what is a literature review in a lab report

Get science-backed answers as you write with Paperpal's Research feature

What is a Literature Review? How to Write It (with Examples)

A literature review is a critical analysis and synthesis of existing research on a particular topic. It provides an overview of the current state of knowledge, identifies gaps, and highlights key findings in the literature. 1 The purpose of a literature review is to situate your own research within the context of existing scholarship, demonstrating your understanding of the topic and showing how your work contributes to the ongoing conversation in the field. Learning how to write a literature review is a critical tool for successful research. Your ability to summarize and synthesize prior research pertaining to a certain topic demonstrates your grasp on the topic of study, and assists in the learning process. 

Table of Contents

• What is the purpose of literature review? 
• a. Habitat Loss and Species Extinction: 
• b. Range Shifts and Phenological Changes: 
• c. Ocean Acidification and Coral Reefs: 
• d. Adaptive Strategies and Conservation Efforts: 

How to write a good literature review 

• Choose a Topic and Define the Research Question: 
• Decide on the Scope of Your Review: 
• Select Databases for Searches: 
• Conduct Searches and Keep Track: 
• Review the Literature: 
• Organize and Write Your Literature Review: 
• How to write a literature review faster with Paperpal? 
• Frequently asked questions 

What is a literature review?

A well-conducted literature review demonstrates the researcher’s familiarity with the existing literature, establishes the context for their own research, and contributes to scholarly conversations on the topic. One of the purposes of a literature review is also to help researchers avoid duplicating previous work and ensure that their research is informed by and builds upon the existing body of knowledge.

What is the purpose of literature review?

A literature review serves several important purposes within academic and research contexts. Here are some key objectives and functions of a literature review: 2  

1. Contextualizing the Research Problem: The literature review provides a background and context for the research problem under investigation. It helps to situate the study within the existing body of knowledge. 

2. Identifying Gaps in Knowledge: By identifying gaps, contradictions, or areas requiring further research, the researcher can shape the research question and justify the significance of the study. This is crucial for ensuring that the new research contributes something novel to the field. 

Find academic papers related to your research topic faster. Try Research on Paperpal  

3. Understanding Theoretical and Conceptual Frameworks: Literature reviews help researchers gain an understanding of the theoretical and conceptual frameworks used in previous studies. This aids in the development of a theoretical framework for the current research. 

4. Providing Methodological Insights: Another purpose of literature reviews is that it allows researchers to learn about the methodologies employed in previous studies. This can help in choosing appropriate research methods for the current study and avoiding pitfalls that others may have encountered. 

5. Establishing Credibility: A well-conducted literature review demonstrates the researcher’s familiarity with existing scholarship, establishing their credibility and expertise in the field. It also helps in building a solid foundation for the new research. 

6. Informing Hypotheses or Research Questions: The literature review guides the formulation of hypotheses or research questions by highlighting relevant findings and areas of uncertainty in existing literature. 

Literature review example

Let’s delve deeper with a literature review example: Let’s say your literature review is about the impact of climate change on biodiversity. You might format your literature review into sections such as the effects of climate change on habitat loss and species extinction, phenological changes, and marine biodiversity. Each section would then summarize and analyze relevant studies in those areas, highlighting key findings and identifying gaps in the research. The review would conclude by emphasizing the need for further research on specific aspects of the relationship between climate change and biodiversity. The following literature review template provides a glimpse into the recommended literature review structure and content, demonstrating how research findings are organized around specific themes within a broader topic. 

Literature Review on Climate Change Impacts on Biodiversity:

Climate change is a global phenomenon with far-reaching consequences, including significant impacts on biodiversity. This literature review synthesizes key findings from various studies: 

a. Habitat Loss and Species Extinction:

Climate change-induced alterations in temperature and precipitation patterns contribute to habitat loss, affecting numerous species (Thomas et al., 2004). The review discusses how these changes increase the risk of extinction, particularly for species with specific habitat requirements. 

b. Range Shifts and Phenological Changes:

Observations of range shifts and changes in the timing of biological events (phenology) are documented in response to changing climatic conditions (Parmesan & Yohe, 2003). These shifts affect ecosystems and may lead to mismatches between species and their resources. 

c. Ocean Acidification and Coral Reefs:

The review explores the impact of climate change on marine biodiversity, emphasizing ocean acidification’s threat to coral reefs (Hoegh-Guldberg et al., 2007). Changes in pH levels negatively affect coral calcification, disrupting the delicate balance of marine ecosystems. 

d. Adaptive Strategies and Conservation Efforts:

Recognizing the urgency of the situation, the literature review discusses various adaptive strategies adopted by species and conservation efforts aimed at mitigating the impacts of climate change on biodiversity (Hannah et al., 2007). It emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary approaches for effective conservation planning. 

Strengthen your literature review with factual insights. Try Research on Paperpal for free!    

Writing a literature review involves summarizing and synthesizing existing research on a particular topic. A good literature review format should include the following elements. 

Introduction: The introduction sets the stage for your literature review, providing context and introducing the main focus of your review. 

• Opening Statement: Begin with a general statement about the broader topic and its significance in the field. 
• Scope and Purpose: Clearly define the scope of your literature review. Explain the specific research question or objective you aim to address. 
• Organizational Framework: Briefly outline the structure of your literature review, indicating how you will categorize and discuss the existing research. 
• Significance of the Study: Highlight why your literature review is important and how it contributes to the understanding of the chosen topic. 
• Thesis Statement: Conclude the introduction with a concise thesis statement that outlines the main argument or perspective you will develop in the body of the literature review. 

Body: The body of the literature review is where you provide a comprehensive analysis of existing literature, grouping studies based on themes, methodologies, or other relevant criteria. 

• Organize by Theme or Concept: Group studies that share common themes, concepts, or methodologies. Discuss each theme or concept in detail, summarizing key findings and identifying gaps or areas of disagreement. 
• Critical Analysis: Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each study. Discuss the methodologies used, the quality of evidence, and the overall contribution of each work to the understanding of the topic. 
• Synthesis of Findings: Synthesize the information from different studies to highlight trends, patterns, or areas of consensus in the literature. 
• Identification of Gaps: Discuss any gaps or limitations in the existing research and explain how your review contributes to filling these gaps. 
• Transition between Sections: Provide smooth transitions between different themes or concepts to maintain the flow of your literature review. 

Write and Cite as you go with Paperpal Research. Start now for free.   

Conclusion: The conclusion of your literature review should summarize the main findings, highlight the contributions of the review, and suggest avenues for future research. 

• Summary of Key Findings: Recap the main findings from the literature and restate how they contribute to your research question or objective. 
• Contributions to the Field: Discuss the overall contribution of your literature review to the existing knowledge in the field. 
• Implications and Applications: Explore the practical implications of the findings and suggest how they might impact future research or practice. 
• Recommendations for Future Research: Identify areas that require further investigation and propose potential directions for future research in the field. 
• Final Thoughts: Conclude with a final reflection on the importance of your literature review and its relevance to the broader academic community. 

Conducting a literature review

Conducting a literature review is an essential step in research that involves reviewing and analyzing existing literature on a specific topic. It’s important to know how to do a literature review effectively, so here are the steps to follow: 1  

Choose a Topic and Define the Research Question:

• Select a topic that is relevant to your field of study. 
• Clearly define your research question or objective. Determine what specific aspect of the topic do you want to explore? 

Decide on the Scope of Your Review:

• Determine the timeframe for your literature review. Are you focusing on recent developments, or do you want a historical overview? 
• Consider the geographical scope. Is your review global, or are you focusing on a specific region? 
• Define the inclusion and exclusion criteria. What types of sources will you include? Are there specific types of studies or publications you will exclude? 

Select Databases for Searches:

• Identify relevant databases for your field. Examples include PubMed, IEEE Xplore, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. 
• Consider searching in library catalogs, institutional repositories, and specialized databases related to your topic. 

Conduct Searches and Keep Track:

• Develop a systematic search strategy using keywords, Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT), and other search techniques. 
• Record and document your search strategy for transparency and replicability. 
• Keep track of the articles, including publication details, abstracts, and links. Use citation management tools like EndNote, Zotero, or Mendeley to organize your references. 

Review the Literature:

• Evaluate the relevance and quality of each source. Consider the methodology, sample size, and results of studies. 
• Organize the literature by themes or key concepts. Identify patterns, trends, and gaps in the existing research. 
• Summarize key findings and arguments from each source. Compare and contrast different perspectives. 
• Identify areas where there is a consensus in the literature and where there are conflicting opinions. 
• Provide critical analysis and synthesis of the literature. What are the strengths and weaknesses of existing research? 

Organize and Write Your Literature Review:

• Literature review outline should be based on themes, chronological order, or methodological approaches. 
• Write a clear and coherent narrative that synthesizes the information gathered. 
• Use proper citations for each source and ensure consistency in your citation style (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.). 
• Conclude your literature review by summarizing key findings, identifying gaps, and suggesting areas for future research. 

Whether you’re exploring a new research field or finding new angles to develop an existing topic, sifting through hundreds of papers can take more time than you have to spare. But what if you could find science-backed insights with verified citations in seconds? That’s the power of Paperpal’s new Research feature!  

How to write a literature review faster with Paperpal?

Paperpal, an AI writing assistant, integrates powerful academic search capabilities within its writing platform. With the Research feature, you get 100% factual insights, with citations backed by 250M+ verified research articles, directly within your writing interface with the option to save relevant references in your Citation Library. By eliminating the need to switch tabs to find answers to all your research questions, Paperpal saves time and helps you stay focused on your writing.   

Here’s how to use the Research feature:  

• Ask a question: Get started with a new document on paperpal.com. Click on the “Research” feature and type your question in plain English. Paperpal will scour over 250 million research articles, including conference papers and preprints, to provide you with accurate insights and citations. 
• Review and Save: Paperpal summarizes the information, while citing sources and listing relevant reads. You can quickly scan the results to identify relevant references and save these directly to your built-in citations library for later access. 
• Cite with Confidence: Paperpal makes it easy to incorporate relevant citations and references into your writing, ensuring your arguments are well-supported by credible sources. This translates to a polished, well-researched literature review. 

The literature review sample and detailed advice on writing and conducting a review will help you produce a well-structured report. But remember that a good literature review is an ongoing process, and it may be necessary to revisit and update it as your research progresses. By combining effortless research with an easy citation process, Paperpal Research streamlines the literature review process and empowers you to write faster and with more confidence. Try Paperpal Research now and see for yourself.  

Frequently asked questions

A literature review is a critical and comprehensive analysis of existing literature (published and unpublished works) on a specific topic or research question and provides a synthesis of the current state of knowledge in a particular field. A well-conducted literature review is crucial for researchers to build upon existing knowledge, avoid duplication of efforts, and contribute to the advancement of their field. It also helps researchers situate their work within a broader context and facilitates the development of a sound theoretical and conceptual framework for their studies.

Literature review is a crucial component of research writing, providing a solid background for a research paper’s investigation. The aim is to keep professionals up to date by providing an understanding of ongoing developments within a specific field, including research methods, and experimental techniques used in that field, and present that knowledge in the form of a written report. Also, the depth and breadth of the literature review emphasizes the credibility of the scholar in his or her field.  

Before writing a literature review, it’s essential to undertake several preparatory steps to ensure that your review is well-researched, organized, and focused. This includes choosing a topic of general interest to you and doing exploratory research on that topic, writing an annotated bibliography, and noting major points, especially those that relate to the position you have taken on the topic. 

Literature reviews and academic research papers are essential components of scholarly work but serve different purposes within the academic realm. 3 A literature review aims to provide a foundation for understanding the current state of research on a particular topic, identify gaps or controversies, and lay the groundwork for future research. Therefore, it draws heavily from existing academic sources, including books, journal articles, and other scholarly publications. In contrast, an academic research paper aims to present new knowledge, contribute to the academic discourse, and advance the understanding of a specific research question. Therefore, it involves a mix of existing literature (in the introduction and literature review sections) and original data or findings obtained through research methods. 

Literature reviews are essential components of academic and research papers, and various strategies can be employed to conduct them effectively. If you want to know how to write a literature review for a research paper, here are four common approaches that are often used by researchers.  Chronological Review: This strategy involves organizing the literature based on the chronological order of publication. It helps to trace the development of a topic over time, showing how ideas, theories, and research have evolved.  Thematic Review: Thematic reviews focus on identifying and analyzing themes or topics that cut across different studies. Instead of organizing the literature chronologically, it is grouped by key themes or concepts, allowing for a comprehensive exploration of various aspects of the topic.  Methodological Review: This strategy involves organizing the literature based on the research methods employed in different studies. It helps to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of various methodologies and allows the reader to evaluate the reliability and validity of the research findings.  Theoretical Review: A theoretical review examines the literature based on the theoretical frameworks used in different studies. This approach helps to identify the key theories that have been applied to the topic and assess their contributions to the understanding of the subject.  It’s important to note that these strategies are not mutually exclusive, and a literature review may combine elements of more than one approach. The choice of strategy depends on the research question, the nature of the literature available, and the goals of the review. Additionally, other strategies, such as integrative reviews or systematic reviews, may be employed depending on the specific requirements of the research.

The literature review format can vary depending on the specific publication guidelines. However, there are some common elements and structures that are often followed. Here is a general guideline for the format of a literature review:  Introduction:   Provide an overview of the topic.  Define the scope and purpose of the literature review.  State the research question or objective.  Body:   Organize the literature by themes, concepts, or chronology.  Critically analyze and evaluate each source.  Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the studies.  Highlight any methodological limitations or biases.  Identify patterns, connections, or contradictions in the existing research.  Conclusion:   Summarize the key points discussed in the literature review.  Highlight the research gap.  Address the research question or objective stated in the introduction.  Highlight the contributions of the review and suggest directions for future research.

Both annotated bibliographies and literature reviews involve the examination of scholarly sources. While annotated bibliographies focus on individual sources with brief annotations, literature reviews provide a more in-depth, integrated, and comprehensive analysis of existing literature on a specific topic. The key differences are as follows: 

References 

• Denney, A. S., & Tewksbury, R. (2013). How to write a literature review.  Journal of criminal justice education ,  24 (2), 218-234. 
• Pan, M. L. (2016).  Preparing literature reviews: Qualitative and quantitative approaches . Taylor & Francis. 
• Cantero, C. (2019). How to write a literature review.  San José State University Writing Center . 

Paperpal is an AI writing assistant that help academics write better, faster with real-time suggestions for in-depth language and grammar correction. Trained on millions of research manuscripts enhanced by professional academic editors, Paperpal delivers human precision at machine speed.  

Try it for free or upgrade to  Paperpal Prime , which unlocks unlimited access to premium features like academic translation, paraphrasing, contextual synonyms, consistency checks and more. It’s like always having a professional academic editor by your side! Go beyond limitations and experience the future of academic writing.  Get Paperpal Prime now at just US$19 a month!

Related Reads:

• Empirical Research: A Comprehensive Guide for Academics 
• How to Write a Scientific Paper in 10 Steps 
• How Long Should a Chapter Be?
• How to Use Paperpal to Generate Emails & Cover Letters?

6 Tips for Post-Doc Researchers to Take Their Career to the Next Level

Self-plagiarism in research: what it is and how to avoid it, you may also like, how to write a high-quality conference paper, how paperpal’s research feature helps you develop and..., how paperpal is enhancing academic productivity and accelerating..., how to write a successful book chapter for..., academic editing: how to self-edit academic text with..., 4 ways paperpal encourages responsible writing with ai, what are scholarly sources and where can you..., how to write a hypothesis types and examples , measuring academic success: definition & strategies for excellence, what is academic writing: tips for students.

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

7 Writing a Literature Review

Hundreds of original investigation research articles on health science topics are published each year. It is becoming harder and harder to keep on top of all new findings in a topic area and – more importantly – to work out how they all fit together to determine our current understanding of a topic. This is where literature reviews come in.

In this chapter, we explain what a literature review is and outline the stages involved in writing one. We also provide practical tips on how to communicate the results of a review of current literature on a topic in the format of a literature review.

7.1 What is a literature review?

Literature reviews provide a synthesis and evaluation  of the existing literature on a particular topic with the aim of gaining a new, deeper understanding of the topic.

Published literature reviews are typically written by scientists who are experts in that particular area of science. Usually, they will be widely published as authors of their own original work, making them highly qualified to author a literature review.

However, literature reviews are still subject to peer review before being published. Literature reviews provide an important bridge between the expert scientific community and many other communities, such as science journalists, teachers, and medical and allied health professionals. When the most up-to-date knowledge reaches such audiences, it is more likely that this information will find its way to the general public. When this happens, – the ultimate good of science can be realised.

A literature review is structured differently from an original research article. It is developed based on themes, rather than stages of the scientific method.

In the article Ten simple rules for writing a literature review , Marco Pautasso explains the importance of literature reviews:

Literature reviews are in great demand in most scientific fields. Their need stems from the ever-increasing output of scientific publications. For example, compared to 1991, in 2008 three, eight, and forty times more papers were indexed in Web of Science on malaria, obesity, and biodiversity, respectively. Given such mountains of papers, scientists cannot be expected to examine in detail every single new paper relevant to their interests. Thus, it is both advantageous and necessary to rely on regular summaries of the recent literature. Although recognition for scientists mainly comes from primary research, timely literature reviews can lead to new synthetic insights and are often widely read. For such summaries to be useful, however, they need to be compiled in a professional way (Pautasso, 2013, para. 1).

An example of a literature review is shown in Figure 7.1.

Video 7.1: What is a literature review? [2 mins, 11 secs]

Watch this video created by Steely Library at Northern Kentucky Library called ‘ What is a literature review? Note: Closed captions are available by clicking on the CC button below.

Examples of published literature reviews

• Strength training alone, exercise therapy alone, and exercise therapy with passive manual mobilisation each reduce pain and disability in people with knee osteoarthritis: a systematic review
• Traveler’s diarrhea: a clinical review
• Cultural concepts of distress and psychiatric disorders: literature review and research recommendations for global mental health epidemiology

7.2 Steps of writing a literature review

Writing a literature review is a very challenging task. Figure 7.2 summarises the steps of writing a literature review. Depending on why you are writing your literature review, you may be given a topic area, or may choose a topic that particularly interests you or is related to a research project that you wish to undertake.

Chapter 6 provides instructions on finding scientific literature that would form the basis for your literature review.

Once you have your topic and have accessed the literature, the next stages (analysis, synthesis and evaluation) are challenging. Next, we look at these important cognitive skills student scientists will need to develop and employ to successfully write a literature review, and provide some guidance for navigating these stages.

Analysis, synthesis and evaluation

Analysis, synthesis and evaluation are three essential skills required by scientists  and you will need to develop these skills if you are to write a good literature review ( Figure 7.3 ). These important cognitive skills are discussed in more detail in Chapter 9.

The first step in writing a literature review is to analyse the original investigation research papers that you have gathered related to your topic.

Analysis requires examining the papers methodically and in detail, so you can understand and interpret aspects of the study described in each research article.

An analysis grid is a simple tool you can use to help with the careful examination and breakdown of each paper. This tool will allow you to create a concise summary of each research paper; see Table 7.1 for an example of  an analysis grid. When filling in the grid, the aim is to draw out key aspects of each research paper. Use a different row for each paper, and a different column for each aspect of the paper ( Tables 7.2 and 7.3 show how completed analysis grid may look).

Before completing your own grid, look at these examples and note the types of information that have been included, as well as the level of detail. Completing an analysis grid with a sufficient level of detail will help you to complete the synthesis and evaluation stages effectively. This grid will allow you to more easily observe similarities and differences across the findings of the research papers and to identify possible explanations (e.g., differences in methodologies employed) for observed differences between the findings of different research papers.

Table 7.1: Example of an analysis grid

Table 7.3: Sample filled-in analysis grid for research article by Ping and colleagues

Source: Ping, WC, Keong, CC & Bandyopadhyay, A 2010, ‘Effects of acute supplementation of caffeine on cardiorespiratory responses during endurance running in a hot and humid climate’, Indian Journal of Medical Research, vol. 132, pp. 36–41. Used under a CC-BY-NC-SA licence.

Step two of writing a literature review is synthesis.

Synthesis describes combining separate components or elements to form a connected whole.

You will use the results of your analysis to find themes to build your literature review around. Each of the themes identified will become a subheading within the body of your literature review.

A good place to start when identifying themes is with the dependent variables (results/findings) that were investigated in the research studies.

Because all of the research articles you are incorporating into your literature review are related to your topic, it is likely that they have similar study designs and have measured similar dependent variables. Review the ‘Results’ column of your analysis grid. You may like to collate the common themes in a synthesis grid (see, for example Table 7.4 ).

Step three of writing a literature review is evaluation, which can only be done after carefully analysing your research papers and synthesising the common themes (findings).

During the evaluation stage, you are making judgements on the themes presented in the research articles that you have read. This includes providing physiological explanations for the findings. It may be useful to refer to the discussion section of published original investigation research papers, or another literature review, where the authors may mention tested or hypothetical physiological mechanisms that may explain their findings.

When the findings of the investigations related to a particular theme are inconsistent (e.g., one study shows that caffeine effects performance and another study shows that caffeine had no effect on performance) you should attempt to provide explanations of why the results differ, including physiological explanations. A good place to start is by comparing the methodologies to determine if there are any differences that may explain the differences in the findings (see the ‘Experimental design’ column of your analysis grid). An example of evaluation is shown in the examples that follow in this section, under ‘Running performance’ and ‘RPE ratings’.

When the findings of the papers related to a particular theme are consistent (e.g., caffeine had no effect on oxygen uptake in both studies) an evaluation should include an explanation of why the results are similar. Once again, include physiological explanations. It is still a good idea to compare methodologies as a background to the evaluation. An example of evaluation is shown in the following under ‘Oxygen consumption’.

7.3 Writing your literature review

Once you have completed the analysis, and synthesis grids and written your evaluation of the research papers , you can combine synthesis and evaluation information to create a paragraph for a literature review ( Figure 7.4 ).

The following paragraphs are an example of combining the outcome of the synthesis and evaluation stages to produce a paragraph for a literature review.

Note that this is an example using only two papers – most literature reviews would be presenting information on many more papers than this ( (e.g., 106 papers in the review article by Bain and colleagues discussed later in this chapter). However, the same principle applies regardless of the number of papers reviewed.

The next part of this chapter looks at the each section of a literature review and explains how to write them by referring to a review article that was published in Frontiers in Physiology and shown in Figure 7.1. Each section from the published article is annotated to highlight important features of the format of the review article, and identifies the synthesis and evaluation information.

In the examination of each review article section we will point out examples of how the authors have presented certain information and where they display application of important cognitive processes; we will use the colour code shown below:

This should be one paragraph that accurately reflects the contents of the review article.

Introduction

The introduction should establish the context and importance of the review

Body of literature review

The reference section provides a list of the references that you cited in the body of your review article. The format will depend on the journal of publication as each journal has their own specific referencing format.

It is important to accurately cite references in research papers to acknowledge your sources and ensure credit is appropriately given to authors of work you have referred to. An accurate and comprehensive reference list also shows your readers that you are well-read in your topic area and are aware of the key papers that provide the context to your research.

It is important to keep track of your resources and to reference them consistently in the format required by the publication in which your work will appear. Most scientists will use reference management software to store details of all of the journal articles (and other sources) they use while writing their review article. This software also automates the process of adding in-text references and creating a reference list. In the review article by Bain et al. (2014) used as an example in this chapter, the reference list contains 106 items, so you can imagine how much help referencing software would be. Chapter 5 shows you how to use EndNote, one example of reference management software.

Click the drop down below to review the terms learned from this chapter.

Copyright note:

• The quotation from Pautasso, M 2013, ‘Ten simple rules for writing a literature review’, PLoS Computational Biology is use under a CC-BY licence. 
• Content from the annotated article and tables are based on Schubert, MM, Astorino, TA & Azevedo, JJL 2013, ‘The effects of caffeinated ‘energy shots’ on time trial performance’, Nutrients, vol. 5, no. 6, pp. 2062–2075 (used under a CC-BY 3.0 licence ) and P ing, WC, Keong , CC & Bandyopadhyay, A 2010, ‘Effects of acute supplementation of caffeine on cardiorespiratory responses during endurance running in a hot and humid climate’, Indian Journal of Medical Research, vol. 132, pp. 36–41 (used under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence ). 

Bain, A.R., Morrison, S.A., & Ainslie, P.N. (2014). Cerebral oxygenation and hyperthermia. Frontiers in Physiology, 5 , 92.

Pautasso, M. (2013). Ten simple rules for writing a literature review. PLoS Computational Biology, 9 (7), e1003149.

How To Do Science Copyright © 2022 by University of Southern Queensland is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts
• CAREER FEATURE
• 04 December 2020
• Correction 09 December 2020

How to write a superb literature review

Andy Tay is a freelance writer based in Singapore.

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Literature reviews are important resources for scientists. They provide historical context for a field while offering opinions on its future trajectory. Creating them can provide inspiration for one’s own research, as well as some practice in writing. But few scientists are trained in how to write a review — or in what constitutes an excellent one. Even picking the appropriate software to use can be an involved decision (see ‘Tools and techniques’). So Nature asked editors and working scientists with well-cited reviews for their tips.

Access options

Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals

Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription

24,99 € / 30 days

cancel any time

Subscribe to this journal

Receive 51 print issues and online access

185,98 € per year

only 3,65 € per issue

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-03422-x

Interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

Updates & Corrections

Correction 09 December 2020 : An earlier version of the tables in this article included some incorrect details about the programs Zotero, Endnote and Manubot. These have now been corrected.

Hsing, I.-M., Xu, Y. & Zhao, W. Electroanalysis 19 , 755–768 (2007).

Article   Google Scholar  

Ledesma, H. A. et al. Nature Nanotechnol. 14 , 645–657 (2019).

Article   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Brahlek, M., Koirala, N., Bansal, N. & Oh, S. Solid State Commun. 215–216 , 54–62 (2015).

Choi, Y. & Lee, S. Y. Nature Rev. Chem . https://doi.org/10.1038/s41570-020-00221-w (2020).

Download references

Related Articles

• Research management

I’m worried I’ve been contacted by a predatory publisher — how do I find out?

Career Feature 15 MAY 24

How I fled bombed Aleppo to continue my career in science

Career Feature 08 MAY 24

Illuminating ‘the ugly side of science’: fresh incentives for reporting negative results

US halts funding to controversial virus-hunting group: what researchers think

News 16 MAY 24

Japan can embrace open science — but flexible approaches are key

Correspondence 07 MAY 24

US funders to tighten oversight of controversial ‘gain of function’ research

News 07 MAY 24

Mount Etna’s spectacular smoke rings and more — April’s best science images

News 03 MAY 24

Senior Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Senior Postdoctoral Research Fellow required to lead exciting projects in Cancer Cell Cycle Biology and Cancer Epigenetics.

Melbourne University, Melbourne (AU)

University of Melbourne & Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre

Overseas Talent, Embarking on a New Journey Together at Tianjin University

We cordially invite outstanding young individuals from overseas to apply for the Excellent Young Scientists Fund Program (Overseas).

Tianjin, China

Tianjin University (TJU)

Chair Professor Positions in the School of Pharmaceutical Science and Technology

SPST seeks top Faculty scholars in Pharmaceutical Sciences.

Chair Professor Positions in the School of Precision Instruments and Optoelectronic Engineering

We are committed to accomplishing the mission of achieving a world-top-class engineering school.

Chair Professor Positions in the School of Mechanical Engineering

Aims to cultivate top talents, train a top-ranking faculty team, construct first-class disciplines and foster a favorable academic environment.

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• PLoS Comput Biol
• v.9(7); 2013 Jul

Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review

Marco pautasso.

1 Centre for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology (CEFE), CNRS, Montpellier, France

2 Centre for Biodiversity Synthesis and Analysis (CESAB), FRB, Aix-en-Provence, France

Literature reviews are in great demand in most scientific fields. Their need stems from the ever-increasing output of scientific publications [1] . For example, compared to 1991, in 2008 three, eight, and forty times more papers were indexed in Web of Science on malaria, obesity, and biodiversity, respectively [2] . Given such mountains of papers, scientists cannot be expected to examine in detail every single new paper relevant to their interests [3] . Thus, it is both advantageous and necessary to rely on regular summaries of the recent literature. Although recognition for scientists mainly comes from primary research, timely literature reviews can lead to new synthetic insights and are often widely read [4] . For such summaries to be useful, however, they need to be compiled in a professional way [5] .

When starting from scratch, reviewing the literature can require a titanic amount of work. That is why researchers who have spent their career working on a certain research issue are in a perfect position to review that literature. Some graduate schools are now offering courses in reviewing the literature, given that most research students start their project by producing an overview of what has already been done on their research issue [6] . However, it is likely that most scientists have not thought in detail about how to approach and carry out a literature review.

Reviewing the literature requires the ability to juggle multiple tasks, from finding and evaluating relevant material to synthesising information from various sources, from critical thinking to paraphrasing, evaluating, and citation skills [7] . In this contribution, I share ten simple rules I learned working on about 25 literature reviews as a PhD and postdoctoral student. Ideas and insights also come from discussions with coauthors and colleagues, as well as feedback from reviewers and editors.

Rule 1: Define a Topic and Audience

How to choose which topic to review? There are so many issues in contemporary science that you could spend a lifetime of attending conferences and reading the literature just pondering what to review. On the one hand, if you take several years to choose, several other people may have had the same idea in the meantime. On the other hand, only a well-considered topic is likely to lead to a brilliant literature review [8] . The topic must at least be:

• interesting to you (ideally, you should have come across a series of recent papers related to your line of work that call for a critical summary),
• an important aspect of the field (so that many readers will be interested in the review and there will be enough material to write it), and
• a well-defined issue (otherwise you could potentially include thousands of publications, which would make the review unhelpful).

Ideas for potential reviews may come from papers providing lists of key research questions to be answered [9] , but also from serendipitous moments during desultory reading and discussions. In addition to choosing your topic, you should also select a target audience. In many cases, the topic (e.g., web services in computational biology) will automatically define an audience (e.g., computational biologists), but that same topic may also be of interest to neighbouring fields (e.g., computer science, biology, etc.).

Rule 2: Search and Re-search the Literature

After having chosen your topic and audience, start by checking the literature and downloading relevant papers. Five pieces of advice here:

• keep track of the search items you use (so that your search can be replicated [10] ),
• keep a list of papers whose pdfs you cannot access immediately (so as to retrieve them later with alternative strategies),
• use a paper management system (e.g., Mendeley, Papers, Qiqqa, Sente),
• define early in the process some criteria for exclusion of irrelevant papers (these criteria can then be described in the review to help define its scope), and
• do not just look for research papers in the area you wish to review, but also seek previous reviews.

The chances are high that someone will already have published a literature review ( Figure 1 ), if not exactly on the issue you are planning to tackle, at least on a related topic. If there are already a few or several reviews of the literature on your issue, my advice is not to give up, but to carry on with your own literature review,

The bottom-right situation (many literature reviews but few research papers) is not just a theoretical situation; it applies, for example, to the study of the impacts of climate change on plant diseases, where there appear to be more literature reviews than research studies [33] .

• discussing in your review the approaches, limitations, and conclusions of past reviews,
• trying to find a new angle that has not been covered adequately in the previous reviews, and
• incorporating new material that has inevitably accumulated since their appearance.

When searching the literature for pertinent papers and reviews, the usual rules apply:

• be thorough,
• use different keywords and database sources (e.g., DBLP, Google Scholar, ISI Proceedings, JSTOR Search, Medline, Scopus, Web of Science), and
• look at who has cited past relevant papers and book chapters.

Rule 3: Take Notes While Reading

If you read the papers first, and only afterwards start writing the review, you will need a very good memory to remember who wrote what, and what your impressions and associations were while reading each single paper. My advice is, while reading, to start writing down interesting pieces of information, insights about how to organize the review, and thoughts on what to write. This way, by the time you have read the literature you selected, you will already have a rough draft of the review.

Of course, this draft will still need much rewriting, restructuring, and rethinking to obtain a text with a coherent argument [11] , but you will have avoided the danger posed by staring at a blank document. Be careful when taking notes to use quotation marks if you are provisionally copying verbatim from the literature. It is advisable then to reformulate such quotes with your own words in the final draft. It is important to be careful in noting the references already at this stage, so as to avoid misattributions. Using referencing software from the very beginning of your endeavour will save you time.

Rule 4: Choose the Type of Review You Wish to Write

After having taken notes while reading the literature, you will have a rough idea of the amount of material available for the review. This is probably a good time to decide whether to go for a mini- or a full review. Some journals are now favouring the publication of rather short reviews focusing on the last few years, with a limit on the number of words and citations. A mini-review is not necessarily a minor review: it may well attract more attention from busy readers, although it will inevitably simplify some issues and leave out some relevant material due to space limitations. A full review will have the advantage of more freedom to cover in detail the complexities of a particular scientific development, but may then be left in the pile of the very important papers “to be read” by readers with little time to spare for major monographs.

There is probably a continuum between mini- and full reviews. The same point applies to the dichotomy of descriptive vs. integrative reviews. While descriptive reviews focus on the methodology, findings, and interpretation of each reviewed study, integrative reviews attempt to find common ideas and concepts from the reviewed material [12] . A similar distinction exists between narrative and systematic reviews: while narrative reviews are qualitative, systematic reviews attempt to test a hypothesis based on the published evidence, which is gathered using a predefined protocol to reduce bias [13] , [14] . When systematic reviews analyse quantitative results in a quantitative way, they become meta-analyses. The choice between different review types will have to be made on a case-by-case basis, depending not just on the nature of the material found and the preferences of the target journal(s), but also on the time available to write the review and the number of coauthors [15] .

Rule 5: Keep the Review Focused, but Make It of Broad Interest

Whether your plan is to write a mini- or a full review, it is good advice to keep it focused 16 , 17 . Including material just for the sake of it can easily lead to reviews that are trying to do too many things at once. The need to keep a review focused can be problematic for interdisciplinary reviews, where the aim is to bridge the gap between fields [18] . If you are writing a review on, for example, how epidemiological approaches are used in modelling the spread of ideas, you may be inclined to include material from both parent fields, epidemiology and the study of cultural diffusion. This may be necessary to some extent, but in this case a focused review would only deal in detail with those studies at the interface between epidemiology and the spread of ideas.

While focus is an important feature of a successful review, this requirement has to be balanced with the need to make the review relevant to a broad audience. This square may be circled by discussing the wider implications of the reviewed topic for other disciplines.

Rule 6: Be Critical and Consistent

Reviewing the literature is not stamp collecting. A good review does not just summarize the literature, but discusses it critically, identifies methodological problems, and points out research gaps [19] . After having read a review of the literature, a reader should have a rough idea of:

• the major achievements in the reviewed field,
• the main areas of debate, and
• the outstanding research questions.

