State-of-the-art on writing a literature review: An overview of types and components

Abstract

In many academic fields, literature review has become an established research method of technical writing. In this process, it serves as a method for identifying relevant findings in a research area by synthesizing existing data, identifying knowledge gaps, and critically evaluating results. We systematically reviewed the literature on writing literature reviews and found that a number of papers on that topic has been published, but they do not include suggestions and guidelines for all typical components of a literature review. Therefore, this paper deals with the research question, what are the typical components of a literature review and what should they contain to achieve a high-quality literature review. This paper first explains the goals of literature reviews and then introduces the most common types of literature reviews. Afterwards, the main components are described, and methodological approaches of different authors are brought in. In addition, the goal-oriented process of individual components is presented. Thereby, the paper does not focus on a specific research area but takes an interdisciplinary approach to the given topic.