literature review in research introduction

How to write a literature review introduction (+ examples)

The introduction to a literature review serves as your reader’s guide through your academic work and thought process. Explore the significance of literature review introductions in review papers, academic papers, essays, theses, and dissertations. We delve into the purpose and necessity of these introductions, explore the essential components of literature review introductions, and provide step-by-step guidance on how to craft your own, along with examples.

Why you need an introduction for a literature review

In academic writing , the introduction for a literature review is an indispensable component. Effective academic writing requires proper paragraph structuring to guide your reader through your argumentation. This includes providing an introduction to your literature review.

It is imperative to remember that you should never start sharing your findings abruptly. Even if there isn’t a dedicated introduction section .

When you need an introduction for a literature review

There are three main scenarios in which you need an introduction for a literature review:

What to include in a literature review introduction

It is crucial to customize the content and depth of your literature review introduction according to the specific format of your academic work.

In practical terms, this implies, for instance, that the introduction in an academic literature review paper, especially one derived from a systematic literature review , is quite comprehensive. Particularly compared to the rather brief one or two introductory sentences that are often found at the beginning of a literature review section in a standard academic paper. The introduction to the literature review chapter in a thesis or dissertation again adheres to different standards.

Academic literature review paper

The introduction of an academic literature review paper, which does not rely on empirical data, often necessitates a more extensive introduction than the brief literature review introductions typically found in empirical papers. It should encompass:

Regular literature review section in an academic article or essay

In a standard 8000-word journal article, the literature review section typically spans between 750 and 1250 words. The first few sentences or the first paragraph within this section often serve as an introduction. It should encompass:

In some cases, you might include:

Introduction to a literature review chapter in thesis or dissertation

Some students choose to incorporate a brief introductory section at the beginning of each chapter, including the literature review chapter. Alternatively, others opt to seamlessly integrate the introduction into the initial sentences of the literature review itself. Both approaches are acceptable, provided that you incorporate the following elements:

Examples of literature review introductions

Example 1: an effective introduction for an academic literature review paper.

To begin, let’s delve into the introduction of an academic literature review paper. We will examine the paper “How does culture influence innovation? A systematic literature review”, which was published in 2018 in the journal Management Decision.

Example 2: An effective introduction to a literature review section in an academic paper

The second example represents a typical academic paper, encompassing not only a literature review section but also empirical data, a case study, and other elements. We will closely examine the introduction to the literature review section in the paper “The environmentalism of the subalterns: a case study of environmental activism in Eastern Kurdistan/Rojhelat”, which was published in 2021 in the journal Local Environment.

Thus, the author successfully introduces the literature review, from which point onward it dives into the main concept (‘subalternity’) of the research, and reviews the literature on socio-economic justice and environmental degradation.

Examples 3-5: Effective introductions to literature review chapters

Numerous universities offer online repositories where you can access theses and dissertations from previous years, serving as valuable sources of reference. Many of these repositories, however, may require you to log in through your university account. Nevertheless, a few open-access repositories are accessible to anyone, such as the one by the University of Manchester . It’s important to note though that copyright restrictions apply to these resources, just as they would with published papers.

Master’s thesis literature review introduction

Phd thesis literature review chapter introduction, phd thesis literature review introduction.

The last example is the doctoral thesis Metacognitive strategies and beliefs: Child correlates and early experiences Chan, K. Y. M. (Author). 31 Dec 2020 . The author clearly conducted a systematic literature review, commencing the review section with a discussion of the methodology and approach employed in locating and analyzing the selected records.

Steps to write your own literature review introduction

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

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

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

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

There are five key steps to writing a literature review:

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

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

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Table of contents

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

• Quick Run-through
• Step 1 & 2

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

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

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

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See an example

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

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

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

Download Word doc Download Google doc

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

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

Make a list of keywords

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

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

Search for relevant sources

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

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

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

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

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

For each publication, ask yourself:

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

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

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

Take notes and cite your sources

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chronological

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

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

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

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

Methodological

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

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

Theoretical

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

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

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

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

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

As you write, you can follow these tips:

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Statistics

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

Research bias

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Writing a Literature Review

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

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

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

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

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

What are the parts of a lit review?

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

Introduction:

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

Conclusion:

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

How should I organize my lit review?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• 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

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Introduction

Literature reviews take time. here is some general information to know before you start.  .

•  VIDEO -- This video is a great overview of the entire process.  (2020; North Carolina State University Libraries) --The transcript is included --This is for everyone; ignore the mention of "graduate students" --9.5 minutes, and every second is important  
• OVERVIEW -- Read this page from Purdue's OWL. It's not long, and gives some tips to fill in what you just learned from the video.  
• NOT A RESEARCH ARTICLE -- A literature review follows a different style, format, and structure from a research article.  

Steps to Completing a Literature Review

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• Last Updated: Sep 26, 2023 10:25 AM
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How To Structure Your Literature Review

3 options to help structure your chapter.

By: Amy Rommelspacher (PhD) | Reviewer: Dr Eunice Rautenbach | November 2020 (Updated May 2023)

Writing the literature review chapter can seem pretty daunting when you’re piecing together your dissertation or thesis. As  we’ve discussed before , a good literature review needs to achieve a few very important objectives – it should:

• Demonstrate your knowledge of the research topic
• Identify the gaps in the literature and show how your research links to these
• Provide the foundation for your conceptual framework (if you have one)
• Inform your own  methodology and research design

To achieve this, your literature review needs a well-thought-out structure . Get the structure of your literature review chapter wrong and you’ll struggle to achieve these objectives. Don’t worry though – in this post, we’ll look at how to structure your literature review for maximum impact (and marks!).

But wait – is this the right time?

Deciding on the structure of your literature review should come towards the end of the literature review process – after you have collected and digested the literature, but before you start writing the chapter. 

In other words, you need to first develop a rich understanding of the literature before you even attempt to map out a structure. There’s no use trying to develop a structure before you’ve fully wrapped your head around the existing research.

Equally importantly, you need to have a structure in place before you start writing , or your literature review will most likely end up a rambling, disjointed mess. 

Importantly, don’t feel that once you’ve defined a structure you can’t iterate on it. It’s perfectly natural to adjust as you engage in the writing process. As we’ve discussed before , writing is a way of developing your thinking, so it’s quite common for your thinking to change – and therefore, for your chapter structure to change – as you write. 

Need a helping hand?

Like any other chapter in your thesis or dissertation, your literature review needs to have a clear, logical structure. At a minimum, it should have three essential components – an  introduction , a  body   and a  conclusion . 

Let’s take a closer look at each of these.

1: The Introduction Section

Just like any good introduction, the introduction section of your literature review should introduce the purpose and layout (organisation) of the chapter. In other words, your introduction needs to give the reader a taste of what’s to come, and how you’re going to lay that out. Essentially, you should provide the reader with a high-level roadmap of your chapter to give them a taste of the journey that lies ahead.

Here’s an example of the layout visualised in a literature review introduction:

Your introduction should also outline your topic (including any tricky terminology or jargon) and provide an explanation of the scope of your literature review – in other words, what you  will   and  won’t   be covering (the delimitations ). This helps ringfence your review and achieve a clear focus . The clearer and narrower your focus, the deeper you can dive into the topic (which is typically where the magic lies). 

Depending on the nature of your project, you could also present your stance or point of view at this stage. In other words, after grappling with the literature you’ll have an opinion about what the trends and concerns are in the field as well as what’s lacking. The introduction section can then present these ideas so that it is clear to examiners that you’re aware of how your research connects with existing knowledge .

2: The Body Section

The body of your literature review is the centre of your work. This is where you’ll present, analyse, evaluate and synthesise the existing research. In other words, this is where you’re going to earn (or lose) the most marks. Therefore, it’s important to carefully think about how you will organise your discussion to present it in a clear way. 

The body of your literature review should do just as the description of this chapter suggests. It should “review” the literature – in other words, identify, analyse, and synthesise it. So, when thinking about structuring your literature review, you need to think about which structural approach will provide the best “review” for your specific type of research and objectives (we’ll get to this shortly).

There are (broadly speaking)  three options  for organising your literature review.

Option 1: Chronological (according to date)

Organising the literature chronologically is one of the simplest ways to structure your literature review. You start with what was published first and work your way through the literature until you reach the work published most recently. Pretty straightforward.

The benefit of this option is that it makes it easy to discuss the developments and debates in the field as they emerged over time. Organising your literature chronologically also allows you to highlight how specific articles or pieces of work might have changed the course of the field – in other words, which research has had the most impact . Therefore, this approach is very useful when your research is aimed at understanding how the topic has unfolded over time and is often used by scholars in the field of history. That said, this approach can be utilised by anyone that wants to explore change over time .

For example , if a student of politics is investigating how the understanding of democracy has evolved over time, they could use the chronological approach to provide a narrative that demonstrates how this understanding has changed through the ages.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself to help you structure your literature review chronologically.

• What is the earliest literature published relating to this topic?
• How has the field changed over time? Why?
• What are the most recent discoveries/theories?

In some ways, chronology plays a part whichever way you decide to structure your literature review, because you will always, to a certain extent, be analysing how the literature has developed. However, with the chronological approach, the emphasis is very firmly on how the discussion has evolved over time , as opposed to how all the literature links together (which we’ll discuss next ).

Option 2: Thematic (grouped by theme)

The thematic approach to structuring a literature review means organising your literature by theme or category – for example, by independent variables (i.e. factors that have an impact on a specific outcome).

As you’ve been collecting and synthesising literature , you’ll likely have started seeing some themes or patterns emerging. You can then use these themes or patterns as a structure for your body discussion. The thematic approach is the most common approach and is useful for structuring literature reviews in most fields.

For example, if you were researching which factors contributed towards people trusting an organisation, you might find themes such as consumers’ perceptions of an organisation’s competence, benevolence and integrity. Structuring your literature review thematically would mean structuring your literature review’s body section to discuss each of these themes, one section at a time.

Here are some questions to ask yourself when structuring your literature review by themes:

• Are there any patterns that have come to light in the literature?
• What are the central themes and categories used by the researchers?
• Do I have enough evidence of these themes?

PS – you can see an example of a thematically structured literature review in our literature review sample walkthrough video here.

Option 3: Methodological

The methodological option is a way of structuring your literature review by the research methodologies used . In other words, organising your discussion based on the angle from which each piece of research was approached – for example, qualitative , quantitative or mixed  methodologies.

Structuring your literature review by methodology can be useful if you are drawing research from a variety of disciplines and are critiquing different methodologies. The point of this approach is to question  how  existing research has been conducted, as opposed to  what  the conclusions and/or findings the research were.

For example, a sociologist might centre their research around critiquing specific fieldwork practices. Their literature review will then be a summary of the fieldwork methodologies used by different studies.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself when structuring your literature review according to methodology:

• Which methodologies have been utilised in this field?
• Which methodology is the most popular (and why)?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the various methodologies?
• How can the existing methodologies inform my own methodology?

3: The Conclusion Section

Once you’ve completed the body section of your literature review using one of the structural approaches we discussed above, you’ll need to “wrap up” your literature review and pull all the pieces together to set the direction for the rest of your dissertation or thesis.

The conclusion is where you’ll present the key findings of your literature review. In this section, you should emphasise the research that is especially important to your research questions and highlight the gaps that exist in the literature. Based on this, you need to make it clear what you will add to the literature – in other words, justify your own research by showing how it will help fill one or more of the gaps you just identified.

Last but not least, if it’s your intention to develop a conceptual framework for your dissertation or thesis, the conclusion section is a good place to present this.

Example: Thematically Structured Review

In the video below, we unpack a literature review chapter so that you can see an example of a thematically structure review in practice.

Let’s Recap

In this article, we’ve  discussed how to structure your literature review for maximum impact. Here’s a quick recap of what  you need to keep in mind when deciding on your literature review structure:

• Just like other chapters, your literature review needs a clear introduction , body and conclusion .
• The introduction section should provide an overview of what you will discuss in your literature review.
• The body section of your literature review can be organised by chronology , theme or methodology . The right structural approach depends on what you’re trying to achieve with your research.
• The conclusion section should draw together the key findings of your literature review and link them to your research questions.

If you’re ready to get started, be sure to download our free literature review template to fast-track your chapter outline.

Psst… there’s more!

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

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27 Comments

Great work. This is exactly what I was looking for and helps a lot together with your previous post on literature review. One last thing is missing: a link to a great literature chapter of an journal article (maybe with comments of the different sections in this review chapter). Do you know any great literature review chapters?

I agree with you Marin… A great piece

I agree with Marin. This would be quite helpful if you annotate a nicely structured literature from previously published research articles.

Awesome article for my research.

I thank you immensely for this wonderful guide

It is indeed thought and supportive work for the futurist researcher and students

Very educative and good time to get guide. Thank you

Great work, very insightful. Thank you.

Thanks for this wonderful presentation. My question is that do I put all the variables into a single conceptual framework or each hypothesis will have it own conceptual framework?

Thank you very much, very helpful

This is very educative and precise . Thank you very much for dropping this kind of write up .

Pheeww, so damn helpful, thank you for this informative piece.

I’m doing a research project topic ; stool analysis for parasitic worm (enteric) worm, how do I structure it, thanks.

comprehensive explanation. Help us by pasting the URL of some good “literature review” for better understanding.

great piece. thanks for the awesome explanation. it is really worth sharing. I have a little question, if anyone can help me out, which of the options in the body of literature can be best fit if you are writing an architectural thesis that deals with design?

I am doing a research on nanofluids how can l structure it?

Beautifully clear.nThank you!

Lucid! Thankyou!

Brilliant work, well understood, many thanks

I like how this was so clear with simple language 😊😊 thank you so much 😊 for these information 😊

Insightful. I was struggling to come up with a sensible literature review but this has been really helpful. Thank you!

You have given thought-provoking information about the review of the literature.

Thank you. It has made my own research better and to impart your work to students I teach

I learnt a lot from this teaching. It’s a great piece.

I am doing research on EFL teacher motivation for his/her job. How Can I structure it? Is there any detailed template, additional to this?

You are so cool! I do not think I’ve read through something like this before. So nice to find somebody with some genuine thoughts on this issue. Seriously.. thank you for starting this up. This site is one thing that is required on the internet, someone with a little originality!

I’m asked to do conceptual, theoretical and empirical literature, and i just don’t know how to structure it

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• Steps in Conducting a Literature Review

What is a literature review?

A literature review is an integrated analysis -- not just a summary-- of scholarly writings and other relevant evidence related directly to your research question.  That is, it represents a synthesis of the evidence that provides background information on your topic and shows a association between the evidence and your research question.

A literature review may be a stand alone work or the introduction to a larger research paper, depending on the assignment.  Rely heavily on the guidelines your instructor has given you.

Why is it important?

A literature review is important because it:

• Explains the background of research on a topic.
• Demonstrates why a topic is significant to a subject area.
• Discovers relationships between research studies/ideas.
• Identifies major themes, concepts, and researchers on a topic.
• Identifies critical gaps and points of disagreement.
• Discusses further research questions that logically come out of the previous studies.

APA7 Style resources

APA Style Blog - for those harder to find answers

1. Choose a topic. Define your research question.

Your literature review should be guided by your central research question.  The literature represents background and research developments related to a specific research question, interpreted and analyzed by you in a synthesized way.

• Make sure your research question is not too broad or too narrow.  Is it manageable?
• Begin writing down terms that are related to your question. These will be useful for searches later.
• If you have the opportunity, discuss your topic with your professor and your class mates.

2. Decide on the scope of your review

How many studies do you need to look at? How comprehensive should it be? How many years should it cover? 

• This may depend on your assignment.  How many sources does the assignment require?

3. Select the databases you will use to conduct your searches.

Make a list of the databases you will search. 

