to situate your own research within the context of existing scholarship, demonstrating your understanding of the topic and showing how your work contributes to the ongoing conversation in the field. Learning how to write a literature review is a critical tool for successful research. Your ability to summarize and synthesize prior research pertaining to a certain topic demonstrates your grasp on the topic of study, and assists in the learning process. 

Table of Contents

• What is the purpose of literature review? 
• a. Habitat Loss and Species Extinction: 
• b. Range Shifts and Phenological Changes: 
• c. Ocean Acidification and Coral Reefs: 
• d. Adaptive Strategies and Conservation Efforts: 
• How to write a good literature review 
• Choose a Topic and Define the Research Question: 
• Decide on the Scope of Your Review: 
• Select Databases for Searches: 
• Conduct Searches and Keep Track: 
• Review the Literature: 
• Organize and Write Your Literature Review: 
• Frequently asked questions 

What is a literature review?

A well-conducted literature review demonstrates the researcher’s familiarity with the existing literature, establishes the context for their own research, and contributes to scholarly conversations on the topic. One of the purposes of a literature review is also to help researchers avoid duplicating previous work and ensure that their research is informed by and builds upon the existing body of knowledge.

What is the purpose of literature review?

A literature review serves several important purposes within academic and research contexts. Here are some key objectives and functions of a literature review: 2  

• Contextualizing the Research Problem: The literature review provides a background and context for the research problem under investigation. It helps to situate the study within the existing body of knowledge. 
• Identifying Gaps in Knowledge: By identifying gaps, contradictions, or areas requiring further research, the researcher can shape the research question and justify the significance of the study. This is crucial for ensuring that the new research contributes something novel to the field. 
• Understanding Theoretical and Conceptual Frameworks: Literature reviews help researchers gain an understanding of the theoretical and conceptual frameworks used in previous studies. This aids in the development of a theoretical framework for the current research. 
• Providing Methodological Insights: Another purpose of literature reviews is that it allows researchers to learn about the methodologies employed in previous studies. This can help in choosing appropriate research methods for the current study and avoiding pitfalls that others may have encountered. 
• Establishing Credibility: A well-conducted literature review demonstrates the researcher’s familiarity with existing scholarship, establishing their credibility and expertise in the field. It also helps in building a solid foundation for the new research. 
• Informing Hypotheses or Research Questions: The literature review guides the formulation of hypotheses or research questions by highlighting relevant findings and areas of uncertainty in existing literature. 

Literature review example

Let’s delve deeper with a literature review example: Let’s say your literature review is about the impact of climate change on biodiversity. You might format your literature review into sections such as the effects of climate change on habitat loss and species extinction, phenological changes, and marine biodiversity. Each section would then summarize and analyze relevant studies in those areas, highlighting key findings and identifying gaps in the research. The review would conclude by emphasizing the need for further research on specific aspects of the relationship between climate change and biodiversity. The following literature review template provides a glimpse into the recommended literature review structure and content, demonstrating how research findings are organized around specific themes within a broader topic. 

Literature Review on Climate Change Impacts on Biodiversity:

Climate change is a global phenomenon with far-reaching consequences, including significant impacts on biodiversity. This literature review synthesizes key findings from various studies: 

a. Habitat Loss and Species Extinction:

Climate change-induced alterations in temperature and precipitation patterns contribute to habitat loss, affecting numerous species (Thomas et al., 2004). The review discusses how these changes increase the risk of extinction, particularly for species with specific habitat requirements. 

b. Range Shifts and Phenological Changes:

Observations of range shifts and changes in the timing of biological events (phenology) are documented in response to changing climatic conditions (Parmesan & Yohe, 2003). These shifts affect ecosystems and may lead to mismatches between species and their resources. 

c. Ocean Acidification and Coral Reefs:

The review explores the impact of climate change on marine biodiversity, emphasizing ocean acidification’s threat to coral reefs (Hoegh-Guldberg et al., 2007). Changes in pH levels negatively affect coral calcification, disrupting the delicate balance of marine ecosystems. 

d. Adaptive Strategies and Conservation Efforts:

Recognizing the urgency of the situation, the literature review discusses various adaptive strategies adopted by species and conservation efforts aimed at mitigating the impacts of climate change on biodiversity (Hannah et al., 2007). It emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary approaches for effective conservation planning. 

How to write a good literature review

Writing a literature review involves summarizing and synthesizing existing research on a particular topic. A good literature review format should include the following elements. 

Introduction: The introduction sets the stage for your literature review, providing context and introducing the main focus of your review. 

• Opening Statement: Begin with a general statement about the broader topic and its significance in the field. 
• Scope and Purpose: Clearly define the scope of your literature review. Explain the specific research question or objective you aim to address. 
• Organizational Framework: Briefly outline the structure of your literature review, indicating how you will categorize and discuss the existing research. 
• Significance of the Study: Highlight why your literature review is important and how it contributes to the understanding of the chosen topic. 
• Thesis Statement: Conclude the introduction with a concise thesis statement that outlines the main argument or perspective you will develop in the body of the literature review. 

Body: The body of the literature review is where you provide a comprehensive analysis of existing literature, grouping studies based on themes, methodologies, or other relevant criteria. 

• Organize by Theme or Concept: Group studies that share common themes, concepts, or methodologies. Discuss each theme or concept in detail, summarizing key findings and identifying gaps or areas of disagreement. 
• Critical Analysis: Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each study. Discuss the methodologies used, the quality of evidence, and the overall contribution of each work to the understanding of the topic. 
• Synthesis of Findings: Synthesize the information from different studies to highlight trends, patterns, or areas of consensus in the literature. 
• Identification of Gaps: Discuss any gaps or limitations in the existing research and explain how your review contributes to filling these gaps. 
• Transition between Sections: Provide smooth transitions between different themes or concepts to maintain the flow of your literature review. 

Conclusion: The conclusion of your literature review should summarize the main findings, highlight the contributions of the review, and suggest avenues for future research. 

• Summary of Key Findings: Recap the main findings from the literature and restate how they contribute to your research question or objective. 
• Contributions to the Field: Discuss the overall contribution of your literature review to the existing knowledge in the field. 
• Implications and Applications: Explore the practical implications of the findings and suggest how they might impact future research or practice. 
• Recommendations for Future Research: Identify areas that require further investigation and propose potential directions for future research in the field. 
• Final Thoughts: Conclude with a final reflection on the importance of your literature review and its relevance to the broader academic community. 

Conducting a literature review

Conducting a literature review is an essential step in research that involves reviewing and analyzing existing literature on a specific topic. It’s important to know how to do a literature review effectively, so here are the steps to follow: 1  

Choose a Topic and Define the Research Question:

• Select a topic that is relevant to your field of study. 
• Clearly define your research question or objective. Determine what specific aspect of the topic do you want to explore? 

Decide on the Scope of Your Review:

• Determine the timeframe for your literature review. Are you focusing on recent developments, or do you want a historical overview? 
• Consider the geographical scope. Is your review global, or are you focusing on a specific region? 
• Define the inclusion and exclusion criteria. What types of sources will you include? Are there specific types of studies or publications you will exclude? 

Select Databases for Searches:

• Identify relevant databases for your field. Examples include PubMed, IEEE Xplore, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. 
• Consider searching in library catalogs, institutional repositories, and specialized databases related to your topic. 

Conduct Searches and Keep Track:

• Develop a systematic search strategy using keywords, Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT), and other search techniques. 
• Record and document your search strategy for transparency and replicability. 
• Keep track of the articles, including publication details, abstracts, and links. Use citation management tools like EndNote, Zotero, or Mendeley to organize your references. 

Review the Literature:

• Evaluate the relevance and quality of each source. Consider the methodology, sample size, and results of studies. 
• Organize the literature by themes or key concepts. Identify patterns, trends, and gaps in the existing research. 
• Summarize key findings and arguments from each source. Compare and contrast different perspectives. 
• Identify areas where there is a consensus in the literature and where there are conflicting opinions. 
• Provide critical analysis and synthesis of the literature. What are the strengths and weaknesses of existing research? 

Organize and Write Your Literature Review:

• Literature review outline should be based on themes, chronological order, or methodological approaches. 
• Write a clear and coherent narrative that synthesizes the information gathered. 
• Use proper citations for each source and ensure consistency in your citation style (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.). 
• Conclude your literature review by summarizing key findings, identifying gaps, and suggesting areas for future research. 

The literature review sample and detailed advice on writing and conducting a review will help you produce a well-structured report. But remember that a literature review is an ongoing process, and it may be necessary to revisit and update it as your research progresses. 

Frequently asked questions

A literature review is a critical and comprehensive analysis of existing literature (published and unpublished works) on a specific topic or research question and provides a synthesis of the current state of knowledge in a particular field. A well-conducted literature review is crucial for researchers to build upon existing knowledge, avoid duplication of efforts, and contribute to the advancement of their field. It also helps researchers situate their work within a broader context and facilitates the development of a sound theoretical and conceptual framework for their studies.

Literature review is a crucial component of research writing, providing a solid background for a research paper’s investigation. The aim is to keep professionals up to date by providing an understanding of ongoing developments within a specific field, including research methods, and experimental techniques used in that field, and present that knowledge in the form of a written report. Also, the depth and breadth of the literature review emphasizes the credibility of the scholar in his or her field.  

Before writing a literature review, it’s essential to undertake several preparatory steps to ensure that your review is well-researched, organized, and focused. This includes choosing a topic of general interest to you and doing exploratory research on that topic, writing an annotated bibliography, and noting major points, especially those that relate to the position you have taken on the topic. 

Literature reviews and academic research papers are essential components of scholarly work but serve different purposes within the academic realm. 3 A literature review aims to provide a foundation for understanding the current state of research on a particular topic, identify gaps or controversies, and lay the groundwork for future research. Therefore, it draws heavily from existing academic sources, including books, journal articles, and other scholarly publications. In contrast, an academic research paper aims to present new knowledge, contribute to the academic discourse, and advance the understanding of a specific research question. Therefore, it involves a mix of existing literature (in the introduction and literature review sections) and original data or findings obtained through research methods. 

Literature reviews are essential components of academic and research papers, and various strategies can be employed to conduct them effectively. If you want to know how to write a literature review for a research paper, here are four common approaches that are often used by researchers.  Chronological Review: This strategy involves organizing the literature based on the chronological order of publication. It helps to trace the development of a topic over time, showing how ideas, theories, and research have evolved.  Thematic Review: Thematic reviews focus on identifying and analyzing themes or topics that cut across different studies. Instead of organizing the literature chronologically, it is grouped by key themes or concepts, allowing for a comprehensive exploration of various aspects of the topic.  Methodological Review: This strategy involves organizing the literature based on the research methods employed in different studies. It helps to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of various methodologies and allows the reader to evaluate the reliability and validity of the research findings.  Theoretical Review: A theoretical review examines the literature based on the theoretical frameworks used in different studies. This approach helps to identify the key theories that have been applied to the topic and assess their contributions to the understanding of the subject.  It’s important to note that these strategies are not mutually exclusive, and a literature review may combine elements of more than one approach. The choice of strategy depends on the research question, the nature of the literature available, and the goals of the review. Additionally, other strategies, such as integrative reviews or systematic reviews, may be employed depending on the specific requirements of the research.

The literature review format can vary depending on the specific publication guidelines. However, there are some common elements and structures that are often followed. Here is a general guideline for the format of a literature review:  Introduction:   Provide an overview of the topic.  Define the scope and purpose of the literature review.  State the research question or objective.  Body:   Organize the literature by themes, concepts, or chronology.  Critically analyze and evaluate each source.  Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the studies.  Highlight any methodological limitations or biases.  Identify patterns, connections, or contradictions in the existing research.  Conclusion:   Summarize the key points discussed in the literature review.  Highlight the research gap.  Address the research question or objective stated in the introduction.  Highlight the contributions of the review and suggest directions for future research.

Both annotated bibliographies and literature reviews involve the examination of scholarly sources. While annotated bibliographies focus on individual sources with brief annotations, literature reviews provide a more in-depth, integrated, and comprehensive analysis of existing literature on a specific topic. The key differences are as follows: 

References 

• Denney, A. S., & Tewksbury, R. (2013). How to write a literature review.  Journal of criminal justice education ,  24 (2), 218-234. 
• Pan, M. L. (2016).  Preparing literature reviews: Qualitative and quantitative approaches . Taylor & Francis. 
• Cantero, C. (2019). How to write a literature review.  San José State University Writing Center . 

Paperpal is an AI writing assistant that help academics write better, faster with real-time suggestions for in-depth language and grammar correction. Trained on millions of research manuscripts enhanced by professional academic editors, Paperpal delivers human precision at machine speed.  

Try it for free or upgrade to  Paperpal Prime , which unlocks unlimited access to premium features like academic translation, paraphrasing, contextual synonyms, consistency checks and more. It’s like always having a professional academic editor by your side! Go beyond limitations and experience the future of academic writing.  Get Paperpal Prime now at just US$19 a month!

Related Reads:

• Empirical Research: A Comprehensive Guide for Academics 
• How to Write a Scientific Paper in 10 Steps 
• Life Sciences Papers: 9 Tips for Authors Writing in Biological Sciences
• What is an Argumentative Essay? How to Write It (With Examples)

6 Tips for Post-Doc Researchers to Take Their Career to the Next Level

Self-plagiarism in research: what it is and how to avoid it, you may also like, 4 ways paperpal encourages responsible writing with ai, what are scholarly sources and where can you..., how to write a hypothesis types and examples , measuring academic success: definition & strategies for excellence, what is academic writing: tips for students, why traditional editorial process needs an upgrade, paperpal’s new ai research finder empowers authors to..., what is hedging in academic writing  , how to use ai to enhance your college..., ai + human expertise – a paradigm shift....

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.

• University of Texas Libraries

Literature Reviews

• What is a literature review?
• Steps in the Literature Review Process
• Define your research question
• Determine inclusion and exclusion criteria
• Choose databases and search
• Review Results
• Synthesize Results
• Analyze Results
• Librarian Support

What is a Literature Review?

A literature or narrative review is a comprehensive review and analysis of the published literature on a specific topic or research question. The literature that is reviewed contains: books, articles, academic articles, conference proceedings, association papers, and dissertations. It contains the most pertinent studies and points to important past and current research and practices. It provides background and context, and shows how your research will contribute to the field. 

A literature review should: 

• Provide a comprehensive and updated review of the literature;
• Explain why this review has taken place;
• Articulate a position or hypothesis;
• Acknowledge and account for conflicting and corroborating points of view

From  S age Research Methods

Purpose of a Literature Review

A literature review can be written as an introduction to a study to:

• Demonstrate how a study fills a gap in research
• Compare a study with other research that's been done

Or it can be a separate work (a research article on its own) which:

• Organizes or describes a topic
• Describes variables within a particular issue/problem

Limitations of a Literature Review

Some of the limitations of a literature review are:

• It's a snapshot in time. Unlike other reviews, this one has beginning, a middle and an end. There may be future developments that could make your work less relevant.
• It may be too focused. Some niche studies may miss the bigger picture.
• It can be difficult to be comprehensive. There is no way to make sure all the literature on a topic was considered.
• It is easy to be biased if you stick to top tier journals. There may be other places where people are publishing exemplary research. Look to open access publications and conferences to reflect a more inclusive collection. Also, make sure to include opposing views (and not just supporting evidence).

Source: Grant, Maria J., and Andrew Booth. “A Typology of Reviews: An Analysis of 14 Review Types and Associated Methodologies.” Health Information & Libraries Journal, vol. 26, no. 2, June 2009, pp. 91–108. Wiley Online Library, doi:10.1111/j.1471-1842.2009.00848.x.

Meryl Brodsky : Communication and Information Studies

Hannah Chapman Tripp : Biology, Neuroscience

Carolyn Cunningham : Human Development & Family Sciences, Psychology, Sociology

Larayne Dallas : Engineering

Janelle Hedstrom : Special Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Ed Leadership & Policy ​

Susan Macicak : Linguistics

Imelda Vetter : Dell Medical School

For help in other subject areas, please see the guide to library specialists by subject .

Periodically, UT Libraries runs a workshop covering the basics and library support for literature reviews. While we try to offer these once per academic year, we find providing the recording to be helpful to community members who have missed the session. Following is the most recent recording of the workshop, Conducting a Literature Review. To view the recording, a UT login is required.

• October 26, 2022 recording
• Last Updated: Oct 26, 2022 2:49 PM
• URL: https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/literaturereviews

• UConn Library
• Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide
• Introduction

Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide — Introduction

• Getting Started
• How to Pick a Topic
• Strategies to Find Sources
• Evaluating Sources & Lit. Reviews
• Tips for Writing Literature Reviews
• Writing Literature Review: Useful Sites
• Citation Resources
• Other Academic Writings

What are Literature Reviews?

So, what is a literature review? "A literature review is an account of what has been published on a topic by accredited scholars and researchers. In writing the literature review, your purpose is to convey to your reader what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. As a piece of writing, the literature review must be defined by a guiding concept (e.g., your research objective, the problem or issue you are discussing, or your argumentative thesis). It is not just a descriptive list of the material available, or a set of summaries." Taylor, D.  The literature review: A few tips on conducting it . University of Toronto Health Sciences Writing Centre.

Goals of Literature Reviews

What are the goals of creating a Literature Review?  A literature could be written to accomplish different aims:

• To develop a theory or evaluate an existing theory
• To summarize the historical or existing state of a research topic
• Identify a problem in a field of research 

Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1997). Writing narrative literature reviews .  Review of General Psychology , 1 (3), 311-320.

What kinds of sources require a Literature Review?

• A research paper assigned in a course
• A thesis or dissertation
• A grant proposal
• An article intended for publication in a journal

All these instances require you to collect what has been written about your research topic so that you can demonstrate how your own research sheds new light on the topic.

Types of Literature Reviews

What kinds of literature reviews are written?

Narrative review: The purpose of this type of review is to describe the current state of the research on a specific topic/research and to offer a critical analysis of the literature reviewed. Studies are grouped by research/theoretical categories, and themes and trends, strengths and weakness, and gaps are identified. The review ends with a conclusion section which summarizes the findings regarding the state of the research of the specific study, the gaps identify and if applicable, explains how the author's research will address gaps identify in the review and expand the knowledge on the topic reviewed.

• Example : Predictors and Outcomes of U.S. Quality Maternity Leave: A Review and Conceptual Framework:  10.1177/08948453211037398  

Systematic review : "The authors of a systematic review use a specific procedure to search the research literature, select the studies to include in their review, and critically evaluate the studies they find." (p. 139). Nelson, L. K. (2013). Research in Communication Sciences and Disorders . Plural Publishing.

• Example : The effect of leave policies on increasing fertility: a systematic review:  10.1057/s41599-022-01270-w

Meta-analysis : "Meta-analysis is a method of reviewing research findings in a quantitative fashion by transforming the data from individual studies into what is called an effect size and then pooling and analyzing this information. The basic goal in meta-analysis is to explain why different outcomes have occurred in different studies." (p. 197). Roberts, M. C., & Ilardi, S. S. (2003). Handbook of Research Methods in Clinical Psychology . Blackwell Publishing.

• Example : Employment Instability and Fertility in Europe: A Meta-Analysis:  10.1215/00703370-9164737

Meta-synthesis : "Qualitative meta-synthesis is a type of qualitative study that uses as data the findings from other qualitative studies linked by the same or related topic." (p.312). Zimmer, L. (2006). Qualitative meta-synthesis: A question of dialoguing with texts .  Journal of Advanced Nursing , 53 (3), 311-318.

• Example : Women’s perspectives on career successes and barriers: A qualitative meta-synthesis:  10.1177/05390184221113735

Literature Reviews in the Health Sciences

• UConn Health subject guide on systematic reviews Explanation of the different review types used in health sciences literature as well as tools to help you find the right review type
• << Previous: Getting Started
• Next: How to Pick a Topic >>
• Last Updated: Sep 21, 2022 2:16 PM
• URL: https://guides.lib.uconn.edu/literaturereview

Have a language expert improve your writing

Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, automatically generate references for free.

• Knowledge Base
• Dissertation
• What is a Literature Review? | Guide, Template, & Examples

What is a Literature Review? | Guide, Template, & Examples

Published on 22 February 2022 by Shona McCombes . Revised on 7 June 2022.

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.

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 summarise sources – it analyses, synthesises, and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

Instantly correct all language mistakes in your text

Be assured that you'll submit flawless writing. Upload your document to correct all your mistakes.

Table of contents

Why write 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, frequently asked questions about literature reviews, introduction.

• Quick Run-through
• Step 1 & 2

When you write a dissertation or thesis, you will 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 scholarly context
• Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
• Position yourself in relation to other researchers and theorists
• Show how your dissertation addresses a gap or contributes to a debate

You might also have to write a literature review as a stand-alone assignment. In this case, the purpose is to evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of scholarly debates around a topic.

The content will look slightly different in each case, but the process of conducting a literature review follows the same steps. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below.

The only proofreading tool specialized in correcting academic writing

The academic proofreading tool has been trained on 1000s of academic texts and by native English editors. Making it the most accurate and reliable proofreading tool for students.

Correct my document today

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 objectives and questions .

If you are writing a literature review as a stand-alone assignment, you will have to choose a focus and develop a central question to direct your search. Unlike a dissertation research question, this question has to be answerable without collecting original data. You should be able to answer it based only on a review of existing publications.

Make a list of keywords

Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research topic. 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 if 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 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 use boolean operators to help narrow down your search:

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.

To identify the most important publications on your topic, take note of recurring citations. If the same authors, books or articles keep appearing in your reading, make sure to seek them out.

You probably won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on the topic – you’ll have to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your questions.

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?
• How does the publication contribute to your understanding of the topic? What are its key insights and arguments?
• 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 find out how many times an article has been cited on Google Scholar – a high citation count means the article has been influential in the field, and should certainly be included in your literature review.

The scope of your review will depend on your topic and discipline: in the sciences you usually only review recent literature, but in the humanities you might take a long historical perspective (for example, to trace how a concept has changed in meaning over time).

Remember that you can use our template to summarise and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using!

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’s important to keep track of your sources with references to avoid plagiarism . It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography, where you compile full reference 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.

You can use our free APA Reference Generator for quick, correct, consistent citations.

To begin organising your literature review’s argument and structure, you need to 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 organising the body of a literature review. You should have a rough idea of your strategy before you start writing.

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 summarising sources in order.

Try to analyse 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 organise 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.

If you are writing the literature review as part of your dissertation or thesis, reiterate your central problem or research question and give a brief summary of the scholarly context. You can emphasise the timeliness of the topic (“many recent studies have focused on the problem of x”) or highlight a gap in the literature (“while there has been much research on x, few researchers have taken y into consideration”).

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, make sure to follow these tips:

• Summarise and synthesise: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole.
• Analyse and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers – add your own interpretations, 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 transitions and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts.

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

If the literature review is part of your dissertation or thesis, reiterate how your research addresses gaps and contributes new knowledge, or discuss how you have drawn on existing theories and methods to build a framework for your research. This can lead directly into your methodology section.

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 dissertation , thesis, research paper , or proposal .

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

• To familiarise 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  dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

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 Reference Generator.

McCombes, S. (2022, June 07). What is a Literature Review? | Guide, Template, & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved 29 April 2024, from https://www.scribbr.co.uk/thesis-dissertation/literature-review/

Is this article helpful?

Shona McCombes

Other students also liked, how to write a dissertation proposal | a step-by-step guide, what is a theoretical framework | a step-by-step guide, what is a research methodology | steps & tips.

How to Write a Literature Review

What is a literature review.

• What Is the Literature
• Writing the Review

A literature review is much more than an annotated bibliography or a list of separate reviews of articles and books. It is a critical, analytical summary and synthesis of the current knowledge of a topic. Thus it should compare and relate different theories, findings, etc, rather than just summarize them individually. In addition, it should have a particular focus or theme to organize the review. It does not have to be an exhaustive account of everything published on the topic, but it should discuss all the significant academic literature and other relevant sources important for that focus.

This is meant to be a general guide to writing a literature review: ways to structure one, what to include, how it supplements other research. For more specific help on writing a review, and especially for help on finding the literature to review, sign up for a Personal Research Session .

The specific organization of a literature review depends on the type and purpose of the review, as well as on the specific field or topic being reviewed. But in general, it is a relatively brief but thorough exploration of past and current work on a topic. Rather than a chronological listing of previous work, though, literature reviews are usually organized thematically, such as different theoretical approaches, methodologies, or specific issues or concepts involved in the topic. A thematic organization makes it much easier to examine contrasting perspectives, theoretical approaches, methodologies, findings, etc, and to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of, and point out any gaps in, previous research. And this is the heart of what a literature review is about. A literature review may offer new interpretations, theoretical approaches, or other ideas; if it is part of a research proposal or report it should demonstrate the relationship of the proposed or reported research to others' work; but whatever else it does, it must provide a critical overview of the current state of research efforts. 

Literature reviews are common and very important in the sciences and social sciences. They are less common and have a less important role in the humanities, but they do have a place, especially stand-alone reviews.

Types of Literature Reviews

There are different types of literature reviews, and different purposes for writing a review, but the most common are:

• Stand-alone literature review articles . These provide an overview and analysis of the current state of research on a topic or question. The goal is to evaluate and compare previous research on a topic to provide an analysis of what is currently known, and also to reveal controversies, weaknesses, and gaps in current work, thus pointing to directions for future research. You can find examples published in any number of academic journals, but there is a series of Annual Reviews of *Subject* which are specifically devoted to literature review articles. Writing a stand-alone review is often an effective way to get a good handle on a topic and to develop ideas for your own research program. For example, contrasting theoretical approaches or conflicting interpretations of findings can be the basis of your research project: can you find evidence supporting one interpretation against another, or can you propose an alternative interpretation that overcomes their limitations?
• Part of a research proposal . This could be a proposal for a PhD dissertation, a senior thesis, or a class project. It could also be a submission for a grant. The literature review, by pointing out the current issues and questions concerning a topic, is a crucial part of demonstrating how your proposed research will contribute to the field, and thus of convincing your thesis committee to allow you to pursue the topic of your interest or a funding agency to pay for your research efforts.
• Part of a research report . When you finish your research and write your thesis or paper to present your findings, it should include a literature review to provide the context to which your work is a contribution. Your report, in addition to detailing the methods, results, etc. of your research, should show how your work relates to others' work.

A literature review for a research report is often a revision of the review for a research proposal, which can be a revision of a stand-alone review. Each revision should be a fairly extensive revision. With the increased knowledge of and experience in the topic as you proceed, your understanding of the topic will increase. Thus, you will be in a better position to analyze and critique the literature. In addition, your focus will change as you proceed in your research. Some areas of the literature you initially reviewed will be marginal or irrelevant for your eventual research, and you will need to explore other areas more thoroughly. 

Examples of Literature Reviews

See the series of Annual Reviews of *Subject* which are specifically devoted to literature review articles to find many examples of stand-alone literature reviews in the biomedical, physical, and social sciences. 

Research report articles vary in how they are organized, but a common general structure is to have sections such as:

• Abstract - Brief summary of the contents of the article
• Introduction - A explanation of the purpose of the study, a statement of the research question(s) the study intends to address
• Literature review - A critical assessment of the work done so far on this topic, to show how the current study relates to what has already been done
• Methods - How the study was carried out (e.g. instruments or equipment, procedures, methods to gather and analyze data)
• Results - What was found in the course of the study
• Discussion - What do the results mean
• Conclusion - State the conclusions and implications of the results, and discuss how it relates to the work reviewed in the literature review; also, point to directions for further work in the area

Here are some articles that illustrate variations on this theme. There is no need to read the entire articles (unless the contents interest you); just quickly browse through to see the sections, and see how each section is introduced and what is contained in them.

The Determinants of Undergraduate Grade Point Average: The Relative Importance of Family Background, High School Resources, and Peer Group Effects , in The Journal of Human Resources , v. 34 no. 2 (Spring 1999), p. 268-293.

This article has a standard breakdown of sections:

• Introduction
• Literature Review
• Some discussion sections

First Encounters of the Bureaucratic Kind: Early Freshman Experiences with a Campus Bureaucracy , in The Journal of Higher Education , v. 67 no. 6 (Nov-Dec 1996), p. 660-691.

This one does not have a section specifically labeled as a "literature review" or "review of the literature," but the first few sections cite a long list of other sources discussing previous research in the area before the authors present their own study they are reporting.

• Next: What Is the Literature >>
• Last Updated: Jan 11, 2024 9:48 AM
• URL: https://libguides.wesleyan.edu/litreview

Libraries | Research Guides

Literature reviews, what is a literature review, learning more about how to do a literature review.

• Planning the Review
• The Research Question
• Choosing Where to Search
• Organizing the Review
• Writing the Review

A literature review is a review and synthesis of existing research on a topic or research question. A literature review is meant to analyze the scholarly literature, make connections across writings and identify strengths, weaknesses, trends, and missing conversations. A literature review should address different aspects of a topic as it relates to your research question. A literature review goes beyond a description or summary of the literature you have read. 

• Sage Research Methods Core Collection This link opens in a new window SAGE Research Methods supports research at all levels by providing material to guide users through every step of the research process. SAGE Research Methods is the ultimate methods library with more than 1000 books, reference works, journal articles, and instructional videos by world-leading academics from across the social sciences, including the largest collection of qualitative methods books available online from any scholarly publisher. – Publisher

• Next: Planning the Review >>
• Last Updated: May 2, 2024 10:39 AM
• URL: https://libguides.northwestern.edu/literaturereviews

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts
• CAREER FEATURE
• 04 December 2020
• Correction 09 December 2020

How to write a superb literature review

Andy Tay is a freelance writer based in Singapore.

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Literature reviews are important resources for scientists. They provide historical context for a field while offering opinions on its future trajectory. Creating them can provide inspiration for one’s own research, as well as some practice in writing. But few scientists are trained in how to write a review — or in what constitutes an excellent one. Even picking the appropriate software to use can be an involved decision (see ‘Tools and techniques’). So Nature asked editors and working scientists with well-cited reviews for their tips.

Access options

Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals

Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription

24,99 € / 30 days

cancel any time

Subscribe to this journal

Receive 51 print issues and online access

185,98 € per year

only 3,65 € per issue

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-03422-x

Interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

Updates & Corrections

Correction 09 December 2020 : An earlier version of the tables in this article included some incorrect details about the programs Zotero, Endnote and Manubot. These have now been corrected.

Hsing, I.-M., Xu, Y. & Zhao, W. Electroanalysis 19 , 755–768 (2007).

Article   Google Scholar  

Ledesma, H. A. et al. Nature Nanotechnol. 14 , 645–657 (2019).

Article   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Brahlek, M., Koirala, N., Bansal, N. & Oh, S. Solid State Commun. 215–216 , 54–62 (2015).

Choi, Y. & Lee, S. Y. Nature Rev. Chem . https://doi.org/10.1038/s41570-020-00221-w (2020).

Download references

Related Articles

• Research management

Hunger on campus: why US PhD students are fighting over food

Career Feature 03 MAY 24

US National Academies report outlines barriers and solutions for scientist carers

Career News 02 MAY 24

My PI yelled at me and I’m devastated. What do I do?

Career Feature 02 MAY 24

France’s research mega-campus faces leadership crisis

News 03 MAY 24

Plagiarism in peer-review reports could be the ‘tip of the iceberg’

Nature Index 01 MAY 24

Mount Etna’s spectacular smoke rings and more — April’s best science images

How reliable is this research? Tool flags papers discussed on PubPeer

News 29 APR 24

Two Junior Research Group Leaders (f/d/m) for Photonics

Friedrich Schiller University is a traditional University with a strong research profile based in the heart of Germany. As a University covering al...

07743, Jena (DE)

Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena

PhD Researcher Positions (f/m/d)

Yeast Synthetic Biology

Germany (DE)

Humboldt Universität zu Berlin

Reporter, Nature

Reporter, Nature Location: London, UK - Hybrid office and remote working Closing date: 13th May 2024   Nature, the world’s most authoritative scien...

London (Greater) (GB)

Springer Nature Ltd

Vice-Chancellor and President

The Chinese University of Hong Kong Vice-Chancellor and President The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) is conducting a worldwide search for t...

Hong Kong (HK)

The Chinese University of Hong Kong

ERC-funded PhD and Postdoc Positions in Comparative Genomics

We are looking for two PhD and/or PostDoc candidates for the 6 years ERC-funded grant project "BATPROTECT" in Frankfurt a.M., Germany

Frankfurt am Main, Hessen (DE)

Senckenberg Society for Nature Research

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies

• Library Homepage

Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide: Literature Reviews?

• Literature Reviews?
• Strategies to Finding Sources
• Keeping up with Research!
• Evaluating Sources & Literature Reviews
• Organizing for Writing
• Writing Literature Review
• Other Academic Writings

What is a Literature Review?

So, what is a literature review .

"A literature review is an account of what has been published on a topic by accredited scholars and researchers. In writing the literature review, your purpose is to convey to your reader what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. As a piece of writing, the literature review must be defined by a guiding concept (e.g., your research objective, the problem or issue you are discussing, or your argumentative thesis). It is not just a descriptive list of the material available or a set of summaries." - Quote from Taylor, D. (n.d)."The Literature Review: A Few Tips on Conducting it".

• Citation: "The Literature Review: A Few Tips on Conducting it"

What kinds of literature reviews are written?

Each field has a particular way to do reviews for academic research literature. In the social sciences and humanities the most common are:

• Narrative Reviews: The purpose of this type of review is to describe the current state of the research on a specific research topic and to offer a critical analysis of the literature reviewed. Studies are grouped by research/theoretical categories, and themes and trends, strengths and weaknesses, and gaps are identified. The review ends with a conclusion section that summarizes the findings regarding the state of the research of the specific study, the gaps identify and if applicable, explains how the author's research will address gaps identify in the review and expand the knowledge on the topic reviewed.
• Book review essays/ Historiographical review essays : A type of literature review typical in History and related fields, e.g., Latin American studies. For example, the Latin American Research Review explains that the purpose of this type of review is to “(1) to familiarize readers with the subject, approach, arguments, and conclusions found in a group of books whose common focus is a historical period; a country or region within Latin America; or a practice, development, or issue of interest to specialists and others; (2) to locate these books within current scholarship, critical methodologies, and approaches; and (3) to probe the relation of these new books to previous work on the subject, especially canonical texts. Unlike individual book reviews, the cluster reviews found in LARR seek to address the state of the field or discipline and not solely the works at issue.” - LARR

What are the Goals of Creating a Literature Review?

• To develop a theory or evaluate an existing theory
• To summarize the historical or existing state of a research topic
• Identify a problem in a field of research 
• Baumeister, R.F. & Leary, M.R. (1997). "Writing narrative literature reviews," Review of General Psychology , 1(3), 311-320.

When do you need to write a Literature Review?

• When writing a prospectus or a thesis/dissertation
• When writing a research paper
• When writing a grant proposal

In all these cases you need to dedicate a chapter in these works to showcase what has been written about your research topic and to point out how your own research will shed new light into a body of scholarship.

Where I can find examples of Literature Reviews?

Note:  In the humanities, even if they don't use the term "literature review", they may have a dedicated  chapter that reviewed the "critical bibliography" or they incorporated that review in the introduction or first chapter of the dissertation, book, or article.

• UCSB electronic theses and dissertations In partnership with the Graduate Division, the UC Santa Barbara Library is making available theses and dissertations produced by UCSB students. Currently included in ADRL are theses and dissertations that were originally filed electronically, starting in 2011. In future phases of ADRL, all theses and dissertations created by UCSB students may be digitized and made available.

Where to Find Standalone Literature Reviews

Literature reviews are also written as standalone articles as a way to survey a particular research topic in-depth. This type of literature review looks at a topic from a historical perspective to see how the understanding of the topic has changed over time. 

• Find e-Journals for Standalone Literature Reviews The best way to get familiar with and to learn how to write literature reviews is by reading them. You can use our Journal Search option to find journals that specialize in publishing literature reviews from major disciplines like anthropology, sociology, etc. Usually these titles are called, "Annual Review of [discipline name] OR [Discipline name] Review. This option works best if you know the title of the publication you are looking for. Below are some examples of these journals! more... less... Journal Search can be found by hovering over the link for Research on the library website.

Social Sciences

• Annual Review of Anthropology
• Annual Review of Political Science
• Annual Review of Sociology
• Ethnic Studies Review

Hard science and health sciences:

• Annual Review of Biomedical Data Science
• Annual Review of Materials Science
• Systematic Review From journal site: "The journal Systematic Reviews encompasses all aspects of the design, conduct, and reporting of systematic reviews" in the health sciences.
• << Previous: Overview
• Next: Strategies to Finding Sources >>
• Last Updated: Mar 5, 2024 11:44 AM
• URL: https://guides.library.ucsb.edu/litreview

• USC Libraries
• Research Guides

Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper

• 5. The Literature Review
• Purpose of Guide
• Design Flaws to Avoid
• Independent and Dependent Variables
• Glossary of Research Terms
• Reading Research Effectively
• Narrowing a Topic Idea
• Broadening a Topic Idea
• Extending the Timeliness of a Topic Idea
• Academic Writing Style
• Applying Critical Thinking
• Choosing a Title
• Making an Outline
• Paragraph Development
• Research Process Video Series
• Executive Summary
• The C.A.R.S. Model
• Background Information
• The Research Problem/Question
• Theoretical Framework
• Citation Tracking
• Content Alert Services
• Evaluating Sources
• Primary Sources
• Secondary Sources
• Tiertiary Sources
• Scholarly vs. Popular Publications
• Qualitative Methods
• Quantitative Methods
• Insiderness
• Using Non-Textual Elements
• Limitations of the Study
• Common Grammar Mistakes
• Writing Concisely
• Avoiding Plagiarism
• Footnotes or Endnotes?
• Further Readings
• Generative AI and Writing
• USC Libraries Tutorials and Other Guides
• Bibliography

A literature review surveys prior research published in books, scholarly articles, and any other sources relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory, and by so doing, provides a description, summary, and critical evaluation of these works in relation to the research problem being investigated. Literature reviews are designed to provide an overview of sources you have used in researching a particular topic and to demonstrate to your readers how your research fits within existing scholarship about the topic.

Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper . Fourth edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2014.

Importance of a Good Literature Review

A literature review may consist of simply a summary of key sources, but in the social sciences, a literature review usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis, often within specific conceptual categories . A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information in a way that informs how you are planning to investigate a research problem. The analytical features of a literature review might:

• Give a new interpretation of old material or combine new with old interpretations,
• Trace the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates,
• Depending on the situation, evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant research, or
• Usually in the conclusion of a literature review, identify where gaps exist in how a problem has been researched to date.

Given this, the purpose of a literature review is to:

• Place each work in the context of its contribution to understanding the research problem being studied.
• Describe the relationship of each work to the others under consideration.
• Identify new ways to interpret prior research.
• Reveal any gaps that exist in the literature.
• Resolve conflicts amongst seemingly contradictory previous studies.
• Identify areas of prior scholarship to prevent duplication of effort.
• Point the way in fulfilling a need for additional research.
• Locate your own research within the context of existing literature [very important].

Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005; Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998; Jesson, Jill. Doing Your Literature Review: Traditional and Systematic Techniques . Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2011; Knopf, Jeffrey W. "Doing a Literature Review." PS: Political Science and Politics 39 (January 2006): 127-132; Ridley, Diana. The Literature Review: A Step-by-Step Guide for Students . 2nd ed. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2012.

Types of Literature Reviews

It is important to think of knowledge in a given field as consisting of three layers. First, there are the primary studies that researchers conduct and publish. Second are the reviews of those studies that summarize and offer new interpretations built from and often extending beyond the primary studies. Third, there are the perceptions, conclusions, opinion, and interpretations that are shared informally among scholars that become part of the body of epistemological traditions within the field.

In composing a literature review, it is important to note that it is often this third layer of knowledge that is cited as "true" even though it often has only a loose relationship to the primary studies and secondary literature reviews. Given this, while literature reviews are designed to provide an overview and synthesis of pertinent sources you have explored, there are a number of approaches you could adopt depending upon the type of analysis underpinning your study.

Argumentative Review This form examines literature selectively in order to support or refute an argument, deeply embedded assumption, or philosophical problem already established in the literature. The purpose is to develop a body of literature that establishes a contrarian viewpoint. Given the value-laden nature of some social science research [e.g., educational reform; immigration control], argumentative approaches to analyzing the literature can be a legitimate and important form of discourse. However, note that they can also introduce problems of bias when they are used to make summary claims of the sort found in systematic reviews [see below].

Integrative Review Considered a form of research that reviews, critiques, and synthesizes representative literature on a topic in an integrated way such that new frameworks and perspectives on the topic are generated. The body of literature includes all studies that address related or identical hypotheses or research problems. A well-done integrative review meets the same standards as primary research in regard to clarity, rigor, and replication. This is the most common form of review in the social sciences.

Historical Review Few things rest in isolation from historical precedent. Historical literature reviews focus on examining research throughout a period of time, often starting with the first time an issue, concept, theory, phenomena emerged in the literature, then tracing its evolution within the scholarship of a discipline. The purpose is to place research in a historical context to show familiarity with state-of-the-art developments and to identify the likely directions for future research.

Methodological Review A review does not always focus on what someone said [findings], but how they came about saying what they say [method of analysis]. Reviewing methods of analysis provides a framework of understanding at different levels [i.e. those of theory, substantive fields, research approaches, and data collection and analysis techniques], how researchers draw upon a wide variety of knowledge ranging from the conceptual level to practical documents for use in fieldwork in the areas of ontological and epistemological consideration, quantitative and qualitative integration, sampling, interviewing, data collection, and data analysis. This approach helps highlight ethical issues which you should be aware of and consider as you go through your own study.

Systematic Review This form consists of an overview of existing evidence pertinent to a clearly formulated research question, which uses pre-specified and standardized methods to identify and critically appraise relevant research, and to collect, report, and analyze data from the studies that are included in the review. The goal is to deliberately document, critically evaluate, and summarize scientifically all of the research about a clearly defined research problem . Typically it focuses on a very specific empirical question, often posed in a cause-and-effect form, such as "To what extent does A contribute to B?" This type of literature review is primarily applied to examining prior research studies in clinical medicine and allied health fields, but it is increasingly being used in the social sciences.

Theoretical Review The purpose of this form is to examine the corpus of theory that has accumulated in regard to an issue, concept, theory, phenomena. The theoretical literature review helps to establish what theories already exist, the relationships between them, to what degree the existing theories have been investigated, and to develop new hypotheses to be tested. Often this form is used to help establish a lack of appropriate theories or reveal that current theories are inadequate for explaining new or emerging research problems. The unit of analysis can focus on a theoretical concept or a whole theory or framework.

NOTE : Most often the literature review will incorporate some combination of types. For example, a review that examines literature supporting or refuting an argument, assumption, or philosophical problem related to the research problem will also need to include writing supported by sources that establish the history of these arguments in the literature.

Baumeister, Roy F. and Mark R. Leary. "Writing Narrative Literature Reviews."  Review of General Psychology 1 (September 1997): 311-320; Mark R. Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper . 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005; Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998; Kennedy, Mary M. "Defining a Literature." Educational Researcher 36 (April 2007): 139-147; Petticrew, Mark and Helen Roberts. Systematic Reviews in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide . Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2006; Torracro, Richard. "Writing Integrative Literature Reviews: Guidelines and Examples." Human Resource Development Review 4 (September 2005): 356-367; Rocco, Tonette S. and Maria S. Plakhotnik. "Literature Reviews, Conceptual Frameworks, and Theoretical Frameworks: Terms, Functions, and Distinctions." Human Ressource Development Review 8 (March 2008): 120-130; Sutton, Anthea. Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review . Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, 2016.

Structure and Writing Style

I.  Thinking About Your Literature Review

The structure of a literature review should include the following in support of understanding the research problem :

• An overview of the subject, issue, or theory under consideration, along with the objectives of the literature review,
• Division of works under review into themes or categories [e.g. works that support a particular position, those against, and those offering alternative approaches entirely],
• An explanation of how each work is similar to and how it varies from the others,
• Conclusions as to which pieces are best considered in their argument, are most convincing of their opinions, and make the greatest contribution to the understanding and development of their area of research.

The critical evaluation of each work should consider :

• Provenance -- what are the author's credentials? Are the author's arguments supported by evidence [e.g. primary historical material, case studies, narratives, statistics, recent scientific findings]?
• Methodology -- were the techniques used to identify, gather, and analyze the data appropriate to addressing the research problem? Was the sample size appropriate? Were the results effectively interpreted and reported?
• Objectivity -- is the author's perspective even-handed or prejudicial? Is contrary data considered or is certain pertinent information ignored to prove the author's point?
• Persuasiveness -- which of the author's theses are most convincing or least convincing?
• Validity -- are the author's arguments and conclusions convincing? Does the work ultimately contribute in any significant way to an understanding of the subject?

II.  Development of the Literature Review

Four Basic Stages of Writing 1.  Problem formulation -- which topic or field is being examined and what are its component issues? 2.  Literature search -- finding materials relevant to the subject being explored. 3.  Data evaluation -- determining which literature makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the topic. 4.  Analysis and interpretation -- discussing the findings and conclusions of pertinent literature.

Consider the following issues before writing the literature review: Clarify If your assignment is not specific about what form your literature review should take, seek clarification from your professor by asking these questions: 1.  Roughly how many sources would be appropriate to include? 2.  What types of sources should I review (books, journal articles, websites; scholarly versus popular sources)? 3.  Should I summarize, synthesize, or critique sources by discussing a common theme or issue? 4.  Should I evaluate the sources in any way beyond evaluating how they relate to understanding the research problem? 5.  Should I provide subheadings and other background information, such as definitions and/or a history? Find Models Use the exercise of reviewing the literature to examine how authors in your discipline or area of interest have composed their literature review sections. Read them to get a sense of the types of themes you might want to look for in your own research or to identify ways to organize your final review. The bibliography or reference section of sources you've already read, such as required readings in the course syllabus, are also excellent entry points into your own research. Narrow the Topic The narrower your topic, the easier it will be to limit the number of sources you need to read in order to obtain a good survey of relevant resources. Your professor will probably not expect you to read everything that's available about the topic, but you'll make the act of reviewing easier if you first limit scope of the research problem. A good strategy is to begin by searching the USC Libraries Catalog for recent books about the topic and review the table of contents for chapters that focuses on specific issues. You can also review the indexes of books to find references to specific issues that can serve as the focus of your research. For example, a book surveying the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may include a chapter on the role Egypt has played in mediating the conflict, or look in the index for the pages where Egypt is mentioned in the text. Consider Whether Your Sources are Current Some disciplines require that you use information that is as current as possible. This is particularly true in disciplines in medicine and the sciences where research conducted becomes obsolete very quickly as new discoveries are made. However, when writing a review in the social sciences, a survey of the history of the literature may be required. In other words, a complete understanding the research problem requires you to deliberately examine how knowledge and perspectives have changed over time. Sort through other current bibliographies or literature reviews in the field to get a sense of what your discipline expects. You can also use this method to explore what is considered by scholars to be a "hot topic" and what is not.

III.  Ways to Organize Your Literature Review

Chronology of Events If your review follows the chronological method, you could write about the materials according to when they were published. This approach should only be followed if a clear path of research building on previous research can be identified and that these trends follow a clear chronological order of development. For example, a literature review that focuses on continuing research about the emergence of German economic power after the fall of the Soviet Union. By Publication Order your sources by publication chronology, then, only if the order demonstrates a more important trend. For instance, you could order a review of literature on environmental studies of brown fields if the progression revealed, for example, a change in the soil collection practices of the researchers who wrote and/or conducted the studies. Thematic [“conceptual categories”] A thematic literature review is the most common approach to summarizing prior research in the social and behavioral sciences. Thematic reviews are organized around a topic or issue, rather than the progression of time, although the progression of time may still be incorporated into a thematic review. For example, a review of the Internet’s impact on American presidential politics could focus on the development of online political satire. While the study focuses on one topic, the Internet’s impact on American presidential politics, it would still be organized chronologically reflecting technological developments in media. The difference in this example between a "chronological" and a "thematic" approach is what is emphasized the most: themes related to the role of the Internet in presidential politics. Note that more authentic thematic reviews tend to break away from chronological order. A review organized in this manner would shift between time periods within each section according to the point being made. Methodological A methodological approach focuses on the methods utilized by the researcher. For the Internet in American presidential politics project, one methodological approach would be to look at cultural differences between the portrayal of American presidents on American, British, and French websites. Or the review might focus on the fundraising impact of the Internet on a particular political party. A methodological scope will influence either the types of documents in the review or the way in which these documents are discussed.

Other Sections of Your Literature Review Once you've decided on the organizational method for your literature review, the sections you need to include in the paper should be easy to figure out because they arise from your organizational strategy. In other words, a chronological review would have subsections for each vital time period; a thematic review would have subtopics based upon factors that relate to the theme or issue. However, sometimes you may need to add additional sections that are necessary for your study, but do not fit in the organizational strategy of the body. What other sections you include in the body is up to you. However, only include what is necessary for the reader to locate your study within the larger scholarship about the research problem.

Here are examples of other sections, usually in the form of a single paragraph, you may need to include depending on the type of review you write:

• Current Situation : Information necessary to understand the current topic or focus of the literature review.
• Sources Used : Describes the methods and resources [e.g., databases] you used to identify the literature you reviewed.
• History : The chronological progression of the field, the research literature, or an idea that is necessary to understand the literature review, if the body of the literature review is not already a chronology.
• Selection Methods : Criteria you used to select (and perhaps exclude) sources in your literature review. For instance, you might explain that your review includes only peer-reviewed [i.e., scholarly] sources.
• Standards : Description of the way in which you present your information.
• Questions for Further Research : What questions about the field has the review sparked? How will you further your research as a result of the review?

IV.  Writing Your Literature Review

Once you've settled on how to organize your literature review, you're ready to write each section. When writing your review, keep in mind these issues.

Use Evidence A literature review section is, in this sense, just like any other academic research paper. Your interpretation of the available sources must be backed up with evidence [citations] that demonstrates that what you are saying is valid. Be Selective Select only the most important points in each source to highlight in the review. The type of information you choose to mention should relate directly to the research problem, whether it is thematic, methodological, or chronological. Related items that provide additional information, but that are not key to understanding the research problem, can be included in a list of further readings . Use Quotes Sparingly Some short quotes are appropriate if you want to emphasize a point, or if what an author stated cannot be easily paraphrased. Sometimes you may need to quote certain terminology that was coined by the author, is not common knowledge, or taken directly from the study. Do not use extensive quotes as a substitute for using your own words in reviewing the literature. Summarize and Synthesize Remember to summarize and synthesize your sources within each thematic paragraph as well as throughout the review. Recapitulate important features of a research study, but then synthesize it by rephrasing the study's significance and relating it to your own work and the work of others. Keep Your Own Voice While the literature review presents others' ideas, your voice [the writer's] should remain front and center. For example, weave references to other sources into what you are writing but maintain your own voice by starting and ending the paragraph with your own ideas and wording. Use Caution When Paraphrasing When paraphrasing a source that is not your own, be sure to represent the author's information or opinions accurately and in your own words. Even when paraphrasing an author’s work, you still must provide a citation to that work.

V.  Common Mistakes to Avoid

These are the most common mistakes made in reviewing social science research literature.

• Sources in your literature review do not clearly relate to the research problem;
• You do not take sufficient time to define and identify the most relevant sources to use in the literature review related to the research problem;
• Relies exclusively on secondary analytical sources rather than including relevant primary research studies or data;
• Uncritically accepts another researcher's findings and interpretations as valid, rather than examining critically all aspects of the research design and analysis;
• Does not describe the search procedures that were used in identifying the literature to review;
• Reports isolated statistical results rather than synthesizing them in chi-squared or meta-analytic methods; and,
• Only includes research that validates assumptions and does not consider contrary findings and alternative interpretations found in the literature.

Cook, Kathleen E. and Elise Murowchick. “Do Literature Review Skills Transfer from One Course to Another?” Psychology Learning and Teaching 13 (March 2014): 3-11; Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper . 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005; Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998; Jesson, Jill. Doing Your Literature Review: Traditional and Systematic Techniques . London: SAGE, 2011; Literature Review Handout. Online Writing Center. Liberty University; Literature Reviews. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Onwuegbuzie, Anthony J. and Rebecca Frels. Seven Steps to a Comprehensive Literature Review: A Multimodal and Cultural Approach . Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2016; Ridley, Diana. The Literature Review: A Step-by-Step Guide for Students . 2nd ed. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2012; Randolph, Justus J. “A Guide to Writing the Dissertation Literature Review." Practical Assessment, Research, and Evaluation. vol. 14, June 2009; Sutton, Anthea. Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review . Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, 2016; Taylor, Dena. The Literature Review: A Few Tips On Conducting It. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Writing a Literature Review. Academic Skills Centre. University of Canberra.

Writing Tip

Break Out of Your Disciplinary Box!

Thinking interdisciplinarily about a research problem can be a rewarding exercise in applying new ideas, theories, or concepts to an old problem. For example, what might cultural anthropologists say about the continuing conflict in the Middle East? In what ways might geographers view the need for better distribution of social service agencies in large cities than how social workers might study the issue? You don’t want to substitute a thorough review of core research literature in your discipline for studies conducted in other fields of study. However, particularly in the social sciences, thinking about research problems from multiple vectors is a key strategy for finding new solutions to a problem or gaining a new perspective. Consult with a librarian about identifying research databases in other disciplines; almost every field of study has at least one comprehensive database devoted to indexing its research literature.

Frodeman, Robert. The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity . New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Another Writing Tip

Don't Just Review for Content!

While conducting a review of the literature, maximize the time you devote to writing this part of your paper by thinking broadly about what you should be looking for and evaluating. Review not just what scholars are saying, but how are they saying it. Some questions to ask:

• How are they organizing their ideas?
• What methods have they used to study the problem?
• What theories have been used to explain, predict, or understand their research problem?
• What sources have they cited to support their conclusions?
• How have they used non-textual elements [e.g., charts, graphs, figures, etc.] to illustrate key points?

When you begin to write your literature review section, you'll be glad you dug deeper into how the research was designed and constructed because it establishes a means for developing more substantial analysis and interpretation of the research problem.

Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1 998.

Yet Another Writing Tip

When Do I Know I Can Stop Looking and Move On?

Here are several strategies you can utilize to assess whether you've thoroughly reviewed the literature:

• Look for repeating patterns in the research findings . If the same thing is being said, just by different people, then this likely demonstrates that the research problem has hit a conceptual dead end. At this point consider: Does your study extend current research?  Does it forge a new path? Or, does is merely add more of the same thing being said?
• Look at sources the authors cite to in their work . If you begin to see the same researchers cited again and again, then this is often an indication that no new ideas have been generated to address the research problem.
• Search Google Scholar to identify who has subsequently cited leading scholars already identified in your literature review [see next sub-tab]. This is called citation tracking and there are a number of sources that can help you identify who has cited whom, particularly scholars from outside of your discipline. Here again, if the same authors are being cited again and again, this may indicate no new literature has been written on the topic.

Onwuegbuzie, Anthony J. and Rebecca Frels. Seven Steps to a Comprehensive Literature Review: A Multimodal and Cultural Approach . Los Angeles, CA: Sage, 2016; Sutton, Anthea. Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review . Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, 2016.

• << Previous: Theoretical Framework
• Next: Citation Tracking >>
• Last Updated: May 2, 2024 4:39 PM
• URL: https://libguides.usc.edu/writingguide

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

• UTC Library
• Research Guides
• Single Page

Literature Reviews

What is a literature review.

• Getting Started
• Searching the Literature
• How to Read Scholarly Studies
• Managing Your Results
• Assembling Your Review

Jump to Section

• Selecting a Topic & Scope
• Identify Keywords to Use in Searching
• Finding Articles
• Reading, Note-taking, and Organization
• Citation Management

Writing Assistance for Literature Reviews

Research help.

Set up a consultation with a librarian for help refining your topic and finding sources for your paper.

• Make an Appointment

A literature review is a very specific type of academic project. It is not an annotated bibliography. It isn't a research paper. It isn't a comprehensive list of everything ever published on a certain topic. 

Literature reviews are not created to produce new insights. They are written to explore and explain the literature on the topic or issue. 

One of the most important functions of a literature review is to lay the groundwork, provide background and context, for a larger research project such as a Masters thesis or PhD dissertation. Literature reviews often come at the start of scholarly journal articles. In the social sciences and natural sciences, a literature review comprises a section of a scholarly journal article.

Professors in research methods courses often assign standalone literature reviews so that students develop skills in searching, analyzing and organizing scholarly literature in a particular field. 

1. Selecting a Topic & Scope

The first step in any literature review is to identify a topic or subject area you wish to explore, and then setting some parameters to find the scope of your review.

You also need to make sure you select a subject area that has already been researched . It will not be possible to locate sufficient existing literature on a brand new discovery or current event that is being written about in the news right now. It needs to be a well-established research area with existing studies you can review, organize and analyze. Some professors require you to find a topic that has 'not been researched before'. In that case, they don't mean an entire broad topic that hasn't been researched; instead, you'll want to find a sliver of a broad topic that hasn't been researched before. This is where narrowing your topic and finding parameters becomes very important. You may need to do some background reading on several different topics to find one that works, if your professor is having you do a standalone literature review as part of a research methods course.

Ways of Narrowing a Broad topic

For example:

Broad topic: ADHD treatments

Narrowed question: How can neurofeedback be used in threating elementary school-aged children?

Publication Dates

The scope of your review will be a part of refining your topic area or research question. In some disciplines, medicine and health science for example, the publication date of your sources may be extremely important. So, to avoid including outdated clinical recommendations, you may want to limit your review to only the most recent research out there. For other topics, say history or literature, publication date may not be as important - and scholarly research from 20, 30, even 50 years ago may still be relevant and useful today. So it's good idea to consider setting some date ranges for your search, it that is important to your topic.

Whatever your topic area turns out to be, framing the boundaries of your research question ahead of time will make searching and selecting appropriate articles that much easier. 

2. Identify Keywords to Use in Searching

Once you have defined a suitable topic or research question for your review, you will need to create a list of keywords that you will use to search for appropriate studies to include in your review. You will be doing searches through several different databases, Google scholar, or publisher platforms and the terminology used in each may vary. It is especially important to have a good variety of search terms that you can combine in different ways. This will ensure you gather the most relevant sources that cover your topic thoroughly. 

Remember to continue to gather and change your keywords as you read more about your topic!

To start, list synonyms and phrases that have to do with the main words of a research topic:

Example: Is neurofeedback useful in the treatment of ADHD in children?

Now, let's consider the word "useful" in this example topic. What is meant by "useful"? The word itself will not be helpful while searching. Instead, think about what might be useful  in terms of treatment of a child with ADHD. Think about benefits and outcomes and brainstorm a list of words:

3. Finding Articles

Using research guides to find subject specific databases.

For more focused searching of the literature of just one discipline, head over to the Research Guides section of our website. We have  Subject Guides   for all disciplines represented at UTC. Find the subject guide that has most to do with your topic, for example, if you are writing about politics, you'd choose Political Science and Public Service guide. Writing about K-12 schools? Choose Education. Each Subject Guide was created by UTC Librarians and has links to a variety of resources that you have access to.

The databases listed are smaller, specialized search engines that mainly retrieve scholarly articles. You will usually find smaller sets of results for each search you do, but those results will be from a subset of very focused resources.

Subject specific databases are searchable by keywords just like Quick Search. An example is shown in the screenshot below of the APA PsycINFO database using the keywords "neurofeedback therapy" AND "ADHD in children":

APA PsycInfo Database Search:

Using the Quick Search

Quick Search is the main search box located in the center of the Library home page. It covers all formats within our collection (physical and electronic, books, films, articles and more).and all subject areas. It is an excellent tool for locating and accessing scholarly content using keyword searches. Below is an example of how to enter your keywords for an effective search, for our sample topic we typed the words "neurofeedback ADHD children behavior problems":

Quick Search has filters  to narrow to just peer reviewed if you'd like, or you can narrow to a specific format like articles, books, or ebooks. You can also narrow by date. Look for the filters on the left sidebar after you run a search. 

As you browse results. you will notice links below each article that allow you to read the full text on the publisher website. If you decide you would like to use the article in your lit review, download the entire PDF to your device for later use. 

Using Google Scholar

Click the  Databases button (just below the Quick Search box on library's homepage) and look for Google Scholar under Multisubject Databases. Using Google Scholar through the UTC Library links our library subscriptions to your Google Scholar search results- which allows you to see articles with no paywalls if we have access! 

4. Reading, Note-taking, and Organization

1. review the how to read a scholarly article guide.

• Learn about common sections in science and social science articles
• Strategies and tips for reading start by reading the entire Abstract, and feel free to jump down to Discussion to decide if an article should be included in your paper

2. Save yourself time with good note-taking

As you read each study, take notes about the most important findings, key concepts, debates or areas of controversy and common themes you see. These notes will inform how you approach organizing and writing your literature review.

To keep organized, UTC Librarians recommend using a literature review matrix, or spreadsheet, to keep track of the articles you find as you go.  Add columns for the citation (including the URL of the article), and once you read it, track the authors' research question, methods, findings and themes. Importantly, keep track of notes and quotes as you go, and the page numbers you got them from. You will see themes or facts emerge as you read more and more articles. 

Here's an example Literature Review Matrix for you to view. Download a sample matrix as an Excel file and edit with your own sources.

3. Some ideas on how to compile an outline for your review:

After reading and taking notes on the sources you are including in your literature review, you will probably be able to identify common themes or threads that appear throughout. These recurring threads or themes can be very useful in creating a narrative framework for your review to make it easier for your readers to understand what literature exists, what has been learned, and why it is significant. Using our example of Neurofeedback Therapy for Children with ADHD, we might decide to organize our results something like this:

Other questions you might ask yourself as you decide how to outline your literature review: 

• What are the major claims being made about the topic? (There may be several)
• What significant data exists to support / explain the claims?
• Are there connections between the claims / concepts / evidence?
• Are there controversies in the literature? 
• Are there knowledge gaps that have yet to be explored? 

5. Citation Management

For smaller literature review projects, simply keeping a list of your references in Word or Google Docs is probably fine. But for longer projects, or those that are going to form the basis for a thesis or dissertation, many students choose to use citation management software to keep track of, organize, and format their references. The UTC Library supports two main citation management options: Zotero and EndNote. 

Zotero is an open source tool provided by Google. It works well with Chrome and Google Docs and has a really nice, easy to use Chrome extension that allows you to seamlessly add references and full text PDFs to your reference "library" as you do your research. The Library has a guide page that walks you through the basics of downloading, configuring and using Zotero. Visit the link below to get started. 

Zotero Guide Page

EndNote is a very powerful software package with lots of advanced features. It is produced by a commercial publisher and the Library pays a subscription fee to offer it to our students and faculty. It comes in two versions: desktop and cloud-based. (The two versions work together to provide seamless access and redundancy no matter where you are). EndNote can be very labor intensive to configure and use at the beginning, but it offers hundreds of citation styles (most major journals, academic associations and scholarly publishers) and works very well for longer, more complex projects with many references and citations. It integrates really well with Microsoft Word but does not work as well with Google Docs. The Library has basic information on its website about how to download and set up EndNote, but in order to learn it effectively, a workshop or librarian consultation is usually required. Our EndNote information is found a the link below:

EndNote Help Page

The UTC Library is home to a full-service Writing and Communication Center with tutors available to assist you with writing projects at any stage - from outline, to draft, to final manuscript. The WCC has it's own section of the UTC Library website. Check out the link below to learn more about the services they offer and how to go about scheduling an appointment.

UTC Writing and Communication Center

• Next: Getting Started >>
• Last Updated: Sep 19, 2023 8:50 AM
• URL: https://guides.lib.utc.edu/literature-reviews

• Interlibrary Loan and Scan & Deliver
• Course Reserves
• Purchase Request
• Collection Development & Maintenance
• Current Negotiations
• Ask a Librarian
• Instructor Support
• Library How-To
• Research Guides
• Research Support
• Study Rooms
• Research Rooms
• Partner Spaces
• Loanable Equipment
• Print, Scan, Copy
• 3D Printers
• Poster Printing
• OSULP Leadership
• Strategic Plan

Scholarly Articles: How can I tell?

• Journal Information

Literature Review

• Author and affiliation
• Introduction
• Specialized Vocabulary
• Methodology
• Research sponsors
• Peer-review

The literature review section of an article is a summary or analysis of all the research the author read before doing his/her own research. This section may be part of the introduction or in a section called Background. It provides the background on who has done related research, what that research has or has not uncovered and how the current research contributes to the conversation on the topic. When you read the lit review ask:

• Does the review of the literature logically lead up to the research questions?
• Do the authors review articles relevant to their research study?
• Do the authors show where there are gaps in the literature?

The lit review is also a good place to find other sources you may want to read on this topic to help you get the bigger picture.

• << Previous: Journal Information
• Next: Author and affiliation >>
• Last Updated: Apr 15, 2024 3:26 PM
• URL: https://guides.library.oregonstate.edu/ScholarlyArticle

Contact Info

121 The Valley Library Corvallis OR 97331–4501

Phone: 541-737-3331

Services for Persons with Disabilities

In the Valley Library

• Oregon State University Press
• Special Collections and Archives Research Center
• Undergrad Research & Writing Studio
• Graduate Student Commons
• Tutoring Services
• Northwest Art Collection

Digital Projects

• Oregon Explorer
• Oregon Digital
• ScholarsArchive@OSU
• Digital Publishing Initiatives
• Atlas of the Pacific Northwest
• Marilyn Potts Guin Library  
• Cascades Campus Library
• McDowell Library of Vet Medicine

• PRO Courses Guides New Tech Help Pro Expert Videos About wikiHow Pro Upgrade Sign In
• EDIT Edit this Article
• EXPLORE Tech Help Pro About Us Random Article Quizzes Request a New Article Community Dashboard This Or That Game Popular Categories Arts and Entertainment Artwork Books Movies Computers and Electronics Computers Phone Skills Technology Hacks Health Men's Health Mental Health Women's Health Relationships Dating Love Relationship Issues Hobbies and Crafts Crafts Drawing Games Education & Communication Communication Skills Personal Development Studying Personal Care and Style Fashion Hair Care Personal Hygiene Youth Personal Care School Stuff Dating All Categories Arts and Entertainment Finance and Business Home and Garden Relationship Quizzes Cars & Other Vehicles Food and Entertaining Personal Care and Style Sports and Fitness Computers and Electronics Health Pets and Animals Travel Education & Communication Hobbies and Crafts Philosophy and Religion Work World Family Life Holidays and Traditions Relationships Youth
• Browse Articles
• Learn Something New
• Quizzes Hot
• This Or That Game
• Train Your Brain
• Explore More
• Support wikiHow
• About wikiHow
• Log in / Sign up
• Education and Communications
• Critical Reviews

How to Write an Article Review (With Examples)

Last Updated: April 24, 2024 Fact Checked

Preparing to Write Your Review

Writing the article review, sample article reviews, expert q&a.

This article was co-authored by Jake Adams . Jake Adams is an academic tutor and the owner of Simplifi EDU, a Santa Monica, California based online tutoring business offering learning resources and online tutors for academic subjects K-College, SAT & ACT prep, and college admissions applications. With over 14 years of professional tutoring experience, Jake is dedicated to providing his clients the very best online tutoring experience and access to a network of excellent undergraduate and graduate-level tutors from top colleges all over the nation. Jake holds a BS in International Business and Marketing from Pepperdine University. There are 12 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 3,097,479 times.

An article review is both a summary and an evaluation of another writer's article. Teachers often assign article reviews to introduce students to the work of experts in the field. Experts also are often asked to review the work of other professionals. Understanding the main points and arguments of the article is essential for an accurate summation. Logical evaluation of the article's main theme, supporting arguments, and implications for further research is an important element of a review . Here are a few guidelines for writing an article review.

Education specialist Alexander Peterman recommends: "In the case of a review, your objective should be to reflect on the effectiveness of what has already been written, rather than writing to inform your audience about a subject."

Article Review 101

• Read the article very closely, and then take time to reflect on your evaluation. Consider whether the article effectively achieves what it set out to.
• Write out a full article review by completing your intro, summary, evaluation, and conclusion. Don't forget to add a title, too!
• Proofread your review for mistakes (like grammar and usage), while also cutting down on needless information.

• Article reviews present more than just an opinion. You will engage with the text to create a response to the scholarly writer's ideas. You will respond to and use ideas, theories, and research from your studies. Your critique of the article will be based on proof and your own thoughtful reasoning.
• An article review only responds to the author's research. It typically does not provide any new research. However, if you are correcting misleading or otherwise incorrect points, some new data may be presented.
• An article review both summarizes and evaluates the article.

• Summarize the article. Focus on the important points, claims, and information.
• Discuss the positive aspects of the article. Think about what the author does well, good points she makes, and insightful observations.
• Identify contradictions, gaps, and inconsistencies in the text. Determine if there is enough data or research included to support the author's claims. Find any unanswered questions left in the article.

• Make note of words or issues you don't understand and questions you have.
• Look up terms or concepts you are unfamiliar with, so you can fully understand the article. Read about concepts in-depth to make sure you understand their full context.

• Pay careful attention to the meaning of the article. Make sure you fully understand the article. The only way to write a good article review is to understand the article.

• With either method, make an outline of the main points made in the article and the supporting research or arguments. It is strictly a restatement of the main points of the article and does not include your opinions.
• After putting the article in your own words, decide which parts of the article you want to discuss in your review. You can focus on the theoretical approach, the content, the presentation or interpretation of evidence, or the style. You will always discuss the main issues of the article, but you can sometimes also focus on certain aspects. This comes in handy if you want to focus the review towards the content of a course.
• Review the summary outline to eliminate unnecessary items. Erase or cross out the less important arguments or supplemental information. Your revised summary can serve as the basis for the summary you provide at the beginning of your review.

• What does the article set out to do?
• What is the theoretical framework or assumptions?
• Are the central concepts clearly defined?
• How adequate is the evidence?
• How does the article fit into the literature and field?
• Does it advance the knowledge of the subject?
• How clear is the author's writing? Don't: include superficial opinions or your personal reaction. Do: pay attention to your biases, so you can overcome them.

• For example, in MLA , a citation may look like: Duvall, John N. "The (Super)Marketplace of Images: Television as Unmediated Mediation in DeLillo's White Noise ." Arizona Quarterly 50.3 (1994): 127-53. Print. [9] X Trustworthy Source Purdue Online Writing Lab Trusted resource for writing and citation guidelines Go to source

• For example: The article, "Condom use will increase the spread of AIDS," was written by Anthony Zimmerman, a Catholic priest.

• Your introduction should only be 10-25% of your review.
• End the introduction with your thesis. Your thesis should address the above issues. For example: Although the author has some good points, his article is biased and contains some misinterpretation of data from others’ analysis of the effectiveness of the condom.

• Use direct quotes from the author sparingly.
• Review the summary you have written. Read over your summary many times to ensure that your words are an accurate description of the author's article.

• Support your critique with evidence from the article or other texts.
• The summary portion is very important for your critique. You must make the author's argument clear in the summary section for your evaluation to make sense.
• Remember, this is not where you say if you liked the article or not. You are assessing the significance and relevance of the article.
• Use a topic sentence and supportive arguments for each opinion. For example, you might address a particular strength in the first sentence of the opinion section, followed by several sentences elaborating on the significance of the point.

• This should only be about 10% of your overall essay.
• For example: This critical review has evaluated the article "Condom use will increase the spread of AIDS" by Anthony Zimmerman. The arguments in the article show the presence of bias, prejudice, argumentative writing without supporting details, and misinformation. These points weaken the author’s arguments and reduce his credibility.

• Make sure you have identified and discussed the 3-4 key issues in the article.

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://libguides.cmich.edu/writinghelp/articlereview
• ↑ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4548566/
• ↑ Jake Adams. Academic Tutor & Test Prep Specialist. Expert Interview. 24 July 2020.
• ↑ https://guides.library.queensu.ca/introduction-research/writing/critical
• ↑ https://www.iup.edu/writingcenter/writing-resources/organization-and-structure/creating-an-outline.html
• ↑ https://writing.umn.edu/sws/assets/pdf/quicktips/titles.pdf
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_works_cited_periodicals.html
• ↑ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4548565/
• ↑ https://writingcenter.uconn.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/593/2014/06/How_to_Summarize_a_Research_Article1.pdf
• ↑ https://www.uis.edu/learning-hub/writing-resources/handouts/learning-hub/how-to-review-a-journal-article
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/editing-and-proofreading/

About This Article

If you have to write an article review, read through the original article closely, taking notes and highlighting important sections as you read. Next, rewrite the article in your own words, either in a long paragraph or as an outline. Open your article review by citing the article, then write an introduction which states the article’s thesis. Next, summarize the article, followed by your opinion about whether the article was clear, thorough, and useful. Finish with a paragraph that summarizes the main points of the article and your opinions. To learn more about what to include in your personal critique of the article, keep reading the article! Did this summary help you? Yes No

• Send fan mail to authors

Reader Success Stories

Prince Asiedu-Gyan

Apr 22, 2022

Did this article help you?

Sammy James

Sep 12, 2017

Juabin Matey

Aug 30, 2017

Vanita Meghrajani

Jul 21, 2016

Nov 27, 2018

Featured Articles

Trending Articles

Watch Articles

• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• Do Not Sell or Share My Info
• Not Selling Info

Don’t miss out! Sign up for

wikiHow’s newsletter

Help | Advanced Search

Computer Science > Data Structures and Algorithms

Title: teaching algorithm design: a literature review.

Abstract: Algorithm design is a vital skill developed in most undergraduate Computer Science (CS) programs, but few research studies focus on pedagogy related to algorithms coursework. To understand the work that has been done in the area, we present a systematic survey and literature review of CS Education studies. We search for research that is both related to algorithm design and evaluated on undergraduate-level students. Across all papers in the ACM Digital Library prior to August 2023, we only find 94 such papers. We first classify these papers by topic, evaluation metric, evaluation methods, and intervention target. Through our classification, we find a broad sparsity of papers which indicates that many open questions remain about teaching algorithm design, with each algorithm topic only being discussed in between 0 and 10 papers. We also note the need for papers using rigorous research methods, as only 38 out of 88 papers presenting quantitative data use statistical tests, and only 15 out of 45 papers presenting qualitative data use a coding scheme. Only 17 papers report controlled trials. We then synthesize the results of the existing literature to give insights into what the corpus reveals about how we should teach algorithms. Much of the literature explores implementing well-established practices, such as active learning or automated assessment, in the algorithms classroom. However, there are algorithms-specific results as well: a number of papers find that students may under-utilize certain algorithmic design techniques, and studies describe a variety of ways to select algorithms problems that increase student engagement and learning. The results we present, along with the publicly available set of papers collected, provide a detailed representation of the current corpus of CS Education work related to algorithm design and can orient further research in the area.

Submission history

Access paper:.

• HTML (experimental)
• Other Formats

References & Citations

• Google Scholar
• Semantic Scholar

BibTeX formatted citation

Bibliographic and Citation Tools

Code, data and media associated with this article, recommenders and search tools.

• Institution

arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators

arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.

Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.

Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs .

• Our Ministry
• The Gap We See
• Partner with Us
• Newsletters

• Partner With Us

‘Wildcat’ Is as Unsettling as Flannery O’Connor Would Have Wanted

Why not write something that “a lot, a lot , of people like?” Regina O’Connor asks her daughter, the writer Flannery O’Connor, in the middle of the new biopic Wildcat . The same question might be put to the film itself. It’s not a movie that a lot of people will like. But unlike the author’s mother, I mean that as a high compliment. Director and screenwriter Ethan Hawke has made a film worthy of Flannery O’Connor’s genius.

An epigraph from O’Connor’s essay “The Nature and Aim of Fiction” sums up what Wildcat sets out to do: “I’m always irritated by people who imply writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality.” Fittingly, rather than depict the writer’s life from birth to death, Wildcat uses her fiction to discover what’s real, to “get down under things” to the problem of suffering, the limitations of human experience, the desire for goodness, the habits of evil, and, always present, the longing for God.

The result is a movie as scandalous as one of O’Connor’s short stories—“shocking to the system,” to borrow her words. Her devotees will applaud it; most of the audience will be left wondering what just clobbered them.

After that opening epigraph, Wildcat rolls a fake trailer for a 1950s-style horror flick inspired by O’Connor’s story “The Comforts of Home.” (A mother brings home a wayward, orphaned teen who tries to seduce her grown son. The son attempts to kill the teen, but shoots his own mother instead.) The trailer, starring Laura Linney and Maya Hawke—who also play the roles of Regina and Flannery— sets up expectations for Wildcat ’s time period, for its gothic weirdness, and for its blending of fiction and biography.

Most of the movie’s action occurs in 1950, the year O’Connor returned home to Milledgeville, Georgia, and was diagnosed with lupus. Fictional stories, threaded throughout the biographical narrative, are drawn from all over her corpus—from “Good Country People” (a Bible salesman steals a crippled woman’s prosthetic leg) to “Revelation” (Mrs. Ruby Turpin is a warthog from hell capable of having her virtue burned clean).

Flannery O’Connor wanted to be a great writer and a good Catholic, and viewers witness her wrestle with disappointments as she tries to be faithful to both God and vocation. We hear voiceover petitions from her A Prayer Journal , composed while she was a student at the University of Iowa MFA program, with beautiful shots of the young woman as a pilgrim. She confesses to the priest Father Flynn (Liam Neeson) in a scene that mimics her story “The Enduring Chill.” (Asbury Fox returns home to his mother’s farm, sick and debilitated, and is catechized by the local priest.)

Free Newsletters

When O’Connor attends a graduate school party, she drops a bottle of rum before she arrives. This scene is drawn from her biography; in fact, her friend Sally Fitzgerald thought this incident was a real-life metaphor for how “Flannery seemed fated to asceticism.” Wildcat does portray O’Connor as an outcast from what her friend called “frolics”; she simply can’t compromise her zealous Christian faith. Through scenes both real and imagined, the film demonstrates the untiring dedication to truth that made O’Connor perhaps unpopular with her peers. That zeal also made her the great writer (and good Catholic) that she desired to be.

Wildcat also brings O’Connor’s writing to life, defamiliarizing even the most well-known of her stories. Take, for instance, the ahistorical treatment of “Parker’s Back” (1964). (This synopsis is a straightforward one: O. E. Parker has a tattoo of Jesus on his back.) We hear the name of the central figure, “Obadiah Elihue,” in the mouth of an editor at Rinehart Publishing. In reality, the editor had nothing to do with this story’s publication, though he did notoriously decide not to publish O’Connor’s novel Wise Blood .

Later, O’Connor reads “Parker’s Back” at Iowa in front of Robert “Cal” Lowell (Philip Ettinger). The scene is cast as a first meeting, though the two writers actually met at the artists’ retreat Yaddo in 1948, and Lowell didn’t teach at the university until 1950. But seeing his imagined response intensifies our own understanding of the story. The newly converted poet listens enthralled.

And later, Wildcat riffs on “Parker’s Back” yet again, dramatizing the story on screen. O. E. Parker (Rafael Casal) and his future wife Sarah Ruth (Maya Hawke, again) fall in love. Their marriage as portrayed here is even more believable than on O’Connor’s page—perhaps in part because of that final scene, when Sarah Ruth beats her husband’s back. Reading about Christ’s bleeding face is one thing; seeing it, droplets running over the tattoo ink, is another. Wildcat does not merely translate words into images; it glosses O’Connor’s stories for us, so that we can reimagine them anew.

Though fans are often tempted to deify O’Connor, Wildcat resists that temptation. It allows us to know the woman behind the artistry: her illness, her feelings for friends, her nuanced relationship with her mother. It’s one thing to hear about her deterioration from lupus; it’s another to see the rash on her face, to watch a young girl inject cortisone shots into her thigh with a needle the size of her hand.

Because of her sickness, O’Connor had to forego mild love interests that could have become something more. Biographers publicized her brief affair with Erik Langkjaer, a traveling textbook salesman from Denmark, who said kissing her was like “kissing a skeleton.” That unfortunate description casts O’Connor as less than flesh and blood. However, Wildcat shows a young woman enamored with her writing mentor (who seems just as drawn to her). One rightly wonders what might have happened had she been spared the ravages of lupus.

Instead, the dominant relationship in O’Connor’s life was with her mother, whom she called Regina from the time she was a child. Some have characterized Regina as overbearing and suffocating, much like the comic maternal characters in O’Connor’s short stories. Other biographers uplift her as sacrificing everything for Flannery, trying to support the daughter that she didn’t understand but to whom she was devoted until her death. The reality is likely a mix of both, which the film balances well.

In 1957, O’Connor’s short story “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” was made into a televised play starring tap-dancing sensation Gene Kelly. Everyone in Milledgeville thought that “Regina’s daughter who writes” had finally done something worthwhile (“They feel I have arrived at last,” O’Connor wrote ) because her uncomfortable stories had been sanitized for public consumption. In a letter to a friend, O’Connor derides the congratulations: “The local city fathers think I am a credit now to the community. One old lady said, ‘That was a play that really made me think!’ I didn’t ask her what.”

Clearly, Flannery O’Connor did not take any pleasure in growing her audience by making her stories more palatable. (Thankfully she was not alive in the era of platform building!) She wrote not to placate lukewarm Christians, but to startle them. Like a 20th-century Kierkegaard, she knew the truth was absurd, and therefore it would have too few adherents. She had a prophetic imagination, which means that if she was true to using her talent, she’d have as many fans as Ezekiel or Jeremiah.

Wildcat is loyal to that prophetic gift. If 1950s adaptations of Flannery O’Connor’s work to the screen dishonored their maker, Wildcat accomplishes the opposite. It celebrates a writer who was once called “prematurely arrogant,” but who was, by much suffering that she did not deserve, beautifully transfigured.

Jessica Hooten Wilson is the Fletcher Jones Chair of Great Books at Pepperdine University and senior fellow at Trinity Forum. She is the author of several books, most recently Flannery O’Connor’s Why Do the Heathen Rage? : A Behind-the-Scenes Look at a Work in Progress .

• Current Issue

• How to Pray with ADHD
• The Struggle to Hold It Together When a Church Falls Apart
• The Secret Sin of ‘Mommy Juice’

Annual & Monthly subscriptions available.

• Print & Digital Issues of CT magazine
• Complete access to every article on ChristianityToday.com
• Unlimited access to 65+ years of CT’s online archives
• Member-only special issues

Read These Next

The Magazine

• Issue Archives
• Member Benefits
• Give a Gift

Special Sections

• News & Reporting
• Español | All Languages

Topics & People

• Theology & Spirituality
• Church Life & Ministry
• Politics & Current Affairs
• Higher Education
• Global Church
• All Topics & People

Help & Info

• Contact Us | FAQ

Unlock This Article for a Friend

To unlock this article for your friends, use any of the social share buttons on our site, or simply copy the link below.

Share This Article with a Friend

To share this article with your friends, use any of the social share buttons on our site, or simply copy the link below.

• Search Menu
• Volume 2024, Issue 5, May 2024 (In Progress)
• Volume 2024, Issue 4, April 2024
• Bariatric Surgery
• Breast Surgery
• Cardiothoracic Surgery
• Colorectal Surgery
• Colorectal Surgery, Upper GI Surgery
• Gynaecology
• Hepatobiliary Surgery
• Interventional Radiology
• Neurosurgery
• Ophthalmology
• Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
• Otorhinolaryngology - Head & Neck Surgery
• Paediatric Surgery
• Plastic Surgery
• Transplant Surgery
• Trauma & Orthopaedic Surgery
• Upper GI Surgery
• Vascular Surgery
• Author Guidelines
• Submission Site
• Open Access
• Reasons to Submit
• About Journal of Surgical Case Reports
• Editorial Board
• Advertising and Corporate Services
• Journals Career Network
• Self-Archiving Policy
• Journals on Oxford Academic
• Books on Oxford Academic

Article Contents

Introduction, case report, author contributions, conflict of interest statement, intrarenal neurofibroma: unveiling a diagnostic challenge—a case report and literature review.

• Article contents
• Figures & tables
• Supplementary Data

Mahmoud Mustafa, Abdelkarim Barqawi, Amir Aghbar, Ibraheem Alami, Honood Abu Ras, Intrarenal neurofibroma: unveiling a diagnostic challenge—a case report and literature review, Journal of Surgical Case Reports , Volume 2024, Issue 5, May 2024, rjae285, https://doi.org/10.1093/jscr/rjae285

• Permissions Icon Permissions

A 53-year-old male patient presented with an incidental finding of a left kidney mass after being evaluated for elevated serum creatinine without having any symptoms. The left kidney mass was confirmed by ultrasound, computed tomography ‘CT’ scan and magnetic resonance imaging ‘MRI’. A left radical nephrectomy was done, and histopathology confirmed the presence of intrarenal neurofibroma with no evidence of malignancy.

Neurofibroma is an uncommon benign tumor arising in peripheral nerves, and rarely occurs in the kidneys and parapelvic areas [ 1 , 2 ]. Only eight cases were reported, the first of which was in 1967 [ 1–5 ]. A diagnostic dilemma has been faced in the preoperative diagnosis of kidney neurofibroma as it mimics renal cell carcinoma (RCC) or transitional cell carcinoma (TCC). Solitary neurofibroma occurs without a genetic, mutational or syndromic manifestations [ 1 , 4 ]. In this report, we are presenting a case of a 53-year-old male patient with an incidental finding of a left kidney mass, who underwent radical nephrectomy, and the histopathological result was consistent with neurofibroma.

A 53-year-old male patient with a past medical history of hypertension for 10 years, diabetes mellitus (DM) for 20 years and ischemic heart disease with previous percutaneous coronary intervention was incidentally found to have elevated serum creatinine (1.6 mg/dl) as part of routine follow-up evaluation for DM. The patient reported previous normal serum creatinine with no history of hematuria, abdominal pain, weight loss, anorexia or decreased oral intake. Moreover, there was no history of prior surgical or endourological interventions and no family history of kidney tumors.

As part of his evaluation for his elevated serum creatinine, abdominal ultrasound showed the presence of a large, well-defined hypoechoic medullary lesion with internal heterogeneity and minimal vascularity measuring about 6.7 × 7.4 cm 2 and abutting the inner aspect of the left renal cortex. Renal computed tomography (CT) scan without contrast demonstrated a well-defined rounded soft tissue density mass lesion measuring about 6.7 × 6.4 × 7.9 cm 3 in the lower aspect of the left renal medulla ( Fig. 1A and B ).

(A) CT scan axial section and (B) CT scan coronal section. Showing left kidney well-defined rounded soft tissue density mass lesions measuring about 6.7 cm in the lower aspect of the renal medulla. (C) MRI axial section, and (D) MRI coronal section. Showing left kidney large well defined rounded hypointense on T1W and heterogenous hyperintense on T2W images focus seen in the lower aspect of the medulla of the left kidney measuring about 6.8 cm approximately, resulting in mild calyceal dilatation.

As the serum creatinine was elevated, preventing the use of contrast material with the CT scan, abdomen magnetic resonance imaging ‘MRI’ with gadolinium IV contrast showed a large, well-defined rounded lesion, hypointense on T1W and heterogeneous hyperintense on T2W image, with a focus seen in the lower aspect of the medulla of the left kidney measuring about 6.8 × 7.5 cm 2 approximately, resulting in mild calyceal dilatation. After IV contrast administration, it showed mild heterogeneous enhancement, more marked in the delayed images. Two para-aortic small solid lymph nodes, the biggest measuring 1.2 cm, were detected. Chest imaging showed no evidence of distant metastasis ( Fig. 1C and D ).

The left kidney mass was suspicious for malignancy, for which the patient underwent left radical nephrectomy with the removal of the suspicious para-aortic lymph nodes ( Fig. 2 ). The histopathology report showed a final diagnosis of neurofibroma with no malignancy. Para-aortic lymph nodes were also free of malignancy. Histopathological description of the sample showed a 6 × 6 × 5 cm 3 tumor that was located in the lower pole of the removed kidney, encapsulated with yellowish cut surfaces, and was limited to the kidney and did not invade the Gertoa’s fascia. Tumor cells were focally positive for S100 and negative for smooth muscle actin ‘SMA’ and desmin. The pathological findings in the remaining part of the kidney included glomerulosclerosis, interstitial fibrosis and tubular atrophy ( Fig. 3 ). Neurofibroma in our case was truly intrarenal, and this can be demonstrated in Figs 2 and 3 , where tumorous tissues appear adjacent to normal kidney tissues.

(A) Gross images of the harvested left kidney with the tumor located in the lower pole. (B) Cross-section of the harvested specimen showing a well-demarcated circumscribed mass located inside renal parenchyma at the lower aspect of the left renal medulla.

Multiple histopathology sections showing intrarenal neurofibroma with normal kidney tissues. (A) and (B) show the tumor located inside renal parenchyma, juxta to the renal cortical parenchyma. (C) The image show spindle cell tumor with serpentine wavy nuclei arranged in a fascicular pattern.

Neurofibroma is a benign tumor rarely affecting the kidney, and few cases have been reported worldwide [ 1 ]. They tend to be solitary, localized and circumscribed [ 2 ]. Different clinical presentations have been described for the few reported cases of neurofibroma, ranging from no symptoms to flank pain or hematuria (depending on the lesion's extent within the kidney). All of the reported cases of renal or parapelvic neurofibroma had a preoperative diagnostic challenge in confirming the nature of the kidney mass, given its imaging resemblance to RCC or TCC, and thus all of the cases were treated radically [ 1 ]. Involvement of renal sinuses, calyces or upper ureters has also been reported, making preoperative diagnosis more challenging.

In our case, there was a suspicion of RCC based on preoperative imaging, including a CT scan and MRI, which favored our decision to proceed with radical nephrectomy. To our knowledge, most of the reported cases in the literature have also been managed similarly, given the diagnostic dilemma of preoperative diagnosis. Therefore, histopathological examination remains the only way to establish the diagnosis of kidney neurofibroma [ 4 ].

After reviewing all of the eight reported cases [ 1–5 ], there was no radiological suspicion related or specific to neurofibroma during the standard preoperative imaging techniques. Except for two patients who presented with hematuria, the remaining patients presented with pain. In our case, the patient’s diagnosis was incidental. The average age of presentation in all the reported cases ranged from 33 to 59 years, with no predominance in certain genders (four males, three females, and one unknown gender). The volume of the lesions in the reported cases did not exceed 10 cm, which did not raise any special suspicion during the workup, for which there was no deviation from the standard preoperative evaluation for renal RCC. Regarding the location of the tumor, in six out of the eight reported cases, the tumor was located in the renal sinus; the remaining two were located in the retroperitoneum and lower pole. In our case, the lesion was located in the lower aspect of the left renal medulla. Thus, a high index of suspicion is required for any patient with a mass in the renal sinus; ureteroscopy with or without biopsy should be done to distinguish the upper TCC from other renal masses, thus avoiding unnecessary ureterectomy and bladder cuff excision if TCC is ruled out.

Histologically, the examined tumor in the removed kidney in our patient showed an encapsulated lesion with yellowish cut surfaces and was limited to the kidney and did not invade the Gertoa’s fascia. Tumor cells were focally positive for S100 and negative for SMA and desmin, making other mesenchymal tumors, such as solitary fibrous tumor, unlikely. Thus, immunohistochemistry is vital in formulating a final diagnosis [ 2 ].

Neurofibroma of the kidneys is a rare benign tumor with a limited propensity to affect the kidney and parapelvic spaces. No imaging pathognomic findings have been described to help differentiate it from RCC or TCC, making diagnosis challenging and based mainly on histopathological examination. However, a preoperative ureteroscopy with biopsy may determine the nature of the tumor, thus avoiding unnecessary nephrectomy.

All authors made substantial contributions to conception and design. They have all agreed to submit to the current journal; gave final approval of the version to be published; and agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

None declared.

This research did not receive any kind of funds.

A written signed consent was obtained from the patient for the purpose of this article publication and its attached images.

Singh BP , Krishnaswamy SA , Singhai A , Sankhwar S . Parapelvic solitary neurofibroma of the kidney . Case Rep 2015 ; 2015 : bcr2014208357 .

Google Scholar

Mondal SK , Mallick MG , Bandyopadhyay R , Mondal PK . Neurofibroma of kidney: an uncommon neoplasm and diagnostic dilemma with solitary fibrous tumor . J Cancer Res Ther 2010 ; 6 : 388 – 90 .

Corbellini C , Vingiani A , Maffini F , et al.  Retroperitoneal pararenal isolated neurofibroma: report of a case and review of literature . Ecancermedicalscience 2012 ; 6 : 253 .

Eljack S , Rosenkrantz A , Das K . CT and MRI appearance of solitary parapelvic neurofibroma of the kidney . Br J Radiol 2010 ; 83 : e108 – e10 .

Kostakopoulos A , Chorti M , Protogerou V , Kokkinou S . Solitary neurofibroma of kidney: clinical, histological and chromosomal appearance . Int Urol Nephrol 2003 ; 35 : 11 – 3 .

Email alerts

Citing articles via, affiliations.

• Online ISSN 2042-8812
• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press and JSCR Publishing Ltd
• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Institutional account management
• Rights and permissions
• Get help with access
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

• Reference Manager
• Simple TEXT file

People also looked at

Case report article, old woman with sheehan's syndrome suffered severe hyponatremia following percutaneous coronary intervention: a case report and review of literature.

• 1 School of Clinical Medicine, Shandong Second Medical University, Weifang, Shandong, China
• 2 Cardiology Department and Experimental Animal Center, Liaocheng People’s Hospital of Shandong University and Liaocheng Hospital Affiliated to Shandong First Medical University, Liaocheng, Shandong, China
• 3 Department of Central Laboratory, Liaocheng People’s Hospital, Liaocheng, Shandong, China
• 4 Department of Cardiology, Shandong Corps Hospital of Chinese People’s Armed Police Forces, Jinan, China

Glucocorticoid deficiency can lead to hypoglycemia, hypotension, and electrolyte disorders. Acute glucocorticoid deficiency under stress is very dangerous. Here, we present a case study of an elderly patient diagnosed with Sheehan's syndrome, manifesting secondary adrenal insufficiency and secondary hypothyroidism, managed with daily prednisone and levothyroxine therapy. She was admitted to our hospital due to acute non-ST segment elevation myocardial infarction. The patient developed nausea and limb twitching post-percutaneous coronary intervention, with subsequent diagnosis of hyponatremia. Despite initial intravenous sodium supplementation failed to rectify the condition, and consciousness disturbances ensued. However, administration of 50 mg hydrocortisone alongside 6.25 mg sodium chloride rapidly ameliorated symptoms and elevated blood sodium levels. Glucocorticoid deficiency emerged as the primary etiology of hyponatremia in this context, exacerbated by procedural stress during percutaneous coronary intervention. Contrast agent contributed to blood sodium dilution. Consequently, glucocorticoid supplementation emerges as imperative, emphasizing the necessity of stress-dose administration of glucocorticoid before the procedure. Consideration of shorter intervention durations and reduced contrast agent dosages may mitigate severe hyponatremia risks. Moreover, it is crucial for this patient to receive interdisciplinary endocrinologist management. In addition, Sheehan's syndrome may pose a risk for coronary atherosclerotic disease.

Introduction

In developed countries, studies have revealed varying prevalence rates of Sheehan's syndrome (SHS) among women, ranging from 0.0051% ( 1 ) to 3.1% ( 2 ). There were also studies showing that the prevalence of SHS ranged from 1% to 2% among women who experienced hypotension due to blood loss of 1–2 L ( 3 , 4 ). Contrastingly, in undeveloped nations, the prevalence varies from 3.1% to 27.6% ( 5 – 7 ). The diagnostic journey for SHS patients spans a considerable duration of 7–19 years from symptom onset to definitive diagnosis ( 8 ). Sheehan's syndrome arises from ischemic necrosis of the anterior pituitary gland triggered by postpartum hemorrhage ( 8 ), leading to pituitary hormone dysfunction, including insufficient secretion of growth hormone, thyroid stimulating hormone, gonadotropin, prolactin, and adrenocorticotropin (ACTH) ( 7 , 9 ). Predominant symptoms are associated with dysfunction of the gonads, thyroid, and adrenal cortex due to insufficient secretion of gonadotropins, thyroid stimulating hormones, and ACTH, respectively. The latter is the most prominent and sometimes life-threatening. Supplementing various deficient hormones is the primary treatment for SHS.

Glucocorticoids, pivotal adrenal cortex hormones, play crucial roles in regulating glucose metabolism, blood pressure, and electrolyte balance. Deficiency in glucocorticoids can lead to hypoglycemia, hypotension, and electrolyte disturbances. Lifetime glucocorticoid replacement therapy stands as a cornerstone in managing SHS patients. Fluctuations in neuroendocrine system activity necessitate adjustments in glucocorticoid supplementation, while metabolic disruptions from other etiologies also dictate dosage alterations. Inadequate comprehension of these dynamics among healthcare professionals may impact the prognosis of SHS patients and predispose them to risks. Surgical treatments, including interventional procedures, represent significant stressors in medical care. Failure to administer preoperative stress doses of glucocorticoids to SHS patients can engender serious consequences. To our knowledge, this article represents the first documented case of severe hyponatremia in an SHS patient following percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI).

Case presentation

A 70-year-old female patient presented with paroxysmal exertional chest tightness persisting for one month, alleviated by a few minutes of rest. Forty years ago, the patient suffered from postpartum hemorrhage, without blood transfusion, subsequently developing lactation failure and amenorrhea. Five years later, she was diagnosed with SHS at the Affiliated Hospital of Shandong University. Management included 5 mg of prednisone acetate in the morning for secondary adrenal insufficiency, and 50 ug of levothyroxine for secondary hypothyroidism. Apart from medication adherence, the patient lacked awareness regarding adrenal insufficiency. The patient had a decade-long history of hypertension, controlled with 5 mg of telmisartan and 5 mg of amlodipine daily. This patient had a weight of 46 kl, a height of 1.57 m, and a BMI of 18.66 kg/m 2 . Upon hospital admission, her vital signs were stable with a blood pressure of 122/58 mmHg, and a heart rate of 65 beats per minute. Physical examination revealed no pulmonary rales, cardiac murmurs, lower limb edema. Laboratory finding indicated elevated blood troponin I (0.5487 ng/ml, 0–0.0175 ng/ml), normal blood sodium (141.5 mmol/L, 137 mmol/L–147 mmol/L), and elevated fasting total cholesterol (6.28 mmol/L, 3 mmol/L–5.7 mmol/L). Thyroid function tests revealed low level of free thyroxine (FT4) (6.77 pmol/L, 7.98 pmol/L–16.02 pmol/L), with normal levels of free triiodothyronine (FT3) and thyroid stimulating hormone. Electrocardiogram indicated sinus bradycardia. We diagnosed the patient with acute non-ST segment elevation myocardial infarction (NSTEMI) and performed percutaneous coronary angiography (CAG) and intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) examination. We found that the stenosis degree was 40%, 80%, and 60%, 98%, and almost completely occluded, respectively, in the left main trunk (LM), the proximal and middle segments of the left anterior descending branch (LAD), the proximal segments of the left circumflex branch (LCX), and the middle segment of the right coronary artery (RCA) ( Figures 1A–C ). The minimum lumen area at the distal stenosis of the LM was 4.51 mm 2 ( Figure 1E ), the plaque load at the most severe stenosis of the proximal LAD was 80%, with a minimum lumen area of 2.88 mm 2 ( Figure 1F ). Due to the patient's refusal to undergo coronary artery bypass grafting, two stents were inserted in the middle segment of the RCA ( Figure 1D ). The intervention lasted for 2 h, including coronary angiography, bilateral intravascular ultrasound examination, patient involvement in treatment decision-making based on examination results, and subsequent coronary intervention treatment, utilizing 130 ml of iodixanol. The patient did not experience any chest discomfort, but was nervous and had a blood pressure rise to 190/100 mmHg, managed with sublingual nifedipine tablets and intravenous isosorbide nitrate. Following percutaneous intervention (PCI), the patient experienced a sequence of symptoms from the 12th to the 50th h, including nausea and loss of appetite, profuse sweating, mild limb twitching, and drowsiness in sequence ( Table 1 ). Limb twitching persisited for 18 h from the 38th to the 56th h post-PCI. On the 24th h post-PCI, the patient was diagnosed with hyponatremia ( Table 1 ), and 2%−3% sodium chloride was intermittently administered intravenously. Despite increased sodium chloride supplementation, symptoms persisted until administration of hydrocortisone, leading to symptom resolution and rapid improvement in blood sodium levels ( Table 1 ). By the 62nd h post-PCI, symptoms of hyponatremia completely resolved, with blood sodium level increasing from 114.2 mmol/L to 132 mmol/L ( Table 1 ). At the 86th h post-PCI, blood sodium level returned to normal. After 40 h, blood tests revealed low levels of cortisol (2.76 ug/dl, 6.7ug/dl–22.6 ug/dl), ACTH (4.26 pg/ml, 10.1 pg/ml–57.6 pg/ml), FT3 (3.41 pmol/L, 3.53 pmol/L−7.37 pmol/L), and FT4 (7.12 pmol/L, 7.98 pmol/L–16.02 pmol/L). Following discharge, the patient continued oral medication with 2.5 mg prednisone acetate and 50 ug levothyroxine sodium daily, as well as dual antiplatelet drugs, statins, and antihypertensive agents. During the next nine-month follow-up period, the patient did not experience ischemic symptoms or hyponatremia.

Figure 1 . Coronary angiography ( A – D ) and intravascular ultrasound examination ( E and F ) in an elderly patient with Sheehan's syndrome. ( A ) The stenosis degree is 40%, 80%, and 60%, respectively, at the end of the left main trunk, the proximal and middle segments of the left anterior descending branch. ( B ) The stenosis degree is 98% at the proximal segments of the left circumflex branch. ( C ) The stenosis degree is almost completely occluded at the middle segment of the right coronary artery. ( D ) Two stents are inserted in the middle segment of the RCA. ( E ) The minimum lumen area at the distal stenosis of the left main trunk is 4.51 mm 2 . ( F ) The plaque load at the most severe stenosis of the proximal left anterior descending branch is 80%, and the minimum lumen area is 2.88 mm 2 .

Table 1 . Timeline of changes in symptoms, blood sodium titers, and hyponatremia treatment in this patient at 12, 24, 38, 50, 56, 62 and 86 h after percutaneous intervention. normal titer blood sodium reference value: 137 mmol/L to 147 mmol/L.

SHS and hyponatremia

Sheehan's syndrome is characterized by insufficient secretion of ACTH due to pituitary necrosis, resulting in decreased synthesis and secretion of adrenocortical hormones, particularly glucocorticoids. Glucocorticoids play a vital role in regulating sodium and water excretion and maintaining electrolyte balance in the body. Insufficient glucocorticoid levels lead to diminished renal free water clearance, causing water retention and dilutional hyponatremia, resulting in reduced plasma osmolality. Furthermore, despite low osmolality, there is inappropriate secretion of antidiuretic hormone (vasopressin) due to the absence of cortisol's tonic inhibition ( 10 ).

Clinical presentation and management

In this case, the patient had a medical history of a SHS diagnosis, presenting with secondary adrenal insufficiency and secondary thyrotrophin deficiency necessitating hormone replacement therapy. Secondary adrenal insufficiency arises from pituitary impairment, causing decreased production of ACTH and subsequent reduction in adrenal stimulation, leading to decreased cortisol production. Glucocorticoid deficiency emerged as the primary mechanism of hyponatremia in this patient. During the 2-h of coronary diagnosis and treatment, the patient was anxious, had high blood pressure, and was in a severe stress state, which required additional cortisol to cope with. The specific amount could be evaluated by a specialist doctor. However, due to secondary adrenal insufficiency, the patient could not suddenly increase the secretion of glucocorticoids to copy with the stress. Additionally, glucocorticoids were not pre increased before the procedure. Therefore, the patient was at risk of acute and severe adrenal cortical hormone deficiency, leading to excessive sodium loss, water retention, and subsequent hyponatremia.

Treatment response

Despite intravenous supplementation of 24.05 g sodium chloride within 26 h, hyponatremia persisted, accompanied limb twitching and drowsiness, indicating an exacerbation of hyponatremia and the formation of hypotonic brain edema. Administration of 50 mg hydrocortisone effectively relieved excessive sodium excretion and water retention. Even with 6.25 g sodium chloride treatment, the patient's symptoms almost disappeared after 6 h, and blood sodium increased from 114.2 mmol/L to 132 mmol/L after 12 h. The subsequent increase in blood sodium levels highlights the importance of glucocorticoid replacement therapy in managing hyponatremia secondary to SHS.

