Graduate Research: Guide to the Literature Review

[ 9.38 minutes ]

• A high quality version of the video with captions is available on their website at http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/tutorials/lit-review/

Read the following paragraph.  Then answer the questions below it. [1]

“Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer [her]; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally's assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress.”[2]

Questions (click on question for answer):

1. What would happen if you walked into this parlor, marched right into the center of the room and started spouting your ideas?

You wouldn’t be taken seriously, because you’ve interrupted the conversation without knowing where the conversation has been or where is headed.

2. What if you wandered in, heard one person speak, and then left? What would you be able to say about the discussion?

Not much. You could only describe what one person said.

3. How does the Burkean Parlor relate to writing a literature review?

Think of research in the literature of a topic as if you were JOINING A CONVERSATION -- a scholarly conversation that has been going on for some time. Question 1 is intended to help you understand a situation in which you develop a research question and carry out original research without first doing a literature review. Essentially, your work could not be taken seriously because you would be attempting to enter the scholarly discussion without understanding what anyone else has done or is doing. Question 2 is intended to help you understand the ramifications of carrying out original research after reading only one or two articles. Without a more complete knowledge of the conversation, you may be repeating something that's already been said or done or repeating errors that have already been recognized and avoided by others. When doing a literature review in preparation for carrying out your own original research, you are joining a scholarly conversation. For your research to make a worthwhile contribution to that conversation, you need to be very familiar with what other researchers have done and are doing. Preparing a literature review is a way to familiarize yourself with the work of others and writing a literature review is a way of demonstrating to other scholars that you fully comprehend how your own research fits into and contributes to the conversation.

REFERENCES

[1] Use of the Burkean Parlor and questions was suggested by Erika Bennett (Reference Librarian, Capella University) on the Information Literacy discussion list of the American Library Association, ILI-L, on 13 February 2009.

 [2]  K. Burke, The philosophy of literary form; studies in symbolic action. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1941, pp. 110-111.

The following articles provide guidance on writing a literature review.

• Pautasso M (2013) Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review. PLOS Computational Biology 9(7): e1003149. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003149
• Webster, J., & Watson, R. T. (2002). Analyzing the past to prepare for the future: Writing a literature review. MIS quarterly, xiii-xxiii. https://www.academia.edu/download/57757636/2002_Webster_WritingaLiteratureReview.pdf

 NOTE: When off-campus, you will be required to login with your DSU credentials when you link to the items below. 

I. Example of an article in which the literature review takes up several sections.  The literature review is provided in the first several sections before the authors report their new proposed model in section V.

Aljahdali, H., Townend, P., & Xu, J. (2013). Enhancing Multi-tenancy Security in the Cloud IaaS Model over Public Deployment. 2013 IEEE 7th International Symposium on Service Oriented System Engineering (SOSE), pp. 285-390. Digital Object Identifier: 10.1109/SOSE.2013.50    

II. Example of an article with the literature review in a section labeled "current state of the art." The literature review begins on page 29.

Shu, Z., Qian, Y., & Ci, S. (2013). On physical layer security for cognitive radio networks. IEEE Network, 23(3), 28-32. Digital Object Identifier: 10.1109/MNET.2013.6523805    

III. Example of an article with the literature review in a section labeled "background and related work."

Ali, M.Q., Al-Shaer, E., Khan, H., & Khayam, S.A. (2013). Automated Anomaly Detector Adaptation using Adaptive Threshold Tuning. ACM Transactions on Information and System Security (TISSEC), 15(4). DOI: 10.1145/2445566.2445569     

IV. Example of a dissertation with the literature review as Chapter 2.

Chen, V. V. (2012). Ensuring the effectiveness of information security policy: The development and validation of an information security policy model. Doctoral Dissertation, State University of New York at Albany). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses http://www.ezproxy.dsu.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/1098436806?accountid=27073. Order number 3540120.

V. Example of a review article, in which the entire article is devoted to a literature review. 

Lebek, B., Uffen, J., Breitner, M.H., Neumann, M., & Hohler, B. (2013). Employees' Information Security Awareness and Behavior: A Literature Review, pp. 2978 - 2987. 2013 46th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS). Digital Object Identifier: 10.1109/HICSS.2013.192