Where to find databases:

• use the tabs on this guide
• Find other databases in the Nursing Information Resources web page
• More on the Medical Library web page
• ... and more on the Yale University Library web page

4. Conduct your searches to find the evidence. Keep track of your searches.

• Use the key words in your question, as well as synonyms for those words, as terms in your search. Use the database tutorials for help.
• Save the searches in the databases. This saves time when you want to redo, or modify, the searches. It is also helpful to use as a guide is the searches are not finding any useful results.
• Review the abstracts of research studies carefully. This will save you time.
• Use the bibliographies and references of research studies you find to locate others.
• Check with your professor, or a subject expert in the field, if you are missing any key works in the field.
• Ask your librarian for help at any time.
• Use a citation manager, such as EndNote as the repository for your citations. See the EndNote tutorials for help.

Review the literature

Some questions to help you analyze the research:

• What was the research question of the study you are reviewing? What were the authors trying to discover?
• Was the research funded by a source that could influence the findings?
• What were the research methodologies? Analyze its literature review, the samples and variables used, the results, and the conclusions.
• Does the research seem to be complete? Could it have been conducted more soundly? What further questions does it raise?
• If there are conflicting studies, why do you think that is?
• How are the authors viewed in the field? Has this study been cited? If so, how has it been analyzed?

Tips: 

• Review the abstracts carefully.  
• Keep careful notes so that you may track your thought processes during the research process.
• Create a matrix of the studies for easy analysis, and synthesis, across all of the studies.
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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

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• Writing well

How to write a literature review

• Starting well
• How to write an annotated bibliography
• How to write a case study response
• How to write a critique
• How to write an empirical article
• How to write an essay
• How to write a reflective task
• How to write a report
• Finishing well

Structure of a literature review

Determine your purpose.

Work out what you need to address in the literature review. What are you being asked to do in your literature review? What are you searching the literature to discover? Check your assignment question and your criteria sheet to know what to focus on.

Do an extensive search of the literature

Find out what has been written on the topic.

What kind of literature?

Select appropriate source material: Use a variety of academic or scholarly sources that are relevant, current and authoritative. An extensive review of relevant material will include — books, journal articles, reports, government documents, conference proceedings and web resources. The Library would be the best place to search for your sources.

How many resources?

The number of sources that you will be required to review will depend on what the literature review is for and how advanced you are in your studies. It could be from five sources at first year undergraduate level to more than fifty for a thesis. Your lecturer will advise you on these details.

Note the bibliographical details of your sources

Keep a note of the publication title, date, authors’ names, page numbers and publishers. These details will save you time later.

Read the literature

• Critically read each source, look for the arguments presented rather than for facts.
• Take notes as you read and start to organise your review around themes and ideas.
• Consider using a table, matrix or concept map to identify how the different sources relate to each other.

Analyse the literature you have found

In order for your writing to reflect strong critical analysis, you need to evaluate the sources. For each source you are reviewing ask yourself these questions:

• What are the key terms and concepts?
• How relevant is this article to my specific topic?
• What are the major relationships, trends and patterns?
• How has the author structured the arguments?
• How authoritative and credible is this source?
• What are the differences and similarities between the sources?
• Are there any gaps in the literature that require further study?

Write the review

• Start by writing your thesis statement. This is an important introductory sentence that will tell your reader what the topic is and the overall perspective or argument you will be presenting.
• Like essays, a literature review must have an introduction, a body and a conclusion.

Introduction

Your introduction should give an outline of:

• why you are writing a review, and why the topic is important
• the scope of the review — what aspects of the topic will be discussed
• the criteria used for your literature selection (e.g. type of sources used, date range)
• the organisational pattern of the review.

Body paragraphs

Each body paragraph should deal with a different theme that is relevant to your topic. You will need to synthesise several of your reviewed readings into each paragraph, so that there is a clear connection between the various sources. You will need to critically analyse each source for how they contribute to the themes you are researching.

The body could include paragraphs on:

• historical background
• methodologies
• previous studies on the topic
• mainstream versus alternative viewpoints
• principal questions being asked
• general conclusions that are being drawn.

Your conclusion should give a summary of:

• the main agreements and disagreements in the literature
• any gaps or areas for further research
• your overall perspective on the topic.
• outlined the purpose and scope?
• identified appropriate and credible (academic/scholarly) literature?
• recorded the bibliographical details of the sources?
• analysed and critiqued your readings?
• identified gaps in the literature and research?
• explored methodologies / theories / hypotheses / models?
• discussed the varying viewpoints?
• written an introduction, body and conclusion?
• checked punctuation and spelling?

Further information

• HiQ: Managing weekly readings
• HiQ: Notetaking
• HiQ: Structuring your assignment
• RMIT University: Literature review - Overview

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Introduction to Literature Reviews

Introduction.

• Step One: Define
• Step Two: Research
• Step Three: Write
• Suggested Readings

A literature review is a written work that :

• Compiles significant research published on a topic by accredited scholars and researchers;
• —Surveys scholarly articles, books, dissertations, conference proceedings, and other sources;
• —Examines contrasting perspectives, theoretical approaches, methodologies, findings, results, conclusions.
• —Reviews critically, analyzes, and synthesizes existing research on a topic; and,
• Performs a thorough “re” view, “overview”, or “look again” of past and current works on a subject, issue, or theory.

From these analyses, the writer then offers an overview of the current status of a particular area of knowledge from both a practical and theoretical perspective.

Literature reviews are important because they are usually a  required  step in a thesis proposal (Master's or PhD). The proposal will not be well-supported without a literature review. Also, literature reviews are important because they help you learn important authors and ideas in your field. This is useful for your coursework and your writing. Knowing key authors also helps you become acquainted with other researchers in your field.

Look at this diagram and imagine that your research is the "something new." This shows how your research should relate to major works and other sources.

Olivia Whitfield | Graduate Reference Assistant | 2012-2015

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Conducting a Literature Review

• Introduction

What is a Literature Review?

Goals of the literature review, types of literature reviews.

• Recommended Reading
• Planning Your Literature Review
• Choose Keywords
• Decide where to search
• Formulate Your Search Strategy
• Utilize Citation Chaining
• When to Stop Searching
• Using Ai for Searching the Literature
• Evaluate, Synthesize & Analyze the Literature
• Write a Literature Review

A literature review surveys, summarizes, critically analyzes, compares, and synthesizes multiple scholarly works, or published knowledge on a particular topic or specific subject area.

Literature can include peer-reviewed or scholarly  articles, books/ ebooks, conference proceedings, theses/ dissertations, documents published by governmental agencies and non-profit organizations, and other forms of gray literature.

Conducting a literature review is part of the research process and serves to establish a base of knowledge and overview of the principal works on a specific area of research as well as identify important themes, discoveries, areas of consensus and debate, changes over time, and provide a foundation for further research.

A literature review may be written to:

•     Synthesize past and current literature on a topic
•     Identify a problem in a field of research  
•     Show how the literature relates to one another
•     Place your work in the the context of other related research

What kinds of sources require a Literature Review?

•     A thesis or dissertation
•     A grant proposal
•     A research paper assigned in a course 
•     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.

The following are common types of literature reviews:

Narrative or Traditional 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.

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.

Meta-analysis

This type of review utilizes quantitative methods to combine the results of independent studies and synthesize summaries and conclusions which can be used to evaluate therapeutic effectiveness, plan new studies, etc.

Meta-synthesis

A 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.

Further Reading on Different Types of Literature Reviews

Grant, M. J., & Booth, A. (2009). A typology of reviews: An analysis of 14 review types and associated methodologies . Health Information and Libraries Journal, 26(2), 91-108. doi:10.1111/j.1471-1842.2009.00848.x Gough, D., Thomas, J., & Oliver, S. (2012). Clarifying differences between review designs and methods . Systematic Reviews, 1, 28. doi:10.1186/2046-4053-1-28

eBooks in the Library

The library has a number of books on conducting and writing literature reviews:

eBooks on Conducting Systematic Literature Reviews:

• Next: Planning Your Literature Review >>
• Last Updated: Jun 25, 2024 1:24 PM
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Reference management. Clean and simple.

What is a literature review? [with examples]

What is a literature review?

The purpose of a literature review, how to write a literature review, the format of a literature review, general formatting rules, the length of a literature review, literature review examples, frequently asked questions about literature reviews, related articles.

A literature review is an assessment of the sources in a chosen topic of research.

In a literature review, you’re expected to report on the existing scholarly conversation, without adding new contributions.

If you are currently writing one, you've come to the right place. In the following paragraphs, we will explain:

• the objective of a literature review
• how to write a literature review
• the basic format of a literature review

Tip: It’s not always mandatory to add a literature review in a paper. Theses and dissertations often include them, whereas research papers may not. Make sure to consult with your instructor for exact requirements.

The four main objectives of a literature review are:

• Studying the references of your research area
• Summarizing the main arguments
• Identifying current gaps, stances, and issues
• Presenting all of the above in a text

Ultimately, the main goal of a literature review is to provide the researcher with sufficient knowledge about the topic in question so that they can eventually make an intervention.

The format of a literature review is fairly standard. It includes an:

• introduction that briefly introduces the main topic
• body that includes the main discussion of the key arguments
• conclusion that highlights the gaps and issues of the literature

➡️ Take a look at our guide on how to write a literature review to learn more about how to structure a literature review.

First of all, a literature review should have its own labeled section. You should indicate clearly in the table of contents where the literature can be found, and you should label this section as “Literature Review.”

➡️ For more information on writing a thesis, visit our guide on how to structure a thesis .

There is no set amount of words for a literature review, so the length depends on the research. If you are working with a large amount of sources, it will be long. If your paper does not depend entirely on references, it will be short.

Take a look at these three theses featuring great literature reviews:

• School-Based Speech-Language Pathologist's Perceptions of Sensory Food Aversions in Children [ PDF , see page 20]
• Who's Writing What We Read: Authorship in Criminological Research [ PDF , see page 4]
• A Phenomenological Study of the Lived Experience of Online Instructors of Theological Reflection at Christian Institutions Accredited by the Association of Theological Schools [ PDF , see page 56]

Literature reviews are most commonly found in theses and dissertations. However, you find them in research papers as well.

There is no set amount of words for a literature review, so the length depends on the research. If you are working with a large amount of sources, then it will be long. If your paper does not depend entirely on references, then it will be short.

No. A literature review should have its own independent section. You should indicate clearly in the table of contents where the literature review can be found, and label this section as “Literature Review.”

The main goal of a literature review is to provide the researcher with sufficient knowledge about the topic in question so that they can eventually make an intervention.

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Reviewing literature for research: Doing it the right way

Shital amin poojary.

Department of Dermatology, K J Somaiya Medical College, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

Jimish Deepak Bagadia

In an era of information overload, it is important to know how to obtain the required information and also to ensure that it is reliable information. Hence, it is essential to understand how to perform a systematic literature search. This article focuses on reliable literature sources and how to make optimum use of these in dermatology and venereology.

INTRODUCTION

A thorough review of literature is not only essential for selecting research topics, but also enables the right applicability of a research project. Most importantly, a good literature search is the cornerstone of practice of evidence based medicine. Today, everything is available at the click of a mouse or at the tip of the fingertips (or the stylus). Google is often the Go-To search website, the supposed answer to all questions in the universe. However, the deluge of information available comes with its own set of problems; how much of it is actually reliable information? How much are the search results that the search string threw up actually relevant? Did we actually find what we were looking for? Lack of a systematic approach can lead to a literature review ending up as a time-consuming and at times frustrating process. Hence, whether it is for research projects, theses/dissertations, case studies/reports or mere wish to obtain information; knowing where to look, and more importantly, how to look, is of prime importance today.

Literature search

Fink has defined research literature review as a “systematic, explicit and reproducible method for identifying, evaluating, and synthesizing the existing body of completed and recorded work produced by researchers, scholars and practitioners.”[ 1 ]

Review of research literature can be summarized into a seven step process: (i) Selecting research questions/purpose of the literature review (ii) Selecting your sources (iii) Choosing search terms (iv) Running your search (v) Applying practical screening criteria (vi) Applying methodological screening criteria/quality appraisal (vii) Synthesizing the results.[ 1 ]

This article will primarily concentrate on refining techniques of literature search.

Sources for literature search are enumerated in Table 1 .

Sources for literature search

PubMed is currently the most widely used among these as it contains over 23 million citations for biomedical literature and has been made available free by National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), U.S. National Library of Medicine. However, the availability of free full text articles depends on the sources. Use of options such as advanced search, medical subject headings (MeSH) terms, free full text, PubMed tutorials, and single citation matcher makes the database extremely user-friendly [ Figure 1 ]. It can also be accessed on the go through mobiles using “PubMed Mobile.” One can also create own account in NCBI to save searches and to use certain PubMed tools.

PubMed home page showing location of different tools which can be used for an efficient literature search

Tips for efficient use of PubMed search:[ 2 , 3 , 4 ]

Use of field and Boolean operators

When one searches using key words, all articles containing the words show up, many of which may not be related to the topic. Hence, the use of operators while searching makes the search more specific and less cumbersome. Operators are of two types: Field operators and Boolean operators, the latter enabling us to combine more than one concept, thereby making the search highly accurate. A few key operators that can be used in PubMed are shown in Tables ​ Tables2 2 and ​ and3 3 and illustrated in Figures ​ Figures2 2 and ​ and3 3 .

Field operators used in PubMed search

Boolean operators used in PubMed search

PubMed search results page showing articles on donovanosis using the field operator [TIAB]; it shows all articles which have the keyword “donovanosis” in either title or abstract of the article

PubMed search using Boolean operators ‘AND’, ‘NOT’; To search for articles on treatment of lepra reaction other than steroids, after clicking the option ‘Advanced search’ on the home page, one can build the search using ‘AND’ option for treatment and ‘NOT’ option for steroids to omit articles on steroid treatment in lepra reaction

Use of medical subject headings terms

These are very specific and standardized terms used by indexers to describe every article in PubMed and are added to the record of every article. A search using MeSH will show all articles about the topic (or keywords), but will not show articles only containing these keywords (these articles may be about an entirely different topic, but still may contain your keywords in another context in any part of the article). This will make your search more specific. Within the topic, specific subheadings can be added to the search builder to refine your search [ Figure 4 ]. For example, MeSH terms for treatment are therapy and therapeutics.

PubMed search using medical subject headings (MeSH) terms for management of gonorrhea. Click on MeSH database ( Figure 1 ) →In the MeSH search box type gonorrhea and click search. Under the MeSH term gonorrhea, there will be a list of subheadings; therapy, prevention and control, click the relevant check boxes and add to search builder →Click on search →All articles on therapy, prevention and control of gonorrhea will be displayed. Below the subheadings, there are two options: (1) Restrict to medical subject headings (MeSH) major topic and (2) do not include MeSH terms found below this term in the MeSH hierarchy. These can be used to further refine the search results so that only articles which are majorly about treatment of gonorrhea will be displayed

Two additional options can be used to further refine MeSH searches. These are located below the subheadings for a MeSH term: (1) Restrict to MeSH major topic; checking this box will retrieve articles which are majorly about the search term and are therefore, more focused and (2) Do not include MeSH terms found below this term in the MeSH hierarchy. This option will again give you more focused articles as it excludes the lower specific terms [ Figure 4 ].

Similar feature is available with Cochrane library (also called MeSH), EMBASE (known as EMTREE) and PsycINFO (Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms).

Saving your searches

Any search that one has performed can be saved by using the ‘Send to’ option and can be saved as a simple word file [ Figure 5 ]. Alternatively, the ‘Save Search’ button (just below the search box) can be used. However, it is essential to set up an NCBI account and log in to NCBI for this. One can even choose to have E-mail updates of new articles in the topic of interest.

Saving PubMed searches. A simple option is to click on the dropdown box next to ‘Send to’ option and then choose among the options. It can be saved as a text or word file by choosing ‘File’ option. Another option is the “Save search” option below the search box but this will require logging into your National Center for Biotechnology Information account. This however allows you to set up alerts for E-mail updates for new articles

Single citation matcher

This is another important tool that helps to find the genuine original source of a particular research work (when few details are known about the title/author/publication date/place/journal) and cite the reference in the most correct manner [ Figure 6 ].

Single citation matcher: Click on “Single citation matcher” on PubMed Home page. Type available details of the required reference in the boxes to get the required citation

Full text articles

In any search clicking on the link “free full text” (if present) gives you free access to the article. In some instances, though the published article may not be available free, the author manuscript may be available free of charge. Furthermore, PubMed Central articles are available free of charge.

