Research Guide: Scholarly Journals

Use this guide to learn more about scholarly journals and the peer-review process

Literature Review

Identifying a literature review

The image below shows the part of the scholarly article where there is a review of past research, that is, the literature review. 

(click on image to enlarge)

this is an image of a journal article with a highlighted section that shows references to the work of other researchers throughout the text, with their names and the year their research was published in parenthetical citations

  • A literature review describes previous research or discussion that has been published on the topic.
  • This review of the literature can provide a good overview of the topic and will outline what other researchers have found.
  • The passage below shows references to the work of other researchers throughout the text, with their names and the year their research was published in parenthetical citations.