Subject Guides: Education: Postgraduate studies: Literature review

Literature Review in a Thesis

The Literature Review: A Few Tips On Conducting It
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Written by Dena Taylor, Health Sciences Writing Centre, University of Toronto

Besides enlarging your knowledge about the topic, writing a literature review lets you gain and demonstrate skills in two areas

information seeking: the ability to scan the literature efficiently, using manual or computerized methods, to identify a set of useful articles and books
critical appraisal: the ability to apply principles of analysis to identify unbiased and valid studies.

A literature review must do these things

be organized around and related directly to the thesis or research question you are developing
synthesize results into a summary of what is and is not known
identify areas of controversy in the literature
formulate questions that need further research

Written by Dena Taylor, Health Sciences Writing Centre, University of Toronto

Finding Information: Information Sources from the Library

EBSCOhost This link opens in a new window EBSCOhost databases and discovery technologies are the most-used, premium online information resources for tens of thousands of institutions worldwide, representing millions of end-users.
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Emerald Insight This link opens in a new window Emerald's Management collection features over 80,000 articles from over 200 titles. The collection continues to disseminate the latest thinking, from authors at 95 of the Financial Times Top 100 business schools and forms an essential part of the research library at most of these institutions. Our specialist collections in fields such as Education, Engineering, Library Studies and Marketing build on this strength; offering focused international research in a range of subject fields.
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JStor This link opens in a new window
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ProQuest This link opens in a new window ProQuest’s collections span six centuries, all disciplines and the diverse content types needed by researchers, providing the world’s largest collection of dissertations and theses; three centuries of newspapers; more than 450,000 academic ebooks; collections of important scholarly journals and other content researchers need such as data; and unique digital vaults of primary source materials . ProQuest’s renowned abstracting and indexing enables researchers to find sources in their area of study.
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SAGE Research Methods This link opens in a new window SAGE Research Methods is a research methods tool created to help researchers, faculty and students with their research projects. SAGE Research Methods links over 175,000 pages of SAGE’s renowned book, journal and reference content with truly advanced search and discovery tools.
ScienceDirect This link opens in a new window ScienceDirect is a leading full-text scientific database offering journal articles and book chapters from nearly 2,500 journals and more than 30,000 books.
Taylor & Francis (Journals) This link opens in a new window Taylor & Francis Group publishes quality peer-reviewed journals under the Routledge and Taylor & Francis imprints.
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University of Pretoria WorldCat Local This link opens in a new window University of Pretoria Libraries is dedicated to offering you access to the widest possible range of resources. You are now able to search our collection and the collections of many other libraries worldwide using WorldCat, the world's largest network of library-based content and services.

Education: Postgraduate studies: Literature review

What is a literature review?

Literature Review in a Thesis

Finding Information: Information Sources from the Library