Managing filters

Filters can be used to refine a search according to type of article required or subjects of research. One can specify the type of article required such as clinical trial, reviews, free full text; these options are available on a typical search results page. Further specialized filters are available under “manage filters:” e.g., articles confined to certain age groups (properties option), “Links” to other databases, article specific to particular journals, etc. However, one needs to have an NCBI account and log in to access this option [ Figure 7 ].

Managing filters. Simple filters are available on the ‘search results’ page. One can choose type of article, e.g., clinical trial, reviews etc. Further options are available in the “Manage filters” option, but this requires logging into National Center for Biotechnology Information account

The Cochrane library

Although reviews are available in PubMed, for systematic reviews and meta-analysis, Cochrane library is a much better resource. The Cochrane library is a collection of full length systematic reviews, which can be accessed for free in India, thanks to Indian Council of Medical Research renewing the license up to 2016, benefitting users all over India. It is immensely helpful in finding detailed high quality research work done in a particular field/topic [ Figure 8 ].

Cochrane library is a useful resource for reliable, systematic reviews. One can choose the type of reviews required, including trials

An important tool that must be used while searching for research work is screening. Screening helps to improve the accuracy of search results. It is of two types: (1) Practical: To identify a broad range of potentially useful studies. Examples: Date of publication (last 5 years only; gives you most recent updates), participants or subjects (humans above 18 years), publication language (English only) (2) methodological: To identify best available studies (for example, excluding studies not involving control group or studies with only randomized control trials).

Selecting the right quality of literature is the key to successful research literature review. The quality can be estimated by what is known as “The Evidence Pyramid.” The level of evidence of references obtained from the aforementioned search tools are depicted in Figure 9 . Systematic reviews obtained from Cochrane library constitute level 1 evidence.

Evidence pyramid: Depicting the level of evidence of references obtained from the aforementioned search tools

Thus, a systematic literature review can help not only in setting up the basis of a good research with optimal use of available information, but also in practice of evidence-based medicine.

Source of Support: Nil.

Conflict of Interest: None declared.

• Process: Literature Reviews
• Literature Review
• Managing Sources

Ask a Librarian

Does your assignment or publication require that you write a literature review? This guide is intended to help you understand what a literature is, why it is worth doing, and some quick tips composing one.

Understanding Literature Reviews

What is a literature review  .

Typically, a literature review is a written discussion that examines publications about  a particular subject area or topic. Depending on disciplines, publications, or authors a literature review may be: 

A summary of sources An organized presentation of sources A synthesis or interpretation of sources An evaluative analysis of sources

A Literature Review may be part of a process or a product. It may be:

A part of your research process A part of your final research publication An independent publication

Why do a literature review?

The Literature Review will place your research in context. It will help you and your readers:  

Locate patterns, relationships, connections, agreements, disagreements, & gaps in understanding Identify methodological and theoretical foundations Identify landmark and exemplary works Situate your voice in a broader conversation with other writers, thinkers, and scholars

The Literature Review will aid your research process. It will help you to:

Establish your knowledge Understand what has been said Define your questions Establish a relevant methodology Refine your voice Situate your voice in the conversation

What does a literature review look like?

The Literature Review structure and organization may include sections such as:  

An introduction or overview A body or organizational sub-divisions A conclusion or an explanation of significance

The body of a literature review may be organized in several ways, including:

Chronologically: organized by date of publication Methodologically: organized by type of research method used Thematically: organized by concept, trend, or theme Ideologically: organized by belief, ideology, or school of thought

• Find a focus
• Find models
• Review your target publication
• Track citations
• Read critically
• Manage your citations
• Ask friends, faculty, and librarians

Additional Sources

• Reviewing the literature. Project Planner.
• Literature Review: By UNC Writing Center
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Writing: Literature Review Basics

• What is Synthesis?
• Organizing Your Research
• Paraphrasing, Summary, or Direct Quotation?
• Introductions
• Conclusions
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The Most Important Thing

The best time to write an introduction is AFTER you write the body of your paper.

Well, how do you know what to introduce until after you've figured out what you want to say?

The best time to write an introduction is as one of the last things you do.

Basic Introduction Template

For any other sort of scholarly writing, the following basic structure works well for an introduction:

• What has been said or done on this topic?  
• What is the problem with what has been said or done?
• What will you offer to solve the problem?  (The answer to this is your thesis statement.)
• How does your solution address necessary change?

Writing an Introduction

The job of an introduction is to preview what you are going to say so the audience knows what is coming.  A good introduction starts out generally and works towards a specific statement of what you intend to discuss in your writing. 

The introduction explains the focus and establishes the importance of the subject. It discusses what kind of work has been done on the topic and identifies any controversies within the field or any recent research which has raised questions about earlier assumptions. It may provide background or history, and it indicates why the topic is important, interesting, problematic, or relevant in some way.  It concludes with a purpose or thesis statement. In a stand-alone literature review, this statement will sum up and evaluate the state of the art in this field of research; in a review that is an introduction or preparatory to a larger work, such as the Culminating Project, it will suggest how the review findings will lead to the research the writer proposes to undertake.

In a literature review, an introduction may contain the following:

• A concise definition of a topic under consideration (this may be a descriptive or argumentative thesis, or proposal), as well as the scope of the related literature being investigated. (Example: If the topic under consideration is ‘women’s wartime diaries’, the scope of the review may be limited to published or unpublished works, works in English, works from a particular location, time period, or conflict, etc.)  
• The introduction should also note what topics are being included and what are intentional exclusions. (Example: “This review will not explore the diaries of adolescent girls.”)
• A final sentence should signal the list of key topics that will be used to discuss the selected sources.

Many theories have been proposed to explain what motivates human behavior. Although the literature covers a wide variety of such theories, this review will focus on five major themes which emerge repeatedly throughout the literature reviewed. These themes are incorporation of the self-concept into traditional theories of motivation, the influence of rewards on motivation, the increasing importance of internal forces of motivation, autonomy and self-control as sources of motivation, and narcissism as an essential component of motivation. Although the literature presents these themes in a variety of contexts, this paper will primarily focus on their application to self-motivation.

Let's break that apart.

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Literature Review Tips for the Introduction and Discussion Sections

A literature review is a summary of studies related to a particular area of research. It identifies and summarizes all the relevant research conducted on a particular topic. It is important that your literature review is focused . Therefore, you should choose a limited number of studies that are central to your topic rather than trying to collect a wide range of studies that might not be closely connected.

Literature reviews help you accomplish the following:

• Evaluate past research  Collecting relevant resources will help you see what research has already been done. This will also help avoid duplication.
• Identify experts It is important to identify credible researchers who have knowledge in a given field, in order to seek their help if you get stuck with certain aspects of your research.
• Identify key questions  Your ultimate aim is to bring something new to the conversation. Collecting resources will help you determine the important questions that need to be addressed.
• Determine methodologies used in past studies Knowing how others have approached a particular topic will give you the opportunity to identify problems and find new ways to research and study a topic. If the reported methodology was successful, you can use it and save time that you would otherwise be spending on optimization.

Presenting Literature Review in the Introduction and Discussion Sections

There are many benefits to presenting literature reviews in the introduction and discussion sections of your manuscripts . However, there are differences in how you can present literature reviews in each section.

What Should be Included in the Literature Review of the Introduction Section?

The literature reviewed in the introduction should:

• Introduce the topic
• Establish the significance of the study
• Provide an overview of the relevant literature
• Establish a context for the study using the literature
• Identify knowledge gaps
• Illustrate how the study will advance knowledge on the topic

As you can see, literature review plays a significant role in the introduction section. However, there are some things that you should avoid doing in this section. These include:

• Elaborating on the studies mentioned in the literature review
• Using studies from the literature review to aggressively support your research
• Directly quoting studies from the literature review

It is important to know how to integrate the literature review into the introduction in an effective way. Although you can mention other studies, they should not be the focus. Instead, focus on using the literature review to aid in setting a foundation for the manuscript.

What Goes in the Literature Review of the Discussion Section?

Literature reviews play an important role in the discussion section of a manuscript . In this section, your findings should be the focus, rather than those of other researchers. Therefore, you should only use the studies mentioned in the literature review as support and evidence for your study.

There are three ways in which you can use literature reviews in the discussion section:

• To Provide Context for Your Study Using studies from the literature review helps to set the foundation for how you will reveal your findings and develop your ideas.
• Compare your Findings to Other Studies You can use previous literature as a backdrop to compare your new findings. This helps describe and also advance your ideas.
• State the Contribution of Your Study In addition to developing your ideas, you can use literature reviews to explain how your study contributes to the field of study.

However, there are three common mistakes that researchers make when including literature reviews in the discussion section. First, they mention all sorts of studies, some of which are not even relevant to the topic under investigation. Second, instead of citing the original article, they cite a related article that mentions the original article. Lastly, some authors cite previous work solely based on the abstract, without even going through the entire paper.

We hope this article helps you effectively present your literature review in both the introduction as well as the discussion section of your manuscript. You can also mention any other tips that will add to this article in the comments section below.

References:

[1]  http://www.math.montana.edu/jobo/phdprep/documents/phd6.pdf 

[2]  https://libguides.unf.edu/c.php?g=177129&p=1163732

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Conducting a Literature Review

• Literature Review
• Developing a Topic
• Planning Your Literature Review
• Developing a Search Strategy
• Managing Citations
• Critical Appraisal Tools
• Writing a Literature Review

Before You Begin to Write.....

Do you have enough information? If you are not sure,

Ask yourself these questions:

• Has my search been wide enough to insure I've found all the relevant material?
• Has it been narrow enough to exclude irrelevant material?
• Is the number of sources I've used appropriate for the length of my paper?

You may have enough information for your literature review when:

• You've used multiple databases and other resources (web portals, repositories, etc.) to get a variety of perspectives on the research topic.
• The same citations are showing up in a variety of databases.
• Your advisor and other trusted experts say you have enough!

You have to stop somewhere and get on with the writing process!

Writing Tips

A literature review is not a list describing or summarizing one piece of literature after another. It’s usually a bad sign to see every paragraph beginning with the name of a researcher. Instead, organize the literature review into sections that present themes or identify trends, including relevant theory. You are not trying to list all the material published, but to synthesize and evaluate it according to the guiding concept of your thesis or research question

If you are writing an  annotated bibliography , you may need to summarize each item briefly, but should still follow through themes and concepts and do some critical assessment of material. Use an overall introduction and conclusion to state the scope of your coverage and to formulate the question, problem, or concept your chosen material illuminates. Usually you will have the option of grouping items into sections—this helps you indicate comparisons and relationships. You may be able to write a paragraph or so to introduce the focus of each section

Layout of Writing a Literature Review

Generally, the purpose of a review is to analyze critically a segment of a published body of knowledge through summary, classification, and comparison of prior research studies, reviews of literature, and theoretical articles.

Writing the introduction:

In the introduction, you should:

• Define or identify the general topic, issue, or area of concern, thus providing an appropriate context for reviewing the literature.
• Point out overall trends in what has been published about the topic; or conflicts in theory, methodology, evidence, and conclusions; or gaps in research and scholarship; or a single problem or new perspective of immediate interest.
• Establish the writer’s reason (point of view) for reviewing the literature; explain the criteria to be used in analyzing and comparing literature and the organization of the review (sequence); and, when necessary, state why certain literature is or is not included (scope).

Writing the body:

In the body, you should:

• Group research studies and other types of literature (reviews, theoretical articles, case studies, etc.) according to common denominators such as qualitative versus quantitative approaches, conclusions of authors, specific purpose or objective, chronology, etc.
• Summarize individual studies or articles with as much or as little detail as each merits according to its comparative importance in the literature, remembering that space (length) denotes significance.
• Provide the reader with strong “umbrella” sentences at beginnings of paragraphs, “signposts” throughout, and brief “so what” summary sentences at intermediate points in the review to aid in understanding comparisons and analyses.

WRITING TIP:  As you are writing the literature review you will mention the author names and the publication years in your text, but you will still need to compile comprehensive list citations for each entry at the end of your review. Follow  APA, MLA, or Chicago style guidelines , as your course requires.

Writing the conclusion:

In the conclusion, you should:

• Summarize major contributions of significant studies and articles to the body of knowledge under review, maintaining the focus established in the introduction.
• Evaluate the current “state of the art” for the body of knowledge reviewed, pointing out major methodological flaws or gaps in research, inconsistencies in theory and findings, and areas or issues pertinent to future study.
• Conclude by providing some insight into the relationship between the central topic of the literature review and a larger area of study such as a discipline, a scientific endeavor, or a profession.
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College & Research Libraries ( C&RL ) is the official, bi-monthly, online-only scholarly research journal of the Association of College & Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association.

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Jung Mi Scoulas is Assistant Professor and Assessment Coordinator, University Library, University of Illinois Chicago, email: [email protected] .

Sandra L. De Groote is Professor and Head of Assessment and Scholarly Communications, University Library, University of Illinois Chicago.

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Use and Importance of Library Resources to Support Faculty Research and Productivity

Jung Mi Scoulas and Sandra L. De Groote *

This article explores the relationships between faculty library use, their perceptions of the importance of library resources, and its impact on their research productivity at a public research university. The authors used a self-reported faculty survey and publication records from a faculty activity reporting system to answer this question. Findings showed that faculty’s perceptions of the library resource for their research had no relationships with faculty research productivity, whereas a positive correlation was found between the frequency of use of online journals and databases, and faculty research productivity. Qualitative findings revealed that faculty viewed the library as providing and purchasing the needed library resources, and that they valued the librarians and library services as essential to their teaching and research.

Introduction

Research is an integral part of academic research institutions, and university libraries play a critical role in supporting faculty research. Maintaining key services and resources are imperative to supporting research, which can be challenging when libraries are faced with decreasing budgets and competing demands to fund databases, journal subscriptions, and other resources. Due to this environment, it is imperative for academic librarians both to identify faculty’s needs and to demonstrate the library’s value and impact on faculty research productivity.

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between faculty research productivity and faculty perceptions, and use, of the academic library in supporting their academic research. This paper also examines disciplinary differences between faculty perceptions and use of the academic library’s resources and services. Faculty at a research-intensive doctoral granting institution were surveyed about their perceptions on the importance of library resources, their perceptions of the library’s impact on their research, and their use of library resources. Faculty responses were examined along with faculty demographic information, including their publication productivity (books, book chapters, and conference proceedings, and journals) in recent years to explore possible relationships. By analyzing both quantitative and qualitative data this paper will provide deeper understanding of faculty’s perceptions of the library, their library use, and the library’s impact on their research productivity.

Literature Review

Past studies have explored relationships between research productivity and academic libraries. As part the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Research Library Impact Framework, a recent study—conducted at the same large public research university as the current study—explored the relationship between faculty productivity and their use of the library’s collection in faculty publications. 1 In exploring the number of publications produced by individual faculty in relation to their use of references in their publications, it was observed that faculty who were less productive (defined as five or fewer publications in a 15 year period) tended to use the least number of references in the publications. Faculty who were very prolific (defined as 71 or more publication in a 15 year period) used many more references in their publications compared to less productive faculty; however, they used slightly fewer references in their publications compared to faculty who were productive (defined as six to 70 publications in a 15 year period). In other words, faculty that were highly productive but not very prolific were most likely to include the greatest number of references in their publications. As this study focused primarily on journal publications and citations in journal articles, it did not explore humanities publication patterns. However, there were disciplinary differences noted in the included disciplines when average publications, as well as average references in the publications, were examined from 2015 to 2019. 2 Faculty in Engineering were found to be the most productive, publishing on average 18.61 articles per faculty member over a five-year period (2015 to 2019). Faculty in the health sciences were the next most productive group, depending on the specific discipline: Applied Health Sciences, 20.93; Medicine, 14.57; Dentistry, 12.57; Nursing, 15.85; Pharmacy, 19.58; Public Health, 14.88 (average per faculty member/five years). Those in the other disciplines typically averaged fewer publications per faculty from 2015 to 2019: social sciences (e.g. psychology, sociology, etc.) 6.97; social work, 6.88; business administration, 4.30; and education, 5.30. Differences were also observed in the average number of references included in publications from 2015 to 2019. Those in the social sciences generally included more references per publication: social science, 57.49 average references per publication; social work, 48.23, business administration, 61.96; education 52.12. The use of references in health sciences was slightly lower on average than in the social sciences per publication, though this varied depending on the specific discipline: applied health sciences, 42.90 average references per publication; medicine, 41.59; dentistry, 41.36; nursing, 47.36; pharmacy, 46.01; public health, 39.90. Engineering, on average, included 43.38 references per article.