It is challenging to achieve a successful review on all these fronts. A solution can be to involve a set of complementary coauthors: some people are excellent at mapping what has been achieved, some others are very good at identifying dark clouds on the horizon, and some have instead a knack at predicting where solutions are going to come from. If your journal club has exactly this sort of team, then you should definitely write a review of the literature! In addition to critical thinking, a literature review needs consistency, for example in the choice of passive vs. active voice and present vs. past tense.

Rule 7: Find a Logical Structure

Like a well-baked cake, a good review has a number of telling features: it is worth the reader's time, timely, systematic, well written, focused, and critical. It also needs a good structure. With reviews, the usual subdivision of research papers into introduction, methods, results, and discussion does not work or is rarely used. However, a general introduction of the context and, toward the end, a recapitulation of the main points covered and take-home messages make sense also in the case of reviews. For systematic reviews, there is a trend towards including information about how the literature was searched (database, keywords, time limits) [20] .

How can you organize the flow of the main body of the review so that the reader will be drawn into and guided through it? It is generally helpful to draw a conceptual scheme of the review, e.g., with mind-mapping techniques. Such diagrams can help recognize a logical way to order and link the various sections of a review [21] . This is the case not just at the writing stage, but also for readers if the diagram is included in the review as a figure. A careful selection of diagrams and figures relevant to the reviewed topic can be very helpful to structure the text too [22] .

Rule 8: Make Use of Feedback

Reviews of the literature are normally peer-reviewed in the same way as research papers, and rightly so [23] . As a rule, incorporating feedback from reviewers greatly helps improve a review draft. Having read the review with a fresh mind, reviewers may spot inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and ambiguities that had not been noticed by the writers due to rereading the typescript too many times. It is however advisable to reread the draft one more time before submission, as a last-minute correction of typos, leaps, and muddled sentences may enable the reviewers to focus on providing advice on the content rather than the form.

Feedback is vital to writing a good review, and should be sought from a variety of colleagues, so as to obtain a diversity of views on the draft. This may lead in some cases to conflicting views on the merits of the paper, and on how to improve it, but such a situation is better than the absence of feedback. A diversity of feedback perspectives on a literature review can help identify where the consensus view stands in the landscape of the current scientific understanding of an issue [24] .

Rule 9: Include Your Own Relevant Research, but Be Objective

In many cases, reviewers of the literature will have published studies relevant to the review they are writing. This could create a conflict of interest: how can reviewers report objectively on their own work [25] ? Some scientists may be overly enthusiastic about what they have published, and thus risk giving too much importance to their own findings in the review. However, bias could also occur in the other direction: some scientists may be unduly dismissive of their own achievements, so that they will tend to downplay their contribution (if any) to a field when reviewing it.

In general, a review of the literature should neither be a public relations brochure nor an exercise in competitive self-denial. If a reviewer is up to the job of producing a well-organized and methodical review, which flows well and provides a service to the readership, then it should be possible to be objective in reviewing one's own relevant findings. In reviews written by multiple authors, this may be achieved by assigning the review of the results of a coauthor to different coauthors.

Rule 10: Be Up-to-Date, but Do Not Forget Older Studies

Given the progressive acceleration in the publication of scientific papers, today's reviews of the literature need awareness not just of the overall direction and achievements of a field of inquiry, but also of the latest studies, so as not to become out-of-date before they have been published. Ideally, a literature review should not identify as a major research gap an issue that has just been addressed in a series of papers in press (the same applies, of course, to older, overlooked studies (“sleeping beauties” [26] )). This implies that literature reviewers would do well to keep an eye on electronic lists of papers in press, given that it can take months before these appear in scientific databases. Some reviews declare that they have scanned the literature up to a certain point in time, but given that peer review can be a rather lengthy process, a full search for newly appeared literature at the revision stage may be worthwhile. Assessing the contribution of papers that have just appeared is particularly challenging, because there is little perspective with which to gauge their significance and impact on further research and society.

Inevitably, new papers on the reviewed topic (including independently written literature reviews) will appear from all quarters after the review has been published, so that there may soon be the need for an updated review. But this is the nature of science [27] – [32] . I wish everybody good luck with writing a review of the literature.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to M. Barbosa, K. Dehnen-Schmutz, T. Döring, D. Fontaneto, M. Garbelotto, O. Holdenrieder, M. Jeger, D. Lonsdale, A. MacLeod, P. Mills, M. Moslonka-Lefebvre, G. Stancanelli, P. Weisberg, and X. Xu for insights and discussions, and to P. Bourne, T. Matoni, and D. Smith for helpful comments on a previous draft.

Funding Statement

This work was funded by the French Foundation for Research on Biodiversity (FRB) through its Centre for Synthesis and Analysis of Biodiversity data (CESAB), as part of the NETSEED research project. The funders had no role in the preparation of the manuscript.

• UConn Library
• Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide
• Introduction

Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide — Introduction

• Getting Started
• How to Pick a Topic
• Strategies to Find Sources
• Evaluating Sources & Lit. Reviews
• Tips for Writing Literature Reviews
• Writing Literature Review: Useful Sites
• Citation Resources
• Other Academic Writings

What are Literature Reviews?

So, what is a literature review? "A literature review is an account of what has been published on a topic by accredited scholars and researchers. In writing the literature review, your purpose is to convey to your reader what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. As a piece of writing, the literature review must be defined by a guiding concept (e.g., your research objective, the problem or issue you are discussing, or your argumentative thesis). It is not just a descriptive list of the material available, or a set of summaries." Taylor, D.  The literature review: A few tips on conducting it . University of Toronto Health Sciences Writing Centre.

Goals of Literature Reviews

What are the goals of creating a Literature Review?  A literature could be written to accomplish different aims:

• To develop a theory or evaluate an existing theory
• To summarize the historical or existing state of a research topic
• Identify a problem in a field of research 

Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1997). Writing narrative literature reviews .  Review of General Psychology , 1 (3), 311-320.

What kinds of sources require a Literature Review?

• A research paper assigned in a course
• A thesis or dissertation
• A grant proposal
• An article intended for publication in a journal

All these instances require you to collect what has been written about your research topic so that you can demonstrate how your own research sheds new light on the topic.

Types of Literature Reviews

What kinds of literature reviews are written?

Narrative review: The purpose of this type of review is to describe the current state of the research on a specific topic/research and to offer a critical analysis of the literature reviewed. Studies are grouped by research/theoretical categories, and themes and trends, strengths and weakness, and gaps are identified. The review ends with a conclusion section which summarizes the findings regarding the state of the research of the specific study, the gaps identify and if applicable, explains how the author's research will address gaps identify in the review and expand the knowledge on the topic reviewed.

• Example : Predictors and Outcomes of U.S. Quality Maternity Leave: A Review and Conceptual Framework:  10.1177/08948453211037398  

Systematic review : "The authors of a systematic review use a specific procedure to search the research literature, select the studies to include in their review, and critically evaluate the studies they find." (p. 139). Nelson, L. K. (2013). Research in Communication Sciences and Disorders . Plural Publishing.

• Example : The effect of leave policies on increasing fertility: a systematic review:  10.1057/s41599-022-01270-w

Meta-analysis : "Meta-analysis is a method of reviewing research findings in a quantitative fashion by transforming the data from individual studies into what is called an effect size and then pooling and analyzing this information. The basic goal in meta-analysis is to explain why different outcomes have occurred in different studies." (p. 197). Roberts, M. C., & Ilardi, S. S. (2003). Handbook of Research Methods in Clinical Psychology . Blackwell Publishing.

• Example : Employment Instability and Fertility in Europe: A Meta-Analysis:  10.1215/00703370-9164737

Meta-synthesis : "Qualitative meta-synthesis is a type of qualitative study that uses as data the findings from other qualitative studies linked by the same or related topic." (p.312). Zimmer, L. (2006). Qualitative meta-synthesis: A question of dialoguing with texts .  Journal of Advanced Nursing , 53 (3), 311-318.

• Example : Women’s perspectives on career successes and barriers: A qualitative meta-synthesis:  10.1177/05390184221113735

Literature Reviews in the Health Sciences

• UConn Health subject guide on systematic reviews Explanation of the different review types used in health sciences literature as well as tools to help you find the right review type
• << Previous: Getting Started
• Next: How to Pick a Topic >>
• Last Updated: Sep 21, 2022 2:16 PM
• URL: https://guides.lib.uconn.edu/literaturereview

Literature Reviews

What this handout is about.

This handout will explain what literature reviews are and offer insights into the form and construction of literature reviews in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.

Introduction

OK. You’ve got to write a literature review. You dust off a novel and a book of poetry, settle down in your chair, and get ready to issue a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” as you leaf through the pages. “Literature review” done. Right?

Wrong! The “literature” of a literature review refers to any collection of materials on a topic, not necessarily the great literary texts of the world. “Literature” could be anything from a set of government pamphlets on British colonial methods in Africa to scholarly articles on the treatment of a torn ACL. And a review does not necessarily mean that your reader wants you to give your personal opinion on whether or not you liked these sources.

What is a literature review, then?

A literature review discusses published information in a particular subject area, and sometimes information in a particular subject area within a certain time period.

A literature review can be just a simple summary of the sources, but it usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis. A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information. It might give a new interpretation of old material or combine new with old interpretations. Or it might trace the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates. And depending on the situation, the literature review may evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant.

But how is a literature review different from an academic research paper?

The main focus of an academic research paper is to develop a new argument, and a research paper is likely to contain a literature review as one of its parts. In a research paper, you use the literature as a foundation and as support for a new insight that you contribute. The focus of a literature review, however, is to summarize and synthesize the arguments and ideas of others without adding new contributions.

Why do we write literature reviews?

Literature reviews provide you with a handy guide to a particular topic. If you have limited time to conduct research, literature reviews can give you an overview or act as a stepping stone. For professionals, they are useful reports that keep them up to date with what is current in the field. For scholars, the depth and breadth of the literature review emphasizes the credibility of the writer in his or her field. Literature reviews also provide a solid background for a research paper’s investigation. Comprehensive knowledge of the literature of the field is essential to most research papers.

Who writes these things, anyway?

Literature reviews are written occasionally in the humanities, but mostly in the sciences and social sciences; in experiment and lab reports, they constitute a section of the paper. Sometimes a literature review is written as a paper in itself.

Let’s get to it! What should I do before writing the literature review?

If your assignment is not very specific, seek clarification from your instructor:

• Roughly how many sources should you include?
• What types of sources (books, journal articles, websites)?
• Should you summarize, synthesize, or critique your sources by discussing a common theme or issue?
• Should you evaluate your sources?
• Should you provide subheadings and other background information, such as definitions and/or a history?

Find models

Look for other literature reviews in your area of interest or in the discipline and read them to get a sense of the types of themes you might want to look for in your own research or ways to organize your final review. You can simply put the word “review” in your search engine along with your other topic terms to find articles of this type on the Internet or in an electronic database. The bibliography or reference section of sources you’ve already read are also excellent entry points into your own research.

Narrow your topic

There are hundreds or even thousands of articles and books on most areas of study. The narrower your topic, the easier it will be to limit the number of sources you need to read in order to get a good survey of the material. Your instructor will probably not expect you to read everything that’s out there on the topic, but you’ll make your job easier if you first limit your scope.

Keep in mind that UNC Libraries have research guides and to databases relevant to many fields of study. You can reach out to the subject librarian for a consultation: https://library.unc.edu/support/consultations/ .

And don’t forget to tap into your professor’s (or other professors’) knowledge in the field. Ask your professor questions such as: “If you had to read only one book from the 90’s on topic X, what would it be?” Questions such as this help you to find and determine quickly the most seminal pieces in the field.

Consider whether your sources are current

Some disciplines require that you use information that is as current as possible. In the sciences, for instance, treatments for medical problems are constantly changing according to the latest studies. Information even two years old could be obsolete. However, if you are writing a review in the humanities, history, or social sciences, a survey of the history of the literature may be what is needed, because what is important is how perspectives have changed through the years or within a certain time period. Try sorting through some other current bibliographies or literature reviews in the field to get a sense of what your discipline expects. You can also use this method to consider what is currently of interest to scholars in this field and what is not.

Strategies for writing the literature review

Find a focus.

A literature review, like a term paper, is usually organized around ideas, not the sources themselves as an annotated bibliography would be organized. This means that you will not just simply list your sources and go into detail about each one of them, one at a time. No. As you read widely but selectively in your topic area, consider instead what themes or issues connect your sources together. Do they present one or different solutions? Is there an aspect of the field that is missing? How well do they present the material and do they portray it according to an appropriate theory? Do they reveal a trend in the field? A raging debate? Pick one of these themes to focus the organization of your review.

Convey it to your reader

A literature review may not have a traditional thesis statement (one that makes an argument), but you do need to tell readers what to expect. Try writing a simple statement that lets the reader know what is your main organizing principle. Here are a couple of examples:

The current trend in treatment for congestive heart failure combines surgery and medicine. More and more cultural studies scholars are accepting popular media as a subject worthy of academic consideration.

Consider organization

You’ve got a focus, and you’ve stated it clearly and directly. Now what is the most effective way of presenting the information? What are the most important topics, subtopics, etc., that your review needs to include? And in what order should you present them? Develop an organization for your review at both a global and local level:

First, cover the basic categories

Just like most academic papers, literature reviews also must contain at least three basic elements: an introduction or background information section; the body of the review containing the discussion of sources; and, finally, a conclusion and/or recommendations section to end the paper. The following provides a brief description of the content of each:

• Introduction: Gives a quick idea of the topic of the literature review, such as the central theme or organizational pattern.
• Body: Contains your discussion of sources and is organized either chronologically, thematically, or methodologically (see below for more information on each).
• Conclusions/Recommendations: Discuss what you have drawn from reviewing literature so far. Where might the discussion proceed?

Organizing the body

Once you have the basic categories in place, then you must consider how you will present the sources themselves within the body of your paper. Create an organizational method to focus this section even further.

To help you come up with an overall organizational framework for your review, consider the following scenario:

You’ve decided to focus your literature review on materials dealing with sperm whales. This is because you’ve just finished reading Moby Dick, and you wonder if that whale’s portrayal is really real. You start with some articles about the physiology of sperm whales in biology journals written in the 1980’s. But these articles refer to some British biological studies performed on whales in the early 18th century. So you check those out. Then you look up a book written in 1968 with information on how sperm whales have been portrayed in other forms of art, such as in Alaskan poetry, in French painting, or on whale bone, as the whale hunters in the late 19th century used to do. This makes you wonder about American whaling methods during the time portrayed in Moby Dick, so you find some academic articles published in the last five years on how accurately Herman Melville portrayed the whaling scene in his novel.

Now consider some typical ways of organizing the sources into a review:

• Chronological: If your review follows the chronological method, you could write about the materials above according to when they were published. For instance, first you would talk about the British biological studies of the 18th century, then about Moby Dick, published in 1851, then the book on sperm whales in other art (1968), and finally the biology articles (1980s) and the recent articles on American whaling of the 19th century. But there is relatively no continuity among subjects here. And notice that even though the sources on sperm whales in other art and on American whaling are written recently, they are about other subjects/objects that were created much earlier. Thus, the review loses its chronological focus.
• By publication: Order your sources by publication chronology, then, only if the order demonstrates a more important trend. For instance, you could order a review of literature on biological studies of sperm whales if the progression revealed a change in dissection practices of the researchers who wrote and/or conducted the studies.
• By trend: A better way to organize the above sources chronologically is to examine the sources under another trend, such as the history of whaling. Then your review would have subsections according to eras within this period. For instance, the review might examine whaling from pre-1600-1699, 1700-1799, and 1800-1899. Under this method, you would combine the recent studies on American whaling in the 19th century with Moby Dick itself in the 1800-1899 category, even though the authors wrote a century apart.
• Thematic: Thematic reviews of literature are organized around a topic or issue, rather than the progression of time. However, progression of time may still be an important factor in a thematic review. For instance, the sperm whale review could focus on the development of the harpoon for whale hunting. While the study focuses on one topic, harpoon technology, it will still be organized chronologically. The only difference here between a “chronological” and a “thematic” approach is what is emphasized the most: the development of the harpoon or the harpoon technology.But more authentic thematic reviews tend to break away from chronological order. For instance, a thematic review of material on sperm whales might examine how they are portrayed as “evil” in cultural documents. The subsections might include how they are personified, how their proportions are exaggerated, and their behaviors misunderstood. A review organized in this manner would shift between time periods within each section according to the point made.
• Methodological: A methodological approach differs from the two above in that the focusing factor usually does not have to do with the content of the material. Instead, it focuses on the “methods” of the researcher or writer. For the sperm whale project, one methodological approach would be to look at cultural differences between the portrayal of whales in American, British, and French art work. Or the review might focus on the economic impact of whaling on a community. A methodological scope will influence either the types of documents in the review or the way in which these documents are discussed. Once you’ve decided on the organizational method for the body of the review, the sections you need to include in the paper should be easy to figure out. They should arise out of your organizational strategy. In other words, a chronological review would have subsections for each vital time period. A thematic review would have subtopics based upon factors that relate to the theme or issue.

