Physics: Writing a Literature Review

Find recommended resources for beginning your research in Physics, including databases, electronic journals, and websites.

Literature Reviews

A literature review surveys scholarly articles, books and other sources (e.g. dissertations, conference proceedings) relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory, providing a description, summary, and critical evaluation of each work.

Purpose

Provide context for a research paper
Explore the history and development of a topic
Examine the scholarly conversation surrounding the topic
Shows relationships between studies
Examines gaps in research on the topic

Components

Similar to primary research, development of the literature review requires four stages:

Problem formulation—which topic or field is being examined and what are its component issues?
Literature search—finding materials relevant to the subject being explored
Data evaluation—determining which literature makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the topic
Analysis and interpretation—discussing the findings and conclusions of pertinent literature

Conducting a Literature Review

1. Choose a topic. Define your research questions.

Your literature review should be guided by a central research question. Remember, it is not a collection of loosely related studies in a field but instead represents background and research developments related to a specific research question, interpreted and analyzed by you in a synthesized way.

Tips:

Make sure your research question is not too broad or too narrow. Is it manageable?
Begin writing down terms that are related to your question. These will be useful for searches later.
If you have the opportunity, discuss your topic with your professor.

2. Decide on the scope of your review.

How many studies do you need to look at?
How comprehensive should it be?
How many years should it cover?

Tip: This may depend on your assignment. How many sources does the assignment require?

3. Select the databases you will use to conduct your searches.

Make a list of the databases you will search.

Where to find databases:

Find Databases by Subject

UW Databases categorized by discipline

T he Find Articles tab of this guide

This page contains a list of the most relevant databases for most Physics research.

4. Conduct your searches and find the literature. Keep track of your searches!

Review the abstracts of research studies carefully. This will save you time.
Write down the searches you conduct in each database so that you may duplicate them if you need to later (or avoid dead-end searches that you'd forgotten you'd already tried).
Use the bibliographies and references of research studies you find to locate others.
Ask your professor or a librarian if you are missing any key works in the field.

5. Review the Literature

Some questions to help you analyze the research:

What was the research question of the study you are reviewing? What were the authors trying to discover?
Was the research funded by a source that could influence the findings?
What were the research methodologies? Analyze its literature review, the samples and variables used, the results, and the conclusions. Does the research seem to be complete? Could it have been conducted more soundly? What further questions does it raise?
If there are conflicting studies, why do you think that is?
How are the authors viewed in the field? Has this study been cited?; if so, how has it been analyzed?