Checklist for assessing literature review

How can I assess the quality of my Literature Review?

To make a self-assessment of your Literature Review, you can ask yourself the following questions.

·      Have I shown that I am familiar with the state of the art.

·      Have I mentioned only what my readers specifically need to know and what I will subsequently refer to in the Discussion?

·      Have I avoided only mentioning the literature that supports my hypotheses?

·      Are the papers I have mentioned in a logical order?

·      Is it clear why I have chosen these papers and not others?

·      Have I selected a disproportionate number of papers from my own country?

·      Have I ensured that there are no papers cited in the bibliography that are not cited in the paper, and vice versa?

·      Have I followed my journal’s instructions regarding how I make references to the literature?

·      Where possible have I done this in a variety of ways?

·      Have I removed any redundancy when reporting the literature?

·      Have I used tenses correctly? present simple (descriptions of established scientific fact), present perfect (at the beginning of review to give general overview; for past-to-present evolutions), past simple (when specific dates are mentioned within a sentence; for the verbs that introduce an author’s findings).

Source: Adrian Wallwork