Conducting a literature review
Abstract
This article offers support and guidance for students undertaking a literature review as part of their dissertation during an undergraduate or Masters course. A literature review is a summary of a subject field that supports the identification of specific research questions. A literature review needs to draw on and evaluate a range of different types of sources including academic and professional journal articles, books, and web-based resources. The literature search helps in the identification and location of relevant documents and other sources. Search engines can be used to search web resources and bibliographic databases. Conceptual frameworks can be a useful tool in developing an understanding of a subject area. Creating the literature review involves the stages of: scanning, making notes, structuring the literature review, writing the literature review, and building a bibliography.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Guidance on Conducting a Systematic Literature Review
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“As suggested by Rowley and Slack (2004), it is necessary to be very specific regarding the search strings.”
The Psychological Causes of Panic Buying Following a Health Crisis
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- Authors
- Rowley, J., & Slack, F.
- Affiliations
- Bangor University (GB)
- Sheffield Hallam University (GB)
- ORCID
- Rowley, Jennifer
- Venue
- Management Research News
- Publisher
- Emerald
- Published
- 2004-06
- Volume
- 27
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 31-39
- ISSN
- 0140-9174 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2033494546
- Cited by
- 885
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 28 · 2025: 61 · 2024: 105 · 2023: 107 · 2022: 122 · 2021: 109 · 2020: 81 · 2019: 51 · 2018: 44 · 2017: 31 · 2016: 26 · 2015: 35 · 2014: 23 · 2013: 15 · 2012: 11
- FWCI
- 9.29
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Management Research News (publishedVersion)
- e-space (Manchester Metropolitan University) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Library and Information Sciences › Library Science and Information Literacy
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Academic Writing and Publishing
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › Meta-analysis and systematic reviews
- Keywords
- literature searching, bibliographic databases, search engines, conceptual framework, research question formulation, undergraduate graduation thesis, student research skills
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
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