Writing a well-written literature review is the most effective way of providing your readers with a deep insight into the writings that helped you to build your research. It’s, however, important to note that a literature review shouldn’t just include a sequence of names and data. Remember, it’s not just a summary. If you are looking for the best source on how to write a good literature review for a medical research paper, you have come to the right place. A good literature review must have a solid structure with a clear explanation. Above all, it must also have substance.
Writing a careful, well-thought literature review is vital when writing about research at any level. It’s basic homework that’s assumed to have been done diligently. There’s a lot more that you ought to know about how to write a good literature review for a medical research paper before you actually start to write one. Here’s a more detailed review of what you need to know:
How to Write a Good Literature Review for a Medical Research Paper
First, it’s vital to note that writing a literature review requires great responsibility. Remember, this is a document that demands high reliability concerning its findings and sources. You must, therefore, feel intellectually comfortable in that specific area of study that you intend to write. Likewise, you should be highly proficient and knowledgeable in the target language that you intend to use. The same is also true for misconceptions and errors that don’t have a place in any acknowledged document type. Knowing how to write a good literature review for a medical research paper is crucial, considering text editing services like the ones offered by UKessays.com.
A well-written literature review for a research paper must also meet the highest text quality standards. Remember, you want your research to be the most memorable in the bunch. And you can only do this by checking the paper’s novelty and quality instead of language errors.
These steps should help guide you even as you how to write a good literature review for a medical research paper from scratch:
Choose Your Topic/Research Question
Before you start searching for literature, it’s vital that you have a clearly defined topic. You will have to search for and use literature related to research issues and questions if your literature review section is of a research or dissertation paper. If you’re writing a literature review, it’s important that you also choose a focus and use it to develop a central question that will direct your search. Also, unlike with dissertation research questions, this question should be answerable without necessarily having to collect data.
As for the research question, it shouldn’t be too competitive or too limited. Remember, you will have to complete your research paper within a specified period. Also, you must note that your professor won’t really appreciate incomplete outcomes from your review.
Decide Which Databases to Use for Your Searches
The best way to nail how to write a good literature review for a medical research paper is to use the best, most viable resources for your literature review. It’s imperative that you use comprehensive databases that will help you build a big picture. Ideally, you want your literature review to be the best and as related to your chosen topic as possible. While it may be improbable to read absolutely everything from your sources, it’s up to you to determine which sources are worth using.
The sources that you choose must also be credible and relevant to your questions. Also, ensure that you read any landmark studies, including all major theories related to your field of research. It’s always recommended that you use articles and sources that have high citation counts, especially on Google Scholar. Most of these sources are excellent for use in your literature review. Their degree of citations only proves that they have been influential in that particular field of study.
The scope of your review also significantly depends on your discipline and topic. For instance, for historical literature reviews, you may be required to use several historical perspectives in your paper. In scientific reviews, however, you’re only usually required to review recent literature.
Review All Literature and Appraise its Content Carefully
After reading your study’s abstract, it’s now time to pay more attention to the rest of your review. In this particular section, all the vital points that you shortlisted from your intensive research come into play. By this stage, you should have identified methodologies to use, the most relevant questions that they arise, if they can be complete if cited enough, etc.
Also, it’s always important that you use and follow a special structure when writing your literature review. Think of it as writing a thesis where you must have an introduction, a body, and finally, the recommendations or conclusions. When sourcing for how to write a good literature review for a medical research paper, you find that your conclusions may sometimes suggest that there aren’t any agreeable findings. And that your discussions should be continued to reach a more amicable solution.
Evaluate Your Literature
Anyone who wants to learn how to write a good literature review for a medical research paper must also implement this process. By carefully reading the writings and sources that you’ve chosen, you will be better placed to make your review weightier. As such, it’s vital that you evaluate your writings and address any concerns that you may have. A few concerns to think about may include:
- Is the author of the source that you intend to use an expert in that particular field? If not, then how is his/her work relevant to your paper, considering that he/she doesn’t have qualifications?
- Is the author providing convincing evidence that supports his/her theory? Is he/she using other studies as well or providing his/her own approach?
- Does the article take one direction, or does it leave room for interpretation?
In addition to these aspects, you must remember to keep the original content as unaltered as possible. Otherwise, you can make a proper evaluation of the content by mastering the topic that you are researching. This will provide you with insight to extract any oversights if there are any.
Be Organized
Anyone who wants to learn how to write a good literature review for a medical research paper must be organized in their writing. Essentially, you should come up with a clear and concise classification of the resources that you chose to dress up your thesis. There’s no other way around it. It’s always vital that you underline your position in your literature review as soon as possible. Your readers should be able to discern what your research paper is about from the get-go. And this is only always possible if you organize your writings properly.
To make your work easier, you can always divide your writings into two distinct parts where one offers sources similar to your statement, and the other shows the opposite. Your readers will understand papers organized in this form more easily. Essentially, they will know your stand on the topic and the approach that you decided to take.
Moreover, it also always helps to look for common or opposed conclusions while using the most influential assumptions. The reader should know if there’s any pattern or trends that lead the research into another direction. Note these down. And even though they might not support your initial assumption, even the most popular theories can be overturned. Provided you can bring solid evidence to support your sayings; then you should have a case. Remember, we thought that the earth was flat once. That’s until someone proved everyone wrong with substantial evidence.
Provide Clues About Your Findings
To know how to write a good literature review for a medical research paper, you should include one or two paragraphs that summarize your findings. Often times, a literature review covers the theoretical aspect of your work only. That it’s the research methods that eventually help you to build up your own notions. This, however, isn’t always the case as a literature review may work as an independent study in some instances. In such cases, writing a conclusion or recommendation is an understatement.
However, when writing more complex research papers, students often disregard summarizing sentences. Yet, it’s always more than welcome in papers such as dissertations. Basically, these concluding sentences help readers to make their own idea about your findings.
Therefore, writing a paragraph about your entire thesis helps to create a smooth transition to your next study chapter. This provides your readers with a sense of familiarity while examining the body of your paper. Providing clues about your findings opens up your reader’s appetite to want to know more.
Proofread Your Paper
The need to revise and proofread your work cannot be overstated. Yet, you still find some students ignoring this simple yet, crucial writing practice. If you want to learn how to write a literature review for a research paper, then you must learn to proofread your writings.
Proofreading your work not only helps you to check for grammatical and spelling errors, but it also helps you to know if there are any important points that you might have missed in your paper. It also helps to ensure that you have the right quotations and identifies plagiarism issues.
How to Organize Your Literature Review
Every good literature must have a specific literature review outline that the writer uses to organize the body of the paper. It’s, therefore, vital that you at least have a rough idea of what strategy you intend to use before you start writing. You can also always combine several literature review writing strategies to make your paper more engaging.
Chronology of Events
Supposing your literature review follows a chronological method, then you can write about materials according to their publishing dates. However, you can only always follow this path if you can identify a clear path of research that builds on your previous research. These trends must also follow a clear chronological development order. You, therefore, cannot use it in any other way lest you end up with jumbled work that’s difficult to understand.
By Publication
Here, you can order your sources by their publication chronology. However, this method is only always impactful if the publication order demonstrates an essential trend. This review organization method is more suited for scientific reviews.
Thematic (Conceptual Categories)
These types of literature are often organized around an issue or topic, rather than with the progression over time. Still, the progression to time can still be a crucial factor in writing a thematic review. For instance, when writing a review on the internet’s effect on American presidential politics. You can write a review that focuses more on the development of online political satire.
The only difference between a thematic approach and a chronological approach is what each writing structure emphasizes the most. However, more authentic thematic reviews always tend to break away from any chronological order. Such reviews usually shift between different time periods based on the point made.
Methodological
Using a methodological approach when learning how to write a literature review for a research paper is excellent for writers new to writing reviews. A methodological approach focuses more on the methods that the researcher utilizes when writing. Basically, a methodological scope may influence the types of documents in your review or how they are disclosed. It depends more on which methodological approach the researcher takes.
Other Sections of the Literature Review
Upon deciding which organizational method to use for your literature review, the rest is quite easy to figure out. Essentially, other sections of your paper should originate from your organizational strategy. However, there are a few instances where you may be forced to add some additional sections to make your study more topic-driven.
It’s, however, vital that you only include necessary organizational sections in your paper to build to your overall literature review structure.
Here’s a list of other sections that you may have to include in your review:
- Current situation: include any information necessary to help the reader understand the focus of the review
- History: this entails the chronological progression of your particular field, the literature. It may also be an idea that helps the reader to understand the literature review
- Selection methods: here, you mention the criteria that you used to select or exclude sources when writing your literature review
- Standards: this entails how you present information in your literature review
- Question for further research: include any questions that your research might have sparked when writing your paper. it may also be best to include any steps you can take to further your research and reach more substantial conclusions
The Importance of Literature Review When Writing a Research Paper
This section should highlight in-depth what a literature review should do and how you can benefit from it.
Creates a Rapport with the Reader
A well-written literature review helps to create a sense of rapport between you and your audience. Remember, the main purpose of writing your literature review is to convince your reader that you did your homework. Consequently, you can receive credit for your due diligence. It’s only always right to award someone who has done his/her fact-finding and completed his/her fact-checking mission.
As a student, you may not necessarily be an expert in any given field. However, if you can convince your reader that you did a thorough review and produced an informative research paper, your audience will know that you really know what you’re writing about. As such, the more books, articles, and other sources related to your review that you can list, the more trustworthy your paper will be.
Helps You to Avoid Incidental Plagiarism
Often, professors will ask you what the significance of repeating a literature review that’s already published was. In more severe cases, it may cost you your grades or worse, expulsion from the university. You could have utilized the money, time, and other resources into writing your review from scratch only to find that another student wrote a paper on the same topic.
Preparing your literature review right from the onset of your research helps you to avoid such inconveniences. You can, therefore, write your paper with the peace of mind that it’s 100% original and unique. And if someone else had already written a paper on a similar topic, then you will have time to tweak yours to make it more authentic.
It Sharpens Your Research Focus
While assembling outside sources into your paper, you may need to condense, synthesize, paraphrase, and evaluate almost every word from the sources into your own words. This winnowing process will help you to write a more relevant research paper in a larger context of what other researchers have already done. Big academic writing services such as Kessays.com have already mastered the art of winnowing research to create high-quality 100% original finished papers.
Kessays.com could help you to craft the best literature review in your class and boost your overall grades. If you don’t know how to write a literature review for a research paper, then a company like UKessays is the academic assistant that you need.
Conclusion
The above excerpt provides all the relevant information for students who want to know how to write a good literature review for a medical research paper. With this information, you should be better placed to write the best, most informative literature review in your class. Or you can always hire experts in literature reviews like UKessays to do the hard work for you.
