Approaching your literature review
The literature review workflow

Approaching your literature review

Literature reviews can be considered an umbrella concept of related methods and approaches to research, which all aim to collect and present previous research findings. Other terms commonly used to denote this approach to research is evidence synthesis and review studies, but as these terms are more vague or carry certain methodological connotations which we wish to avoid, we prefer using "literature review" when talking about the method and approach in a general sense. "Review type" will be used to the denote specific methods (e.g. systematic review, narrative review) encompassed in the umberella concept.

No matter what type of literature review you want to conduct, there will be a few central questions to consider. These questions also form the structure for this module.

The module also provides recommendations to tools useful for literature reviews.

The literature review workflow

Even if there are methodological differences between different types of literature reviews, the general workflow still has similarities. The model below (adapted from Pettersson, Kjellin and Palmqvist 2020), gives one view of the workflow when conducting a literature review.

informationssökningmodellreview.png

A good starting point for reading up on search strategies for literature reviews in the Social Sciences is consulting the Campbell Collaboration's guide Searching for studies: A guide to information retrieval for Campbell systematic reviews. A more thorough read on the literature review as method is the book An introduction to systematic reviews by Gough, Oliver and Thomas (2017).

Cited works

Campbell Collaboration. (2017). Searching for studies: A guide to information retrieval for Campbell systematic reviews. https://doi.org/10.4073/cmg.2016.1

Gough, D., Oliver, S. & Thomas, J. (2017). An introduction to systematic reviews. SAGE.

Pettersson, A., Kjellin, D. & Palmqvist, T. (2020). Informationssökning vid översiktsstudier. In A. Hellman, A. Åkerblom & N. Pramling (eds.). Metodologi: för studier i, om och med förskolan (pp. 245-269). Gleerups

Further reading

SBU – Statens beredning för medicinsk och social utvärdering. (2025). Metod. Retrieved 2025-03-26 from https://www.sbu.se/sv/metod/metodboken-2023/?pub=101442&lang=sv 

Skolforskningsportalen. (2023). Vår metod. Retrieved 2025-03-26 from https://skolforskningsportalen.se/var-metod/ 

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