How to Format a Literature Review | APA | MLA

What Is a Lit Review?

A literature review is not a simple summary of what has been written around a specific topic. It is a synthesis of that information to review the different theories and ideas that have been discussed and written about. It may discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the ideas or even trace their historical development over time. Knowing how to format a literature review correctly will ensure that your paper will be laid out correctly when you submit it.

Academic writing at this level is usually done to a very specific academic style such as literature review APA format or MLA. Your literature review must follow this style precisely especially when it comes to your citations and references which are a vital part of your literature review. Good academic writing and formatting is vital if your work is to be accepted.

Getting your literary review format spot on is very important but often students have limited experience in using the style that is required of them. It is therefore very important that you get all of the help that you can find to ensure that you apply the different types of formatting required correctly within your paper.

What to Do Before Starting to Write Your Literature Review

Before you start to worry about how to format a literature review or search for nursing literature review topics (if this is a related theme of your lit review) you need to ensure that you have your work on track. The following should always be followed:

1. Clarify your requirements: most of the time you will be provided with very clear requirements for your assignments and paper. However, with a literature review it may be left quite open as to what topic is to be written about. Ensure that you clarify exactly what your tutor is looking for before you get to work so that you don’t waste any time.
2. Look at models to understand how others have approached the task: read past literature reviews of information around your topic area to understand how others have approached the task. This will help to guide your writing as well as often pointing you in the direction of a number of relevant sources for your own writing.
3. Narrow down your topic: often a student will select a topic area that is simply too broad such as “global warming”. This will fail to focus your research and there will be many thousands of sources of information to look at. You need to provide your research with more focus to narrow down your topic area. For instance “The impact on global warming on the decline of coral reefs around northern Australia.”
4. Select relevant sources: look at how current your sources are. Even something a few years old may be considered out of date in some fields such as medicine, while you may need to look at the historical development of an idea within sociology. Ensure that sources are going to be relevant to the research that you are conducting.

How to Format a Literature Review Correctly

Whether writing in APA, MLA or any other format you must ensure that your formatting is done perfectly. There are some very specific differences between the different types of formatting and you must get it right. The following sections will run through some of those differences:

Writing a Literature Review APA Style

APA or the American Psychological Association style of writing is most commonly used within the social sciences such as sociology and psychology. Your citation within your text when you refer to the work of an author will be in the format (Smith, A) using the surname and first initial. If you use the name of the author within the sentence then you will also provide the date of the publication (“Smith (2011) says…”)

All of the sources that you cite within your literature review must then be listed within your “references” page. Each reference must be carefully organized and structured according to the rules of APA:

A reference to a book within APA should look like:

Last, F. M. (Year Published) Book. City, State: Publisher.

A reference to a journal in APA will look like: 

Last, F. M., & Last, F. M. (Year Published). Article title. Journal Name, Volume(Issue), pp. Pages.

Remember when learning how to do a literature review APA that the origin of your source will affect the layout of the reference within your references section.

How to Do an MLA Format Literature Review

MLA is the style of the Modern Languages Association and is often used within the humanities such as art, or English language. Within your literature review you will provide the citation using the last name and first name (Smith, Albert). Where you use the name within the text you will follow it with the page number (“According to Albert Smith (27)…”)

Each citation that you make within your literature review must be recorded within the “Works cited” page in the correct format:

A reference to a book in MLA format will look like:

Last, First M. Book. City: Publisher, Year Published. Print.

A reference to a journal article using MLA:

Last, First M., and First M. Last. "Article Title." Journal Title Series Volume. Issue (Year Published): Page(s). Print.

When writing your MLA literature review and doing your works cited page always take care with getting the structure of your reference correct depending on where you found the source.

Template for You Literature Review

As with other papers for student writing you will need to write your literature review to a specific structure. While this can vary somewhat between subject areas it will typically follow the outline shown here:

1. Introduction: this is your opportunity to clearly state the topic area that you are investigating and to detail the scope of the review that you are undertaking. In addition to stating what you will be reviewing it may also be necessary to clearly state any exclusions should they not be immediately obvious.
2. Main body: this can be organized in many different ways depending on the type of review you have undertaken and the subject area. The most common structures and thematic and chronological. A thematic literature review will review different themes within each section of the main body while chronological review will follow the historical timeline. Each, however, should not simply summarize the information but evaluate it and compare it.
3. Conclusion: this section will provide a brief summary of the main findings as well as highlighting any differences in opinion, weaknesses and holes within the current literature. If it is a part of a larger paper it is also the point at which you will justify the research that you have proposed.

