Guides: Political Science: Literature Reviews

What's a Literature Review?

Finding relevant materials for a literature review can often be a time-consuming, difficult process. A literature review examines primary and secondary scholarly literature of a topic, including books, journal articles, working papers, and other scholarly materials. A literature review can be as brief as a one-page summary or as comprehensive as a full-length scholarly article such as those found in the Annual Reviews. Literature reviews provide scholarly, informative overviews of published literature that help researchers remain up-to-date in their disciplinary areas and also do the following:

Acquire a better understanding of the current state of knowledge in a particular discipline or field of study, providing context for a research project.
Identify key concepts, theories, methodologies, and other findings related to their research topic, which helps researchers in build theoretical frameworks based on established theories and concepts.
Identify gaps in a disciplinary area where there is a lack of research or conflicting findings, and highlight major questions that should be addressed in further literature.

Types of Literature Reviews

There are different types of literature reviews, and it's important to understand their differences. The most common types you will see in the literature are listed below.

Narrative literature reviews provide a general, qualitative summary of the literature. Narrative reviews focus on only a few studies that describe a topic of interest and are not systematic.
Systematic reviews follow a structured, rigorous methodology to systematically gather, analyze, and synthesize all relevant studies on a specific literature topic. They use specific criteria to decide what literature to include. Systematic reviews are primarily used in the medical and psychological literature.
Meta-analyses combine empirical statistical analysis research and data from multiple studies. The terms meta-analysis and systematic review are often used interchangeably.
Scoping reviews map the literature broadly to identify key themes and gaps. Unlike systematic reviews, which have a narrow focus, scoping reviews are broader in scope and explore the wide range of the available literature in a given field.

Resources for Locating Literature Reviews

Published literature reviews of all types are found in various research databases. When searching for literature reviews in academic databases, it’s important to use the right keywords and search strategies to find high-quality reviews. When searching for literature reviews in academic databases, it’s important to use the right keywords and search strategies to find high-quality reviews. Most authors clearly specify the type of literature review in the article title. This makes it relatively easy to locate literature reviews in academic databases. Here’s how to refine your search:

"literature review" OR "review of the literature" AND "your research topic/question/key terms"
"systematic review" AND "your research topic/question/key terms"
"meta analysis" OR "meta-analysis" AND "your research topic/question/key terms"
"scoping review" AND "your research topic/question/key terms"

Annual Reviews
The Annual Reviews series of publications provides literature review articles that analyze the most significant scholarly research published within the preceding year. These article-length reviews are authored by leading scholars and cover over 40 different subject disciplines in the social, behavioral, and hard sciences.
Dissertations & Theses Global
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global is a comprehensive collection of academic theses and dissertations students submit as part of their university studies. Each dissertation or thesis provides a literature review section, offering a critical assessment of the sources used to write the work.
International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS)
The International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS) is compiled by the British Library of Political and Economic Science at the London School of Economics. It provides access to scholarly literature in the social sciences, covering various disciplines, including sociology, political science, anthropology, economics, geography, and more. It includes over 3 million bibliographic references to journal articles, books, book reviews, and selected book chapters back to 1951.
JSTOR
Started as a grant-funded project at the University of Michigan, JSTOR is now a premier scholarly digital research database primarily for the humanities and social sciences. In addition to journal articles, users can access ebooks, book chapters, images, and primary source documents. JSTOR contains the full text of more than 2,300 journals from 1,000 publishers, with publication dates ranging from 1665 to 2015 (for specific titles). Journals are available in more than 60 disciplines in the humanities, social sciences, sciences, and mathematics.

Note: The majority of journals in JSTOR have an embargo period or "Moving Wall" delay of 3 to 5 years. This means there is a gap in the availability of current issues of most JSTOR journals.
Oxford Bibliographies: Political Science
Provides authoritative subject articles of current scholarship, containing original commentary and annotations written and reviewed by academic experts. Oxford Bibliographies in Political Science is a reliable, up-to-date, and authoritative guide to the best literature in the political science field. Areas of coverage include African politics, Asian politics, comparative politics, European politics, international relations, Latin American politics, methodologies, Middle Eastern politics, political psychology, political theory, and US politics.
Project Muse
Project Muse provides online access to many scholarly journals, books, and other academic resources in the humanities, social sciences, and arts. It is also a leading provider of digital humanities content. Project MUSE offers access to a wide range of high-quality, peer-reviewed journals from renowned university presses, scholarly societies, and academic publishers. It also covers various disciplines, including literature, history, philosophy, political science, sociology, cultural studies, etc. Some institutions subscribe to the Project Muse Premium Collection, which contains over 700 scholarly journals from over 100 publishers on various subjects.
Science Direct
Science Direct provides a large collection of Social Sciences and Humanities journals and books, highlighting historical context, current developments, theories, applications, trends, and more.
Social Science Citation Index™ (Web of Science)
Social Sciences Citation Index™ provides access to a wide range of scholarly literature in the social sciences, including sociology, psychology, political science, anthropology, economics, and education, among others. Contains over 3,400 journals across 58 social sciences disciplines, as well as selected items from 3,500 of the world’s leading scientific and technical journals. More than 9.37 million records and 122 million cited references date back from 1900 to the present.

Resources for Writing Literature Reviews

Conducting Research Literature Reviews by Arlene G. Fink
Providing readers with an accessible, in-depth look at how to synthesize research literature, Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper is perfect for students, researchers, marketers, planners, and policymakers who design and manage public and private agencies, conduct research studies, and prepare strategic plans and grant proposals.
The Literature Review by Lawrence A. Machi; Brenda T. McEvoy
The essential guide--updated, expanded, and easier to use than ever. Creating a successful literature review can be a daunting task, which is why so many researchers have relied on previous editions of this book to make the process more manageable. Using the six-step model, you'll work seamlessly to narrow your research topic, focus your literature search, negotiate the myriad of books, periodicals, and reports about your topic--and, of course, write the review.
The Literature Review: A Step-by-Step Guide by Diana Ridley
This second edition of Diana Ridley's bestselling book provides a step-by-step guide to conducting a literature search and literature review, using cases and examples throughout to demonstrate best practice. Ridley outlines practical strategies for conducting a systematic search of the available literature, reading and note taking and writing up your literature review as part of an undergraduate research project, Masters dissertation or PhD thesis.
Writing Literature Reviews by Jose L. Galvan; Melisa C. Galvan
This useful guide educates students in preparing literature reviews for term projects, theses, and dissertations. The authors provide numerous examples from published reviews that illustrate the guidelines discussed throughout the book.
Writing the Literature Review by Sara Efrat Efron; Ruth Ravid
This accessible text provides a roadmap for producing a high-quality literature review--an integral part of a successful thesis, dissertation, term paper, or grant proposal. Each step of searching for, evaluating, analyzing, and synthesizing prior studies is clearly explained and accompanied by user-friendly suggestions, organizational tips, vignettes, and examples of student work.
Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review by Andrew Booth; Anthea Sutton; Mark Clowes; Marrissa Martyn-St James
Whether you are new to literature reviews or working with new types of data, this book takes the guesswork out of writing your literature review. From deciding how much literature to include to managing your data, assessing your sources, and writing results, it outlines a step-by-step process that works with any data.