Michael Rawls utilized ARL library statistics expenditure variables and faculty publication data from a five-year period (2005–2009). 3 Research productivity was positively correlated with library investment, particularly with electronic library resource expenditures. A 2020 study also utilized ARL library reported statistics (e.g. collection expenditures, full-text article requests, and database searches) in conjunction with faculty productivity, as measured by published research articles. 4 A positive correlation was reported between number of publications and library expenditures, collection size, and full-text article requests.

Using surveys, several studies have examined the behavior of researchers to better understand how they seek, read, and use scholarly articles. A study conducted in 2002 captured an early view of the use, and satisfaction of, University of Idaho faculty’s with technology to capture, process, store, and communicate information using electronic means. 5 In this study, 71 percent of faculty reported using electronic journals and books for research purposes; however, only 65 percent reported being satisfied with the electronic resources offered by the library. While faculty found that electronic resources saved them time to search and “sped up” the research process, there were also concerns. For example, some faculty were not aware of electronic resources, not everyone’s needs were met, and a poorly designed website made accesses complicated. As a result of a longitudinal survey, which collected data over a 30-year period, Carol Tenopir, Donald W. King, Sheri Edwards and Lei Wu concluded that faculty have increased their reading compared to the number of articles they had read in the past, and that faculty were relying more on the library to provide access to articles compared to the past where they had their own personal subscriptions to journals. 6 They also found that faculty had diversified the ways in which they identified articles to read including internet searching, online journal table of contents browsing, abstracting and indexing (A&I) databases, and full-text database searching as a result of online journals. A study conducted by Carol Tenopir, Donald W. King, Lisa Christian, and Rachel Volentine found online journals were the primary source of articles read by faculty. The articles were primarily accessed through library or other institutional subscriptions. 7

In another study, faculty members from five U.S., and two Australian, Universities were surveyed about their scholarly article reading habits. 8 Faculty members whose positions were more focused on research reported reading more articles for research purposes (62 percent) compared to the teaching-oriented faculty (49 percent). The research-oriented faculty members also reported more of their reading materials were provided by the library (58 percent), in contrast to the more teaching-oriented faculty (38 percent). A positive relationship was also found between productivity, as measured by publications, and the average number of articles read per month. Faculty who read more articles also published more. This study also found that faculty members in the health science, engineering, and sciences read more scholarly journals articles on average than faculty in the social sciences and humanities.

A more recent study by Carol Tenopir, Lisa Christian, and Jordan Kaufman explored how researchers discovered, read, and used scholarly literature for their work. 9 The study explored how many articles faculty researchers read, how they go about accessing and using the literature, how important other types of information resources are, and demographic differences. Articles from journals were rated the most important source for scholarly information, followed by books, and conference proceedings. Overall, researchers reported reading about 20 articles a month, the majority (70 percent) being read with care. More than half of the articles were read (59 percent) specifically for research, but were also read to support writing proposals, reports, and articles, which—when counted as research related activities—raised the percentage to 67 percent. Most articles were found from browsing (34 percent), or searching (29 percent); the next most common method being finding a source in the citations of another publication (18 percent). The authors conclude that, although many articles read are still in online journals from the library or other institutional subscriptions, researchers are finding other ways to discover and access articles.

Tenopir, Christian, and Kaufman also explored disciplinary differences between the researchers they examined. 10 Almost all disciplines—life and physical sciences, math, computer science, engineering, social sciences, humanities—ranked scholarly journals as “absolutely essential,” or “very important” for their work. The exception was medical sciences, which ranked journals between “very important” and “important.” Only those in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities ranked scholarly books or book chapters as “absolutely essential” or “very important.” Tenopir et al. also explored the number of articles read each month by discipline. They found that, on average, those in the sciences read 24.10 articles a month, medical sciences read 15.07 articles a month, computer science read 16.83 articles a month, engineering read 16.48 articles a month, social sciences read 26.45 a month, and humanities and fine arts read 25.63 articles a month.

While the literature above confirmed that faculty’s library use was associated with their research productivity, it is limited in its exploration of how faculty perceived the importance of the library resources and the library’s impact on their research productivity. In addition, not only is there is a scarcity of current research, but the earlier canonical literature exploring disciplinary differences in information seeking behavior related to the academic library may no longer be applicable, as databases and access to online journals have continued to evolve, which likely impacts user behavior. This paper aims to analyze both quantitative and qualitative data from an online faculty survey that was conducted earlier this year at a public research university to deepen an understanding of faculty’s perceptions of the library, their library use, and its impact on their research productivity. It also explores disciplinary differences in faculty’s perceptions and use of the academic library.

Institutional Setting

This study took place at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), a large urban research university with 16 colleges: medicine, nursing, applied health sciences, dentistry, pharmacy, public health, social work, liberal arts and sciences, engineering, education, architecture, design and the arts, urban planning and public affairs, business administration, graduate college, honors college, and law. The University is classified as an R1 research university by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, with approximately 4,500 faculty serving more than 33,000 undergraduate and graduate students. As of Spring 2022, among 4,500 faculty, about 77 percent of them are assistant, associate and full professor, and the rest are instructors, lecturers, and postdocs. About half of the faculty are from College of Medicine in Chicago, Liberal arts and sciences, and pharmacy. On average, faculty have worked at UIC for about ten years.

Survey Instrument

The Assessment Advisory Committee developed an online survey to examine faculty perceptions of the importance of library resources, their use of library resources, and their perception of the library’s impact on their research (Appendix A). Among a total of 12 questions, six questions were based on previous survey questions distributed to faculty in 2017 and 2019, and a set of six new questions addressed topics of current interest including frequency of library use (range of library resources), potential workshop topic to gauge faculty interest, and perceptions of the library’s impact on their research and scholarship success. The survey questions were pilot tested by faculty in various departments to check the clarity of the questions and to ensure whether the goals of the survey match with the survey questions. Given this paper’s aim of examining the relationships between faculty’s perceptions on library resources, their library use, and its impact on their research productivity (measured by the number of publications in 2021 (one year) and 2017–2021 (five years), the following survey questions were selected for this paper.

• Importance of library resources for research or administrative responsibility with a nine-point Likert Scale (from one, “not at all” to nine, “extremely important,” with zero as “not applicable”) on the following list: Print books, eBooks, Online journals, Databases to find literature, Special Collections, Interlibrary Loan (ILL), Digital Images, Assistance from a subject specialist librarian, and Comprehensive literature search support.
• Frequency of library resource and service use for research with a four-point Likert Scale (0 = Never, 1 = Once a year, 2 = Once a month, 3 = Weekly or More often) on the following list: Print books, eBooks, Online Journals, Databases to find literature, Special Collections, Subject and Course guides, Interlibrary loan (ILL), Assistance from a subject specialist librarian, and Comprehensive literature support.
• Faculty’s perceptions of library impact on their teaching and research (Open-ended question).
• Faculty’s demographic information from the University’s Office of Institutional Research and their publication records from the institution’s faculty activity reporting tool were included in this paper as follows:Faculty demographics: Faculty status and their Full Time Equivalent (FTE) percentage of department.
• Faculty research productivity: This was measured by the numbers of publications including books, book chapters, conference proceedings, and journal articles published in 2021 (one year) and 2017–2021 (five years). Considering the nature of the publication, the authors carefully selected the publication time range that corresponds to the survey. While the survey was being performed in February 2022, faculty were invited to respond to questions on their library use and perceptions in the past year (as stated in the survey instruction). For these reasons, the research productivity used two time ranges: one year and five years.

Data Collection

Prior to distributing the survey, email addresses and demographic information was obtained from the institutions Office of Institutional Research (OIR). Faculty demographic information was uploaded as a “panel” in Qualtrics, along with their publication output. Publication output—when the information was available—was obtained from the institution’s faculty activity reporting tool, 11 a faculty scholarly and professional activity reporting system that automatically captures faculty scholarly productivity when indexed in database such as PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and Dimensions authored by each faculty in 2021, and from 2017 to 2021. According to the University’s faculty activity reporting tool, 87 percent of faculty had publication information. Faculty can assess research impact using citation metrics automatically captured by the reporting tool, and other scholarship and professional activities can be manually entered. In the past five years, the average publication per faculty member— including books, book chapters, conference proceeding, and journal articles entered in the system—was 11. The survey was distributed to about 4,500 university faculty and post-docs working at UIC February 21, 2022, closing March 25, 2022. Three reminder emails were sent to faculty who did not complete the survey in Qualtrics. A total of 557 faculty completed the survey (12 percent response rate).

Survey Incentives

All survey respondents were invited to enter a drawing to win one of six items valued at $100-$200, such as smart watch and wireless headphone. Contact information was destroyed after the incentives were distributed.

Data Analysis

Descriptive statistics and inferential statistics (correlations and a two-way between group analysis of variance (ANOVA) were run using SPSS 28. Correlations were employed to explore if there were any relationships between: 1. faculty’s perceptions of the importance of library resources and support for their research and their research productivity; and 2. their frequency of library use and research productivity. A Pearson correlation was used to test faculty perceptions of the importance of library support for their research using a ratings scale from one (not at all) to nine (extremely important). This nine-point scale is treated as interval variable, also known as number rating scales, because it is commonly used by researchers in education field by treating responses as interval-level measures rather than just ordinal data and allows researchers to utilize statistical analysis such as Pearson correlations or ANOVA. 12 A Spearman correlation was employed to test the frequency library use, using a scale from zero (never) to three (Weekly or more often), which is considered an ordinal variable.

To examine the impact of disciplines and faculty’s library use on their publications, a two-way ANOVA was conducted. Prior to conducting a two-way ANOVA, assumptions were tested including homogeneity of variances assumption using Levene’s Test of Equality of Error Variances (to test whether the variance of dependent variable across the groups are equal). The results of homogeneity of variance assumption were violated (significant level is greater than .05). Therefore, the authors used more stringent significant level at the p value of less than <.01 rather than .05 when evaluating and reporting the results of the two-way ANOVA. 13

Disciplines were grouped into five categories based on the department where the faculty member had their highest FTE: arts and humanities, social sciences, physical sciences, life sciences, and health sciences. To create groups for library use, faculty’ frequency of library use (zero = never, to three = weekly or more often) were used to sum all nine library resources and services, from print book to comprehensive literature search support; the range of minimum and maximum for frequency of use were from one to 27. Using quartiles, the total number of library uses was used to group faculty members into three categories: less frequent (faculty who used library resources from one-ten), moderate (faculty who used library resources from 11–15), and high (faculty who used library resources from 16 or more).

Another goal of this paper is to explore how faculty perceived library impact for their teaching and research by examining their feedback. The open-ended responses were imported into Excel and analyzed by the Assessment Coordinator using thematic analysis, which is a popular qualitative analysis technique to analyze themes in a dataset and identify meaning. Initial codes and themes were reviewed by the Assessment Advisory Committee members and condensed after repeating this process until reaching agreement.

Below are the research questions for this study:

• What are the relationships between faculty’s perceptions on the importance of library resource, frequency of library use, and their research productivity?
• Are there differences in faculty’s library use and research productivity between disciplines?
• How do faculty perceive the importance of library resources and services as it relates to their teaching and research?

Publications by Faculty Status

Faculty publications for a one-year period (2021), and the average for a five-year period (2017–2021) respectively, were analyzed by the particular faculty’s status: assistant, associate and full professor, and others—which included instructors, lecturers, postdoctoral and visiting faculty. As shown in table 1, regardless of the type of publications, full professors published the most, followed by associate professor and assistant professors in both a one-year period and an average of a five-year period. Regarding the types of the publications, journals recorded the highest type of publication ( M =1.93, SD =3.78 in a one- year period, M =1.73, SD =3.29, an average of a five-year period).

Relationships between Faculty’s Perceptions on the Importance of Library Resource and Their Research Productivity

Faculty were asked to rate the importance of library resources on a scale from one to nine, with nine being “extremely important” and one being “not important at all.” The overall perception ratings based on 2022 survey results were as follows: online journals ( M = 8.73); scholarly databases ( M = 8.44); interlibrary loan ( M = 7.51); eBooks ( M = 7.23); subject special assistance from a librarian ( M = 6.15); print books ( M = 5.65); and special collections ( M = 4.47). 14 Faculty’s perceptions of the importance of library resources for research was further analyzed to examine whether their perceptions of library resources were correlated with their research productivity—measured by number of publications including books, book chapters, conference proceeding, and journals articles—over one year (2021) and over five years (from 2017 to 2021). The results from Pearson correlations indicated that based on importance, only one library resource (eBooks ( r [419] = -.102, p < .05) in 2021 was correlated with their research productivity, whereas Special Collections in 2017 and 2021 was correlated with their research productivity ( r [389] = -.110, p < .05). However, the directions of the correlations were negative, meaning that the higher faculty’s research productivity, the less their perceptions of eBooks in 2021, the higher faculty’s research productivity, the less their perceptions of Special Collections in 2017 and 2021 (see table 2).

Relationships between Faculty’s Library Use and Their Research Productivity

Faculty’s library resource use was further analyzed to examine whether their frequency of library resource use correlated with their research productivity (measured by number of publications including books, book chapters, conference proceeding, and journals) in a one-year period (2021) and a 5-year period (2017 to 2021). A Spearman rank correlation was employed, and the results indicate that only certain library resource uses in 2021 were correlated with their research productivity: print books ( r s [407] = -.136, p < .01), online journal ( r s [418] = .194, p < .01), databases ( r s [419] = .124, p < .05), and subject and course guides ( r s [400] = -.099, p < .05); however, the directions of the correlations were different (see table 3). That is, print books, and subject and course guides use were negatively correlated with the faculty’s research productivity, whereas journal and database use were positively correlated with their research productivity, indicating the more faculty used print books or course guides, the less productive they were. On the other hand, the more journal and database use, the higher number of publications in 2021.

When examining the relationships over a five-year period, the results were slightly different. Print books, journal, and subject and course guides uses in a five-year period remained similar in their relationship with faculty research productivity in 2021. That is, these library resources were associated with faculty research productivity in both 2021 and a five-year period. However, productivity in the five-year period appeared to be statistically associated with eBooks ( r s [413] = -.098, p < .05), whereas database use was not ( r s [419] = .088, p = .071). While it is important to demonstrate that faculty’s library resource uses were correlated with their research productivity, one should be cautious to interpret the findings, as this relationship does not warrant causation. Also, faculty library resource use over a one-year period may not be accurately represented by their publication numbers for the same year because publications are typically released well after the year in which the initial research occurred. Further investigation would be needed to fully explore this chronological disconnect.

Given that the amount of time it takes for books and book chapters to be published is longer than it is for conference proceeding and journals, a separate analysis of publications including only journals and conference proceedings for a five-year period (2017 to 2021) was examined to explore if there were any differences in the relationship between publications and library resource and service use (see table 4). The results remained the same as when all publication types (i.e. book, book chapters, conference proceeding and journals) were included, with the exception of special collections, which also showed a statistically significant negative relationship ( r s [403] = -.113, p < .05). This indicates that faculty’s library use for print books, eBooks, special collections, and subject guides were statistically and negatively correlated with the number of journals and conference proceedings, but positively correlated with the frequency of online journal use.

Library Impact: Library Use, Discipline and Publications

Table 5 demonstrates how well survey respondents from five discipline categories—arts and humanities, social sciences, physical sciences, life sciences, and health sciences—represent the university populations. Except for health sciences, all of the disciplines accurately represented the University population; around 10% of faculty from health sciences were less representative of those from the university health science population.