If you are not sure how to format a literature review or how to do you research just turn to the professional team for effective and reliable help and advice.

25 Popular Biology Research Topics | Lit Review

How to Get Started on Your Biology Research Paper

Writing in biology like many other science subjects is relatively easy due to there being so many popular biology research topics that you can write on. There is also a huge amount of information and literature that you can find on a wide variety of biology paper topics with many online journals and sites that you can access for information. Selecting interesting biology topics for project paper writing is always going to be the first stage and this needs to be done with care if you are to finish your paper successfully.

Good biology literature review topics are those that not only grab your own interest, they must be seen as important by others and be in an area that there is already research that you can read and review. After all if you select an area that is so obscure that there are no papers written on the topic then you will find it very hard to write a review. Also if you select a topic that is simply too broad such as “genetic inheritance” you will not have any real focus for your writing and you will need to narrow your focus much more before you can do anything meaningful.

The following sections will show you everything you will need to know about selecting good topics to write a biology literature review on. We will also provide you with a long list of literature review topics and advice on writing your paper successfully.

What Areas Can You Find Your Researchable Topics in Biology In?

Biology is a wide area and as such offers many interesting biology topics for presentation and research writing. The following are just a few of the areas in biology that you could base your biology literature review within:

1. Neurobiology: the study of the brain and the nervous system is a fascinating area and one that we still know surprisingly little about. There is so much within this area that we can learn about instincts and reflexes through to genetic issues that affect our behavior.
2. Developmental Biology: understanding how we grow from a single zygote through a ball of cells to a grown creature is something that fascinates many. Understanding the processes and mechanisms involved as well as what can go wrong is an area that will keep you fascinated.
3. Cancer Metastasis: if we can understand what makes cancer turn metastatic then we can help to prevent its spread through the human body. Most deaths are caused by cancers that spread rapidly and reoccur due to metastasis.
4. Resistance to antibiotics: this is a very topical area with many diseases becoming highly resistant to the most commonly used forms of treatment. Understanding how to overcome this problem is key to our survival as it is certain that pathogens will continue to evolve and become immune to what we use to destroy them.
5. Agriculture: our population is growing at an alarming rate and feeding the people of the world effectively without damage to the environment is becoming ever harder. The challenges in this field are huge yet they must be overcome in the near future if severe food shortages are to be averted.
6. Aging: senescence is something that for us is inevitable, or is it? Understanding how the body ages and how it degenerates can help us to unlock the secrets to preventing our bodies from finally aging.

25 Popular Biology Research Topics for You

Writing a biology literature review first requires you to select good topics around which to do your research. Selecting scientific literature review topics can be hard, but our list of 25 biology paper topics can provide you with inspiration for the topic you will follow:

1. Can raw materials be generated through microbial factories
2. What is optimum historical diet for humans?
3. Why are people opposed to genetically modified crops?
4. Is behavioral epigenetics real?
5. Is there more chance of passing on genetic abnormalities as a man ages?
6. Is personalized medicine that has been engineered for our DNA the way forward?
7. Is there a ceiling to how old we can be?
8. What can be achieved through stem cell treatment?
9. Can stem cells rejoin severed nerves?
10. How do emotions alter the body chemistry?
11. What can be learned from studying the history of epidemics?
12. How to impart better fungal resistance to crops
13. Development of a high yield rice crop
14. How to use probiotics to prevent infections
15. Programming cell death in drug resistant organisms
16. Development of plastic digesting microbes
17. Plants and microbes for absorbing toxic elements from pollution
18. Environmental effects that cause genetic defects
19. Investigation of the HTT gene causing Huntington’s
20. Infertility and age
21. Mapping of brain for addicted subjects
22. Brain functions involved in forming memories
23. Should we bring back the mammoth?
24. Building new organs in the lab
25. 3D printing of biological material