Sometimes, though, you might need to add additional sections that are necessary for your study, but do not fit in the organizational strategy of the body. What other sections you include in the body is up to you. Put in only what is necessary. Here are a few other sections you might want to consider:

• Current Situation: Information necessary to understand the topic or focus of the literature review.
• History: The chronological progression of the field, the literature, or an idea that is necessary to understand the literature review, if the body of the literature review is not already a chronology.
• Methods and/or Standards: The criteria you used to select the sources in your literature review or the way in which you present your information. For instance, you might explain that your review includes only peer-reviewed articles and journals.

Questions for Further Research: What questions about the field has the review sparked? How will you further your research as a result of the review?

Begin composing

Once you’ve settled on a general pattern of organization, you’re ready to write each section. There are a few guidelines you should follow during the writing stage as well. Here is a sample paragraph from a literature review about sexism and language to illuminate the following discussion:

However, other studies have shown that even gender-neutral antecedents are more likely to produce masculine images than feminine ones (Gastil, 1990). Hamilton (1988) asked students to complete sentences that required them to fill in pronouns that agreed with gender-neutral antecedents such as “writer,” “pedestrian,” and “persons.” The students were asked to describe any image they had when writing the sentence. Hamilton found that people imagined 3.3 men to each woman in the masculine “generic” condition and 1.5 men per woman in the unbiased condition. Thus, while ambient sexism accounted for some of the masculine bias, sexist language amplified the effect. (Source: Erika Falk and Jordan Mills, “Why Sexist Language Affects Persuasion: The Role of Homophily, Intended Audience, and Offense,” Women and Language19:2).

Use evidence

In the example above, the writers refer to several other sources when making their point. A literature review in this sense is just like any other academic research paper. Your interpretation of the available sources must be backed up with evidence to show that what you are saying is valid.

Be selective

Select only the most important points in each source to highlight in the review. The type of information you choose to mention should relate directly to the review’s focus, whether it is thematic, methodological, or chronological.

Use quotes sparingly

Falk and Mills do not use any direct quotes. That is because the survey nature of the literature review does not allow for in-depth discussion or detailed quotes from the text. Some short quotes here and there are okay, though, if you want to emphasize a point, or if what the author said just cannot be rewritten in your own words. Notice that Falk and Mills do quote certain terms that were coined by the author, not common knowledge, or taken directly from the study. But if you find yourself wanting to put in more quotes, check with your instructor.

Summarize and synthesize

Remember to summarize and synthesize your sources within each paragraph as well as throughout the review. The authors here recapitulate important features of Hamilton’s study, but then synthesize it by rephrasing the study’s significance and relating it to their own work.

Keep your own voice

While the literature review presents others’ ideas, your voice (the writer’s) should remain front and center. Notice that Falk and Mills weave references to other sources into their own text, but they still maintain their own voice by starting and ending the paragraph with their own ideas and their own words. The sources support what Falk and Mills are saying.

Use caution when paraphrasing

When paraphrasing a source that is not your own, be sure to represent the author’s information or opinions accurately and in your own words. In the preceding example, Falk and Mills either directly refer in the text to the author of their source, such as Hamilton, or they provide ample notation in the text when the ideas they are mentioning are not their own, for example, Gastil’s. For more information, please see our handout on plagiarism .

Revise, revise, revise

Draft in hand? Now you’re ready to revise. Spending a lot of time revising is a wise idea, because your main objective is to present the material, not the argument. So check over your review again to make sure it follows the assignment and/or your outline. Then, just as you would for most other academic forms of writing, rewrite or rework the language of your review so that you’ve presented your information in the most concise manner possible. Be sure to use terminology familiar to your audience; get rid of unnecessary jargon or slang. Finally, double check that you’ve documented your sources and formatted the review appropriately for your discipline. For tips on the revising and editing process, see our handout on revising drafts .

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Anson, Chris M., and Robert A. Schwegler. 2010. The Longman Handbook for Writers and Readers , 6th ed. New York: Longman.

Jones, Robert, Patrick Bizzaro, and Cynthia Selfe. 1997. The Harcourt Brace Guide to Writing in the Disciplines . New York: Harcourt Brace.

Lamb, Sandra E. 1998. How to Write It: A Complete Guide to Everything You’ll Ever Write . Berkeley: Ten Speed Press.

Rosen, Leonard J., and Laurence Behrens. 2003. The Allyn & Bacon Handbook , 5th ed. New York: Longman.

Troyka, Lynn Quittman, and Doug Hesse. 2016. Simon and Schuster Handbook for Writers , 11th ed. London: Pearson.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Make a Gift

Have a language expert improve your writing

Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, automatically generate references for free.

• Knowledge Base
• Dissertation
• What is a Literature Review? | Guide, Template, & Examples

What is a Literature Review? | Guide, Template, & Examples

Published on 22 February 2022 by Shona McCombes . Revised on 7 June 2022.

What is a literature review? A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research.

There are five key steps to writing a literature review:

• Search for relevant literature
• Evaluate sources
• Identify themes, debates and gaps
• Outline the structure
• Write your literature review

A good literature review doesn’t just summarise sources – it analyses, synthesises, and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

Instantly correct all language mistakes in your text

Be assured that you'll submit flawless writing. Upload your document to correct all your mistakes.

Table of contents

Why write a literature review, examples of literature reviews, step 1: search for relevant literature, step 2: evaluate and select sources, step 3: identify themes, debates and gaps, step 4: outline your literature review’s structure, step 5: write your literature review, frequently asked questions about literature reviews, introduction.

• Quick Run-through
• Step 1 & 2

When you write a dissertation or thesis, you will have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:

• Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and scholarly context
• Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
• Position yourself in relation to other researchers and theorists
• Show how your dissertation addresses a gap or contributes to a debate

You might also have to write a literature review as a stand-alone assignment. In this case, the purpose is to evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of scholarly debates around a topic.

The content will look slightly different in each case, but the process of conducting a literature review follows the same steps. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below.

The only proofreading tool specialized in correcting academic writing

The academic proofreading tool has been trained on 1000s of academic texts and by native English editors. Making it the most accurate and reliable proofreading tool for students.

Correct my document today

Writing literature reviews can be quite challenging! A good starting point could be to look at some examples, depending on what kind of literature review you’d like to write.

• Example literature review #1: “Why Do People Migrate? A Review of the Theoretical Literature” ( Theoretical literature review about the development of economic migration theory from the 1950s to today.)
• Example literature review #2: “Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines” ( Methodological literature review about interdisciplinary knowledge acquisition and production.)
• Example literature review #3: “The Use of Technology in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Thematic literature review about the effects of technology on language acquisition.)
• Example literature review #4: “Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Chronological literature review about how the concept of listening skills has changed over time.)

You can also check out our templates with literature review examples and sample outlines at the links below.

Download Word doc Download Google doc

Before you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic .

If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research paper, you will search for literature related to your research objectives and questions .

If you are writing a literature review as a stand-alone assignment, you will have to choose a focus and develop a central question to direct your search. Unlike a dissertation research question, this question has to be answerable without collecting original data. You should be able to answer it based only on a review of existing publications.

Make a list of keywords

Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research topic. Include each of the key concepts or variables you’re interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list if you discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.

• Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
• Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
• Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth

Search for relevant sources

Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some databases to search for journals and articles include:

• Your university’s library catalogue
• Google Scholar
• Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
• Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
• EconLit (economics)
• Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)

You can use boolean operators to help narrow down your search:

Read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.

To identify the most important publications on your topic, take note of recurring citations. If the same authors, books or articles keep appearing in your reading, make sure to seek them out.

You probably won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on the topic – you’ll have to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your questions.

For each publication, ask yourself:

• What question or problem is the author addressing?
• What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
• What are the key theories, models and methods? Does the research use established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
• What are the results and conclusions of the study?
• How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge?
• How does the publication contribute to your understanding of the topic? What are its key insights and arguments?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?

Make sure the sources you use are credible, and make sure you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.

You can find out how many times an article has been cited on Google Scholar – a high citation count means the article has been influential in the field, and should certainly be included in your literature review.

The scope of your review will depend on your topic and discipline: in the sciences you usually only review recent literature, but in the humanities you might take a long historical perspective (for example, to trace how a concept has changed in meaning over time).

Remember that you can use our template to summarise and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using!

Take notes and cite your sources

As you read, you should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.

It’s important to keep track of your sources with references to avoid plagiarism . It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography, where you compile full reference information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the process.

You can use our free APA Reference Generator for quick, correct, consistent citations.

To begin organising your literature review’s argument and structure, you need to understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:

• Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches become more or less popular over time?
• Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
• Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
• Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
• Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be addressed?

This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.

• Most research has focused on young women.
• There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
• But there is still a lack of robust research on highly-visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat – this is a gap that you could address in your own research.

There are various approaches to organising the body of a literature review. You should have a rough idea of your strategy before you start writing.

Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).

Chronological

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarising sources in order.

Try to analyse patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.

If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organise your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.

For example, if you are reviewing literature about inequalities in migrant health outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economic access.

Methodological

If you draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a variety of research methods , you might want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from different approaches. For example:

• Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
• Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources

Theoretical

A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework . You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.

You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.

Like any other academic text, your literature review should have an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion . What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.

The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.

If you are writing the literature review as part of your dissertation or thesis, reiterate your central problem or research question and give a brief summary of the scholarly context. You can emphasise the timeliness of the topic (“many recent studies have focused on the problem of x”) or highlight a gap in the literature (“while there has been much research on x, few researchers have taken y into consideration”).

Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.

As you write, make sure to follow these tips:

• Summarise and synthesise: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole.
• Analyse and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers – add your own interpretations, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole.
• Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources.
• Write in well-structured paragraphs: use transitions and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts.

In the conclusion, you should summarise the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasise their significance.

If the literature review is part of your dissertation or thesis, reiterate how your research addresses gaps and contributes new knowledge, or discuss how you have drawn on existing theories and methods to build a framework for your research. This can lead directly into your methodology section.

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .

It is often written as part of a dissertation , thesis, research paper , or proposal .

There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:

• To familiarise yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
• To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
• To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
• To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
• To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.

The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your  dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the ‘Cite this Scribbr article’ button to automatically add the citation to our free Reference Generator.

McCombes, S. (2022, June 07). What is a Literature Review? | Guide, Template, & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved 14 May 2024, from https://www.scribbr.co.uk/thesis-dissertation/literature-review/

Is this article helpful?

Shona McCombes

Other students also liked, how to write a dissertation proposal | a step-by-step guide, what is a theoretical framework | a step-by-step guide, what is a research methodology | steps & tips.

• Ask a Librarian

Research: Overview & Approaches

• Getting Started with Undergraduate Research
• Planning & Getting Started
• Building Your Knowledge Base
• Locating Sources
• Reading Scholarly Articles
• Creating a Literature Review

Finding and Completing a Literature Review

Intro to creating a literature review.

• Productivity & Organizing Research
• Scholarly and Professional Relationships
• Empirical Research
• Interpretive Research
• Action-Based Research
• Creative & Experimental Approaches

• Palgrave's Study Guide to Carrying Out a Literature Review Your research is seen as a contribution to knowledge in the field and it needs to indicate, therefore, that there is an awareness of what that knowledge comprises. Read this guide to getting started.
• Purdue OWL's Guide to Writing a Literature Review A literature review requires the writer to perform extensive research on published work in one’s field in order to explain how one’s own work fits into the larger conversation regarding a particular topic. This task requires the writer to spend time reading, managing, and conveying information; the complexity of literature reviews can make this section one of the most challenging parts of writing about one’s research. This handout will provide some strategies for revising literature reviews.

Every time you conduct research, you will need to make it clear where you got your evidence from. This work of citing our sources is absolutely essential for a couple of reasons.

• It demonstrates to the readers of our own research that we have evidence to back up our claims.
• A complete and correct citation directs readers to the original source for them to verify our claims and learn more.
• It gives credit to the researchers whose intellectual work helped form our own research.
• << Previous: Reading Scholarly Articles
• Next: Productivity & Organizing Research >>
• Last Edited: Apr 25, 2024 4:11 PM
• URL: https://guides.lib.purdue.edu/research_approaches

Engineering: The Literature Review Process

• How to Use This Guide

What is a literature review and why is it important?

Further reading ....

• 2. Precision vs Retrieval
• 3. Equip Your Tool Box
• 4. What to look for
• 5. Where to Look for it
• 6. How to Look for it
• 7. Keeping Current
• 8. Reading Tips
• 9. Writing Tips
• 10. Checklist

A literature review not only summarizes the knowledge of a particular area or field of study, it also evaluates what has been done, what still needs to be done and why all of this is important to the subject.  

• The Stand-Alone Literature Review A literature review may stand alone as an individual document in which the history of the topic is reported and then analyzed for trends, controversial issues, and what still needs to be studied.  The review could just be a few pages for narrow topics or quite extensive with long bibliographies for in-depth reviews.   In-depth review articles are valuable time-savers for professionals and researchers who need a quick introduction or analysis of a topic but they can be very time-consuming for authors to produce. Examples of review articles:   Walker, Sara Louise (2011)   Building mounted wind turbines and their suitability for the urban scale - a review of methods of estimating urban wind resource .   Energy and Buildings  43(8):1852-1862. For this review, the author focused on the different methodologies used to estimate wind speed in urban settings.  After introducing the theory, she explained the difficulty for in-situ measuring, and then followed up by describing each of the different estimation techniques that have been used instead.  Strengths and weaknesses of each method are discussed and suggestions are given on where more study is needed.   Length: 11 pages. References: 59. Calm, J.M. (2008)   The next generation of refrigerants - historical review, considerations, and outlook.   International Journal of Refrigeration  31(7):1123-1133. This review focuses on the evolution of refrigerants and divides the evolution into 4 generations.  In each generation the author describes which type of refrigerants were most popular and discusses how political, environmental, and economic issues as well as chemical properties effected choices.  Length: 11 pages.  References: 51.  
• The Literature Review as a Section Within a Document Literature reviews are also part of dissertations, theses, research reports and scholarly journal articles; these types of documents include the review in a section or chapter that discusses what has gone before, how the research being presented in this document fills a gap in the field's knowledge and why that is important.   Examples of literature reviews within a journal article:  Jobert, Arthur, et al. (2007) Local acceptance of wind energy: factors of success identified in French and German case studies.  Energy Policy  35(5):2751-2760.  In this case, the literature review is a separate, labeled section appearing between the introduction and methodology sections.  Peel, Deborah and Lloyd, Michael Gregory (2007)   Positive planning for wind-turbines in an urban context.   Local Environment  12(4):343-354. In this case the literature review is incorporated into the article's introduction rather than have its own section.   Which version you choose (separate section or within the introduction) depends on format requirements of the publisher (for journal articles), the ASU Graduate College and your academic unit (for ASU dissertations and theses) and application instructions for grants.   If no format is specified choose the method in which you can best explain your research topic, what has come before and the importance of the knowledge you are adding to the field.    Examples of literature reviews within a dissertation or thesis :  Porter, Wayne Eliot (2011)   Renewable Energy in Rural Southeastern Arizona: Decision Factors: A Comparison of the Consumer Profiles of Homeowners Who Purchased Renewable Energy Systems With Those Who Performed Other Home Upgrades or Remodeling Projects .    Arizona State University, M.S. Thesis.  This author effectively uses a separate chapter for the literature review for his detailed analysis.  Magerman, Beth (2014)   Short-Term Wind Power Forecasts using Doppler Lidar.   Arizona State University, M.S. Thesis. The author puts the literature review within Chapter Two presenting it as part of the background information of her topic.   Note that the literature review within a thesis or dissertation more closely resembles the scope and depth of a stand- alone literature review as opposed to the briefer reviews appearing within journal articles.  Within a thesis or dissertation, the review not only presents the status of research in the specific area it also establishes the author's expertise and justifies his/her own research.   

Online tutorials:

• Literature Reviews: An Overview for Graduate Students Created by the North Caroline State University Libraries

Other ASU Library Guides: 

• Literature Reviews and Annotated Bibliographies More general information about the format and content of literature reviews; created by Ed Oetting, History and Political Science Librarian, Hayden Library. ​

Readings: 

• The Literature Review: A Few Tips on Conducting It Written by Dena Taylor, Health Sciences Writing Centre, University of Toronto
• Literature Reviews Created by The Writing Center at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. 
• << Previous: How to Use This Guide
• Next: 2. Precision vs Retrieval >>
• Last updated: Jan 2, 2024 8:27 AM
• URL: https://libguides.asu.edu/engineeringlitreview

The ASU Library acknowledges the twenty-three Native Nations that have inhabited this land for centuries. Arizona State University's four campuses are located in the Salt River Valley on ancestral territories of Indigenous peoples, including the Akimel O’odham (Pima) and Pee Posh (Maricopa) Indian Communities, whose care and keeping of these lands allows us to be here today. ASU Library acknowledges the sovereignty of these nations and seeks to foster an environment of success and possibility for Native American students and patrons. We are advocates for the incorporation of Indigenous knowledge systems and research methodologies within contemporary library practice. ASU Library welcomes members of the Akimel O’odham and Pee Posh, and all Native nations to the Library.