Management considerations

The case underscores the importance of preoperative stress dose glucocorticoid therapy in SHS patients undergoing procedures such as PCI. However, we were unaware the importance. Additionally, awareness of the potential for contrast agents to induce dilutional hyponatremia and stress response caused by PCI is crucial. Lack of endocrinologist consultation before the procedure and inadequate patient education regarding adrenal insufficiency contributed to the suboptimal management of this patient. Inappropriately administered sublingual nifedipine treatment, intended to manage transient hypertension, not only increased the risk of acute cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease, but also increased the risks of further activating the sympathetic nervous ( 11 ) and exacerbating stress. Therefore, the interdisciplinary management involving endocrinologists is crucial for optimizing the treatment for patients with complex endocrine disorders like SHS, facilitating appropriate examinations, treatment and health education to prevent adrenal crisis and improve long-term outcomes ( 12 , 13 ).

Prolonged limb twitching and sodium correction

Unlike the transient symptoms of epilepsy, the patient experienced persistent limb twitching for up to 18 h, possibly due to prolonged lower blood sodium levels. This prolonged imbalance could have led to sustained electrical instability in brain cells, resulting in repetitive abnormal electro-discharge and impaired brain function, posing significant risks to the patient. However, our approach to correcting hyponatremia may not have followed optimal guidelines. Our method of correcting hyponatremia may not have followed the best guidelines. The target value for increasing serum sodium was not set to not exceed 8–10 mmol/L/24 h ( 14 ). Our treatment rapidly increased the patient's blood sodium from 114 mmol/L to 132 mmol/L in 12 h, and then continued to supplement with hypertonic sodium chloride. Within 26 h after identifying hyponatremia, 24.05 g of sodium chloride was administered intravenously. These treatments are unreasonable, and the overly rapid correction of hyponatremia may be a risk factor for osmotic demyelination syndrome. Proper management should aim to increase blood sodium concentration gradually, with close monitoring to prevent such complications.

Other proposed mechanisms of hyponatremia

Contrast agents have been implicated in inducing hyponatremia, particularly in women ( 15 – 18 ). Following administration, the contrast agents elevate the osmotic pressure of extracellular fluid, leading to passive water transfer of intracellular to extracellular compartments and resultant diluted hyponatremia ( 15 , 16 ). Sweating caused by sympathetic nerve stimulation and sweating caused by adverse reactions to iodixanol injection may also contribute to sodium loss.

Role of hypothyroidism

The patient's thyroid hormone levels were low before and after the procedure, indicating the presence of secondary hypothyroidism. Hypothyroidism may have contributed to hyponatremia mainly through the reduced ability to excretal free water, caused by higher levels of ADH. The elevation in ADH levels is largely due to the decrease in cardiac output that stimulates the carotid sinus baroreceptors, prompting the release of ADH. In addition, hypothyroidism can promote hyaluronic acid deposition in extravascular tissues, leading to increased water retention and reduced blood volume. This not only reduces glomerular filtration, but also increases the secretion of antidiuretic hormone, thereby increasing the risk of diluted hyponatremia ( 19 – 22 ). Therefore, optimizing levothyroxine therapy to restore normal thyroid hormone levels may help mitigate the risk of hyponatremia in such cases.

SHS and coronary artery disease

Previous studies have indicated a higher mortality rate in patients with pituitary dysfunction, primarily attributed to cardiovascular diseases ( 23 – 25 ). Due to chronic inflammation, dyslipidemia, and abdominal obesity, patients with SHS tend to develop coronary artery disease (CAD) ( 26 ). This NSTEMI patient suffered from severe coronary atherosclerosis, with traditional risk factors including hypertension and hypercholesterolemia. Long-term oral administration of glucocorticoids may be associated with hypertension and hyperlipidemia in such patients ( 27 , 28 ). In addition, hypothyroidism, which is common in SHS, can also contribute to hyperlipidemia ( 29 ).

Although severe hyponatremia following PCI in SHS patients is not extensively reported, there are cases of female patients exhibiting life-threatening adrenal dysfunction post-PCI ( 30 , 31 ). The lowest blood sodium level in these cases is 122 mmol/L, and there is no hypoglycemia. Glucocorticoids have good therapeutic effects. The difference is that these patients exhibit significant hypotension, shock, and even Takotsubo syndrome ( 30 , 31 ).

Conclusions

The deficiency of glucocorticoids caused by secondary adrenal insufficiency is the primary mechanism for severe hyponatremia in this patient with SHS. The stress induced by PCI exacerbates glucocorticoid deficiency. The contrast agent further contributes to dilutional hyponatremia. The preoperative stress dose of glucocorticoid is crucial to avoid this complication. Glucocorticoids were crucial in correcting severe hyponatremia in this SHS patient with secondary adrenal insufficiency. Shortening the duration of PCI and minimizing the dosage of contrast agents may be beneficial for preventing severe hyponatremia. Meanwhile, it is also crucial for this SHS patient to receive interdisciplinary management involving endocrinologists before and after the procedure. Additionally, SHS may serve as a potential risk factor for CAD.

Data availability statement

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/Supplementary Material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

Ethics statement

The studies involving humans were approved by Ethics Committee of Liaocheng People's Hospital. The studies were conducted in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. Written informed consent for participation in this study was provided by the participants’ legal guardians/next of kin. Written informed consent was obtained from the individual(s) for the publication of any potentially identifiable images or data included in this article.

Author contributions

JG: Data curation, Writing – review & editing. YW: Data curation, Formal Analysis, Investigation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Software, Methodology, Project administration, Supervision. AZ: Writing – review & editing. HP: Writing – review & editing, Data curation. FW: Writing – review & editing.

The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

The work was supported by Shandong Province Traditional Chinese Medicine Science and Technology Development Plan Project (No. 20190906).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

1. Kristjansdottir HL, Bodvarsdottir SP, Sigurjonsdottir HA. Sheehan’s syndrome in modern times: a nationwide retrospective study in Iceland. Eur J Endocrinol . (2011) 164(3):349–54. doi: 10.1530/EJE-10-1004

PubMed Abstract | Crossref Full Text | Google Scholar

2. Abs R, Bengtsson BA, Hernberg-Stâhl E, Monson JP, Tauber JP, Wilton P, et al. GH replacement in 1034 growth hormone deficient hypopituitary adults: demographic and clinical characteristics, dosing and safety. Clin Endocrinol (Oxf) . (1999) 50(6):703–13. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-2265.1999.00695.x

3. Vaphiades MS, Simmons D, Archer RL, Stringer W. Sheehan syndrome: a splinter of the mind. Surv Ophthalmol . (2003) 48(2):230–3. doi: 10.1016/s0039-6257(02)00459-9

4. Keleştimur F. Sheehan’s syndrome. Pituitary . (2003) 6(4):181–8. doi: 10.1023/b:pitu.0000023425.20854.8e

Crossref Full Text | Google Scholar

5. Tanriverdi F, Dokmetas HS, Kebapcı N, Kilicli F, Atmaca H, Yarman S, et al. Etiology of hypopituitarism in tertiary care institutions in Turkish population: analysis of 773 patients from pituitary study group database. Endocrine . (2014) 47(1):198–205. doi: 10.1007/s12020-013-0127-4

6. Diri H, Karaca Z, Tanriverdi F, Unluhizarci K, Kelestimur F. Sheehan’s syndrome: new insights into an old disease. Endocrine . (2016) 51(1):22–31. doi: 10.1007/s12020-015-0726-3

7. Zargar AH, Singh B, Laway BA, Masoodi SR, Wani AI, Bashir MI. Epidemiologic aspects of postpartum pituitary hypofunction (Sheehan’s syndrome). Fertil Steril . (2005) 84(2):523–8. doi: 10.1016/j.fertnstert.2005.02.022

8. Diri H, Tanriverdi F, Karaca Z, Senol S, Unluhizarci K, Durak AC, et al. Extensive investigation of 114 patients with Sheehan’s syndrome: a continuing disorder. Eur J Endocrinol . (2014) 171(3):311–8. doi: 10.1530/EJE-14-0244

9. Laway BA, Misgar RA, Mir SA, Wani AI. Clinical, hormonal and radiological features of partial Sheehan’s syndrome: an Indian experience. Arch Endocrinol Metab . (2016) 60(2):125–9. doi: 10.1590/2359-3997000000137

10. Garrahy A, Thompson CJ. Hyponatremia and glucocorticoid deficiency. Front Horm Res . (2019) 52:80–92. doi: 10.1159/000493239

11. Ragueneau I, Sao AB, Démolis JL, Darné B, Funck-Brentano C, Jaillon P. Comparison of sympathetic modulation induced by single oral doses of mibefradil, amlodipine, and nifedipine in healthy volunteers. Clin Pharmacol Ther . (2001) 69(3):122–9. doi: 10.1067/mcp.2001.113406

12. Arlt W, Society for Endocrinology Clinical Committee. SOCIETY FOR ENDOCRINOLOGY ENDOCRINE EMERGENCY GUIDANCE: emergency management of acute adrenal insufficiency (adrenal crisis) in adult patients. Endocr Connect . (2016) 5(5):G1–3. doi: 10.1530/EC-16-0054

13. Fleseriu M, Hashim IA, Karavitaki N, Melmed S, Murad MH, Salvatori R, et al. Hormonal replacement in hypopituitarism in adults: an endocrine society clinical practice guideline. J Clin Endocrinol Metab . (2016) 101(11):3888–921. doi: 10.1210/jc.2016-2118

14. Lindner G, Schwarz C, Haidinger M, Ravioli S. Hyponatremia in the emergency department. Am J Emerg Med . (2022) 60:1–8. doi: 10.1016/j.ajem.2022.07.023

15. Lim LY, Mohd Firdaus CA, Fam XI, Goh EH. Acute symptomatic hyponatremia after computed tomography renal protocol. J Comput Assist Tomogr . (2017) 41(1):65–6. doi: 10.1097/RCT.0000000000000487

16. Sirken G, Raja R, Garces J, Bloom E, Fumo P. Contrast-induced translocational hyponatremia and hyperkalemia in advanced kidney disease. Am J Kidney Dis . (2004) 43(2):e31–5. doi: 10.1053/j.ajkd.2003.10.028. Erratum in: Am J Kidney Dis. 2004 Dec; 44(6):1127. Fumo, Peter [added]. PMID: 14750123.14750123

17. Sankaran S, Saharia GK, Naik S, Mangaraj M. Effect of iodinated contrast media on serum electrolyte concentrations in patients undergoing routine contrast computed tomography scan procedure. Int J Appl Basic Med Res . (2019) 9(4):217–20. doi: 10.4103/ijabmr.IJABMR_69_19

18. Gucun M, Kahyaoglu M, Celik M, Guner A, Akyuz O, Yilmaz Y. Predictive value of post-procedural hyponatremia on contrast-induced nephropathy in patients who underwent coronary angiography or percutaneous coronary intervention. Acta Cardiol . (2022) 77(3):215–21. doi: 10.1080/00015385.2021.1901022

19. Tomlinson JW, Holden N, Hills RK, Wheatley K, Clayton RN, Bates AS, et al. Association between premature mortality and hypopituitarism. West midlands prospective hypopituitary study group. Lancet . (2001) 357(9254):425–31. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(00)04006-X

20. Schmitt R, Klussmann E, Kahl T, Ellison DH, Bachmann S. Renal expression of sodium transporters and aquaporin-2 in hypothyroid rats. Am J Physiol Renal Physiol . (2003) 284(5):F1097–104. doi: 10.1152/ajprenal.00368.2002

21. Liamis G, Filippatos TD, Liontos A, Elisaf MS. Management of endocrine disease: hypothyroidism-associated hyponatremia: mechanisms, implications and treatment. Eur J Endocrinol . (2017) 176(1):R15–20. doi: 10.1530/EJE-16-0493

22. Macaron C, Famuyiwa O. Hyponatremia of hypothyroidism. Appropriate suppression of antidiuretic hormone levels. Arch Intern Med . (1978) 138(5):820–2. doi: 10.1001/archinte.138.5.820

23. Nakano M, Higa M, Ishikawa R, Yamazaki T, Yamamuro W. Hyponatremia with increased plasma antidiuretic hormone in a case of hypothyroidism. Intern Med . (2000) 39(12):1075–8. doi: 10.2169/internalmedicine.39.1075

24. Pappachan JM, Raskauskiene D, Kutty VR, Clayton RN. Excess mortality associated with hypopituitarism in adults: a meta-analysis of observational studies. J Clin Endocrinol Metab . (2015) 100(4):1405–11. doi: 10.1210/jc.2014-3787

25. McCallum RW, Petrie JR, Dominiczak AF, Connell JMC. Growth hormone deficiency and vascular risk. Clin Endocrinol (Oxf) . (2002) 57(1):11–24. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-2265.2002.01559.x

26. Laway BA, Rasool A, Baba MS, Misgar RA, Bashir MI, Wani AI, et al. High prevalence of coronary artery calcification and increased risk for coronary artery disease in patients with Sheehan syndrome-A case-control study. Clin Endocrinol (Oxf) . (2023) 98(3):375–82. doi: 10.1111/cen.14871

27. Khan NA, Donatelli CV, Tonelli AR, Wiesen J, Ribeiro Neto ML, Sahoo D, et al. Toxicity risk from glucocorticoids in sarcoidosis patients. Respir Med . (2017) 132:9–14. doi: 10.1016/j.rmed.2017.09.003

28. Hemmer MC, Wierer M, Schachtrup K, Downes M, Hübner N, Evans RM, et al. E47 modulates hepatic glucocorticoid action. Nat Commun . (2019) 10(1):306. doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-08196-5

29. Matlock CL, Vanhoof AR, Rangrej SB, Rathore R. Comparison between levothyroxine and lifestyle intervention on subclinical hypothyroidism in women: a review. Cureus . (2023) 15(4):e38309. doi: 10.7759/cureus.38309

30. Kumar B, Kodliwadmath A, Singh A, Duggal B. Acute adrenal insufficiency as a mysterious cause of shock following percutaneous coronary intervention: a cardiologist’s nightmare. BMJ Case Rep . (2020) 13(3):e233585. doi: 10.1136/bcr-2019-233585

31. Falcetta A, Bonfanti E, Rossini R, Lauria G. A case of shock after STEMI: think beyond the cardiogenic one. Clin Case Rep . (2023) 11(1):e6792. doi: 10.1002/ccr3.6792

Keywords: Sheehan’s syndrome, percutaneous coronary intervention, severe hyponatremia, glucocorticoid deficiency, stress, contrast agent, coronary atherosclerotic disease

Citation: Gao J, Wang Y, Zhang A, Pang H and Wang F (2024) Old woman with Sheehan's syndrome suffered severe hyponatremia following percutaneous coronary intervention: a case report and review of literature. Front. Cardiovasc. Med. 11:1353392. doi: 10.3389/fcvm.2024.1353392

Received: 15 December 2023; Accepted: 17 April 2024; Published: 29 April 2024.

Reviewed by:

© 2024 Gao, Wang, Zhang, Pang and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Yuehai Wang [email protected]

† These authors have contributed equally to this work

This article is part of the Research Topic

Case Reports in General Cardiovascular Medicine: 2023