How to Write an Impressive Biology Literature Review

The following are the steps that you will need to work through to ensure that you write a good biology literature review:

1. Select interesting biology topics for project paper: don’t select a topic that is too broad or too focused. You need something that has sufficient research around which you can write a good review while still being focused on a specific idea or question.
2. Select relevant sources: do not simply use Google to see what is out there in your topic area. There are many scholarly search engines that you can use and you will also be able to access journals and other sources from your library.
3. Keep good notes of your research: you will need to cite your sources correctly within your literature review and list them within your bibliography so ensure that you collect the information required.
4. Ensure that you evaluate the work as you read it and identify key theories and themes within the writing. Look for where the authors agree or disagree. Also look for any gaps or weaknesses in what has been written.
5. Create an outline for your literature review: write clear notes within each section as to what should be included to guide your writing. The main body will usually be arranged to show what different authors have written against different theories or to follow the historical progression of ideas within your topic area.
6. Write with care ensuring that you follow any instructions provided about how to format a literature review correctly for your paper. Writing at this level will need to be written to a precise academic style and the rules for this must be followed precisely especially for your citations and references.
7. Carefully edit and proofread your paper: your writing must be clear, concise and unambiguous as well as being free from any errors if your work is to be accepted.

If you are struggling with writing your literature review or with choosing your topic areas then working with professional academic help can be the answer!

Choosing a Nursing Literature Review Topics - Full Guide

What Is a Literature Review in Academic Writing?

A literature review is not simply a summary of what is known against particular nursing literature review topics. It is a critical evaluation of what is published to identify what is already known, who the key authors are and what are the current theories. It also looks at what questions researchers are asking and what methodologies are being used.

A nursing dissertation topics literature review that seeks to look at ideas presented around a very specific topic that you will research is usually known as a critical literature review. This will seek to look at how others have approached your topic and if your own thesis will agree with or differ from what they are suggesting.

Another form of literature review is a systematic literature review. This seeks to answer a question or thesis not by conducting more original research but by looking at multiple sources of information that will meet very specific criteria. The aim being to minimize any possible bias and to provide information that is more reliable than any one previous study.

How Should You Choose Nursing Literature Review Topics?

Whether you want to select popular biology research topics or require nursing literature review ideas the following are the steps that you should follow to find the right ideas for you:

• Look at past class work and assigned reading or textbooks to see if there are any issues or topics that particularly interest you.
• Brainstorm ideas alone or with other students to develop ideas. Build off of what others suggest to find many more ideas than you would alone.
• Are their particular conditions that you have an interest in that you might like to find out more about?
• Look at why you entered the field of nursing, is there a specific health related issue that drew you into your studies?
• Is there anything in the current news which grabs your interest that may be worth more in depth investigation?
• Read through the contents list of relevant journals and other publications to identify specific areas that get your attention.

Always try to select literature review topics in healthcare that you have a personal interest if possible. This will help you to stay focused on your review of literature and to find information that will actually benefit your development in topics that you may wish to work within in the future. Selecting nursing lit review topics that are not of interest to you will simply give you work to do that you will find hard to complete.

How to Narrow Down Your Literature Review Topic Ideas Nursing

Good topics for a literature review should be something that you can find information on but not so much information that you will find it hard to focus on a specific issue. An issue that is too broad such as “how to improve triage in the emergency room” will turn up masses of works, but you will be hard pressed to keep your research focused in a specific direction. While methods for diagnosing ringworm in 2 year old girls from disadvantaged backgrounds may be just too focused to find many relevant pieces of work.

The following table can help you to understand this:

Examples of narrowing topics that are too broad to focus your review:

30 Potential Nursing Research Topic Ideas

Finding a good medical literature review topic is not always a simple task. Looking at our list of literature review topics may trigger an idea that will be perfect for you:

1. Safe ways of doing minor surgery in nursing homes
2. Effects of stress and fatigue in nursing
3. Minimizing risks of exposure to noxious substances in ER
4. Bullying on the ward: causes and solutions
5. Promoting cultural awareness on the ward
6. Future of nursing qualifications and regulations
7. How to overcome shortages in nurses
8. Is health diagnosis and treatment over skype safe?
9. Should nurses be involved with complementary therapies?
10. ER emergency disaster planning improvements
11. How should nurses be trained to assess risks?
12. Should there be armed guards in all wards?
13. How is the challenge to nurses going to change as the population ages
14. Everyday changes that can be made to tackle obesity
15. Promoting a health environment on the ward
16. How is technology affecting nursing today?
17. Steps for avoiding transmission of infectious diseases in ER
18. How does the community nurses role need to evolve?
19. Pain assessment in unresponsive patients
20. Improving quality of life for cancer sufferers
21. Dealing with addicted teens on the ward
22. Collaboration between different hospital departments to enhance patient care
23. Reducing stress for nurses
24. Reducing patient violence on the ward
25. The effect of social media on pain relief
26. Reducing risks for caregivers
27. Reducing costs on the ward
28. Identifying and reporting domestic violence
29. Improving patient communication on the ward
30. Alternative systems of pain relief through music

What Is the Format of Your Literature Review?

Once you have selected your topic ideas you will still need to do your research and write up your literature review. It is important to understand how a typical literature review will be formatted and laid out.

The following structure is how your review will usually be formatted:

• Introduction: a brief overview of the topic that you are researching that will provide a basic understanding of the background to your review. 
• Methods: describe how you have conducted your literature review and the specific criteria that you have used when selecting your sources. 
• Synthesis of the literature: this is the main body of your review and where you will summarize and discuss what you have found. Usually organized by specific ideas and theories. 
• Conclusions: this should summarize what you have discovered and propose questions for your future research in this area. 

Steps for Writing Your Literature Review

The following are the steps that you will go through when writing your review of literature in nursing:

• Select the topic area that you will research 
• Ensure that you fully understand the specific expectations for your review 
• Seek out relevant articles and literature for your research 
• Read, take notes, and evaluate the work that you have found 
• Create a synthesis of the literature for your writing 
• Discuss and summarize the literature within your review 
• Highlight any gaps, weaknesses, or areas of disagreement in the research

Start your work off on the right foot by getting professional and reliable support with choosing the right nursing literature review topics for you.

5 Effective Ways to Get More out of Scientific Literature Review

Literature review is evaluated in order to determine whether or not a research is relevant or unnecessary. To make a strong case on why your topic should be explored, you must be able to write a quality scientific literature review. Your literature review will basically narrow down the recent knowledge and data on your topic and this will enable both you and your audience to see its strengths and weaknesses. Here are top 5 tips on how to write a scientific literature review:

1. After you have decided on a topic, one of the first and important things to do is to research extensively. Do not limit yourself with online resources but also explore offline data like journals, books, magazines, etc.
2. Consider the publication dates of your research data given that your scientific literature review must be current. Choose only significant resources and avoid those that are outdated and irrelevant.
3. Another crucial tip on how to write a scientific literature review is to define the goal of your lit review. Focus on making an impact not only to your audience but to your chosen field of expertise. Immediately start writing notes and summarizing the content of the most pertinent knowledge. Your literature review should be critical and logical. Limit bias ideas but instead present the ideas as you see it and that means adding the gaps and omissions in the research.
4. Create a checklist when writing and proofreading your scientific literature review. Make sure that you have properly defined the purpose of your literature review, use scientific literature review format, included methodology, research methods and analysis. You can also add samples in your scientific literature review as to communicate effectively your ideas to your readers.
5. You can look through samples online of scientific literature review as guide to write yours. In fact, samples provide you a great literature review help especially when complying with proper scientific literature review format.

For those who have worries about the excellence of their literature review, save yourself the hassle and learn about literature review methods and use these writing tips to create premium quality scientific literature review.

Full List of Literature Review Methods

A literature review surveys numerous resources from books, articles, thesis, magazines, online writings and others in order to establish the significance of a specific topic or question. A well-developed literature review should be able to provide credible summary, offer vital arguments and evaluate critically every literature. 

To make it easier for you to write your own literature review, here are the best literature review methods:

• Evaluating Literature

You will be swamped with data but do not include everything instead screen its eligibility depending on its relevance. Consider the credential of the author, the date of its publication, the arguments presented in the material and its statistics. Understanding the value of the studies is one of the essential parts of this literature review methods.

• Selecting the Literature

Literature review methods will show you that there is no need to report every published literature about your topic. You must be able to know how to select studies that will be included into your review.

• Organizing the Literature

You should keep your topic in mind when it comes to categorizing all literature. You can group it by topic, problem and solution or cause and effect. In methodology literature review, you can also organize materials based on its arguments; this will enable your readers to easily navigate through all your studies.

• Writing your Literature

In this part of literature review methods writing, you should have a clear sense on how to summarize studies. Keep it short and concise; this will enable you to convey the ideas more proficiently. Remember that the main purpose of your literature review is to set the stage for your topic so ensure that everything is vital, accurate and properly delivered.

• Examples

There are many examples of methodology literature review online like for example thesis literature review. By viewing our vast database and catalogues of literature reviews, you can understand step by step literature review methods in which you can use to improve your own lit review. If you have difficulty with writing your literature review, take advantage of these literature review methods and learn about literature review criteria for updated writing techniques that will surely impress your readers.

The List of Main Literature Review Criteria

Writing a literature review can be a time consuming process even to experienced writers. Your literature review should provide relevant summary on every article that you reviewed. Adhering to a proper set of criteria will allow you to guarantee that your literature review is flawless and efficient. Here are literature review criteria that will ensure excellence in your final lit review:

• The first literature review criteria would be to comply with accurate formatting. If you are required to use APA for example, make sure that you are familiar with its guidelines to later do APA format literature review.
• The next criteria for literature review would be to decide on a good and relevant topic.
• Recognize credible literature that you can use in your literature review. Identify resources that you intend to review.
• Evaluate the literature that you will use. To make it easier for you, categorize and group them accordingly. Major trends and patterns can be beneficial when it comes to identifying relationships among studies.
• Another helpful literature review criteria is to summarize literature accordingly. Do not hesitate to use tables as to effectively chart relationships; this will also enable you to easily analyze, summarize and interpret all the literature properly.
• Creating an outline for your final review is an important literature review criteria. Trace your argument effectively; you should be able to justify to your readers the importance of your research.
• When you write the review, tell beforehand why your topic is important and create a clear sense of difference on your research literature review and those that are done previously.
• Developing a coherent and clear essay is the final criteria for literature review writing. Aim for well delivered ideas that integrate various key details of all literature.

Using proper set of literature review criteria will boost the overall quality and impact of your final literature review. For most, criteria and guidelines are efficient solution to save time in what can be a laborious task of writing a good literature review. Do not set yourself up to fail. Simply use this literature review criteria as to guarantee that your literature review can meet top academic standards.

The Best Literature Review Apa Format

Get Started on Proper Literature Review APA Format

Writing a literature review can be daunting but when you know where and how to start, you can ensure its quality and effectiveness. A literature review is basically a summary of all the literature and resources about your topic. This is a crucial part of any research paper as this helps justify the importance of your topic. For those who are required to write their literature review using APA format, you should be able to demonstrate knowledge and familiarity as for your final lit review to be well written and properly formatted.

Basic Sections of APA Format Literature Review

The accuracy of your literature review APA format is as important as the content of your review. The most common outline of literature review in APA format is divided into three sections: (1) Title Page (2) Introduction Section and (3) List of References. Once you know the pattern of APA format, you can now incorporate this into your literature review in order to deliver all essential data properly to your readers. Remember that your literature review serves as a survey towards a specific topic or question and if formatted precisely, you can make a better impact to your readers.

Using Samples as Guideline for Literature Review APA Format

Do not forget to use samples as guidelines in order to write a good literature review for thesis or for other type of work. Majority can find it confusing to use APA format into their literature review and examples can serve as effective solutions that will allow you to see the final result of a literature review formatted using APA. Step by step writing is also easier with literature review APA format samples; it provides you in depth knowledge on where to place specific data and which information to avoid when writing your literature review. Accuracy is essential when it comes to writing your literature review. Get started now and use the latest literature review APA format . Use these tips to start writing your APA format literature review. If you're writing a dissertation you can easily find APA dissertation literature review online.