The Process:
Discovery
Analysis
Reading and structuring
Writing and citation
Ethics and submission
The purpose of the literature survey is not to impress us with how much you have read. Its purpose is to show why your research was unique and necessary. A good literature survey would describe the current state of the field, identify gaps or errors, add new perspectives and present the basis of your argument.
For research and masters' and doctoral levels, the aim of the literature is threefold:
To remind the readers of what we already know - NOT to try and teach them
To tell what it is that we don't know and why it is important to find out
To let them know where and how we should be looking for the answers
There are two main "metaphors" that you could use for your literature survey, the debate and the foil.
Brilliant presentation by Dr Candace Hastings of Texas A&M University on writing a literature survey
The debate: Present the reader with one point of view, and contrast that with another point of view, and then point out that your research will either side with one of them, or produce a third position, which could be a synthesis of theirs, or could be an entirely new position all together.
The foil or sword "cuts down" all current positions already taken. Present an argument by a certain author, and then show why it is not the solution. Maybe the sample size is too small. Perhaps it is a quantitative study whereas you need the depth of a qualitative study or vice versa. Maybe it was done too long ago, or, maybe it was so good that it needs to be replicated.
The literature survey is not a list of what other authors say. The literature survey is your narration of what they say. This means that YOUR voice needs to come through. It is called FOREGROUNDING, and is achieved as follows:
Wrong: According to Cronje (2021) WhatsApp is a good way to assist with community building in higher education.
Correct: WhatsApp is a good way to assist with community building in higher education (Cronje, 2021).
Search before re-search
Both the English word research and the German word Nachforschung mean 'to search again'. So before you can do research, you first have to search the literature. First, you have to find the literature. Here are a number of good places to start looking. (Yes Google Scholar is not the only one)
Google Scholar is probably the easiest place to start looking, particularly if you are not yet registered with a university.
Core is the "world's largest collection of open access research papers,"
Science Open contains 70 million open access publications. Here is a really nice blog that shows how to use it.
Your university library subscribes to numerous scientific databases. Here Ms Zandile Mboneni explains how to use the CPUT databases.
Paper Digest will give you a quick overview then allow you to drill down into specifics and paraphrase, preventing plagiarism.
Elicit and Scispace help determine the key issues, and organize literature in a table.
Inciteful builds a network of academic papers and will analyze the network to help you discover the most relevant literature, key auhors, journals and issues.
Lateral finds all related literature. Here is a demo.
Who are the key authors, and what do they say and where do they publish? What are the key issues, and what are the key journals? For this, you go to Inciteful. Register with Academia.edu, Researchgate.net and Google Scholar. Follow the key authors that you have identified. Get to know who else is following them and get to know whom they follow. Find out which conferences they attend and what keynote addresses they have delivered. Visit their websites, and generally form a picture of the people whose work you follow.
Here is @drandystapleton showing how to write a literature survey in one minute.
Understand the field. Map relationships, identify key authors and organize your findings.
Here are three AI sites that show you how various papers are related.
Litmaps: Visual citation network mapping
Conncected papers: Explore academic papers with a visual grap
Research rabbit Discover related papers and track research trends. How to use Research Rabbit
The most important tool to organize your literature is the literature table. Here are two examples:
Semantic Scholar will read the text for you and provide related readings.
And here @drandystapleton shows how to use AI write an exceptional literature review.
This video shows how to use a branching tree diagram to structure your paper.
Template for a literature survey chapter
The recipe for a literature review is the PRISMA STATEMENT of Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses.
A good literature survey can be published as a research article on its own. Thus, it follows the same basic structure as any other piece of research. Here is a nice pre-print of an article by Pickering and Byrne, explaining how to do it.
Docear and Jenni will help you to write it all up.
Use citation management software to ensure that your citations are automatically correct. My preference is Zotero, but you could also use Mendeley, or EndNote. Here is the first of three videos by Dr Chris Copeland about How to use Mendeley. Watch all three. Convert your existing hand-made bibliographes to BibTex with Anystyle to import into Mendeley or Zotero.
In the highly unlikely event that you will cite AI, then here is how it is done: How to cite ChatGPT: https://apastyle.apa.org/blog/how-to-cite-chatgpt
CPUT Guidelines for the ethical use of AI in Higher Education
Here is a Checklist for evaluating introductions and literature reviews from Sourcely.
To ensure you stay on the right track, use this anonymous checklist of differences between a good and a poor literature review.
Here are some interesting pieces about a literature survey (Including The differences between a good and a poor literature survey, Justus Randolph's literature review guide, Dr Franci Cronje's research proposal, literature survey, and critical reading sheet, and Prof Johannes Cronje's structure of a literature survey)
Below are some videos that will assist you in checking the structure of your work.
How to reduce a paragraph to one thrid of its length by making a precis
How to structure a paragraph with topic sentence and organising principles
How not to write a literature review with ChatGPT
How to generate a literature review from a table using Mailmerge
Here is a link to the "Directory of Free Open Access Journals" where you can submit to publish without paying author's fees.
Before submitting your manuscript, make sure the journal is reputable and aligns with your research goals.
Here are some tools to help you verify journal authenticity, quartile rankings, acceptance rates, and overall quality:
Scopus (Elsevier, Provides journal quartiles (Q1–Q4), CiteScore, SJR, and SNIP metrics.): scopus.com/sources
Web of Science (Clarivate, Offers Journal Impact Factor, quartile rankings, and Journal Citation Reports.): jcr.clarivate.com
SCImago Journal Rank (SJR, Displays SJR indicator, quartile rankings, and citation metrics): scimagojr.com
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ, Verifies journal authenticity and open-access status): doaj.org
Cabells Predatory Reports (Identifies potentially predatory journals): cabells.com
Resurchify (Provides journal rankings, impact factors, and acceptance rates): resurchify.com
JournalGuide (Helps match manuscripts to suitable journals and checks indexing): journalguide.com
Think. Check. Submit (Offers a checklist to assess journal credibility): thinkchecksubmit.org
Then take a look at a few literature surveys, some from theses, and some that have actually been published in peer-reviewed journals.
Here is one by Mary Reynolds. Look how well she describes how she found her sources. The link takes you to Chapter 1, the introduction, as well as to Chapter 2, the literature survey. See how they are linked.
This literature survey by Anne Strehler has an exemplary introduction, in which she explains why the literature survey is done, how it is organized, and then how the literature was obtained. You may want to read these two literature surveys critically and run them through the rubric that you have designed as a part of the exercise in the text box above.
Here are some examples of literature surveys that have actually been published in peer refereed journals:
Muirhead, B., & Juwah, C. (2004). Interactivity in computer-mediated college and university education: A recent review of the literature. Educational Technology &Society, 7 (1), 12-20.
Tsai, C.-C., Chuang, S.-C., Liang, J.-C., & Tsai, M.-J. (2011). Self-efficacy in Internet-based Learning Environments: A Literature Review. Educational Technology & Society, 14 (4), 222–240.
Cheng, B., Wang, M., Mørch, A., & Chen, N.-S. (2014). Research on E-Learning in the Workplace 2000-2012: A Bibliometric Analysis of the Literature. Educational Research Review, 11, 56–72. doi:10.1016/j.edurev.2014.01.001