A literature review synthesizes a collection of works.  It should answer:

1. What research has been done on the topic?
2. What are common theories and methodologies?
3. Are there challenges, controversies, or contradictions?
4. Are there gaps in the research that need to be addressed?

A common way to organize articles for a literature review is to organize them conceptually. Studies relating to the same general idea will appear together in the same section.  Aim to have 3-4 sections total.

• Subtopics/Themes:
  Your task is to group the research articles based on their shared overarching topic. While each article may tackle the topic from a slightly different angle, look for similarities in their discussion of specific subtopics. By grouping sources that cover the same subtopics together, you'll be able to show how the articles overlap and complement one another to create a richer view of the existing research.
• Varying opinions/Claims:
  Your sources may present varied conclusions on the topic, which is exciting! In addition to organizing your review by theme, consider structuring it by posing a question (e.g., Does friendship or family have a greater impact on loneliness? Are positive or negative exchanges more influential?) Each section can then explore the different answers found in the literature. Finally, your concluding paragraph should offer insights into why these discrepancies exist or propose ways to reconcile conflicting results. For instance, you might discuss differences in methodologies or variations in how the phenomenon was measured, thereby providing a deeper understanding of the findings.

As you read sources, themes will emerge that will help you organize the review. You can use a simple Synthesis Matrix to track your notes as you read. From this work, a concept map emerges that provides an overview of the literature and how it connects.

Synthesizing Sources

A literature review doesn't merely summarize the current research on a topic: part of your responsibility is to take this information and make something new out of it that can be used by future researchers. This process of combining other sources of information and making an original argument out of them is called synthesis, which literally means "the combination of ideas to form a theory or system." You will synthesize the literature you've selected for review to form an argument about where more research needs to be done on your topic.

One of the most important elements of synthesis in a literature review is analysis: rather than simply repeating the results of each source you've found, you are going to analyze it for similarities to your other resources, limitations and strengths of the methodology, and an examination of the conclusions drawn by the author(s) compared to the rest of the research on the topic. This is why proper organization of the literature is so important; it will allow you to group your sources by theme so that they can be more easily compared and contrasted.

In addition to the recommendations elsewhere on this page, a common method for preparing to organize your literature is by using a synthesis matrix. This is a tool to help pick out the most important aspects of each source and see where the most common themes lie.  

With the major information organized like this, it is easy to see which resources used similar methods of research, which had similar or differing results, and when chronologically the research was conducted. Grouping the literature by any of these similarities could be a useful way to organize your review.

Additional Resources

The information on this guide was adapted from the following: