Literature Review

Evaluate your sources, read through the literature, and cite your sources to facilitate finding them again.

Summarize and evaluate the literature for its contributions.

Analyse the information and identify any strengths, weaknesses, contradictions and gaps in the research.

1. Author

• What are the author's credentials and affiliations?
• Is the publisher or journal known and reputable?

2. Publisher

• Who is the publisher? Are they reputable? It is an academic press?

3. Accuracy

• Does the author provide references to support their statements?
• Is the source peer-reviewed? (Has the information been verified by other professionals or researchers in the field?)

4. Currency

• How current does your information need to be?
• What is the publication date?
• Is the information outdated?
• Is it a key historical piece of literature on your topic?

5. Coverage

• Who is the audience: the general public, professionals, or researchers?
• Is the information general or in-depth?

6. Point of View

• Is the information balanced and without bias?
• Does the author have a specific goal or objective? (For example: to persuade, to entertain, to inform?)

Reference and cite all the documents you find - you may want to use them for your literature review. This will help you keep track of the literature you have reviewed and facilitate retrieval of the document later.

Using a citation management tool can help you download and organize you citations and keep track of sources.

Use citators to evaluate an article based on how often it has been cited: