What is Review Article? How to Write a Review Article?

Literature Review Writing Tips and Suggestions

BanoMarch 29, 2021

1 3 minutes read

A review article or Literature review is a detailed study on previously reported research on a specific topic. It should mention the summary of previous studies on the topic with the advantages and disadvantages. Different from the original research article, Review article will not present novel experiments and results. Review Article is all about the previous literature discussion.

The main objective of the review article is to present critical discussion of the data from the already existing literature. Literature review can analyze the potential areas of the research to investigate in future. Most of the time it can make conclusions on the basis of the previous research data.

Main components of Review Article or Literature Review

Table of Contents

Provides detailed study on a specific Topic
Elaborates the Knowledge on the Current topic
It can identifies the research gaps for the future studies
It presents the Overall methods used in previous literature and also the techniques of the research.

Reasons of Writing a Review article

If you are working on a specific topic and you have read alot of literature about that, then writing a review article on that topic will give a best chance to share it with new researchers that what you have already learned.

Literature review articles are immensely fruitful for new researchers, providing them the new information on the reported research. It also gives a overall summary of the existing literature data.

The procedure of writing a review article on a selected topic can also be a useful way to speed up your knowledge on a topic that you are not familiar with before.

You may also be interested in reading how to write a response to reviewers comments ?

How to start writing a review article?

Following are the eight key points while writing a review :

#1- Select the Topic

First and foremost thing is deciding on a topic you are going to write on. Start writing an overview of the topic that why it is necessary to write on that specific topic. What is its importance in the research or literature? Try to gather enough literature to give an introduction on the topic and make it strong enough to reach out to the bigger audience and their interest. This will increase its impact and scope.

#2- Select a Journal

Make it clear that you have read the journals terms and conditions where you are going to submit your review article. Every journal has their own terms and conditions of accepting articles and review papers. Some journals only accept the full research papers and some do accept review articles. So it is very important to go through different journals before writing or submitting your article.

#3- Define your Articles Scope Area

Define the scope of the topic of your review article and all the research queries you are going to answer within the review article. Also make it clear that this literature review has potential to contribute something new into the research area.

#4- Finding Sources

You need to collect the data to evaluate the scope and discussion on the review topic that you have selected. you can find out previous literature from web of science, science direct, nature, springer or other research article publishers.

#5- Write a Title of the Topic, Abstract and Keywords

Spend some quality time on deciding an attractive Title for the review article, Then comes the abstract which is main part of the whole article where you have to summarize your article in few lines. Give enough time in writing an effective abstract to capture the attention of the readers.

Then use those keywords that are very trending and readers do search on google and other research article publishers websites.

#6- Discussion (Critical Discussion)

It is best when you critically discuss about the previous reports. You can highlight the important points and go deep into the topic to find their pros and cons.