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The U.S. Naval Academy Nimitz Library

Naval Architecture & Ocean Engineering

Use this guide to find books, articles, reports and websites related to naval architecture and ocean engineering

Get the Gouge on Literature Reviews

What’s a literature review?

From J. Zobel’s  “Writing for Computer Science”:

“A literature review is a structured analysis of a body of literature, and may cover work from several separate areas of research. This review is not simply a list of these papers. Rather, the papers should be grouped by topic, and critically discussed in a way that allows the reader to understand their contribution to the field, their limitations, and the questions that they leave open.”

It is not:

  • An annotated bibliography
  • A summary of papers
  • A book report

Why do we do literature reviews?

  • To demonstrate an understanding of a topic and the context surrounding it
  • To synthesize (or bring together) different pieces of information on a topic
  • To highlight where your research fits in with what’s been done before

Who can I contact for help with a literature review?

In addition to your professors and advisors:

What’s "the literature"?

When we talk about “the literature” we mean:

Searching Tips

What am I looking for?

You’re looking for literature on:

  • Major relevant works on your topic
  • Studies that respond to or build on those papers
  • Information that gives context to your research
    • A specific type of paper called a review article can be helpful here. Instead of reporting the results of an experiment, they synthesize what is known about a topic (sound familiar?). Often they have “review” in the paper title—see the first search result on page 3 as an example.

You aren’t looking for everything that’s ever been published on your topic.

Where do I search for the literature?

Finding additional relevant papers

Some databases will have a Cited By link under search results. This tells us how many other papers included that paper in its references list. This helps identify research that has received much attention from other scholars.