What is a Literature Search?
A literature search is the act of gathering existing knowledge or data around a topic or research question.
Regardless of the purpose of your literature search, all searches follow the same basic process:
- Ask a question
- Select a search resource
- Develop search terms
- Execute the search
- Access results
- Evaluate & improve your search
Each page in this guide explores a different step of the process and lays the groundwork for the following steps.
Why Search the Literature?
- Develop a fundamental understanding of a topic of interest.
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E.g. "I want to learn more about treatment options available for quitting smoking."
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- Support the thesis/argument of an academic paper or presentation.
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E.g. "I need some statistics for how smoking rates have changed over the last 20 years."
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- Justify the need for further research in a given subject area.
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E.g. "I'm designing a research study on the effectiveness of hypnosis for smoking cessation. What's been done before? What areas need further investigation?"
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- Summarize/synthesizie existing evidence related to a given research question.
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E.g. "I want to gather and synthesize all the existing studies that help answer the following research question: Are support groups more effective than nicotine-replacement products for helping teenagers quit smoking?"
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- Make evidence-informed decisions in a clinical setting.
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E.g. "What treatment should I recommend to my teenage patient interested in quitting smoking?"
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