• RMIT Australia
• RMIT Europe
• RMIT Vietnam
• RMIT Global
• RMIT Online
• Alumni & Giving

• What will I do?
• What will I need?
• Who will help me?
• About the institution
• New to university?
• Studying efficiently
• Time management
• Mind mapping
• Note-taking
• Reading skills
• Argument analysis
• Preparing for assessment
• Critical thinking and argument analysis
• Online learning skills
• Starting my first assignment
• Researching your assignment
• What is referencing?
• Understanding citations
• When referencing isn't needed
• Paraphrasing
• Summarising
• Synthesising
• Integrating ideas with reporting words
• Referencing with Easy Cite
• Getting help with referencing
• Acting with academic integrity
• Artificial intelligence tools
• Understanding your audience
• Writing for coursework
• Literature review
• Academic style
• Writing for the workplace
• Spelling tips
• Writing paragraphs
• Writing sentences
• Academic word lists
• Annotated bibliographies
• Artist statement
• Case studies
• Creating effective poster presentations
• Essays, Reports, Reflective Writing
• Law assessments
• Oral presentations
• Reflective writing
• Art and design
• Critical thinking
• Maths and statistics
• Sustainability
• Educators' guide
• Learning Lab content in context
• Latest updates
• Students Alumni & Giving Staff Library

Learning Lab

Getting started at uni, study skills, referencing.

• When referencing isn't needed
• Integrating ideas

Writing and assessments

• Critical reading
• Poster presentations
• Postgraduate report writing

Subject areas

For educators.

• Educators' guide
• Literature review: getting started

Choose, define and refine your topic

Do you have the question or topic for your literature review clearly defined? A lot of time and effort can be wasted unless you do. View this video to break through that starting barrier, find a direction and get your literature review on track.

Let’s explore the levels of thinking that are required for writing a good critical literature review. Writing a critical literature review requires more than just setting forth lots of facts collected from different sources. Benjamin Bloom developed his taxonomy - that is a classification system - of cognitive levels. The lower levels of knowledge, comprehension and application are simply knowing stuff, understanding what it is about, and knowing how to use it.

At tertiary level, however, we are expected to work at the levels above this, namely analysis where you pull an idea or a concept apart to find out what it is about; synthesis is where you take different ideas from different sources and combine them into a new understanding, and you do a lot of this in a literature review. And finally, evaluation, where you keep a critical eye open, make judgements on what you read or hear, and even accept or reject the ideas with your reasoning of why you did so.

This is something you need to do in a critical literature review. You are encouraged to be judicious on the validity or the importance of a writer’s opinion, as long as you have sound arguments in support of your decisions. The point here is: you need to do more than to collect and organise already existing information. This means that you are operating within the lower three levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy, and this is less than what you are expected to do in higher education. You need to create a new overall understanding or a new insight into an issue. Creating new knowledge is what the upper three levels are about. In a literature review, you are not creating new knowledge in terms of experimental data, of course, but you are creating your own interpretation of the information that is available.

It is most important to choose your topic wisely in the first place. Choose a topic that actually is arguable. If there is no dissent or controversy about an issue, procedure or theory, you will find that you’ll be reproducing accepted facts and there will be no room - or reason - to take a stand one way or the other. On some topics, not all researchers are of all the same opinion. They may agree in part, but vary on the details, or they may in fact be diametrically opposed. These disagreements are to be relished, rather than avoided, because it affords plenty of room to make sense of it yourself, and that makes the topic much more interesting.

If you were to choose something in the area of mental health for example, such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, there is little point telling your readers what these conditions entail - this has already been done. The extent to which these conditions could be moderated with diet for example, is still opened to question. And this question is, therefore, worth exploring.

If you can, choose a topic that has relevance and importance. This does not mean that it has to about finding the cure for cancer. The question of whether handwashing with soap and water is better than hand rubbing with anti-bacterial gel, for example, may sound insignificant at first, but it is hugely relevant to a wide number of health professionals. Therefore, this question matters! And, incidentally, there is a broad spectrum of opinions about this question on both sides.

Finally, just to keep yourself on track, turn your topic into a question. A general topic - such as the benefits of hand rubbing - does not imply a specific focus, and you can easily end up collecting a large amount of information on this subject. If you turn your topic into a question such as, “is hand rubbing more effective than handwashing?”, or more specifically, “is hand rubbing the more effective method in the operating theatre environment?”, this gives you something to to respond to; it keeps you on a defined path.

When told to choose something controversial, this means simply arguable, and something for which there is not one widely accepted point of view. It does not necessarily mean to choose one of the socially controversial topics, such as abortion or euthanasia. In fact, I would be very wary of doing so, unless you feel equipped to argue using philosophy, ethics, social theory or theology. Many of these issues have a large moral component and for an academics essay, you would be expected to draw on these sources to make your points.

Whether you feel something is right or wrong is not enough in an academic text. These emotive topics can easily diverge from the field of medical science into ethics, unless you define your question very clearly to keep them there. Lastly, it is a literature review and not a commonwealth-funded task force - you don’t need to solve the problem, or even come up with recommendations necessarily. For a literature review, you are required to say what the experts have already said on your chosen issue. Just find what is already out there in the literature, and help your reader make sense of the wide variety of the perspectives.

Cluster your literature around common themes or threads of ideas. Structure your writing thematically and not author by author. This allows you to compare, contrast, and make sense of the different authors’ perspectives on one point./ And if you find there are a lot of authors with some contribution to one point, then maybe that point needs to be teased out into sub-themes.

Try not hide behind what the literature is saying. Remember, it is up to you to interpret it and make sense of it for your reader. Listing what they have found or believe is part of a literature review, but in itself is not enough, you need to clarify what the reader is to take away from this body of research.

Never be afraid to narrow your topic. You have a word limit, which is enough to make one meaningful point, but not to include detail for its own sake. It is better to dig deep into a topic rather than be broad and superficial. Make your question more specific, such as, “is hand-rubbing more effective in operating theatres?”, or “can diet moderate schizophrenia at onset?”.

You may have to limit you question many times before you submit your draft. This does not diminish the quality of your research, it actually enhances it. So, think long and hard about your question, because this provides the guidelines for your writing and your research. You need to have clear guidelines so that you can research with purpose and efficiency, even if these guidelines get modified at a later date. Otherwise a lot of time and energy will be wasted, either, looking at irrelevant material, or material that cannot fit into your review.

The research timeline

Do you spend hours (if not weeks) printing off more information than you will ever need for your assignment? Thorough research is important but some students get stuck at this stage. Stop the madness and watch this video to see how to keep the research process efficient, effective and moving forward.

If you’re writing on a topic that you know little about, it is worthwhile to get acquainted with the area before you define your question. This means reading generally and broadly but with the aim of moving towards a more targeted search. Avoid getting comfortable in this general reading phase, you need to move beyond this as soon as you can by defining the question yourself – even a tentative one – so that you can start making progress.

If necessary, set a date to turn your contemplation into action. Once you’ve defined a question, you have automatically narrowed the field. You will start to know what you are looking for, and will feel less overwhelmed by the massive amount of information at your fingertips. If you are feeling overwhelmed, it is likely that you do not have a clear enough idea of what you are looking for. Then, you need to revisit and perhaps refine your question.

After your general reading and defining some question, time for a brainstorm. Put everything down on a large sheet of paper. Use mind maps or lists to see what you can explore. But a mind map will lose form very quickly, if there is no purpose or question underpinning it.

Reading, writing, refining and redefining your topic are all cyclic and interlinked parts of your research process. Don’t wallow in the information collecting phase for too long though; the writing process clarifies your thoughts and therefore the outline of the review. When you know what you are looking for, you can go back to the literature.

This may open up new avenues to explore, which again, may mean redefining your question. The notes you make are only raw material only when you put them into paragraph form, and until then, they have no place or function. The only thing more effective than defining a question is to start getting something down on paper, and this will really make your searches more targeted, because your information gaps will be made obvious.

Even if you don’t feel ready to call it your first draft, call it “draft minus 10”. The process of writing is a huge part of clarifying your own thoughts, and giving your writing a direction. The early stages of mainly researching will transition to mainly writing with very specific searching. But on the whole, writing and researching have a symbiotic interaction throughout.

After all, a bird does not build its nest by collecting a huge number of twigs, stop, and frantically assemble them in one day. However, many students research and write their essays just in that way. The bird starts with the basic structure of their nest early on, and collects and build things as needed. We could learn from this example in our own writing – put pen to paper as soon as possible. Writing is part of the research process, it is not the end point.

You have now complete the Literature Review module. We hope you have enjoyed the content. For more study skill resources, visit the RMIT Learning Lab.

Writing a literature review Many students find that writing a literature review can be a difficult task. Like essays, the literature review must follow a set structure. This tutorial shows you how to write a critical examination of the most relevant, recent and scholarly research of a topic that is not just a summary of the articles you have read.

Researching your assignment Research skills are also an important part of tertiary study. If you want to learn how to search smarter not harder, try the Researching your assignment tutorials.

• Structuring the literature review
• Writing a literature review
• Writing with authority

Still can't find what you need?

The RMIT University Library provides study support , one-on-one consultations and peer mentoring to RMIT students.

• Facebook (opens in a new window)
• Twitter (opens in a new window)
• Instagram (opens in a new window)
• Linkedin (opens in a new window)
• YouTube (opens in a new window)
• Weibo (opens in a new window)
• Copyright © 2024 RMIT University |
• Accessibility |
• Learning Lab feedback |
• Complaints |
• ABN 49 781 030 034 |
• CRICOS provider number: 00122A |
• RTO Code: 3046 |
• Open Universities Australia

Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Writing the Experimental Report: Overview, Introductions, and Literature Reviews

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

Experimental reports (also known as "lab reports") are reports of empirical research conducted by their authors. You should think of an experimental report as a "story" of your research in which you lead your readers through your experiment. As you are telling this story, you are crafting an argument about both the validity and reliability of your research, what your results mean, and how they fit into other previous work.

These next two sections provide an overview of the experimental report in APA format. Always check with your instructor, advisor, or journal editor for specific formatting guidelines.

General-specific-general format

Experimental reports follow a general to specific to general pattern. Your report will start off broadly in your introduction and discussion of the literature; the report narrows as it leads up to your specific hypotheses, methods, and results. Your discussion transitions from talking about your specific results to more general ramifications, future work, and trends relating to your research.

Experimental reports in APA format have a title page. Title page formatting is as follows:

• A running head and page number in the upper right corner (right aligned)
• A definition of running head in IN ALL CAPS below the running head (left aligned)
• Vertically and horizontally centered paper title, followed by author and affiliation

Please see our sample APA title page .

Crafting your story

Before you begin to write, carefully consider your purpose in writing: what is it that you discovered, would like to share, or would like to argue? You can see report writing as crafting a story about your research and your findings. Consider the following.

• What is the story you would like to tell?
• What literature best speaks to that story?
• How do your results tell the story?
• How can you discuss the story in broad terms?

During each section of your paper, you should be focusing on your story. Consider how each sentence, each paragraph, and each section contributes to your overall purpose in writing. Here is a description of one student's process.

Briel is writing an experimental report on her results from her experimental psychology lab class. She was interested in looking at the role gender plays in persuading individuals to take financial risks. After her data analysis, she finds that men are more easily persuaded by women to take financial risks and that men are generally willing to take more financial risks.

When Briel begins to write, she focuses her introduction on financial risk taking and gender, focusing on male behaviors. She then presents relevant literature on financial risk taking and gender that help illuminate her own study, but also help demonstrate the need for her own work. Her introduction ends with a study overview that directly leads from the literature review. Because she has already broadly introduced her study through her introduction and literature review, her readers can anticipate where she is going when she gets to her study overview. Her methods and results continue that story. Finally, her discussion concludes that story, discussing her findings, implications of her work, and the need for more research in the area of gender and financial risk taking.

The abstract gives a concise summary of the contents of the report.

• Abstracts should be brief (about 100 words)
• Abstracts should be self-contained and provide a complete picture of what the study is about
• Abstracts should be organized just like your experimental report—introduction, literature review, methods, results and discussion
• Abstracts should be written last during your drafting stage

Introduction

The introduction in an experimental article should follow a general to specific pattern, where you first introduce the problem generally and then provide a short overview of your own study. The introduction includes three parts: opening statements, literature review, and study overview.

Opening statements: Define the problem broadly in plain English and then lead into the literature review (this is the "general" part of the introduction). Your opening statements should already be setting the stage for the story you are going to tell.

Literature review: Discusses literature (previous studies) relevant to your current study in a concise manner. Keep your story in mind as you organize your lit review and as you choose what literature to include. The following are tips when writing your literature review.

• You should discuss studies that are directly related to your problem at hand and that logically lead to your own hypotheses.
• You do not need to provide a complete historical overview nor provide literature that is peripheral to your own study.
• Studies should be presented based on themes or concepts relevant to your research, not in a chronological format.
• You should also consider what gap in the literature your own research fills. What hasn't been examined? What does your work do that others have not?

Study overview: The literature review should lead directly into the last section of the introduction—your study overview. Your short overview should provide your hypotheses and briefly describe your method. The study overview functions as a transition to your methods section.

You should always give good, descriptive names to your hypotheses that you use consistently throughout your study. When you number hypotheses, readers must go back to your introduction to find them, which makes your piece more difficult to read. Using descriptive names reminds readers what your hypotheses were and allows for better overall flow.

In our example above, Briel had three different hypotheses based on previous literature. Her first hypothesis, the "masculine risk-taking hypothesis" was that men would be more willing to take financial risks overall. She clearly named her hypothesis in the study overview, and then referred back to it in her results and discussion sections.

Thais and Sanford (2000) recommend the following organization for introductions.

• Provide an introduction to your topic
• Provide a very concise overview of the literature
• State your hypotheses and how they connect to the literature
• Provide an overview of the methods for investigation used in your research

Bem (2006) provides the following rules of thumb for writing introductions.

• Write in plain English
• Take the time and space to introduce readers to your problem step-by-step; do not plunge them into the middle of the problem without an introduction
• Use examples to illustrate difficult or unfamiliar theories or concepts. The more complicated the concept or theory, the more important it is to have clear examples
• Open with a discussion about people and their behavior, not about psychologists and their research

• What are Articles?
• What Makes a Source Credible?

What is a Literature Review?

Literature review video.

• Where to Search for Articles?
• Books and E-books
• APA Citation
• Biology Associations
• Book a Librarian This link opens in a new window

In Research Articles 

What is a literature review? Rather than describing original research results, literature reviews summarize the research on a particular topic by synthesizing information from many primary sources.

Why should I read literature reviews? Review articles can be helpful for gathering background information and identifying key articles in a particular field.

How can I find a literature review? Many library databases, including Scopus, Web of Science, and PubMed, allow you to filter search results to include only "review articles" or "literature reviews."  

For Class Assignments 

In a class, a lit review may be assigned to help students familiarize themselves with a topic and with scholarship in their field, get an idea of the other researchers working on the topic they’re interested in, find gaps in existing research in order to propose new projects, and/or develop a theoretical framework and methodology for later research.

Source: The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue. (n/a). What is a literature review? Purdue University.  Writing a Literature Review // Purdue Writing Lab

• Writing a Literature Review - Purdue OWL A great place to learn more about Literature Reviews to help you write a literature. Consult Purdue OWL.

To better understand what is a literature review, watch the video from the NC State University Libraries. 

Watch  Literature Reviews: An Overview for Graduate Students  00:09:37

Source: NC State University Libraries(n.a.)  Literature Reviews: An Overview for Graduate Students . Retrieved from   https://www.lib.ncsu.edu/tutorials/lit-review  

• << Previous: What Makes a Source Credible?
• Next: Where to Search for Articles? >>
• Last Updated: Apr 18, 2024 11:13 AM
• URL: https://libguides.wccnet.edu/biology

How to Write a Literature Review

• What Is a Literature Review

What Is the Literature

• Writing the Review

The "literature" that is reviewed is the collection of publications (academic journal articles, books, conference proceedings, association papers, dissertations, etc) written by scholars and researchers for scholars and researchers. The professional literature is one (very significant) source of information for researchers, typically referred to as the secondary literature, or secondary sources. To use it, it is useful to know how it is created and how to access it.

The "Information Cycle"

The diagram below is a brief general picture of how scholarly literature is produced and used. Research does not have a beginning or an end; researchers build on work that has already been done in order to add to it, thus providing more resources for other researchers to build on. They read the professional literature of their field to see what issues, questions, and problems are current, then formulate a plan to address one or a few of those issues. Then they make a more focused review of the literature, which they use to refine their research plan. After carrying out the research, they present their results (presentations at conferences, published articles, etc) to other scholars in the field, i.e. they add to the general subject reading ("the literature").

  Research may not have a beginning or an end, but researchers have to begin somewhere. As noted above, the professional literature is typically referred to as secondary sources. Primary and tertiary sources also play important roles in research. Note, though, that these labels are not rigid distinctions; the same resource can overlap categories.