Prior to examining the impact of disciplines and library use on the research productivity, descriptive statistics were run to seek patterns between disciplines and each type of publications. As shown in figure 1, each type of publication differs by disciplines. The faculty from the arts and humanities published the highest number of books ( M =0.15) and book chapters ( M =0.41), followed by those in the physical sciences (books M =0.05; book chapters M =0.24). There were no book publications ( M =0.00) and few book chapters ( M =0.06) published by faculty from the life sciences. For the journal articles and conference proceeding publications, the patterns were different—faculty from the health sciences published the highest number of journal articles ( M =2.77), followed by faculty from physical sciences ( M =2.61). However, faculty from the life sciences did not produce conference proceedings—journal articles were their primary form of publication ( M =1.82).

Faculty’s ranking for level of importance (table 6) and frequency of library use also differs among the disciplines (table 7). Compared to the other disciplines, arts and humanities ranked books (print and electronic) the highest in terms of importance. Arts and humanities also ranked special collections, interlibrary loan, and digital images as more important compared to other disciplines. All disciplines (from life sciences, M =9.00, to physical sciences, M =8.26) ranked journal articles as the most important resource for their research. Within the rankings of databases, life sciences faculty ranked the importance of database the highest.

Similar to faculty’s perceptions of the importance of library resources for their research, more faculty from art and humanities reported using books (print and online), special collections, and digital images more frequently than other disciplines, at once a month or more often (table 7). However, frequency of using Interlibrary loan was somewhat different; faculty from physical sciences, social sciences and arts and humanities more frequently used Interlibrary loan compared to other disciplines. Most faculty in all disciplines reported using online journals at least weekly, except for those in the physical sciences, where only a little over half reported weekly use. Additionally, physical sciences faculty reported using online journals once a month. With respect to database use, faculty in the physical sciences were most likely to report at least weekly (83.9 percent) database use, compared to those in the life sciences who were the least likely to report weekly use (50 percent). While faculty from the life sciences reported the most frequent use of online journals, these faculty also report highest percentage of resources and services never used including: comprehensive literature search support (71.4 percent), Interlibrary loan (61.5 percent), assistance from a subject librarian (57.1 percent), print books (30.8 percent), and eBooks (30.8 percent).

To further examine the impact of disciplines and library use on the research productivity (table 8), as measured by the total number of publications in 2021 and the overall reported frequency of library use, a two-way ANOVA was conducted (table 9). The interaction effect between disciplines and library use groups ( F (7, 355) = 0.218, p = .981) was not statistically significant, meaning that there was no significant difference in the effect of disciplines on publications for level of library use (less frequent, moderate, and high). There was a statistically significant main effect for disciplines ( F (4, 355) = 5.909, p <.001). This finding indicates that there is a difference in the number of publications for disciplines (arts and humanities, social sciences, physical sciences, health sciences and life sciences). The magnitude of difference for disciplines was moderate (partial eta squared=.062), using Cohen’s criterion. 15 To further systematically compare each discipline, and to test whether there is a significant difference in the means of each of discipline, post-hoc comparisons using the Tukey HSD test was used. As shown in Tables 8 and 10, the results indicated that the mean publication for the health sciences ( M = 3.98, SD = 5.90) was significantly higher than arts and humanities ( M = 1.46, SD = 2.44) and social sciences ( M = 1.41, SD = 2.28) at the p < .01 level. The physical sciences ( M = 3.78, SD = 3.77) and life sciences ( M = 2.42, SD = 2.43) did not differ significantly from either of the other groups. The main effect for library use ( F (2, 355) = 0.078, p =.925) did not reach statistical significance, indicating that degree of library use (less frequent, moderate, and high) does not differ in terms of their publications.

Library Impact on Faculty’s Teaching, Research, or Administrative Work

Faculty were asked to answer the open-ended question: “Thinking about your overall UIC library experience, please describe how the library has impacted your teaching, clinical practice, research, or administrative work.” A total of 267 respondents provided feedback on this question. Three themes were generated from this open-ended question using content analysis. When reporting faculty’s comments, faculty’s college was included to provide context for their feedback.

Theme 1: Invaluable Library Resources (n=181)

Many faculty perceived that accessing library resources was valuable for their teaching and research. The list of resources that impacted their teaching and research includes journals, databases, books, textbooks, and eBooks. Examples of faculty feedback on this theme follow:

• “The UIC library has always helped me to pursue my intellectual curiosity, beyond the articles/journals books that I need to pursue my research and teaching. To me, this is invaluable” (Pharmacy).
• “The UIC Library provides robust literature search engines and strong capture of this articles typically through available subscriptions but also through interlibrary loans. This is critical for poster/oral presentations, manuscript, and grant submissions. For students, this allows them to find relevant research articles to bolster their position in writing essays” (College of Medicine).
• “The library has been fantastic in purchasing electronic versions of the textbooks that I use for my course so that students don’t have to buy them” (School of Public Health).
• “The quick availability of journals is paramount in the development of new projects and in many other aspects of research productivity” (Liberal Arts and Sciences).
• “I use open educational resources in all of my classes and the library is essential to find and collect the information. Access to medical literature through PubMed and other databases is essential for my research” (Applied Health Sciences).

While most faculty valued accessing the library resources and perceived that library resources had a great impact on their teaching and research, some faculty expressed concerns of possible discontinuation of certain resources due to the limited budgets, such as in the following comments:

• “The library is a crucial asset for both teaching and research. Please do not continue to cut resources to the library in ways that result in less access to materials. The move to acquire an increase digital library during the pandemic was crucial to our collective ability to teach and research. Please keep this up for access purposes, but do not limit purchases to only digital copies” (Applied Health Sciences).
• “UIC Library resources are fine, but I know I’ll run into an access wall eventually and would love it if the library sets aside a fund to purchase access or something for people who need material in days, not a week or two” (Urban Planning & Public Affairs).
• “I mostly use art publications. Very often these books are too expensive and / or published internationally. I hope that the library continues to acquire these important resources because the internet cannot supplant them” (Architecture, Design and Arts).

Theme 2: Resourceful and Professional Librarians (n=53)

Another resource that respondents acknowledged had an impact on their teaching and research was the library staff and librarians. Sixteen librarians’ names were mentioned in the survey with appreciation (n=28). Below are examples of faculty’s feedback on this theme:

• “The responsiveness of library support has been great and I feel that the librarians go above and beyond to answer my questions and provide assistance. This has helped to facilitate my research by reducing the time it would typically take for me to find resources and determine what is available and what is not”(Liberal Arts and Sciences).
• “The library and librarians have simplified the work of bringing my students up-to-date with their background searches for their research. I cannot say enough about the help my students and I get from the library and the librarians” (Pharmacy).
• “Qualified Librarians and Experts are critical to our academic and clinical work at UIC. Assistance has always been generous” (College of Medicine).
• “The library makes my research easier and better. My liaison has made sure my students can access assigned reading by speedily acquiring e-books” (Architecture, Design and Arts).

Theme 3: Quick and Immediate Services (n=51)

The last theme is quick and immediate services impacting faculty’s teaching and research. Services mentioned by respondents include chat, ILL/I-Share, reference, and Open Access Publication Funding. Below are some examples of faculty feedback on this theme:

• “I recently did two literature review papers and used the library heavily for interlibrary loans / electronic copy of papers and book chapters—the library services met my needs. I recently requested that the library consider acquiring a couple of books in my specialty field of sickle cell disease and these were purchased” (College of Medicine- Chicago).
• “The librarians on the chat have been very helpful” (College of Medicine, Peoria).
• “I also received support from the UIC library to publish in Open Access to research papers and disseminate my work via Indigo, which is much appreciate, at the early independent career stage I am at” (Business Administration).
• “ILL is amazingly fast. I love being able to get books easily delivered or being able to pick them up” (Architecture, Design and Arts).
• “Thank you for the outstanding service that you provide! The service you provide always exceeds my expectations. RefWorks is a handy feature for sharing literature searches” (Nursing).

As described above, a vast majority of the faculty acknowledged that library resources, services and librarians have a significant impact on their teaching and research; however, some faculty (n=22) stated lack of journals they need, discontinuing journal subscriptions, challenges in accessing the most recent articles or older articles, better access to films and videos (e.g., non-digitized material including projectors), difficulty in searching on library website.

The current study used quantitative and qualitative data from an online faculty survey, as well as publication records from a faculty activity reporting system to examine faculty perceptions of the importance of library resources, frequency of library use by discipline, as well as the impact of library resources and services on their teaching and research.

There were disciplinary differences in how faculty ranked the importance of and frequency of use of library resources. Arts and humanities faculty ranked books (both print and electronic), special collections, and interlibrary loan (most likely monograph requests) as more important to their research compared to other disciplines. All disciplines except for the physical sciences ranked journal articles as the most important resource for their research. Physical sciences ranked the databases as the most important. While Carol Tenopir, Lisa Christian, and Jordan Kaufman also noted the majority of faculty rated articles from journals as the most important source for scholarly information, 16 this study further demonstrated the disciplinary differences in faculty members’ perceptions of the value of the library resources.

It was also discovered that faculty’s perceptions of the importance of library resources (i.e. books, online journals, databases, Interlibrary loan) had no statistical relationship with their research productivity. This result implies that faculty members’ opinions of how much they value these library resources are not related to how productive they are with their research. However, there were negative correlations found between productivity and the importance of eBooks and special collections. This suggests there are resources not utilized by the majority of faculty for their research. Those who rank them higher, such as those in the arts and humanities, tend to have lower publication counts than those in other disciplines. Faculty in the arts and humanities ranked books and special collections as important, and they were also the discipline that reported the highest use of books and special collections. They likely have a smaller scholarly output, in part because their primary output is monographs (books) which are produced less frequently than journal articles. As noted in a study exploring the use of the monograph and citation patterns in the humanities, humanities scholars mainly rely on the monographs for primary and secondary sources. 17 While articles are important to humanities research, they do not serve as a replacement for monographs.

Was faculty research productivity correlated with how frequently they used library resources? With respect to the frequency of use of library resources overall by faculty, reported uses of online journals and databases were positively correlated with faculty productivity according to 2021 publication data. When publication data from 2017 to 2021 was examined, only online journal use positively correlated with productivity, while the database use correlation was not significant. These findings are similar as those of De Groote and colleagues who found a positive correlation between faculty productivity and ARL reported statistics for full-text article requests and database searches. 18 Similarly, Tenopir and colleagues also found a positive relationship between the average number of articles read monthly and the number of publications produced. 19 On the other hand, use of print books, eBooks, and subject guides were negatively correlated with productivity between 2017 and 2021. This indicates that the more productive they were, the less likely they were to use books, or, alternatively, the more they use books to complete their research, they were less likely to have a high publication count. Given that faculty in the arts and humanities ranked print books and eBooks as important to their research compared to the other disciplines, and that they are the most likely to produce print books, this relationship makes sense given that book publication productivity is much lower in comparison to article publication productivity. There were no disciplinary differences found between frequency of use of the library and faculty research productivity, although the differences in productivity between the disciplines is significantly different.

While there were no statistically significant differences in the effect of disciplines on publications for level of library use (less frequent, moderate, and high) as well as no significant differences in publications between the level of library use, it is important to note that patterns of the average numbers of publication vary by discipline; the less frequent library use group had the highest mean scores of publications across all disciplines, except art and humanities. This may indicate that faculty with high productivity are likely searching and accessing the literature to support multiple research papers at one time. This result may also be explained by the fact that library use groups were created based on the total number of library resources use rather than specific resource use (print books, eBooks, journals etc.). As stated earlier, this study found that frequency of print books and subject course guides were negatively correlated with the faculty research productivity, whereas journals and database were positively associated with the research productivity. Additionally, it is important to know which library resources were frequently used by what discipline. For faculty from arts and humanities, the less frequent library use group did not publish any materials ( M =0.00), whereas the moderate library use group scored the highest publication average ( M =1.92).

As the quantitative findings showed that faculty’s certain library use was associated with faculty productivity, qualitative findings also corroborated that many faculty perceived library resources (journals, databases, and books), services and librarians as a significant impact on their teaching and research. The faculty’s comments revealed that faculty viewed the library as providing and purchasing the library resources, and valued the librarians and services as an essential of their teaching and research. While the research productivity was one outcome on whether faculty published books or journals, the qualitative finding further uncovered faculty’s perceptions of library impact for their teaching and research. Faculty considered the library impact when they were involved in the process of the research project such as grant submissions, development of new projects, and manuscript. By employing several datasets (i.e. survey containing multiple choices and open-ended questions, faculty’s demographic information, and their publication records), this study attempted to provide faculty’s perceptions of their library resources and its impact on their teaching and research.

Limitations

The number of publications was obtained using the faculty profile tool, which automatically gathers journal and conference proceedings through API feeds from Web of Science, Scopus, Dimensions, PubMed, and Crossref. A limited number of books and book chapters are also captured by these systems and brought in automatically. For those that are not, a faculty member or their designate would need to enter the publication information. The majority of colleges, though not all, were using the reporting tool at the time of the research. Therefore, some publications—primarily books and book chapters—would not have been recorded for those faculty that were not manually adding missing publications. For these reasons, book and book chapters data may be underrepresented. Some productivity comparisons looked at publication numbers in aggregate when examining the relationships with library use. These generalized findings may not apply to all disciplines. Also, it should be noted that the findings of this research may not be representative of other research universities.

Implications and Conclusion

Faculty use of the library collection and the importance of the library collection for research is highlighted through the findings of this study. Our findings demonstrate that faculty publication patterns differ across the disciplines. Print books, as well as subject and course guides, were found to be negatively correlated with faculty research productivity, whereas journal and database use was found to be positively correlated. These findings indicate that the more productive faculty used print books or course guides less; the more productive faculty used journal and database more. It should be noted that interpreting this correlation should be done with caution because these are not cause and effect relationships. Journal articles, as accessed through online journals, remain important to faculty in conducting their research across all disciplines. By adding faculty publication records to the self-reported faculty input, this study demonstrated the value of library resources.

This study also revealed how faculty members felt about the library’s resources and how it affected their scholarly work. The academic librarians who work with faculty may already be aware of some of the results, but this study’s empirical findings show that faculty members’ use of the library is linked to their research output. As the academic environment changes, the library’s efforts to understand the needs of the faculty are crucial to ensuring their academic success. At the same time, this study raised an important question, how can libraries capture the library’s impact on faculty’s research productivity beyond the publications? As academic libraries are pressured to demonstrate the library’s impact and value for our users, it is possible to look at other outcomes such as grant submissions (accepted vs. not funded), number of research projects in progress, the number of reports and white papers deposited in the institutional repository, and so on.

Acknowledgement

Approval from the Institutional Review Board was granted to this research study (protocol number 2021-1409).

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16. Carol Tenopir, Lisa Christian, and Jordan Kaufman, “Seeking, Reading, and Use of Scholarly Articles: An International Study of Perceptions and Behavior of Researchers,” Publications 7, no. 1 (2019): 18, https://doi.org/10.3390/publications7010018 .

17. J. Wolfe Thompson, “The Death of the Scholarly Monograph in the Humanities? Citation Patterns in Literary Scholarship,” Libri 52, no. 3 (2002): 121–136,  https://doi.org/10.1515/LIBR.2002.121 .

18. Sandra L. De Groote, et al., “Research Productivity and Its Relationship to Library Collections,” Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 15, no. 4 (2020): 16–32, https://doi.org/10.18438/eblip29736 .

19. Tenopir, et al., “Variations in Article Seeking,”139–148. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2009.02.002 .

Appendix A. 2022 Faculty Survey

The UIC Library is seeking to understand how library services and resources impact your teaching, research and scholarship. Your participation will help us develop meaningful programs and collections. Please respond to this survey in the context of the primary UIC library that you use (e.g., Daley Library, Library of Health Sciences-Chicago, Peoria, Rockford or Law Library). We will use your responses to guide our priorities.

Q1 During the past year, have you done any of the following at UIC? Select all that apply.

