Purpose of literature review in research methodology

Journal of Business Research

Volume 104, November 2019, Pages 333-339

Table of Contents Show

Journal of Business Research
What is the purpose of a literature review?
The common perception of literature review and reality:
Literature review
The importance of Literature Review in Research Writing

What is the purpose of a literature review?

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 common perception of literature review and reality:

As per the common belief, literature reviews are only a summary of the sources related to the research. And many authors of scientific manuscripts believe that they are only surveys of what are the researches are done on the chosen topic. But on the contrary, it uses published information from pertinent and relevant sources like

Scholarly books
Scientific papers
Latest studies in the field
Established school of thoughts
Relevant articles from renowned scientific journals

and many more for a field of study or theory or a particular problem to do the following:

Summarize into a brief account of all information
Synthesize the information by restructuring and reorganizing
Critical evaluation of a concept or a school of thought or ideas
Familiarize the authors to the extent of knowledge in the particular field
Appraise
Identify
Evaluate
Encapsulate
Correlate
Compare & contrast

By doing the above on the relevant information, it provides the reader of the scientific manuscript with the following for a better understanding of it:

It establishes the authors’ in-depth understanding and knowledge of their field subject
It gives the background of the research
Portrays the scientific manuscript plan of examining the research result
Illuminates on how the knowledge has changed within the field
Highlights what has already been done in a particular field
Information of the generally accepted facts, emerging and current state of the topic of research
Identifies the research gap that is still unexplored or under-researched fields
Demonstrates how the research fits within a larger field of study
Provides an overview of the sources explored during the research of a particular topic

Literature review

A general guide on how to conduct and write a literature review.

Please check course or programme information and materials provided by teaching staff, including your project supervisor, for subject-specific guidance.

The importance of Literature Review in Research Writing

The importance of literature review in research writing

Table of Contents

What is a literature review?
How to Write a Literature Review
Why are literature reviews important?

Research on research? If you find this idea rather peculiar, know that nowadays, with the huge amount of information produced daily all around the world, it is becoming more and more difficult to keep up to date with all of it. In addition to the sheer amount of research, there is also its origin. We are witnessing the economic and intellectual emergence of countries like China, Brazil, Turkey, and United Arab Emirates, for example, that are producing scholarly literature in their own languages. So, apart from the effort of gathering information, there must also be translators prepared to unify all of it in a single language to be the object of the literature survey. At Elsevier, our team of translators is ready to support researchers by delivering high-quality scientific translations, in several languages, to serve their research – no matter the topic.