• Lab reports (yours or someone else's) - Records of the results of experiments.
• Field notes, measurements, etc (yours or someone else's) - Records of observations of the natural world (electrons, elephants, earthquakes, etc).
• Journal articles, conference proceedings , and similar publications reporting results of original research.
• Historical documents - Official papers, maps, treaties, etc.
• Government publications - Census statistics, economic data, court reports, etc.
• Statistical data - Measurements (counts, surveys, etc.) compiled by researchers.
• First-person accounts - Diaries, memoirs, letters, interviews, speeches
• Newspapers - Some types of articles, e.g. stories on a breaking issue, or journalists reporting the results of their investigations.
• Published writings - Novels, stories, poems, essays, philosophical treatises, etc
• Works of art - Paintings, sculptures, etc.
• Recordings - audio, video, photographic
• Conference proceedings - Scholars and researchers getting together and presenting their latest ideas and findings
• Internet - Web sites that publish the author's findings or research; e.g. your professor's home page listing research results. Note: use extreme caution when using the Internet as a primary source … remember, anyone with internet access can post whatever they want.
• Archives - Records (minutes of meetings, purchase invoices, financial statements, etc.) of an organization (e.g. The Nature Conservancy), institution (e.g. Wesleyan University), business, or other group entity (even the Grateful Dead has an archivist on staff).
• Artifacts - manufactured items such as clothing, furniture, tools, buildings
• Manuscript collections - Collected writings, notes, letters, diaries, and other unpublished works.
• Books or articles - Depending on the purpose and perspective of your project, works intended as secondary sources -- analyzing or critiquing primary sources -- can serve as primary sources for your research.
• Secondary - Books, articles, and other writings by scholars and researchers reporting their analysis of their primary sources to others. They may be reporting the results of their own primary research or critiquing the work of others. As such, these sources are usually a major focus of a literature review: this is where you go to find out in detail what has been and is being done in a field, and thus to see how your work can contribute to the field.   
• Summaries / Introductions - Encyclopedias, dictionaries, textbooks, yearbooks, and other sources which provide an introductory or summary state of the art of the research in the subject areas covered. They are an efficient means to quickly build a general framework for understanding a field.
• Indexes to publications - Provide lists of primary and secondary sources of more extensive information. They are an efficient means of finding books, articles, conference proceedings, and other publications in which scholars report the results of their research.

Work backwards . Usually, your research should begin with tertiary sources:

• Tertiary - Start by finding background information on your topic by consulting reference sources for introductions and summaries, and to find bibliographies or citations of secondary and primary sources.
• Secondary - Find books, articles, and other sources providing more extensive and thorough analyses of a topic. Check to see what other scholars have to say about your topic, find out what has been done and where there is a need for further research, and discover appropriate methodologies for carrying out that research. 
• Primary - Now that you have a solid background knowledge of your topic and a plan for your own research, you are better able to understand, interpret, and analyze the primary source information. See if you can find primary source evidence to support or refute what other scholars have said about your topic, or posit an interpretation of your own and look for more primary sources or create more original data to confirm or refute your thesis. When you present your conclusions, you will have produced another secondary source to aid others in their research.

Publishing the Literature

There are a variety of avenues for scholars to report the results of their research, and each has a role to play in scholarly communication. Not all of these avenues result in official or easily findable publications, or even any publication at all. The categories of scholarly communication listed here are a general outline; keep in mind that they can vary in type and importance between disciplines.

Peer Review - An important part of academic publishing is the peer review, or refereeing,  process. When a scholar submits an article to an academic journal or a book manuscript to a university publisher, the editors or publishers will send copies to other scholars and experts in that field who will review it. The reviewers will check to make sure the author has used methodologies appropriate to the topic, used those methodologies properly, taken other relevant work into account, and adequately supported the conclusions, as well as consider the relevance and importance to the field. A submission may be rejected, or sent back for revisions before being accepted for publication.

Peer review does not guarantee that an article or book is 100% correct. Rather, it provides a "stamp of approval" saying that experts in the field have judged this to be a worthy contribution to the professional discussion of an academic field.

Peer reviewed journals typically note that they are peer reviewed, usually somewhere in the first few pages of each issue. Books published by university presses typically go through a similar review process. Other book publishers may also have a peer review process. But the quality of the reviewing can vary among different book or journal publishers. Use academic book reviews or check how often and in what sources articles in a journal are cited, or ask a professor or two in the field, to get an idea of the reliability and importance of different authors, journals, and publishers.

Informal Sharing - In person or online, researchers discuss their ongoing projects to let others know what they are up to or to give or receive assistance in their work. Conferences, listservs, and online discussion boards are common avenues for these discussions. Increasingly, scholars are using personal web sites to present their work.

Conference Presentations - Many academic organizations sponsor conferences at which scholars read papers, display at poster sessions, or otherwise present the results of their work. To give a presentation, scholars must submit a proposal which is reviewed by those sponsoring the conference. Unless a presentation is published in another venue, it will likely be difficult to find a copy, or even to know what was presented. Some subject specific indexes and other sources list conference proceedings along with the author and contact information.

Conference Papers / Association Papers / Working Papers - Papers presented at a conference, submitted but not yet accepted for publication, works in progress, or not otherwise published are sometimes made available by academic associations. These are often not easy to find, but many are indexed in subject specific indexes or available in subject databases. Sometimes a collection of papers presented at a conference will be published in a book.

Journals - Articles in journals contain specific analyses of particular aspects of a topic. Journal articles can be written and published more quickly than books, academic libraries subscribe to many journals, and the contents of these journals are indexed in a variety of sources so others can easily find them. So, researchers commonly use articles to report their findings to a wide audience, and journals are a good readily available source for anyone researching current information on a topic.

• Research journals - Articles reporting in detail the results of research.
• Review journals - Articles reviewing the literature and work done on particular topics.
• News/Letters journals - News reports, brief research reports, short discussions of current issues.
• Proceedings/Transactions journals - A common venue for publishing conference papers or other proceedings of academic conferences.
• General interest magazines - News and other magazines that report scholarly findings for a general, nonacademic audience. These are usually written by journalists (who are usually not academically trained in the field), but sometimes are written by researchers (or at least by journalists with training in the field). Magazines are not peer reviewed, and are usually not academically useful sources of information for research purposes, but they can alert you to work being done in your field and give you a quick summary.
• Trade journals and magazines - These are written for people working in a particular industry or profession, such as advertising, banking, construction, dentistry, education. Articles are generally written by and for people working in that trade, and focus on current topics and developments in the trade. They do not present academic analyses of their topics, but they can provide useful background or context for academic work if the articles are relevant to your research.

Books - Books take a longer time than articles or conference presentations to get from research to publication, but they can cover a broader range of topics, or cover a topic much more thoroughly. University press books typically go through some sort of a peer review process. There is a wide range of review processes (from rigorous to none at all) among other book publishers.

Dissertations/Theses - Graduate students working on advanced degrees typically must perform a substantial piece of original work, and then present the results in the form of a thesis or dissertation. A master's thesis is typically somewhere between an article and a book in length, and a doctoral dissertation is typically about the length of a book. Both should include extensive bibliographies of their topics. 

Web sites - In addition to researchers informally presenting and discussing their work on personal web pages, there are an increasing number of peer reviewed web sites publishing academic work. The rigor, and even existence, of peer reviewing can vary widely on the web, and it can be difficult to determine the reliability of information presented on the web, so always be careful in relying on a web-based information source. Do your own checking and reviewing to make sure the web site and the information it presents are reliable.

Reference Sources - Subject encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other reference sources present brief introductions to or summaries of the current work in a field or on a topic. These are typically produced by a scholar and/or publisher serving as an editor who invites submissions for articles from experts on the topics covered.

How to Find the Literature

Just as there are many avenues for the literature to be published and disseminated, there are many avenues for searching for and finding the literature. There are, for example, a variety of general and subject specific indexes which list citations to publications (books, articles, conference proceedings, dissertations, etc). The Wesleyan Library web site has links to the library catalog and many indexes and databases in which to search for resources, along with subject guides to list resources appropriate for specific academic disciplines. When you find some appropriate books, articles, etc, look in their bibliographies for other publications and also for other authors writing about the same topics. For research assistance tailored to your topic, you can sign up for a Personal Research Session with a librarian.

• << Previous: What Is a Literature Review
• Next: Writing the Review >>
• Last Updated: Jan 11, 2024 9:48 AM
• URL: https://libguides.wesleyan.edu/litreview

Skip to Content

Massey University

• Search OWLL
• Handouts (Printable)
• Pre-reading Service
• StudyUp Recordings
• StudyUp Postgraduate
• Academic writing
• Intro to academic writing
• What is academic writing?
• Writing objectively
• Writing concisely
• 1st vs. 3rd person
• Inclusive language
• Te Reo Māori
• Assignment planning
• Assignment planning calculator
• Interpreting the assignment question
• Command words
• Organising points
• Researching
• Identifying academic sources
• Evaluating source quality
• Editing & proofreading
• Apostrophes
• Other punctuation
• Active voice
• American vs. British spelling
• Conditionals
• Prepositions
• Pronoun Reference
• Sentence fragments
• Sentence Structure
• Subject-verb agreement
• Formatting and layout
• Word limits and assignment length
• Commonly confused words
• How assignments are marked
• Marking guides
• Getting an A
• Levels of assessment
• Using feedback
• Professional emails
• Forum posts
• Forum netiquette guidelines
• Sharing personal information
• Writing about personal experiences
• Assignment types
• What is an essay?
• Essay planning and structure
• Introduction
• Thesis statement
• Body paragraphs
• Essay revision
• Essay writing resources
• What is a report?
• Report structure
• Analysing issues for a report
• Business report
• What is a business report?
• Business report structure
• Inductive vs. deductive reports
• Other kinds of business communication
• Business report format and layout
• What is a lab report?
• Lab report structure
• Science lab report writing resources
• Psychology lab report writing resources
• Lab report body paragraphs
• Literature review

What is a literature review?

• Writing a literature review
• Literature review structure
• Literature review writing resources
• Research proposal
• Writing a research proposal
• Research proposal structure
• Other types
• Article critique
• Book review
• Annotated bibliography
• Reflective writing
• Oral presentation
• Thesis / dissertation
• Article / conference paper
• Shorter responses
• PhD confirmation report
• Computer skills
• Microsoft Word
• Basic formatting
• Images, tables, & figures
• Long documents
• Microsoft Excel
• Basic spreadsheets
• Navigating & printing spreadsheets
• Charts / graphs & formulas
• Microsoft PowerPoint
• Basic skills
• Advanced skills
• Distance study
• Getting started
• How to study
• Online study techniques
• Distance support
• Reading & writing
• Reading strategies
• Writing strategies
• Grammar resources
• Listening & speaking
• Listening strategies
• Speaking strategies
• Maths & statistics
• Trigonometry
• Finance formulas
• Postgraduate study
• Intro to postgrad study
• Planning postgrad study
• Postgrad resources
• Postgrad assignment types
• Referencing
• Intro to referencing
• What is referencing?
• Why reference?
• Common knowledge
• Referencing styles
• What type of source is this?
• Reference list vs. bibliography
• Referencing software
• Quoting & paraphrasing
• Paraphrasing & summarising
• Paraphrasing techniques
• APA Interactive
• In-text citation
• Reference list
• Online material
• Other material
• Headings in APA
• Tables and Figures
• Referencing elements
• 5th vs. 6th edition
• 6th vs. 7th edition
• Chicago style
• Chicago Interactive
• About notes system
• Notes referencing elements
• Quoting and paraphrasing
• Author-date system
• MLA Interactive
• Abbreviations
• List of works cited
• Captions for images
• 8th vs 9th edition
• Oxford style
• Other styles
• Harvard style
• Vancouver style
• Legal citations
• Visual material
• Sample assignments
• Sample essay 1
• Sample essay 2
• Sample annotated bibliography
• Sample book review
• Study skills
• Time management
• Intro to time management
• Procrastination & perfectionism
• Goals & motivation
• Time management for internal students
• Time management for distance students
• Memory skills
• Principles of good memory
• Memory strategies
• Note-taking
• Note-taking methods
• Note-taking in lectures
• Note-taking while reading
• Digital note-taking
• Reading styles
• In-depth reading
• Reading comprehension
• Reading academic material
• Reading a journal article
• Reading an academic book
• Critical thinking
• What is critical thinking?
• Constructing an argument
• Critical reading
• Logical fallacies
• Tests & exams
• Exam & test study
• Planning exam study
• Gathering & sorting information
• Reviewing past exams
• Phases of revision
• Last-minute study strategies
• Question types
• Short answer
• Multi-choice
• Problem / computational
• Case-study / scenario
• Open book exam
• Open web exam or test
• Take home test
• In the exam
• Online exam
• Physical exam

A literature review is a critical survey of the academic publications and research on a particular topic. A literature review is often, but not always, part of a larger research project.

McMillan and Schumacher (2000) identified 5 purposes of the literature review. A literature review allows you to:

If it is part of a larger research project, the literature review helps you to identify the parameters of your study. Most research areas are broad: a literature review allows you to identify the key issues within a broad research area so that you can define an area of interest which you might pursue.

Unless you are aware of the work of others, you cannot build upon an established foundation. A literature review can highlight gaps in current thinking and help position your research as part of the bigger picture of emerging knowledge in your chosen field.

Sometimes it is appropriate to replicate a previous study, but this should be done intentionally and for a particular purpose. A literature review helps you to make informed choices about a research topic within a scholarly context.

The success or failure of previous investigations can provide useful material for you when you are designing your own research methodology. You can assess what has worked before (or not worked) in previous contexts and why. You may be alerted to new methodologies and procedures.

The findings of your own research need to be related back to earlier studies. This places your work and can point to areas that need further investigation. Your thesis is much more a coherent whole if your discussion section draws on and contrasts with your literature review.

References and further reading

Craswell, G. (2005). Writing for academic success: A postgraduate guide . Sage Publications.

Hart, C. (1998). Doing a literature review: Releasing the social science research imagination. Sage Publications.

McMillan, J. H. & Schumacher, S. (2000). Research in education: A conceptual introduction (5th ed). Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers.

Ridley, D. (2008). The literature review: A step-by-step guide for students. Sage.

Page authorised by Director - Centre for Learner Success Last updated on 26 February, 2020

• Academic Q+A

Have a study or assignment writing question? Ask an expert at Academic Q+A

Live online workshops

• StudyUp (undergraduate)
• Campus workshops
• Albany (undergraduate)
• Albany (postgraduate)
• Albany (distance)
• Manawatu (undergraduate)
• Manawatu (postgraduate)

Upcoming events

• All upcoming events
• Academic writing and learning support
• 0800 MASSEY | (+64 6 350 5701)
• [email protected]
• Online form

• Case Report
• Open access
• Published: 10 May 2024

Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome with central nervous system symptom onset: a case report and literature review

• Dawei Shan 1 ,
• Weibi Chen 1 ,
• Gang Liu 1 ,
• Huimin Zhang 1 ,
• Shuting Chai 1 &
• Yan Zhang 1  

BMC Neurology volume  24 , Article number:  158 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

344 Accesses

Metrics details

Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS) is a natural focal disease transmitted mainly by tick bites, and the causative agent is SFTS virus (SFTSV). SFTS can rapidly progress to severe disease, with multiple-organ failure (MOF) manifestations such as shock, respiratory failure, disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) and death, but cases of SFTS patients with central nervous system (CNS) symptoms onset and marked persistent involuntary shaking of the perioral area and limbs have rarely been reported.

Case presentation

A 69-year-old woman with fever and persistent involuntary shaking of the perioral area and limbs was diagnosed with SFTS with CNS symptom onset after metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and peripheral blood identified SFTSV. The patient developed a cytokine storm and MOF during the course of the disease, and after aggressive antiviral, glucocorticoid, and gamma globulin treatments, her clinical symptoms improved, her laboratory indices returned to normal, and she had a good prognosis.

This case gives us great insight that when patients with CNS symptoms similar to those of viral encephalitis combined with thrombocytopenia and leukopenia are encountered in the clinic, it is necessary to consider the possibility of SFTS involving the CNS. Testing for SFTSV nucleic acid in CSF and blood (mNGS or polymerase chain reaction (PCR)) should be carried out, especially in critically ill patients, and treatment should be given accordingly.

Peer Review reports

Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS) is a natural focal disease transmitted mainly by tick bites, and the causative agent is a novel Bunyavirus, also known as SFTS virus (SFTSV), belonging to the Phenuiviridae family and the Bandavirus genus, which was first isolated from patient serum by the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in 2010 [ 1 ]. The main features of SFTS include fever, thrombocytopenia, leukopenia and gastrointestinal symptoms, and in severe cases, patients may present with multiple‑organ failure (MOF) symptoms such as shock, respiratory failure, disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) and death, with a mortality rate of 5–30% in East Asia [ 2 , 3 ]. SFTS may also present with central nervous system (CNS) involvement, which can severely affect the patient’s disease progression and prognosis and is manifested by seizures, psychiatric symptoms, cognitive impairment, and disorders of consciousness [ 4 , 5 ]. However, reports of patients who present with CNS symptoms as the first symptom and with marked persistent involuntary shaking of the perioral area and limbs are rare.

A 69-year-old female patient was admitted to the hospital with fever for 4 days, involuntary shaking around the mouth and limbs for 3 days, and mental abnormalities for 1 day. The patient was admitted to the emergency department of another hospital 4 days before admission because of fever, where her body temperature reached 38.7 °C and she showed poor mental status, less talking, a loss of appetite, but no headache, vomiting, and limb twitching. A routine blood examination showed a white blood cell (WBC) count of 2.28 × 10 9 /L and a platelet count of 165 × 10 9 /L. When given a cooling infusion for symptomatic treatment, her body temperature would temporarily return to normal. Three days before admission, she experienced persistent involuntary trembling around the mouth and lips, as well as trembling of the tongue and extremities. The trembling of the lips, mouth, and both distal upper limbs was especially bothersome and was aggravated by emotional excitement and accompanied by slurred speech. Two days before admission, she had persistent fever, with a body temperature up to 39.6 °C, and the effect of antipyretic drugs was not good. A routine blood examination performed in another hospital showed a WBC count of 1.78 × 10 9 /L and a platelet count of 81 × 10 9 /L, which was significantly decreased compared with the count from the previous examination. One day prior to admission, the patient experienced babbling, restlessness, irritability, and a decline in time and place orientation and calculation power.

The patient had a many-year history of hypertension, diabetes mellitus and hyperlipidaemia; denied a history of working and living in hilly, forested and mountainous areas and travelling; denied a recent history of mosquito bites; and reported a history of close contact with a pet dog in the last month.

