"...a literature review is a review of papers from a subject area, sometimes from a particular subject area within a certain time period...[it may be a] simple summary of sources but usually has an organizational pattern and combines summary AND synthesis."
Literature reviews are both summarization and analysis of existing research or scholarly articles on a given topic. You can start your literature review on your own, iteratively searching, and developing a focused research question and search strategy. Some researchers use AI search tools to start this process, but it's best to find seed papers or to scope out a topic - not to rely on AI alone. A literature review is a piece of discursive prose, not a list describing or summarizing one piece of literature after another. Organize the review into sections that present themes or identify trends, including relevant theory. Don't list all material published but synthesize and evaluate it according to the guiding concept of your research question.
Consulting a librarian is also advised to ensure broad scoping of sources. A "lit review" examines a range of relevant materials found in libraries, such as scholarly books, journal articles, and other sources to identify key themes, methodologies, findings, and gaps in knowledge. A lit review will evaluate the quality and relevance of these sources, synthesizing them to provide a clear understanding of the topic's context, trends, and debates. Literature reviews are often used in academic research to establish a foundation for a study, justify research questions, or highlight areas needing further investigation. They are common in theses, dissertations, and research papers across disciplines, with varying levels of thoroughness.
Why do a lit review?
Find a place for your work within its discipline/area/subfield;
Develop an understanding of how knowledge in your discipline/field/area has changed over time;
Develop mastery of what's known in your area, and part of larger discipline;
Compare different conceptual or sub-disciplinary approaches for your topic;
Compare and contrast different theoretical schools or leading researchers;
Identify methodologies to use in your research.
Presentations
Literature reviews in medicine - Carrie Price
According to Carrie Price, "...[a few] publications focus on the art and conduct of general literature reviews. Perhaps most notable is a publication that appeared in 1988. Oxman and Guyatt in "Guidelines for Reading Literature Reviews" created a guide for readers of literature reviews who were grappling with increasing, and increasingly overwhelming, amounts of published medical literature. In their parting sentiments, Oxman and Guyatt (1988) state that "just as flawed methods in a study of diagnosis or therapy may invalidate the results, an unscientific literature review may come to incorrect conclusions" (p. 697). The 1988 publication facilitated future work, such as a literature review checklist (Oxman, 1994), an article series (Oxman et al., 1993) on reading the medical literature, and the User's Guide to the Medical Literature, now in its third edition (Guyatt et al., 2001). In 1997, Greenhalgh included a chapter on "papers that summarize other papers" in her extensive How to Read a Paper: The Basics of Evidence-Based Medicine, focusing primarily on systematic reviews of the literature.
Price C. Syntheses Synthesized: A Look Back at Grant and Booth's Review Typology. Evidence Based Library and Information Practice. 2022;17(2):132-8.
Prior to Grant and Booth (2009), no other authors had so clearly categorized and described 14 common literature review types. Grant and Booth, both fully aware of evolving trends in evidence-based medicine, describe the use of the systematic literature review to synthesize research evidence in health care: "Gathering research, getting rid of rubbish and summarizing the best of what remains captures the essence of the science of systematic review" (p. 92).
The application of explicit methods to literature reviews is, Booth anticipated as early as 2001, a practice that should be adopted in the library and information science sector for the purpose of "establishing a solid evidence base" within a field that had little (Grant & Booth, 2009, p. 92). "Given the importance evidence-based practice places upon the retrieval of appropriate information," ambiguous and inconsistent terminology only perpetuates further uncertainty (Grant & Booth, 2009, p. 93).
In a 2017 letter in the Health Information and Libraries Journal, Grant reflects on one of the typology's catalysts. As a new review editor at the journal in 2007, Grant realized that "there were no consistent guidelines on the features a review should incorporate perpetuating a sense of confusion about what . . . was an indistinct and misapplied term" (p. 1). Grant goes on to note that it was the shortage of consistent guidelines that led her to coauthor with Booth.
Expanding on Ankem's (2008) work, which evaluated systematic review and meta-analysis methods in LIS journals, Grant and Booth provided an "explicit basis . . . to gain a clear understanding of what [method] is being requested and the resources . . . required to meet the specification" for various types of literature reviews (Grant & Booth, 2009, p. 104).
The literature search to support a "lit review"
The literature search is increasingly important in medicine, especially in practicing evidence-based medicine. To identify relevant papers supporting a literature review, a range of expert searching can be employed. Most physicians today have explored search engines such as Google and Google Scholar, and search iteratively to find answers to their clinical questions, but these resources have always had their limitations.
In 2025, some physicians are finding their way to AI-powered search tools such as Open Evidence and PubMed.ai to find answers, especially in the absence of search skills and a librarian. Despite the power of Using AI for medical answers, literature searching is the sine qua non of EBM and differs in significant ways from AI searching. One is relevance, which is important as the numbers of papers increases in the AI age. And two is the importance of specificity; consider an internal medicine physician searching for "polycythemia vera", a blood disorder, via ChatGPT. Due to the way the AI tool is built, popular pages and patterns on any given subject are presented first; many points are from Wikipedia; others from commercial information sites; and others from state agencies and medical associations. Although relevant for some questions, they are probably not what a clinician or medical researcher needs to begin their work. A literature search in PubMed is recommended.
GenAI and literature reviews
According to Clark et al (2025): "... current evidence does not support GenAI use in evidence synthesis without human involvement or oversight. However, for most tasks other than searching, GenAI may have a role in assisting humans with evidence synthesis." — Clark et al (2025). Still, researchers are invited to test tools and discuss their findings with their colleagues, and librarian. Of all the review types, perhaps the literature review is the most-suited to using AI-powered search tools because there is not the same expectation for searches to be reproducible.
Note: Please use your critical reading skills while reading entries. No warranties, implied or actual, are granted for any health or medical search or AI information obtained while using these pages. Check with your librarian for more contextual, accurate information.