• □ Taught an undergraduate level course
• □ Taught a graduate level course
• □ Taught a course for professional students
• □ Taught/served in a clinical setting
• □ Engaged in research or scholarship
• □ Published a book, article or other scholarly product
• □ Served in an administrative capacity

Q2 Please rate the following in terms of importance for your teaching (9= Extremely, 1= Not at all, and 0=N/A).

Q3 Please rate the following in terms of importance for your research or administrative responsibility (9=Extremely, 1=Not at all, and 0=N/A).

Q4 How often did you use the following for your research?

Q5 How easy is it to use the university library website to access the following? (9=Extremely easy, 1=Not at all, and 0=I’ve never used this tool).

Q6 Think about the last time you needed a journal article not available through the UIC Library’s physical or digital collections. What method(s) did you use to obtain a copy? Select all that apply.

• □ Searched for a freely available version online
• □ Used interlibrary loan (ILLiad) or document delivery services provided by the UIC Library
• □ Gave up and looked for a different article that I can access
• □ Purchased it myself from the publisher or vendor
• □ Requested it from a colleague at another institution
• □ Contacted the author
• □ Requested a copy using social media (#canhazpdf on Twitter, etc.) or through Scihub
• □ Asked a librarian
• □ Obtained it from Google Scholar, Academia.edu or ResearchGate
• □ Articles I needed were readily available through the UIC Library.
• □ I do not usually use journal articles for my teaching or research.
• □ I do not recall
• □ Other ________________________________________________

Q7 What topics would you like to learn more about? Select all that apply.

• □ Bibliographic Management Software(e.g., RefWorks, EndNote)
• □ Digital scholarship tools & techniques (data visualization, text mining and analysis, natural language processing, GIS, maps, etc.)
• □ Multimedia tools & techniques (videography, podcasting, infographics, websites, digital design, etc.)
• □ Data visualization platforms/software/language for my research (Tableau, PowerBI, Google Data Studio, R, Python etc.)
• □ Qualitative data analysis platforms/software for my research (NVivo, Atlas.ti , MaxQDA, etc.)
• □ Quantitative data analysis platforms/software/language for my research (R, Python, SPSS, etc.)
• □ Managing, preserving, and sharing the data I create in my scholarship
• □ Finding and reusing data for scholarship and instruction
• □ Digital methods for gathering data (APIs, web scraping, etc.)
• □ Academic authorship platforms/software/language for my research (RStudio/Rmarkdown, Overleaf/LaTeX, Pressbooks, etc.)

Q8 How do you usually get informed of library information (e.g., collections, services and resources)? Select all that apply.

• □ Department chair
• □ UIC colleagues
• □ Liaison librarians
• □ UIC Library website (Library News)
• □ UIC mass email

Q9 What information resource support do you need from the Library for your teaching and research?

• □ Teaching ________________________________________________
• □ Clinical practice ________________________________________________
• □ Research ________________________________________________

Q10 Please rate your level of agreement with the following statements (9=strongly agree, 1=strongly disagree).

Q11 Thinking about your overall UIC library experience, please describe how the library has impacted your teaching, clinical practice, research or administrative work.

________________________________________________________________

Q12 Please provide any other comments about the UIC Library, its collections, services or website.

Thank you for completing the UIC Library Faculty Survey 2022. Your responses will help us improve Library services and resources.

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If you can’t get a book at the library, we can usually obtain a copy for you through interlibrary loan or purchase it for the collection.

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If you need assistance with selecting appropriate platforms to make OERs (Open Educational Resources) materials available to students, please contact Chat with a Librarian ( library.uic.edu ). 

You can link to the library through your Blackboard course site. You will not be able to return to the survey.  Once you click Next , you will be taken to a separate survey where you can enter a drawing to win one of six items valued at $100-$200.

* Jung Mi Scoulas is Assistant Professor and Assessment Coordinator, University Library, University of Illinois Chicago, email: [email protected] ; Sandra L. De Groote is Professor and Head of Assessment and Scholarly Communications, University Library, University of Illinois Chicago. ©2024 Jung Mi Scoulas and Sandra L. De Groote, Attribution-NonCommercial ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ ) CC BY-NC.

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Understanding MLA research proposal format: a comprehensive guide

A historian and political analyst by training, Jay Brines offers six years of experience in academic writing. His in-depth understanding of political theories and historical contexts brings a rich perspective to his papers, making them a valuable resource for students in these fields. You can always count on this paper writer.

How to write a research paper MLA format? It's a common question among students and researchers who are preparing papers in the humanities. A research paper proposal outlines the objective, scope, and direction of your academic endeavor. Academic proposals are essential because they allow researchers to explain their study's purpose and request comments or financing. Formatting this text in MLA style follows humanities field standards and makes it organized and readable. This introduction to MLA style paper will explain why writing guidelines are essential for academic achievement and how they help you write a clear, professional, and convincing MLA research proposal format.

Coherent and well-structured proposals are crucial. They prepare the basis for the study and provide a clear path for it, ensuring all project issues are examined and adequately expressed. When drafting such proposals, it's beneficial to understand "What is MLA format?" as this style guide can help organize your documentation and citations effectively, ensuring clarity and consistency throughout the academic writing process. Using the right proposal structure helps you communicate your work's research significance and persuade others to do the study. This introductory section emphasizes the importance of MLA proposal formatting in academic writing and research preparation before diving into the details.

Mastering the essentials of MLA style for crafting research proposals

Modern Language Association (MLA) style is popular in language and literary writing. It's essential to familiarize yourself with the specific guidelines that govern this style. Understanding MLA rules helps research proposals sound professional and scholarly. MLA style paper format organizes proposals, making research aims obvious to reviewers and researchers. MLA proposal format, citations, and organization are crucial for academic legitimacy. The style basics will be covered in this part to help you write a solid MLA research proposal.

The crucial role of following MLA guidelines in writing

Following MLA formatting basics while writing an academic paper is essential to scholarly communication. These standards organize material simply and consistently, making the text easier to read. Researchers should follow MLA formatting principles to guarantee that their work is regarded seriously and evaluated on its merits rather than formatting problems.

Understanding and using MLA style paper format in a study proposal helps generate a professional tone and structure, which is crucial to convincing review panels of its viability and need. It shows attention to detail and adherence to "academic writing" norms, which are appreciated in scholarship. This section will explain MLA style paper format and how to use it to write a research proposal, covering citation styles and formatting a research paper.

Developing a compelling title and abstract

The title page for research proposal writings generally makes the initial impression. A brief title summarizes your study and engages readers. It should be concise, informative, and reflect your idea. Meanwhile, the abstract, much like you might find in a research proposal sample MLA format, condenses your study goals, methods, and consequences. Well-written abstracts instantly convey the scope and relevance of your study, inspiring additional investigation. Title and abstract efficiency can greatly affect study publicity and accessibility.

Crafting a compelling abstract: a quick guide for 100-200 words

Any study project needs an abstract writing to summarize its aims, methodologies, and implications. Effective abstract tips include beginning with a clear problem or purpose, a quick summary of the research methodology used, and a picture of the expected outcomes.

This section of the proposal frequently decides the reader's interest in reading the whole thing. It is the first substantive description of your work viewed by an external scholar, and a well-written abstract may greatly improve its reception. Thus, abstract writing is essential for researchers who want their proposal to stand out. Writing services can help you learn how to start a paper effectively, ensuring your abstract catches the reader's attention immediately. Moreover, services such as write my paper for me can provide guidance on structuring and refining your abstract, making it a powerful introduction to your proposal.

Strategies and insights for crafting engaging titles and abstracts

The title of your MLA research proposal format sets the tone and identifies the subject. A short, detailed, and informative title structure should convey the study's substance and entice the reader to learn more. A strong title quickly tells the reader about the study topic, which is vital in academic writing that prioritizes clarity and accuracy.

To write a good title and abstract, be clear when reading the research proposal example MLA and avoid unclear terminology. Additionally, connecting the title and abstract with the primary research challenges and approaches helps give a comprehensive preview of the proposal's content and persuasively argues for the research's necessity and relevance.

Organizing your research proposal: a strategic approach

Effectively communicating your research proposal sample MLA strategy requires a well-structured research proposal. This section helps you organize your proposal to include all important elements. Your study topic, technique, and projected results should flow together to make a cohesive paper. A logical MLA proposal format helps your proposal flow and emphasizes the importance and viability of your research idea.

Blueprint for organizing your proposal with defined sections

A well-organized proposal organization is crucial to a clear document. A well-organized proposal helps the reviewer identify crucial material and evaluate the study's feasibility and relevance. The parts should be organized from topic introduction to research methodology approaches, expected results implications, and conclusions.

The introduction proposal example, literature review, methodology, expected outcomes, and conclusion should be clearly divided. Each part should explain the research's goals, importance, and methodology and add to the proposal's narrative. This systematic technique helps deliver material effectively and shows the researcher's extensive planning and comprehension of the academic project's needs.

Guidelines for numbering and formatting subsections to enhance clarity and coherence

Effective structuring extends to the detailed organization of your content. Numbering and MLA formatting sub-sections enhance the readability and navigability of your proposal. Here are key practices to consider:

• Consistent sub-section headings: Use uniform styles for headings and subheadings to maintain a coherent MLA structure.
• Sequential numbering: Number sections and sub-sections in a sequential manner to guide the reader through your proposal.
• Logical flow: Arrange sections in a logical order, starting with the introduction proposal example and proceeding through methods, results, and conclusions.
• Visual distinction: Make use of bold or italicized fonts sparingly to emphasize important points without distracting from the main text.

Crafting the introduction and conducting the literature review

The beginning of your MLA research proposal example should set the stage for your investigation. It presents the study issue, emphasizes its relevance, and specifies your research goals. You must demonstrate your understanding of existing research and its relevance to your subject in the literature review after the introduction. This part places your research in the existing scholarly conversation and highlights gaps your study seeks to fill.

Advice for crafting a powerful introduction to frame your research

Introduction writing in a research proposal sample MLA includes background information, the research topic, and study goals. A good beginning sets the stage for the subject, engages the reader, and persuades them that it is important. The study scope and desired contributions to knowledge must be clearly defined.

A good introduction should flow into a Literature review that critically evaluates pertinent research. Literature review guidelines recommend that this part show a deep awareness of the academic environment around the research issue and identify gaps that the present study will fill.

Best practices for performing a literature review in MLA-style research proposals

When conducting a literature review for an MLA research proposal, consider the following MLA guidelines for essay projects:

• Relevant sources: Focus on recent and pertinent literature to support your research context.
• Citation consistency: Adhere strictly to MLA citation guidelines to maintain uniformity and avoid plagiarism.
• Critical analysis: Evaluate and synthesize the literature; don't just summarize. Highlight debates, major themes, and gaps in the research.
• Integration with proposal: Clearly link the literature review to your research questions and objectives, demonstrating its direct relevance.

Formulating the research methodology and anticipating outcomes

Define your research methodology by detailing data collection and analysis methods. The research design, data-collecting techniques, and analytic procedures should be clearly stated in this section to support the study's goals. Describe methodology limitations to honestly examine your approach's flaws and display critical thinking and problem-solving.

Outlining expected results predicts what the research seeks and what it may mean in the area. This indicates the study's direction, likely influence, and relevance. This section addresses research challenges to prepare the proposal for skepticism and scrutiny by showing that the researcher has examined and planned for probable hurdles.

A conclusion of your MLA research proposal is a conclusion summary of the article's main elements. This section revisits key topics like the structured approach to proposal development, MLA formatting, and strategic considerations for each section — from writing an impactful title to writing a clear and concise abstract. The conclusion summarizes these essential elements to help the reader comprehend the MLA structure and substance.

How should I format the title page in an MLA research proposal?

MLA research proposal does not need a title page; instead, write your name, instructor's name, course name, and date in the upper left corner of the first page and the title centered on the following line.

Can I use bullet points in an MLA research proposal?

Bullet points can assist in clarifying procedures or list topics in the methodology section, even though MLA style prioritizes paragraph form.

How do I cite sources within the proposal?

Use parenthetical citations with the author's last name and page number, and list all books cited at the conclusion of your proposal.

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Case Report

Unexpectedly Disabling Headache Revealing Moyamoya Disease in a Child in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Case Report and Review of the Literature.

Kouamé Léonard Kouassi, N’Guessan Yves Constant Broh, Nawa Samuel Yeo, and 1 more

This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal.

https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-4657197/v1

This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License

You are reading this latest preprint version

Introduction

Moyamoya disease is a chronic cerebral vasculopathy of unknown origin. It is rarely described in Africa, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Stroke is the major clinical manifestation. Headache, on the other hand, is a rare presenting symptom, especially when it is recent and disabling. Here, we report a case of moyamoya disease in a child in sub-Saharan Africa that was unexpectedly diagnosed by recent disabling headaches.

Case presentation

A 9-year-old male child with a two-week history of disabling headaches was admitted to the neurology department. These headaches were associated with vomiting, without fever, seizures or loss of consciousness, and without signs of localization. The cranioencephalic CT scan performed on the day of admission was normal. Twenty-four hours later, a left hemicorporeal motor deficit and visual disturbances appeared. Cerebral MRI and TOF angio-MRI revealed bilateral infarcts in the territories of the right middle cerebral artery and posterior cerebral arteries, with stenosis of both ends of the distal internal carotid arteries, giving a "smoke cloud" appearance to the cerebral vessels, suggestive of moya moya disease. The results of secondary etiology studies were unremarkable.

Conclusions

This case report alerts practitioners to an unusual initial clinical presentation of moyamoya disease in children and prompts them to prescribe cerebral MRI coupled with cerebral angio-MRI in the presence of an inaugural, disabling headache. This case also adds to the sub-Saharan literature on this disease.

cerebral vasculopathy

cerebral angiopathy

Moyamoya disease is a chronic cerebral vasculopathy of unknown etiology. It is characterized by progressive stenosis and eventual occlusion of the distal intracranial internal carotid arteries (ICA) and the proximal branches of the anterior and middle cerebral arteries. It is so named because of the opaque, smoke-like vessels that form at the base of the skull and are prominent on cerebral angiography [1] . The disease is most often sporadic, and familial cases are rare, with autosomal dominant inheritance. The susceptibility gene for the disease is thought to be located on chromosome 17 [2] .

Moyamoya disease is more common in East Asian countries such as Korea and Japan than in the Western Hemisphere [3, 4] . On the other hand, the literature on this disease in Africa, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, is sparse due to a paucity of publications. Clinically, moyamoya disease is primarily characterized by stroke, transient or permanent cerebral infarction in children, and cerebral hemorrhage in adults. Other manifestations include headache, seizures, cognitive impairment, and movement disorders [1, 5] .

Although common, headache is underrecognized in this disease and is rarely an initial symptom [6,7] .

Here, we report a case of moyamoya disease that was unexpectedly revealed by an inaugural and disabling headache in a child in sub-Saharan Africa.

A 9-year-old male child with severe, disabling headache was admitted to the neurology department. The history described recent headaches, first frontal and then diffuse, of two weeks' duration, despite the use of analgesics at the WHO level. These headaches were associated with vomiting without fever, convulsions or loss of consciousness. There was no personal or family history of headache.

The cranioencephalic CT scan performed on the day of admission was normal. Twenty-four hours later, the patient developed left hemiparesis and blurred vision. Cranioencephalic MRI on diffusion sequences revealed a large area of hypersignal signal in the territory of the right middle cerebral artery (terminal branches) and the terminal branches of the posterior cerebral arteries with restriction of the ADC (Fig.  1 ). TOF angio-MRI revealed steno-occlusion of the middle, anterior and posterior cerebral arteries and stenosis of both ends of the distal internal carotid arteries, with a "smoke cloud" appearance of the cerebral vessels (Fig.  2 ).

Electroencephalography revealed supraventricular extrasystoles. Echocardiography and Doppler ultrasound of the supra-aortic trunks were normal.

Hemoglobin electrophoresis was normal, and hemostasis, fibrinogen, antistreptolysin O (ASLO), CBC, thrombophilia, and thyroid function tests were normal.