Neurological examination after admission showed that the patient had normal arousal but had unclear speech, hyperactivity, irritability. Her time and place orientation and calculation power decreased. The patient was uncooperative in the pharyngeal reflex examination, and involuntary tongue twitching could be seen when the tongue was stretched out. The remaining cranial nerve examination did not show any abnormalities. Perioral and limb involuntary shaking was obvious and persistent, especially in the perioral area and distal part of both upper limbs. Bilateral tendon reflexes were symmetrical, bilateral pathological signs were negative, and meningeal irritation signs were negative.

On admission, viral encephalitis was considered, and intravenous acyclovir antiviral therapy (0.5 g, q8h) was empirically administered. A comprehensive examination revealed that the patient had MOF: (1) Her platelet count further decreased to 63 × 10 9 /L (normal: 100–300 × 10 9 /L), toxic granules were seen in some granulocytes of the peripheral blood smear, and heterogeneous lymphocytes accounted for 21% of the total. (2) She had impaired liver function with elevated liver enzymes (alanine aminotransferase (ALT), 76 IU/L (normal: 5–40 IU/L); aspartate aminotransferase (AST), 188 IU/L (normal: 8–40 IU/L); and gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase (γ-GT), 177 IU/L (normal: 7–50 IU/L)), which was treated with magnesium isoglycyrrhizinate injection and vitamin C for liver protection. (3) She had acute myocardial injury, with an increased heart rate of > 120 beats/minute and markedly elevated myocardial enzyme and B-type natriuretic peptide levels (myoglobin, 299 ng/mL (normal: 25–58 ng/mL); troponin T, 209 ng/L (normal: 0–14 ng/L); and B-type natriuretic peptide, 9,355 pg/mL (normal: 0-125 pg/mL)). Electrocardiograms (ECGs) showed various atypical manifestations, such as short PR intervals; atrial premature, mild ST-segment depression in leads V2V3; and T-wave changes in multiple leads. Cardiac ultrasound showed a normal left ventricular ejection fraction but abnormal segmental motion of the left ventricular wall, biventricular diastolic insufficiency and a small amount of pericardial effusion. Coenzyme Q10 and trimetazidine were given to improve myocardial energy metabolism, and fluid intake and output were closely monitored. (4) The patient had a bacterial infection of the lungs, combined with type I respiratory failure, which were treated with tracheal intubation and mechanical ventilation immediately to assist respiration and antibiotic antimicrobial therapy. The patient did not have prolonged hypoxic injury. (5) She had impaired renal function, with elevated blood urea nitrogen (BUN) (17.33 mmol/L) (normal: 1.7–8.3 mmol/L) and urinary protein. We administered measures to ensure fluid intake and without the use of nephrotoxic drugs. (6) She had impaired pancreatic function, with elevated lipase (56.5 U/L) (normal: 5.6–51.3 U/L); we administered acid-suppressing drugs to inhibit pancreatic secretion and reduce the load and damage to pancreatic tissue. (7) She had abnormal coagulation, with a prolonged prothrombin time (PT) and thrombin time (TT) (15.7 s (normal: 11–15 s) for PT and 22.6 s (normal: 14–21 s) for TT), decreased fibrinogen (1.8 g/L) (normal: 2–4 g/L), and markedly elevated plasma D-dimer (9.01 µg/mL) (normal: 0.01–0.5 µg/mL) and fibrinogen degradation products (FDPs) (28.36 µg/mL) (normal: 0–5 µg/mL). (8) A thrombus had formed in her right peroneal vein and the intermuscular veins of the right and left calves, for which low molecular heparin anticoagulation was given. (9) Her muscle enzyme profiles were variably elevated (creatine kinase (CK), 335 IU/L (normal: 24–195 IU/L); lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), 1347 IU/L (normal: 109–245 IU/L); and alpha-hydroxybutyrate dehydrogenase (α-HBDH), 645 IU/L (normal: 72–182 IU/L)), correlating with inflammatory response-mediated organ damage. (10) The patient experienced a cytokine storm, with significantly increased inflammatory factors (ferritin > 1500 ng/mL (normal: 11-306.8 ng/mL), interleukin (IL)-6 = 49.88 pg/mL (normal: 0–20 pg/mL), IL-8 = 45.99 pg/mL (normal: 0-21.4 pg/mL), and IL-10 = 25.67 pg/mL (normal: 0-5.9 pg/mL), interferon (IFN)-α = 9.76 pg/mL (normal: 0-7.9 pg/mL), and IFN-γ = 18.7 pg/mL (normal: 0-17.3 pg/mL)) in serum (Table  1 ). (11) Finally, the patient showed an electrolyte balance disorder, as evidenced by hypernatremia (154 mmol/L) (normal: 135–145 mmol/L), hyperchloremia (119 mmol/L) (normal: 96–108 mmol/L), hypocalcaemia (1.92 mmol/L) (normal: 2.03–2.67 mmol/L), and hypophosphatemia (0.54 mmol/L) (normal: 0.84–1.65 mmol/L), and treatments included calcium supplementation, phosphorus supplementation, nasal administration of plain water, and a reduction of sodium and chlorine intake.

Lumbar puncture was performed on the second day after admission (Table  2 ). Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) was colourless and clear, with a pressure of 190 mmH 2 O (normal: 80–180 mmH 2 O) and a WBC count of 3 × 10 6 /L. CSF cytology showed scattered lymphocytes and a few mononuclear cells. The glucose level and protein counts were normal, chloride was slightly elevated (134 mmol/L) (normal: 118–128 mmol/L), immunoglobulins (Ig) were slightly elevated (IgA, 1.03 mg/dL (normal: 0-0.2 mg/dL); IgM, 0.22 mg/dL (normal: 0-0.2 mg/dL); and IgG, 6.68 mg/dL (normal: 0.48–5.86 mg/dL)), and CSF cytokine levels of IL-6 (27.46 pg/mL) (normal: 0–20 pg/mL) and IL-8 (546.93 pg/mL) (normal: 0-21.4 pg/mL) were elevated. CSF was negative for an autoimmune encephalitis antibody profile (NMDAR, CASPR2, AMPAR1, AMPAR2, LGI1, GABABR, DPPX, and IgLON5), neuroparaneoplastic syndrome antibody profile (Hu, Ri, Yo, CV2, Amphiphysin, GAD65, PNMA2, Recoverin, SOX1, Titin, Tr, and Zic4), and CNS demyelination antibody profile (AQP4, GFAP, MBP, and MOG). Metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) showed that the number of sequences of a novel Bunyavirus of the Bandavirus genus was 59 in the blood and 12 in the CSF. We also excluded acute febrile illnesses by serum and CSF mNGS, such as dengue fever, chikungunya fever, EB virus infection, renal syndrome hemorrhagic fever, and rickettsial disease.

A diagnosis of SFTS that started with symptoms of CNS and encephalitis due to a novel Bunyavirus was considered based on the patient’s clinical presentation and laboratory test results. With immediate effect, acyclovir was adjusted to the broad-spectrum antiviral drug Foscarnet sodium (3 g, q8h); intravenous infusion of dexamethasone (10 mg qd for five days) and intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) (0.4 g/kg for five days) were administered to regulate immune function and inhibit the cytokine storm; nifedipine and benidipine hydrochloride were given to reduce the viral-induced calcium inflow to inhibit viral replication, reduce the viral load and increase the platelet count; clonazepam (1 mg, q8h) was given to relieve the patient’s obvious symptoms of involuntary shaking; and adequate symptomatic supportive therapy was given to ensure adequate calorie and protein intake and to maintain water, electrolyte, blood glucose and acid‒base balance.

After 3 days of hospitalization, the patient’s platelet and WBC counts began to rise gradually and returned to normal levels. After 5 days of hospitalization, the patient’s involuntary shaking and psychiatric symptoms were less severe than before, but compliance with activities was still poor, and her cognitive level still had not returned to normal. After 11 days of hospitalization, the lung infection was better than before, and ventilator withdrawal training was started. After 12 days of hospitalization, cranial magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was performed, which showed slightly high signals in the bilateral anterior temporal lobe, temporal lobe hook gyrus, insular cortex, and bilateral thalamus on fluid attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR) and diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) (Fig.  1 a-f). After 13 days of hospitalization, a blood sample was negative for novel Bunyavirus nucleic acid. After 16 days of hospitalization, her condition was significantly better than before, she could perform activities as instructed and answer questions correctly, her time and place orientation returned to normal, and her cognitive level was better than before. A electroencephalogram (EEG) was performed, and a full-lead low-wave amplitude state was observed (Fig.  2 ). After 17 days of hospitalization, the ventilator was completely withdrawn, and the tracheal tube was removed. A repeat lumbar puncture 3 weeks after hospitalization showed a pressure of 110 mmH 2 O, a WBC count of 4 × 10 6 /L, a normal protein count, a slightly elevated glucose level (5.19 mmol/L, compared with a glucose of 7.9 mmol/L over the same period), a slightly elevated chlorine level (130 mmol/L), and a return of Ig to normal. The levels of cytokines IL-6 (4.35 pg/mL) and IL-8 (96.17 pg/mL) decreased significantly compared with the previous levels, and the levels of whole-blood cytokines returned to the normal range (IL-6, 12.22 pg/mL; IL-8, 4.62 pg/mL; IL-10, 1.27 pg/mL; IFN-α, 0 pg/mL; and IFN-γ, 1.14 pg/mL) in serum (Table  1 ). No further novel Bunyaviruses were detected by mNGS of the CSF. Meanwhile, MOF gradually recovered, and liver, heart, lung, kidney, pancreas and coagulation function; the muscle enzyme profile; inflammatory factors; and electrolyte levels gradually returned to normal levels.

After antiviral therapy, immunotherapy, life support and symptomatic treatment, the patient’s vital signs were stable 3 weeks after admission, with clear speech and normal higher cortical function to perform tasks correctly on command. The muscle strength of all four limbs was grade 5, muscle tone was normal, bilateral tendon reflexes existed symmetrically, an ataxia test was normal, bilateral pathological signs were negative, and meningeal irritation signs were negative. She was discharged from the hospital in 23 days after admission. The patient was followed up 1 month after she was discharged from the hospital and is now back to her normal living conditions, with normal functioning of the higher cortex, the ability to take care of herself, and the ability to perform all of the activities she regularly engages in.

Cranial MRI of the patient 12 days after admission. Bilateral anterior temporal lobe (a and d) , temporal lobe leptomeningeal gyrus (a and d) , insular cortex (b and e) , and bilateral thalamus (c and f) FLAIR and DWI sequences with slightly high signals

Sixteen-lead resting-state EEG of the patient 16 days after admission. Simultaneous display an EEG record in monopolar and bipolar montages. A low-amplitude state can be seen in all leads. (a) monopolar montage EEG, (b) bipolar montage EEG

Discussion and conclusions

SFTS is an infectious disease caused by SFTSV infection. The epidemic period is mainly in May-August, and SFTSV is mainly transmitted by tick bites to humans. In recent years, interpersonal and human-animal transmission has also been found. An epidemiological survey of SFTS found that 48% of the patients had had close contact with their pets within two weeks of the onset of the disease [ 6 ]. The general population is susceptible, with a higher risk of infection in residents living in areas such as hills, mountains and forests and in people who spend time outdoors. In this case, SFTSV was isolated from blood and CSF. There was no history of tick bites or travel in the wild, but there was a history of close contact with a pet dog within the past month, and we hypothesized that the infected dog might have been the source of SFTSV in this patient.

The pathogenesis of CNS involvement in SFTS patients is unclear. Previous studies have demonstrated that Bunyaviruses have neurological properties of attack, and Park et al. found viral transcripts of novel Bunyaviruses in the brain and spinal cord of an aged model ferret. It is hypothesized that novel Bunyaviruses also involve the CNS, with consequent symptoms [ 7 ]. Possible mechanisms by which SFTSV attacks the CNS include direct invasion, cytokine storms, and impaired immune function. Kaneko et al. [ 8 ] performed an autopsy on a patient with SFTS with rapid CNS involvement, and the pathological findings revealed a massive infiltration of macrophages with high haematoxylin content and inflammatory cells around the microvessels of the cerebral pontine, fibrin deposition in the vessels, and focal degenerative lesions in some neuronal cells. In a variety of brain tissues, positive SFTSV nucleocapsid protein antigens were observed in the immunoblasts infiltrating the vascular lumen, suggesting that SFTSV can invade the CNS directly for disease development. The availability of agents that recognize these antigens also suggest immunoassays are possible and available for serodiagnosis. For example, serum enzyme linked immunosorbent assay or immunofluorescence to determine SFTSV antigens and antibodies have been used for clinical diagnosis [ 9 ]. Several studies [ 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 ] have found that the blood levels of several cytokines, including IFN-α, IFN-γ, IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, tumour necrosis factor (TNF)-α, and monocyte chemotactic protein (MCP)-1, are elevated in patients with SFTS, and IL-8 and MCP-1 levels in the CSF are significantly higher than the blood of those who present with CNS symptoms [ 10 ], suggesting that a cytokine storm may increase vascular permeability and prompt SFTSV to cross the blood‒brain barrier (BBB) and invade the CNS. SFTSV was found in the CSF of this patient, suggesting that the virus had invaded the patient’s CNS. The patient’s blood levels of IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, IFN-α, and IFN-γ were markedly elevated compared with normal ranges; IL-6 and IL-8 were elevated in the CSF; and CSF IL-8 levels were significantly higher than the blood levels, which was consistent with the results of a previous study [ 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 ], further suggesting that the cytokine storms induced by multiple elevated cytokines may increase BBB vascular permeability and contribute to the SFTSV invasion of the CNS. In patients with SFTS complicated by neurological involvement, protein and glucose levels in the CSF are normal and that an increase in leukocytes in the CSF may be uncommon. However, in the case of a high suspicion both on a clinical and epidemiological level in countries where the infection exists, in these patients the search for MCP-1 and IL-8 in the CSF and serum is indicated and CSF viral RNA detection are recommended.

According to the course of infection, SFTS can be divided into four periods: the incubation period, the febrile period, the MOF period, and the recovery period [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 16 ]. Patients with SFTS can present with neurological symptoms, which usually appear approximately 5 days after the onset of the disease (Table  3 ) and are often regarded as a complication of SFTS, which has been referred to as SFTS-associated encephalopathy/encephalitis (SFTSAE) [ 10 ]. SFTSAE mainly manifests as headache, seizures, mental abnormality, irritability, limb convulsions, cognitive impairment, and impaired consciousness, with an incidence of approximately 19.1-57.02% [ 4 , 5 , 11 , 17 ]. Most patients with SFTSAE develop impaired consciousness, such as coma, before their condition is taken seriously, which leads to a poor prognosis for the patients [ 4 , 18 ]. Most clinicians rely on the clinical manifestations to make the clinical diagnosis. SFTSV has rarely been isolated from CSF. We screened studies and case reports of SFTS with CNS involvement and found no reports of disease onset with CNS symptoms such as marked persistent involuntary shaking of the perioral area and extremities. In this case, the patient first presented with fever, followed by persistent involuntary tremors of the perioral area and limbs and mental behavioural abnormalities such as rambling, irritability and agitation; furthermore, the whole-genome sequence of SFTSV was found by mNGS of blood and CSF. The case reported here is a case of SFTS with CNS symptoms onset, accompanied by perioral and extremity persistent involuntary shaking, which has not been previously reported in the literature. It has been reported in the literature that SFTS patients can have tremors of limbs and muscles [ 8 , 17 , 19 ], but most of them occurred in the middle and late stages of the disease, and the tremor amplitude was small. In this case, the patient had large-amplitude involuntary shaking of the limbs that was persistent and intensified during agitation, which immediately attracted the clinician’s attention. An additional movie file shows this in more detail [see Additional file 1 ]. However, the specific underlying mechanism is not clear, and a description of similar symptoms of viral encephalitis and an analysis of the underlying mechanism have not been found before; therefore, further studies are needed. The course of the disease in this patient was consistent with the general pattern, with the clinical experience of the febrile period, the MOF period, and the recovery period. The febrile period lasted approximately 4 days, followed by MOF involving the liver, heart, lungs, kidneys, and pancreas, and then the recovery period began approximately 2 weeks after the disease onset, with clinical symptoms gradually returning to normal.

There are fewer reports on neurological-related ancillary investigations (CSF, cranial imaging, and EEG) in SFTS patients with CNS involvement, and we analyse this because SFTS patients rarely start with CNS symptoms and go directly to the neurology department and because such patients are generally more severely ill, making it difficult for them to cooperate in completing the relevant investigations. In a few previous studies, lumbar puncture CSF tests in SFTS patients with CNS symptoms were mostly normal, with few abnormal changes in leukocyte counts, sugars and proteins [ 10 , 20 ]. Park et al. [ 10 ] analysed head imaging and EEG in a series of SFTS patients presenting with CNS symptoms, and no new focal lesions were seen on imaging in any of the brain parenchyma, suggesting that the imaging was not specific and that the EEG in the majority of the patients showed a slow-wave background rhythm (δ-θ), a common feature of encephalitis/encephalopathy. In this patient, two lumbar punctures were performed successively, and no CSF leukocyte abnormalities were observed in any of them either; it was presumed that SFTSV infection was less likely to involve the meninges. We performed cranial MRI and EEG on the patient 12 and 16 days after admission, respectively, and slightly high signals were observed in the bilateral anterior temporal lobes, temporal lobe hook gyrus, insular cortex, and bilateral thalamus in the FLAIR and DWI sequences of cranial MRI, all of which were consistent with the general imaging manifestations of viral encephalitis and were presumed to be related to viral invasion. In addition, we should consider the similarities and differences between the above MRI changes and cortical laminar necrosis associated with hypoxia or hypotension. We found that both had MRI high signals distributed along the cortex. However, this patient’s cranial MRI showed cortical high signals only in FLAIR and DWI sequences, and no abnormal signal was found in T1WI, which was the most obvious difference from cortical laminar necrosis. Furthermore, the patient did not show hypotension or significant hypoxic injury, so the changes on cranial MRI were more likely to be inflammatory changes of viral encephalitis and less relevant to cortical laminar necrosis. The background rhythm of the EEG was an α rhythm, and the whole leads were in low amplitude, which was different from previous studies [ 10 ]. It was presumed that the patient’s brain inflammation had tended to recover at that time, but the suppression of cortical function was remained.

