Literature Review

Systematic review and synthesis of published academic and professional literature to establish the state of knowledge and best practices on a topic, informing research approach and interpretation.

Process

Key Fields

Question it answers	What is scientifically or professionally known about this topic? What are the best practices? What research gaps remain?
Participants & timing	No research participants · 4-8 weeks depending on breadth and depth
AI compatibility	AI searches databases, extracts key findings from papers, organizes by theme, and identifies systematic patterns across literature.
Output	Literature review document, methodology recommendations, research gaps identified, evidence base for design recommendations

Use when

Research plan on an established topic needs a best practices foundation
Theoretical grounding is required for research design
Academic or publishable research requires a literature foundation
Evidence base is needed to support design recommendations

Skip when

Topic is entirely new with minimal published research
Practitioner research for an internal decision where the time investment is not justified

Common Mistakes

Not screening for quality and relevance

Reading every paper that mentions a keyword instead of filtering for relevance and quality. Create screening criteria upfront; expect to reject 70-80% of papers based on title and abstract.

Summarizing instead of synthesizing

Listing what each paper found (summary) vs. identifying patterns, contradictions, and gaps across papers (synthesis). Synthesis is harder but substantially more valuable.

Relying on outdated literature

Heavily weighting papers from 10+ years ago when the field has evolved. Prioritize recent papers (last 3-5 years) while acknowledging seminal foundational work.