Retroviral and hepatitis B serologies were negative. Lumbar puncture with cerebrospinal fluid analysis was normal. Her C-reactive protein level was 36 mg/l.

Epidemiologic, clinical, and radiologic data led to the conclusion of multiple cerebral infarctions associated with moyamoya-type vasculopathy.

No intra- or extracranial revascularization was performed. Treatment was essentially conservative and included analgesics from World Health Organization level I to III, an antiplatelet agent, and a preventive anticoagulant. The outcome was characterized by significant headache reduction, partial motor recovery, and resolution of visual disturbances before discharge.

Discussion and Conclusions

The authors' intention in reporting this case was twofold: first, to note a rare, unusual initial presentation of this disease that began with inaugural, disabling headaches. Second, we aimed to contribute to the African data, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, regarding this disease.

Moyamoya disease is rare, and its main clinical manifestation is stroke. Headache is one of the more unusual initial presentations. They may therefore delay diagnosis, especially when they are incipient and disabling without obvious objective neurological signs at onset, as observed in our case. As initially presented in our patient, it was difficult to associate the symptoms with stroke, especially in the absence of localizing signs.

In addition, the cranioencephalic CT scan was normal. The secondary development of motor deficits two weeks after the onset of headache in the absence of imaging suggested the diagnosis of an intracranial expansive process or encephalitis. A cranioencephalic MRI unexpectedly revealed a bilateral infarct in several different arterial territories. The cardiac etiologic work-up failed to reveal an obvious cause, as did the other conventional etiologic work-ups. Finally, cerebral angiography revealed radiologic evidence consistent with moyamoya. These angiographic images in a 9-year-old child, the bilateral nature of the infarcts, and the absence of other associated pathologies after investigation led to the conclusion of moyamoya disease. In fact, there are two main age groups for the onset of Moyamoya disease: 5 to 10 years and 25 to 49 years [5].

In addition, individuals with moyamoya disease usually present with bilateral pathognomonic arteriographic findings in the absence of associated risk factors. In contrast, people with characteristic Moyamoya vasculopathy who also have certain associated conditions, such as sickle cell disease, neurofibromatosis, Down syndrome, autoimmune diseases, congenital heart disease, and posterior fossa malformations, are classified as having Moyamoya syndrome. People with unilateral arteriographic findings also have Moyamoya syndrome, even if they have no other associated risk factors [8]. In addition, in our patient, there was also stenosis of the left posterior cerebral artery, which is not usually affected by moyamoya disease. However, according to authors such as Ohkura et al., the posterior cerebral artery is the most important independent predictor of cerebral infarction in moyamoya patients. Thus, the prediction and inhibition of steno-occlusive changes in the posterior cerebral artery may help prevent cerebral infarction [9].

Headache associated with moyamoya disease in children accounts for 20–30% of cases and is most often chronic [10]. In addition, unlike in adults, cases of headache that are diagnosed as moyamoya disease are rare [11, 12, 13, 14]. Therefore, the case presented here expands the presentation of the disease. Headaches in moyamoya disease are not specific but are dominated by migraine-type headaches [15, 16]. In our patient, the headaches were frontal and then diffuse.

Moyamoya disease is found throughout the world, but mainly in East Asia. Its incidence in European and North American populations is low [4]. This disease is rare in Africa, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, and its incidence and prevalence are not known. A 1992 study of the distribution of the disease worldwide revealed 52 cases in Africa, including 44 in North Africa, 5 in Central Africa, 3 in South Africa, and none in sub-Saharan Africa [17].

In a tertiary hospital in sub-Saharan Africa, Nigeria, a study conducted between 2003 and 2021 to identify rare cranial neurosurgical pathologies, published in 2022, recorded no cases of Moyamoya disease [18]. More recently, in 2022, a case of moyamoya disease was reported in Burkina-Faso, but stroke was the first sign and was associated with hyperhomocysteinemia [19].

In terms of treatment, cerebral surgical revascularization is not a panacea, as it may either relieve or worsen headache [6]. Moreover, some patients improve spontaneously without this treatment, as in our patient who received conservative treatment.

The case we report here illustrates the diversity of the presentation of this vasculopathy. Therefore, the importance of considering moyamoya disease as one of the probable etiologies in the setting of a child's first disabling headache and performing cerebral MRI in conjunction with cerebral angio-MRI without delay is emphasized. Early diagnosis and appropriate treatment improve patient prognosis.

Declarations

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Dr. KOUAKOU-Aphelly Loth Toussaint, a radiologist at the Medical Examination and Radiology Center, for his contribution to the analysis of MR and angio-MR images.

Author contributions

KLK received the patient, examined him and ordered various investigations. He then drafted and revised the manuscript with NYCB. 

NSY and MAND contributed to the revision of the manuscript. 

All authors have read and approved the manuscript.

Availability of Data and Materials

All the data generated or analyzed in this study are included in this published article. For further information, please contact the corresponding author.

Ethical approval and informed consent

Ethical approval was not needed. Consent to participate is not applicable, as this is a retrospective case report; the patient was treated and not previously enrolled in a trial.

Consent to Publication

Informed consent for publication of this child's data was obtained from his father.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

• Zhang H, Zheng L, Feng L: Epidemiology, diagnosis and treatment of moyamoya disease. Exp Ther Med. 2019, 17:1977-1984.
• Gupta A, Tyagi A, Romo M, Amoroso KC and Sonia F. Moyamoya Disease: A Review of Current Literature. Cureus 2020, 12(8): e10141. DOI 10.7759/cureus.10141.
• Kim JS. Moyamoya Disease: Epidemiology, Clinical Features, and Diagnosis. Journal of Stroke 2016;18(1):2-11 http://dx.doi.org/10.5853/jos.2015.01627.
• Kuroda S and Houkin K : Moyamoya disease: Current concepts and future perspectives. Lancet Neurol 7: 1056-1066, 2008.
• Demartini Jr Z, Teixeira BCA, Koppe GL, Gatto LAM, Roman A and Munhoz RP. Moyamoya disease and syndrome : a review. Radiol Bras. 2022 Jan/Fev; 55(1):31–37.
• Chiang CC, Shahid AH, Harriott AM, Tietjen GE, Savastano LE, Klaas JP and al. Evaluation and treatment of headache associated with moyamoya disease – a narrative review. Cephalalgia 2022 ; 42 : 542-552.
• Krämer M, Lee SI, Ayzenberg I, Schwitalla JC, Diehl RR, Berlit P and al. Headache in Caucasian patients with moyamoya angiopathy - a systematic cohort study. Cephalalgia 2017; 37: 496-500.
• Montaser A and Smith ER. Moyamoya Disease. Practical neurology January 2020. Généralités sur moya moya.
• Ohkura A, Negoto T, Aoki T, Noguchi K, Okamoto Y, Komatani H and al. Stenotic changes of the posterior cerebral artery are a major contributing factor for cerebral infarction in moyamoya disease. Surg Neurol Int 2018 ; 9 :105.
• Lee WJ, Kim YO, Yoon W, Rho YI and Woo YJ. Headache Associated with Moyamoya Disease in a Child : Pain Pattern in MRA Progression. Journal of the Korean Child Neurology Society 2014 ;22(2) :98-101.
• Qadri I, Ashraf M and Kumar A. "Moyamoya disease masquerading as recurrent headaches in a 4-year-old child." Heart India 6(3): p 108-110, Jul–Sep 2018.
• Prabhu N, Ramasamy B, Elango S and Kiran Chandrasekar KK. Unraveling the mystery: Headache as a presenting symptom of moyamoya disease. Abstracts/Journal of the Neurological Sciences 455 (2023) 121173. doi:10.1016/j.jns.2023.121659.
• Malone M and Ritchie D. The Mystery of a Unilateral Headache Ultimately Diagnosed as Moyamoya Disease. Cureus 14(7): e26816. DOI 10.7759/cureus.26816.
• Diaz UJ, Cabán-Martinez AJ and Halder GE. Presentation with Recurrent Intractable Headache: A Patient with Moyamoya Syndrome—Case Report. Neurol Med Chir (Tokyo) 54, 133–135, 2014.
• Zach V, Bezov D, Lipton RB and Ashina S. Headache associated with moyamoya disease: a case story and literature review. J Headache Pain (2010) 11:79–82.
• Gao B, Kang K, Zhang J, Zhang D and Zhao X. Clinical Characteristics and Long-Term Outcome of Headaches Associated With Moyamoya Disease in the Chinese Population—A Cohort Study. Front. Neurol. 11 : 605636. Doi : 10.3389/fneur.2020.605636.
• Goto Y and Yonekawa Y. Worldwide Distribution of Moyamoya Disease. Neurol Med Chir (Tokyo) 32, 883-886, 1992.
• Ohaegbulam SC, Ndubuisi C and Okwuoma. Some Rare Neurosurgical Pathologies in a Sub-Saharan Tertiary Hospital. Int J Rare Dis Disord 2022. 5:049. doi.org/10.23937/2643-4571/1710049.
• Kabore R, Ouiminga H, Kabore J. and Vallat J. Moyamoya Disease Associated with Hyperhomocysteinemia: A Rare Cause of Stroke in Sub-Saharan Africa. World Journal of Neuroscience 2022 : 12, 22-28.

Additional Declarations

The authors declare no competing interests.

A bibliometric and systematic review of scientific publications on metaverse research in architecture: web of science (WoS)

• Open access
• Published: 02 July 2024

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• Güneş Mutlu Avinç   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1049-2689 1 &
• Aslı Yıldız 2  

The global trends related to the concept of Metaverse in architecture have significantly expanded in recent years, thanks to the increasing number of scientific publications. Systematically examining the literature on this topic and identifying research trends and potential directions provides comprehensive data maps, thus charting a roadmap for researchers interested in working in this field. In this context, the research aims to identify the trends and tendencies of the concept of the Metaverse in the scientific literature over time at the primary analysis levels, such as countries, institutions, resources, articles, authors, and research topics. The research conducted with this aim involves a dynamic, visual, and systematic examination of the academic literature on academic publishing using data accessed without year limitations from the Web of Science Core Collection-Citation database. In the research conducted without year limitations, a sample comprising 334 articles published/planned to be published between 2005 and 2024 is analyzed. The bibliometrix R-Tool was used to enhance the analysis, and metadata was obtained from the WoS database. This analysis analyzed publications, citations, and information sources, including the most published journals, the most used keywords, the most cited and leading articles, the most cited academics, and the most contributing institutions and countries. In conclusion, this study aims to define the profile of international academic publishing in the field of the Metaverse, present its development, identify research fronts, detect emerging trends, and uncover the working themes and trends in the Metaverse specific to architecture. This study describes the profile of international academic publishing on the metaverse, presents its development, identifies research frontiers, identifies emerging trends, and reveals metaverse study themes and trends in architecture. As a result, education, virtual perception of space, building operation and maintenance, building evacuation, BIM (Building Information Modeling), cultural heritage, physical environment, built environment/planning, smart home, design and creativity, universal design/accessibility, sustainability, smart city/GIS, urban transportation systems, and in-use evaluation are identified as themes that have been studied in relation to the metaverse concept in architecture and design disciplines.

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

Introduction

Information and communication technologies are undergoing rapid change and transformation every day. The concept of technology, which developed with computers in the 1990s, evolved into the Web in the 2000s, Web 2.0, the second stage of the evolution of the Web in the 2004s (Murugesan, 2007 ), telecommunications in the 2010s, and the metaverse in the 2020s (Lee, 2021 ).

Until the 1990s, Web 1.0 emerged as the first version. In this process, access to information was only one-way and there was no interaction. The Web 1.0 era was focused on making connections and obtaining information on the internet. Web 2.0, which emerged in 2004, includes forums, comments, blogs and social networks. However, Web 2.0 allowed users to share information as well as read. Thus, people started to communicate, collaborate and interact in another way (Alby, 2007 ). The concept of Web 3.0, known as the semantic web, which became active in 2010, made it possible to conduct a content search using keywords. Here, instead of humans, computers have come to the forefront to produce new information and think. Web 4.0, which started in 2016, focuses on access and intelligence (Latorre, 2018 ). Using machine learning technologies and artificial intelligence, users started to interact with data. Interpreted as an iteration of the Internet, the metaverse brings together a large number of different virtual spaces that provide access to various projects and entertainment environments using the full spectrum of augmented reality. In summary, the metaverse is the latest in a long line of emerging technologies (Nath, 2022 ). All these definitions are presented in the graph in Fig.  1 .

The Changing Face of the Internet: Journey from Web 1.0 to Web 3.0 (Nath, 2022 )

The concept of Metaverse (fictional universe), which first emerged in Neal Stephenson's cyberpunk novel "Snow Crash" in 1992 (Ağırman & Barakalı, 2022 ), has seen a significant increase in studies on this subject after Marc Zuckerberg changed the name of Facebook and announced it as "Meta" in 2021 (see Figure 1 ). The word Metaverse is a combination of the prefix "meta" (meaning "beyond") and the suffix "verse" (short for "universe") (Dionisio et al., 2013 ). In this context, the Metaverse is defined as a virtual structure that allows participants to participate in real life or recreate real life through self-created avatars in a virtual metaphorical environment, independent of temporal and spatial constraints (Díaz et al., 2020 ). The concept of a metaverse or virtual world is a social and economic universe beyond commerce and entertainment, where digital users or avatars represent the individual (Lee, 2021 ). The Metaverse offers a potential environment in various fields, such as culture, education, design, and entertainment.

In the literature, there are studies on metaverse conducted with various keywords in different databases. For example, Abbate et al, ( 2022 ) conducted a study with the keyword “metaverse” in the title, abstract and keywords in the Scopus database, regardless of the time period studied, and the aim of the study was to review the studies on the Metaverse using bibliometric analysis. Feng et al. ( 2024 ), (2024) was conducted in the WOS database with the keywords “metaverse” and “Non-Fungible Token” between 2000 and 2023. Tas and Bolat, ( 2022 ), unlike these studies, conducted a bibliometric analysis of studies on the use of metaverse in education. Similarly, Bızel ( 2023 ) conducted a bibliometric analysis on the concept of “metaverse” and “education” in education between 2004 and 2022. Zhou et al. ( 2023 ) analyzed articles on the concept of metaverse in different databases between 1992 and 2022 and examined the concept of metaverse, its technical features, user behaviors and their theoretical foundations. Studies in the literature have examined the concept of metaverse in general or in relation to education. The scope of this study is the relationship between metaverse and architecture.

Given its inherent connection with architecture and design, this study primarily focuses on the Metaverse universe. Therefore, this study conducts a bibliometric examination of research related to the Metaverse and performs content analysis specifically within architecture. Bibliometrics is a quantitative analysis method that uses mathematical and statistical tools to measure the interrelation and impact of publications within a specific research field (Lee et al., 2020 ). Bibliometric research encompasses empirical methods focusing on quantitative literature studies (Ding et al., 2001 ). As a powerful tool for analyzing the information domain and revealing the cognitive-epistemological structure of the field (Van Eck & Waltman, 2010 ), it provides a macroscopic view across numerous academic studies. This method highlights influential research, authors, journals, institutions, and countries within a specific domain (Mora et al., 2019 ). Based on this premise, this research chose the WoS database for bibliometric analysis. Indeed, in every article indexed in WoS, research data such as authors, sources, cited references, keywords, and more can be accessed (Wang et al., 2022a , 2022b , 2022c ). Furthermore, the Metaverse literature obtained from the WoS database is systematically analyzed using the Bibliometrix and Biblioshiny software packages available in the R program. The following scientific questions guide this research.

RQ1: What is the development trend of publications in the Metaverse field over the years?

RQ2: How are the relationships among stakeholders in this field, such as authors, institutions, and countries?

RQ3: What are the main keywords in the study domain, and how are they clustered?

RQ4: What are the key elements, trends, and themes that characterize the global development of the Metaverse literature?

This bibliometric and content analysis conducted within this framework presents structured information and a comprehensive examination of the Metaverse field. Gaps, significant, and emerging points in the area are identified for researchers in this domain. The significance and contribution of this study lie in its examination of the literature related to the Metaverse and architectural design up to the present day.