There are no specific drugs for the treatment of CNS symptoms in SFTS, and symptomatic supportive treatment is the mainstay. In vitro and ex vivo studies have found that nifedipine or benidipine hydrochloride can inhibit SFTSV replication, reduce viral load, increase platelet counts, and reduce morbidity and mortality, as confirmed in a retrospective clinical study [ 21 , 22 ]. Glucocorticoids can inhibit the cytokine storms caused by the overproduction of cytokines and reduce patient mortality [ 12 , 13 , 23 ], and a Japanese report documented that three SFTS patients with impaired consciousness recovered without any neurological sequelae after short-term glucocorticoid treatment. However, the authors also suggested that the dosage should be minimized and the duration of administration should be shortened to inhibit cytokine storms and provide systemic benefit, rather than high doses or prolonged use, to avoid side effects [ 24 ]. Gamma globulin, which triggers complement activation and viral neutralization and influences the differentiation process of Schwann cells to increase their regenerative potential [ 25 ], has been used to treat other virus-induced encephalitides and can be used for the treatment of CNS symptoms in SFTS. Two successful cases of combined glucocorticoid and IVIG therapy were reported in Korea [ 26 ]. Two case reports documented that plasma exchange therapy reduced cytokine levels but not viral load, presumably making plasma exchange more effective at an early stage [ 27 , 28 ]. However, these are case reports, and the findings should be confirmed by large-scale randomized controlled studies. In this case, the patient was given the broad-spectrum antiviral drug foscarnet sodium, intravenous infusion of dexamethasone and IVIG to regulate the immune function of the body and inhibit the inflammatory storm, nifedipine and benidipine hydrochloride to inhibit viral replication and reduce the viral load, and other symptomatic treatments. The patient’s clinical manifestations and laboratory indicators gradually improved.

The prognosis of patients with SFTS is related to numerous factors, and studies have shown that advanced age; significant elevations in ALT, AST, CK, CK-MB, LDH, γ-GT, and BUN; low platelet count; persistent lowering of blood calcium; and the presence of CNS symptoms are all important influences that can lead to a poor prognosis [ 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 ]. Most of these are commonly used to monitor cardiac, hepatic and renal function, and significant abnormalities in their results indicate more severe organ damage and dysfunction. In addition, there is a statistically significant difference in serum viral copy number between deceased and non-dead patients. The mean viral copy number was higher in deceased patients than in surviving patients, and patients with higher copy numbers had higher mortality rates [ 35 , 36 ]. It was shown that the serum viral load detected by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) on admission was higher in SFTSAE patients than in non-encephalitis patients [ 11 ]. The above suggests a relationship between patient serum number of SFTSV RNA copies and encephalitis CNS symptoms and mortality in SFTS patients. CNS symptoms are often considered to be associated with fatal outcomes in patients with SFTS [ 33 ], and early diagnosis and treatment of neurological symptoms can help reduce mortality. Advanced age; long intervals between onset and admission; comorbid diabetes mellitus or subcutaneous haemorrhage; pulmonary rales; low platelet count; elevated neutrophil percentages and LDH, CK, and C-reactive protein (CRP) levels; and decreased chloride concentrations are significantly associated with the development of CNS symptoms and should be taken into consideration in clinical practice [ 11 , 17 ]. We believe that changes in platelet count and CK-MB should be monitored in patients with SFTSAE. As shown in previous, decreased platelet counts and high CK-MB levels are risk factors for poor prognosis in patients with SFTS. The presence of encephalitis is evidence of a more critical condition. Monitoring changes in platelet counts may provide an initial indication of the direction of the patient’s regression. It has been found that in cardiac enzyme profiles, patients presenting with CNS symptoms have elevated CK levels earlier than LDH and AST levels, and elevated liver enzyme levels later than cardiac enzymes [ 17 ]. Therefore, early monitoring of CK-MB levels may have a predictive effect on the development of CNS symptoms in patients. Although the mortality rate of SFTS patients presenting with CNS symptoms is significantly higher [ 11 ], several studies have found [ 11 , 37 , 38 ] that the long-term prognosis of surviving patients is good, with no obvious sequelae after active treatment. In this case, the patient’s laboratory indicators were consistent with the factors leading to a poor prognosis, and the CNS symptoms were prominent, suggesting that the condition was critical, but with timely administration of treatment, the patient’s condition eventually returned to normal.

In summary, we report a case of SFTS in a patient who started with CNS symptoms accompanied by marked persistent involuntary perioral and extremity shaking, and the whole-genome sequence of SFTSV was found by mNGS of both serum and CSF (It is important to note that hospitals where mNGS analysis is unavailable should use real-time fluorescent quantitative PCR to detect SFTS-specific nucleic acids in serum and CSF.). This has given us great insight into the fact that SFTS should be considered a possible cause when patients present with common CNS symptoms of viral encephalitis, such as mental behavioural abnormalities, convulsions, and cognitive deficits, or rare symptoms, such as persistent involuntary shaking of the perioral area and limbs in the rare case of this patient, combined with thrombocytopenia and leukopenia. Prompt lumbar puncture examination for SFTSV should be performed, and appropriate treatment should be given aggressively to reduce mortality.

Data availability

No datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.

Abbreviations

severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome

severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome virus

multiple-organ failure

disseminated intravascular coagulation

central nervous system

metagenomic next-generation sequencing

cerebrospinal fluid

alanine aminotransferase

aspartate aminotransferase

gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase

electrocardiogram

blood urea nitrogen

prothrombin time

thrombin time

fibrinogen degradation products

creatine kinase

lactate dehydrogenase

alpha-hydroxybutyrate dehydrogenase

interleukin

immunoglobulin

intravenous immunoglobulin

magnetic resonance imaging

fluid attenuated inversion recovery

diffusion weighted imaging

electroencephalogram

tumour necrosis factor

monocyte chemotactic protein

blood-brain barrier

severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome -associated encephalopathy/ encephalitis

polymerase chain reaction

C-reactive protein

Yu XJ, Liang MF, Zhang SY, Liu Y, Li JD, Sun YL, et al. Fever with thrombocytopenia associated with a novel bunyavirus in China. N Engl J Med. 2011;364(16):1523–32.

Article   CAS   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Yang T, Huang H, Jiang L, Li J. Overview of the immunological mechanism underlying severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (review). Int J Mol Med. 2022;50(3).

Li H, Lu QB, Xing B, Zhang SF, Liu K, Du J, et al. Epidemiological and clinical features of laboratory-diagnosed severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome in China, 2011-17: a prospective observational study. Lancet Infect Dis. 2018;18(10):1127–37.

Article   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Casel MA, Park SJ, Choi YK. Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome virus: emerging novel phlebovirus and their control strategy. Exp Mol Med. 2021;53(5):713–22.

Fei X, Feng B, Fang K, Ren W. Risk factors for mortality in severe fever with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome patients with Central Nervous System complications. Med Sci Monit. 2023;29:e938427.

Kobayashi Y, Kato H, Yamagishi T, Shimada T, Matsui T, Yoshikawa T, et al. Severe fever with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome, Japan, 2013–2017. Emerg Infect Dis. 2020;26(4):692–9.

Article   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Park SJ, Kim YI, Park A, Kwon HI, Kim EH, Si YJ, et al. Ferret animal model of severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome phlebovirus for human lethal infection and pathogenesis. Nat Microbiol. 2019;4(3):438–46.

Article   CAS   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Kaneko M, Shikata H, Matsukage S, Maruta M, Shinomiya H, Suzuki T, et al. A patient with severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome and hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis-associated involvement of the central nervous system. J Infect Chemother. 2018;24(4):292–7.

Guang C, Tao C, Sainan S, Ke M, Xiaojing W, Di W et al. Expert consensus on diagnosis and treatment of severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome. Chin J Clin Infect Dis. 2022:253–63.

Park SY, Kwon JS, Kim JY, Kim SM, Jang YR, Kim MC, et al. Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome-associated encephalopathy/encephalitis. Clin Microbiol Infect. 2018;24(4):432.e1-.e4.

Article   Google Scholar  

Cui N, Liu R, Lu QB, Wang LY, Qin SL, Yang ZD, et al. Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome bunyavirus-related human encephalitis. J Infect. 2015;70(1):52–9.

Sun Y, Jin C, Zhan F, Wang X, Liang M, Zhang Q, et al. Host cytokine storm is associated with disease severity of severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome. J Infect Dis. 2012;206(7):1085–94.

Deng B, Zhang S, Geng Y, Zhang Y, Wang Y, Yao W, et al. Cytokine and chemokine levels in patients with severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome virus. PLoS ONE. 2012;7(7):e41365.

Kwon JS, Kim MC, Kim JY, Jeon NY, Ryu BH, Hong J, et al. Kinetics of viral load and cytokines in severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome. J Clin Virol. 2018;101:57–62.

Liu MM, Lei XY, Yu H, Zhang JZ, Yu XJ. Correlation of cytokine level with the severity of severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome. Virol J. 2017;14(1):6.

Li J, Li S, Yang L, Cao P, Lu J. Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome virus: a highly lethal bunyavirus. Crit Rev Microbiol. 2021;47(1):112–25.

Fei X, Fang K, Ni X, Ren WH. Risk factors of neurological complications in severe fever patients with thrombolytic syndrome: a single-Center Retrospective Study in China. Med Sci Monit. 2021;27:e932836.

Liu MM, Lei XY, Yu XJ. Meta-analysis of the clinical and laboratory parameters of SFTS patients in China. Virol J. 2016;13(1):198.

Li DX. Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome: a newly discovered emerging infectious disease. Clin Microbiol Infect. 2015;21(7):614–20.

Deng B, Zhou B, Zhang S, Zhu Y, Han L, Geng Y, et al. Clinical features and factors associated with severity and fatality among patients with severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome Bunyavirus infection in Northeast China. PLoS ONE. 2013;8(11):e80802.

Takayama-Ito M, Saijo M. Antiviral drugs against severe fever with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome Virus infection. Front Microbiol. 2020;11:150.

Li H, Zhang LK, Li SF, Zhang SF, Wan WW, Zhang YL, et al. Calcium channel blockers reduce severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome virus (SFTSV) related fatality. Cell Res. 2019;29(9):739–53.

Hayden A, Park S, Giustini D, Lee AY, Chen LY. Hemophagocytic syndromes (HPSs) including hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH) in adults: a systematic scoping review. Blood Rev. 2016;30(6):411–20.

Nakamura S, Azuma M, Maruhashi T, Sogabe K, Sumitani R, Uemura M, et al. Steroid pulse therapy in patients with encephalopathy associated with severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome. J Infect Chemother. 2018;24(5):389–92.

Tzekova N, Heinen A, Bunk S, Hermann C, Hartung HP, Reipert B, et al. Immunoglobulins stimulate cultured Schwann cell maturation and promote their potential to induce axonal outgrowth. J Neuroinflammation. 2015;12:107.

Kim UJ, Kim DM, Ahn JH, Kang SJ, Jang HC, Park KH, et al. Successful treatment of rapidly progressing severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome with neurological complications using intravenous immunoglobulin and corticosteroid. Antivir Ther. 2016;21(7):637–40.

Choi S, Kim MC, Kwon JS, Kim JY, Lee KH, Kim SH. Case Report: use of plasma Exchange followed by Convalescent Plasma Therapy in a critically ill patient with severe fever and Thrombocytopenia Syndrome-Associated Encephalopathy: Cytokine/Chemokine concentrations, viral loads, and antibody responses. Am J Trop Med Hyg. 2018;99(6):1466–8.

Park SY, Choi W, Chong YP, Park SW, Wang EB, Lee WJ, et al. Use of plasma therapy for severe fever with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome Encephalopathy. Emerg Infect Dis. 2016;22(7):1306–8.

Jia B, Yan X, Chen Y, Wang G, Liu Y, Xu B, et al. A scoring model for predicting prognosis of patients with severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome. PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2017;11(9):e0005909.

Seo JW, Kim D, Yun N, Kim DM. Clinical update of severe fever with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome. Viruses. 2021;13(7).

Choi SJ, Park SW, Bae IG, Kim SH, Ryu SY, Kim HA, et al. Severe fever with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome in South Korea, 2013–2015. PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2016;10(12):e0005264.

Wang L, Wan G, Shen Y, Zhao Z, Lin L, Zhang W, et al. A nomogram to predict mortality in patients with severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome at the early stage-A multicenter study in China. PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2019;13(11):e0007829.

Gai ZT, Zhang Y, Liang MF, Jin C, Zhang S, Zhu CB, et al. Clinical progress and risk factors for death in severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome patients. J Infect Dis. 2012;206(7):1095–102.

Chen Y, Jia B, Liu Y, Huang R, Chen J, Wu C. Risk factors associated with fatality of severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome: a meta-analysis. Oncotarget. 2017;8(51):89119–29.

Yoshikawa T, Fukushi S, Tani H, Fukuma A, Taniguchi S, Toda S, et al. Sensitive and specific PCR systems for detection of both Chinese and Japanese severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome virus strains and prediction of patient survival based on viral load. J Clin Microbiol. 2014;52(9):3325–33.

Saijo M. Pathophysiology of severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome and development of specific antiviral therapy. J Infect Chemother. 2018;24(10):773–81.

Youdong X, Xiaofeng D, Xiyuan N, Zhengdong L. Analysis of the risk factors and prognosis for severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome associated encephalopathy. J Infect Chemother. 2023;29(5):464–8.

Kawaguchi T, Matsuda M, Takajo I, Kawano A, Kariya Y, Kubo K, et al. Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome with myocardial dysfunction and encephalopathy: a case report. J Infect Chemother. 2016;22(9):633–7.

Kim UJ, Kim DM, Kim SE, Kang SJ, Jang HC, Park KH, et al. Case report: detection of the identical virus in a patient presenting with severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome encephalopathy and the tick that bit her. BMC Infect Dis. 2018;18(1):181.

Sun Y, Guo B, Yan H, Wu AL, Yao WW, Chen K, et al. Patient with severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome virus infection and central nervous system disturbance in Dongyang, Zhejiang Province, China, 2017. Virol J. 2019;16(1):129.

Wang C, Gong L, Zeng Z, Zhang J, Guan H, Chen L, et al. Genome-based analysis of SFTSV causing severe encephalitis with brain lesions. J Neurovirol. 2020;26(2):181–7.

Download references

This project was supported by National Key Research and Development Program of China (2020YFC2005403), and by China Association for Promotion of Health Science and Technology (JKHY2023001).

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Neurology, Xuanwu Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, 100053, China

Dawei Shan, Weibi Chen, Gang Liu, Huimin Zhang, Shuting Chai & Yan Zhang

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Contributions

Dawei Shan and Yan Zhang contributed to the conception and design of the manuscript. Dawei Shan collected the data and drafted the manuscript. Yan Zhang, Weibi Chen, Gang Liu, Huimin Zhang and Shuting Chai reviewed and modified the manuscript. All authors contributed to manuscript revision and read and approved the final submitted version.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yan Zhang .

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate.

Informed consent was obtained from the patient to publish this case, and approval for this study was provided by Research Ethics Committee of the Xuanwu Hospital of Capital Medical University.

Consent for publication

Written informed consent was obtained from the patient for publication of this case report and the accompanying images. A copy of the written consent is available for review by the Editor of this journal.

Competing interests

All authors certify that they have no affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial interest or nonfinancial interest in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript.

Additional information

Publisher’s note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

12883_2024_3664_MOESM1_ESM.mp4

Supplementary Material 1. File name: Additional file 1. File format: mp4. Title of data: Video of patient with persistent involuntary shaking of the perioral area and limbs. Description of data: We took this video on day 2 after the patient was admitted to the hospital. The patient develops persistent involuntary shaking of the perioral area and limbs, especially in the perioral area and distal limbs, which is aggravated by agitation and is accompanied by slurred speech.

Supplementary Material 2. CARE Checklist of information to include when writing this case report.

Rights and permissions.

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Shan, D., Chen, W., Liu, G. et al. Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome with central nervous system symptom onset: a case report and literature review. BMC Neurol 24 , 158 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12883-024-03664-6

Download citation

Received : 30 November 2023

Accepted : 02 May 2024

Published : 10 May 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s12883-024-03664-6

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome
• Novel bunyaviruses
• Central nervous system
• Encephalitis
• Involuntary shaking

BMC Neurology

ISSN: 1471-2377

• General enquiries: [email protected]