What
What are guiding questions for considering the length of literature reviews?
- have I finished my thought?
- have I explained the relevant domains of knowledge for my work widely and deeply?
- have I introduced sharp and consistent arguments for my work?
- have I introduced tensions and conflicts in the field around certain ideas?
How long should the literature review be?
No one can specify the length of a literature review because no two literature reviews are alike. Also depending on the context of the review, the length can vary.
What if there is no literature in my specific area of inquiry? I looked, I couldn't find anything.
That, if it is really true, would be excellent for you to establish a strong need for the work that you might be interested in doing. However, remember that research is supposed to contribute some new knowledge, so chances the exact thing you want to do in the exact way in which you want to do might not exist, and that is a good thing. More than likely, there are related literature to the domains of knowledge that you are trying to inquire.
What questions can guide you to determine if you are done?
- when you have answered the questions posed above satisfactorily
- when your advisor says so (if you are a student)
- when you get sick of it and can't look at it anymore and nothing can incentivize you to return to it
When will I know that I am done with my literature review?
This is a tricky question because no one ever really knows. And often literature reviews feel incomplete, as if they are always a live, working document. That is normal.
What should I be mindful of regarding citation politics?
If you study citations of your sources carefully, you will find that there is a lot of incestuous citing where a few people continuously cite each other and create a disciplinary grand narrative. Be mindful about how you want to situate your work in relation to such citational politics. I often cite people who do good work and forego centering people who are already centered by others. Your mileage might vary, but be mindful of your role in privileging other scholars' work and your ethics of care for fellow scholars.
What are some important points to consider regarding the comprehensiveness of your literature review?
- Know the historically critical works that shape your field(s)
- Know what the current conversation is about domains of knowledge related to your area of inquiry. Are they too homogenous? Do they need to be disrupted? Are there arguments between scholars? Are there multiple camps of thoughts? How do you situate your work within such discourses?
- Are you beginning to see similar citations in the sources that you are reading and using? Do you consider those citations legitimate or would you like to disrupt those citations to make space for other authors that could also contribute to your study?
How do I know that I have done a comprehensive review?
A comprehensive literature review is one that is a balanced review. You cannot possibly know everything there is to know about relevant domains of knowledge for your work. And even if you do, new work is being done all the time that to which you may or may not have access.
What sources should I cite? What if I miss key sources?
You should be very conscious about what sources you cite because whoever you are citing, you are centering that person's knowledge making in your work. Think through this carefully. Who gets cited in your field(s)? Who gets erased in your field(s)? Do you want to contribute to further erasure of scholars who do good work but aren't centered?
What is an argument and how do I establish it?
An argument in a literature review is a position that you are forwarding from reading the literature at a synthesis level. You would need to organize your sources in some way to know what position can be forwarded from the sources. Often sections and subsections in a literature review could be divided based on the argument. This helps with the flow of your writing instead of the readers wondering why they are made to read your review.
How do I address the comment "You have to unpack this"?
Unpacking means offering an explanation of a direct quote or concept that you are using in your writing. When you use a direct quote in your writing, you are telling your readers that this is such a powerful quote that paraphrasing would have done it injustice. Imagine paraphrasing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's "I have a Dream" speech saying that, "Dr. Martin Luther King Jr wanted Black and white people to get along." Kinda loses its power, doesn't it? So if you are using a quote or a concept, you are telling your reader that this is important to the argument that you are trying to forward. So you need to at least offer an explanation as to how this quote/concept forwards your argument. Otherwise you are just stating your direct quote and doing a mic drop. :)
What if I am told that I am "data dumping"? What do I do?
Data dumping is the outcome of writing that has no argument in it. This is where you would cite a bunch of sources and tell the reader what was present/evident in these sources without a connection or an argument. Your reader would not know what holds the sources together. Often data dumping looks like a series of sources being cited without any explanation or reflection or argument in between the sources. It feels like an abrupt jump from one source to another without any explanation in between as to why these sources are relevant. You have to have some narrative explanation of your sources for flow, clarity of thought, and logical progression.