Methodology

Data collection.

This study uses the Web of Science (WoS) database for bibliometric analysis. Indeed, the Web of Science database is preferred due to its wide range of tools for manipulating search results and its general, cited reference, and advanced search features (Norris & Oppenheim, 2007 :163; Merigó et al., 2015 ; Gaviria-Marin, 2019 ). On April 29, 2024, a comprehensive search was conducted across all fields in the Web of Science database using the following search query: "metaverse" AND "architect*" or "design" or "architectural studio" or "architectural education" or "building" or "architectural space" or "built environment" AND "virtual space" or "mixed reality" or "augmented reality" or "extended reality" or "cyberspace" or "virtual reality" or "virtual environment" or "virtual worlds" or "digital world" as keywords (Fig.  2 ). This search resulted in the identification of 513 studies.

WoS search screen

The flow chart of the study is shown in Fig.  3 .

Flowchart of the study

Bibliometric analysis

Bibliometric analysis, a quantitative approach to analyzing academic literature using bibliographies to identify, evaluate, and monitor published research, first used in 1969 (Broadus, 1987 ; Lee et al., 2020 ), is employed in this study to analyze trends and potentials in the field of the Metaverse. Bibliometric analysis distills a comprehensive overview of a specific area by processing a large volume of literature. In this context, bibliometric study provides a broad perspective on extensive research literature and enables the quantitative and objective delineation of research topics from the past to the present (Chen et al., 2021 ). The bibliometric analysis method analyzes development trends in various scientific research fields (Li & Ye, 2016 ). It aids researchers in creating knowledge maps that represent information structure in a particular area and examine their characteristics using statistical and mathematical methods (Ding et al., 2001 ; Godin, 2006 ).

In this study, the graphical web interface Biblioshiny, based on Bibliometrix 3.0 (URL-1), is used within the R software and RStudio environment to create knowledge maps. R software is noted as a dynamically writable and interpretable programming language for statistics and data analysis (Diez-Vial & Montoro-Sanchez, 2017 ; Donoho, 2021 ; Khan et al., 2016 ; Xu & Marinova, 2013 ).

The Bibliometrix R package plays an essential role in scientific methodology by providing a set of tools for quantitative research. This package is developed within the R programming language, an open-source environment and ecosystem. The R language offers substantial opportunities in scientific computation due to its multitude of practical statistical algorithms, access to high-quality numerical data, and integrated data visualization tools (Aria & Cuccurullo, 2017 ; Xie et al., 2020 ). Within the scope of this study, the literature data obtained from the WoS database was analyzed using the bibliometric analysis method within the Bibliometrix software environment. The knowledge maps and data obtained are presented in the findings section.

Distribution of annual documents

To reflect the trends in literature research, it is essential to analyze the accelerations that studies have demonstrated over time (Xie et al., 2020 ). In this context, it was determined that this research, without a time constraint, covers the relevant data from the years 2005 to 2023. It is seen that the number of research studies published on the Metaverse from 2005 to 2023 shows a similar trend with a small number of publications until 2021 but shows a significant increase starting from 2022 (Fig.  4 ). Based on the graphical data, it is anticipated that research in the Metaverse field will rapidly increase.

Number of documentations by year

According to the analysis data from the Web of Science category, the top five categories prominently featured are Engineering Electrical Electronic (103), Computer Science Information Systems (102), Telecommunications (86), Computer Science Artificial Intelligence (58), and Computer Science Interdisciplinary Applications (58) (Fig.  5 ).

Number of documentations by WoS Categories

When the classification of the retrieved studies is examined in the context of Sustainable Development Goals, it is determined that 168 studies were conducted for Quality Education, 61 for Good Health and Well-being, 32 for Sustainable Cities and Communities, 30 for Industry Innovation and Infrastructure, 17 for Responsible Consumption and Production, 3 for Affordable and Clean Energy, 1 for Gender Equality, 1 for Decent Work and Economic Growth, 1 for Reduced Inequality and 1 for Life on Land (Fig.  6 ).

Number of documentations by Sustainable Development Goals

As a result of the studies on the Metaverse, 291 articles, 128 proceeding papers, 46 review articles, 37 early access, 5 book chapters and 4 editorial material were identified (Fig.  7 ).

Number of document types

Data screening and inclusion criteria

As a result of the search conducted in the WoS database on April 29, 2024, a total of 513 sources potentially suitable for this study were identified. In this research, 323 documents were retrieved from 199 sources. In this study, which did not apply any time constraints, the retrieved documents spanned the period from 2005 to 2023. The data file downloaded in Bibtex format from the WoS database was uploaded to the Bibliometrix software (URL-1). In this step, publications written in English, accessible, and peer-reviewed were preferred for examination. In this context, the document type was limited to 'Article/Article; Book Chapter/Article; Early Access/Article; Review; Early Access/Review.' As a result of these restrictions, a total of 190 studies were excluded from the analysis. Figure  8 provides general information about these data.

Primary data information in Bibliometrix software

Most relevant sources

The retrieved articles have been published in a total of 289 different sources. The sources with the most publications are the ‘IEEE Access’ (N = 13), ‘IEEE Network’ (N = 11), ‘Sustainability’ (N = 10), ‘Internet Research’ (N = 8) and ‘Electronics’ (N = 7) publications. Figure  9 presents the top 20 sources with the highest number of publications.

Top 20 most relevant sources

Most frequent words

Keywords ensure the general comprehensibility of a research topic and its content. The analysis of high-frequency keywords reflects important and current topics in the Metaverse field. In this context, Fig.  9 , which includes the ‘TreeMap’, illustrates the tree structure of the 50 most frequently used keywords. In this representation, the size of the rectangle indicates the frequency of usage of the term within the rectangle. In this context, 'virtual-reality (50), augmented reality (30), design (28), system (24), technology (22)' are identified as the top five prominent terms. Additionally, this situation can also be observed through the created 'WordCloud,' which represents the frequency of usage of key terms in a word cloud (Fig.  10 ).

Treemap chart of the 50 most frequently occurring "KeyWords Plus" terms and World cloud of the 50 most frequently occurring "KeyWords Plus" terms

Most relevant countries

Figure  11 shows the collaborations between co-authors and their countries. In this context, it is understood that the most co-authors are commonly found in China. In terms of the number of articles published by a single country; China (N = 51), USA (N = 27), Korea (N = 26), Italy (N = 12) and the United Kingdom (N = 9) are ranked as the top five. Similarly, for multiple-authored articles, the top five countries are as follows: China (N = 35), United Kingdom (N = 11), India (N = 8), USA (N = 6), Malaysia (N = 6), Singapore (N = 6), Korea (N = 5), Italy (N = 5) and USA (N = 5). When looking at Fig.  11 , the turquoise bars represent single-country publications (SCP), while the orange bars represent multi-country publications (MCP).

Corresponding Author's Countries

Most relevant authors

Figure  12 presents a list of the top 20 authors with the highest number of publications. In this context, it is observed that Niyato has the highest number of publications (10). Following Niyato (N = 11), Xiong (7), Wang (6), Bibri (5), Kim (5), Li (5), Liu (5) and Wang (5) respectively.

Most relevant Authors

Authors' production over time

The article dataset related to Metaverse publications includes a total of 1044 authors. Figure  13 displays a diagram depicting the top 20 most productive Metaverse authors during the study period. The size of the dots in this diagram represents the number of articles, while the colors' dimensions represent the annual total citation counts. Regarding the number of articles published during the study period, the top three most productive authors are Niyato (10 articles), followed by Xiong (6 articles), Wang (5 articles), Bibri (2 articles), and Kim (4 articles).

The top 20 authors featured in research on the Metaverse

Most relevant affiliations

When evaluating the institutions where publications on the Metaverse have been conducted, Nanyang Technology University (Number of Articles = 20), Singapore University of Technology and Design (N = 15), Norwegian University (N = 12), Sungkyunkwan University (N = 11), and Gachon Univercity (N = 11) are listed as the top institutions (Fig.  14 ).

Most relevant Affiliations

Country scientific production

The countries with the highest number of publications in the field of Metaverse are shown in Fig.  15 . The number of research articles is represented by the blue color intensity on the map. According to this graph, China (134), USA (130), Korea (87), United Kingdom (72), India (45), and Singapore (48) are ranked as leading countries in terms of publications.

Country Scientific Production

Country collaboration map

International research collaboration for articles on Metaverse is depicted in Fig.  16 . The number of published articles is indicated by the intensity of the blue color on the map. The thickness of brown lines represents the intensity of collaboration based on frequency. While China stands out as the country with the strongest collaboration compared to other countries, the most collaborative countries are ranked as USA, Australia, and the United Kingdom, respectively.

Country Collaboration Map for Metaverse Articles

Most cited countries

According to the graph shown in Fig.  17 , the top five countries receiving the most citations are ranked as follows: China (810), USA (689), Korea (659), France (275), and United Kingdom (207).

Graph of Countries Receiving the Most Citations

Three-field plot

A three-field graph illustrating the relationship between keywords, countries, and journals is presented in Fig.  18 . The height of the rectangular nodes within the graph represents the frequency of author keywords, keywords plus, and authors. The thickness of the lines between nodes represents the number of connections (Wang et al., 2022a , 2022b , 2022c ).

Three-Field Plot showing the relationship between authors keywords (left), keywords plus (middle) and authors (right)

Thematic map

To comprehensively capture the theme map of big data research, author keywords and index keywords from bibliographic records were clustered and classified by dividing them into two using the k-means and naive Bayes algorithms (Parlina et al., 2020 ). The revealed thematic map consists of thirteen clusters. For the clustering of metaverse topics, four categories are represented as clusters in different colors. In the first cluster represented by the green color, the terms ‘virtual reality’, ‘augmented reality’, and ‘design’ take prominence. In the blue cluster, terms such as ‘impact’, ‘experience’, and ‘virtual worlds’' are observed. As seen in Fig.  19 , the red cluster encompasses significant research topics.

Thematic map generated using author's keywords

Trend topics

The Trend topics chart presented in Fig.  20 is created based on Keywords Plus. In this context, the size of the circles within the graph indicates the frequency of the term, while the length of the lines represents how long this concept has been studied. In this context, the results of the analysis conducted to identify trend topics with Keywords Plus are presented in Fig.  20 . Accordingly, virtual reality (f = 50), augmented reality (f = 30), technology (f = 24), design (f = 28), model (f = 22), and environments (f = 10) are determined as trend topics.

Trend topics with Keywords Plus

Examination of publications in the field of architecture through content analysis

Among these studies, a total of 76 research papers were subjected to content analysis within the context of the relationship between architecture and the Metaverse, and the obtained data are presented in Table  1 . Each study has been categorized according to thematic areas within the fields of architecture and design, revealing that the studies were produced in a total of 15 categories: education, building operation and maintenance, building evacuation, Building Information Modelling (BIM), physical environment, virtual space perception, cultural heritage, built environment/planning, smart city/GIS, smart home, design and creativity, universal design/accessibility, sustainability, urban transportation systems, and post-occupancy evaluation. In addition, brief information about the specific topics each study within the field of architecture and design focused on under each study theme has been provided. According to the content analysis conducted, it is evident that education and virtual space perception themes are the most prevalent subjects of scientific research within disciplines related to architecture and design. The fact that the metaverse universe is a virtual fiction of the real world brings to the fore the question of how this universe is perceived by individuals. Consequently, the perception of virtual spaces becomes significant in studies related to the Metaverse. Furthermore, Table  1 indicates that the concept of the Metaverse is gaining importance in various themes related to architecture. It has the potential to be a promising research area in different fields such as different age groups, disability conditions, construction systems and technologies, cultural heritage, and transportation. The density and relevance of research themes in the fields of architecture and design align with the sustainable development goals related to the Metaverse. Themes such as education quality and sustainable cities and communities, as well as community objectives, are prominent in architectural studies as well.

Discussion and conclusion

This research, in general, reveals the overall trends in scientific research related to the Metaverse and specifically within the disciplines of architecture and design. The number of studies analyzed within the scope of the research has increased rapidly since 2021 and this momentum is expected to increase in the coming years. WoS categories such as Electrical-Electronic Engineering, Computer Science Information, and Telecommunications are prominent areas where the concept of the Metaverse is emphasized. In terms of sustainable development goals, topics like education quality, good health and well-being, and sustainable cities and communities are the focal points of research related to the Metaverse. When the document types are evaluated, it is seen that articles come to the forefront. The most frequently used keywords related to the Metaverse concept include virtual reality, augmented reality, design, system, and technology. In terms of the countries where the most studies are produced, China takes the lead, followed by countries such as the USA, Korea, and the United Kingdom. Additionally, the study provides data related to authors, citations, institutions, and journals.

The results of the bibliometric analysis conducted within the scope of the questions guiding the research are as follows.

This study, which evaluates the research conducted between 2005 and 2023, shows that there is a similar trend with a small number of publications until 2021, but there has been a significant increase since 2021. It is predicted that the research on this subject increased rapidly in 2023 and will increase rapidly in the coming years.

In the study, Nanyang Technology University, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Norwegian University, Sungkyunkwan University, and Gachon University stand out as research institutions related to the metaverse. In the study, Niyato was found to be the author with the highest number of publications. He is followed by Xiong Wang, Bibri, Kim, Li, Liu and Wang. In the study, China, the USA, Korea, the United Kingdom, India and Singapore are ranked as the leading countries in terms of publications. However, when the cooperation potentials of the countries are analyzed, China stands out as the country with the strongest cooperation compared to other countries, while the countries with the most cooperation are the USA, Australia and the UK, respectively.

In the publications examined in the study, it was determined that the keywords metaverse, virtual reality, augmented reality, extended reality, artificial intelligence, blockchain, reality, mixed reality, virtual were frequently used.

The prominent themes clustered in the study are “impact, experience, virtual worlds”, “internet, challenges, blockchain”, “integration, rehabilitation, walking” and “virtual-reality, augmented reality, design”. The global collaborative network framework of Metaverse literacy and research needs to be strengthened. In the future, it is envisioned that this research area will further develop in sectors such as education, health, arts, commerce and entertainment. The results of this study are intended to serve as a reference for future applied research on the metaverse.

The particular focus of this study is to examine the themes in which the concept of the Metaverse has been explored within the disciplines of architecture and design. The content of architectural publications addressing the Metaverse has been analyzed in the study, revealing research trends in this field. Within this context, various themes related to the concept of the Metaverse have been explored in the disciplines of architecture and design. These themes include education, building operation and maintenance, building evacuation, Building Information Modelling (BIM), physical environment, virtual space perception, cultural heritage, built environment/planning, smart cities/GIS, smart homes, design and creativity, universal design/accessibility, sustainability, urban transportation systems, and evaluation in the usage process. Among these themes, education and virtual space perception stand out as the most researched areas.

In conclusion, this study aims to provide guidance for researchers by demonstrating how the concept of the Metaverse has shaped a research landscape within the disciplines of architecture and design over time.

This study presents a bibliometric and content analysis of a research conducted in the WoS database with the keywords “metaverse” AND “architect*” or “design” or “architectural studio” or “architectural education” or “building” or “architectural space” or “built environment” AND “virtual space” or “mixed reality” or “augmented reality” or “extended reality” or “cyberspace” or “virtual reality” or “virtual environment” or “virtual worlds” or “digital world”. The study covers the use of metaverse in the field of architecture and design.

Although the concrete reality of the Metaverse has not materialized due to its conceptual novelty, its future prospects are interpreted as promising (Piñeiro-Chousa et al., 2024 ). In this context, researchers can contribute to this point by analyzing the theoretical foundations of the Metaverse in depth. In future studies, in order to obtain more systematic quantitative results on the metaverse, it is planned to expand the keywords, search different databases and include various contents in the study. In addition, it is planned to examine architectural content produced on digital architecture platforms related to metaverse. In order to expand the scope of the study, the relationship of the metaverse with different disciplines will be discussed.

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Mutlu Avinç, G., Yıldız, A. A bibliometric and systematic review of scientific publications on metaverse research in architecture: web of science (WoS). Int J Technol Des Educ (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10798-024-09918-1

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