II. Literature Review

Outlining the article

You don't have to create clean or fully developed text of the article the first time. Try putting down your ideas as they come, without looking up spelling or other details. You will be able to create a full draft quickly, and then you can go back and make it perfect.

Here is an example of an outline for an essay on “ Hamlet” by William Shakespeare from the University of Toronto website (http://www.utoronto.ca/ucwriting/organizing.html#sample).

Thesis: Despite Hamlet's highly developed moral nature, he becomes morally compromised while delaying his revenge.
I.	Introduction: Hamlet's father asks Hamlet not only to seek vengeance but also to keep his mind untainted.
II.	Hamlet has a highly developed moral nature.
	A.	Hamlet is idealistic.
	B.	Hamlet is aware of his own faults, whereas others are self-satisfied.
	C.	Hamlet does not want to take revenge without grounds for acting.
III.	Hamlet becomes morally compromised while delaying.
	A.	The turning point in Hamlet's moral decline is his killing of Polonius.
	B.	Hamlet's moral decline continues when he sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their death.
	C.	Hamlet already began his moral decline before the turning point in the play, the killing of Polonius.
		1.	Hamlet treats women badly.
		2.	Hamlet criticizes others in the play for acting falsely to get ahead, but in adopting the disguise of madness he, too, is presenting a false face to the world.
IV.	Though Hamlet becomes more compromised the longer he delays, killing the king would have been a morally questionable act.
V.	Conclusion: The play Hamlet questions the adequacy of a system of ethics based on honour and revenge.

Make the outline of your article taking into consideration the main obligatory sections of an article in your field of interest.

A literature review should:

• be organized around and related directly to the thesis or research question you are developing;
• synthesize results into a summary of what is and is not known;
• identify areas of controversy in the scientific literature;
• formulate questions that need further research.

Do not try to list all the material published on the topic, but to synthesize and evaluate it according to the guiding concept of your research question. It's usually a bad sign to see every paragraph beginning with the name of a researcher. Instead, organize the literature review into sections that present themes or identify trends, including relevant theory.

In the literary review you may feel free to criticize. But criticize the work, not the investigators or authors. Please see the following examples.

Example 1

Looking at the development of the hydrogen technologies road map from Cavendish to the present day, many research studies [2,12,15,20,24,27,28] have been conducted and reported in the literature. Although many researchers [4,9,10,13,22,25,30] have made significant contributions to improving hydrogen technologies and awareness, the present global energy system is dominated by fossil fuels, and this pattern is expected to continue till 2030. An important question is for how long these business-as-usual projections can continue without running into constraints in the form of limited reserves of fossil fuels, or severe environmental problems from their combustion, including not only global climate change from CO2 and methane emissions, but also air pollution problems [23].

Holland and Provenzano [19] stated as the age of hydrogen is close at hand. According to Holland and Provenzano, a few decades from now, perhaps by the middle of the twenty first century, hydrogen likely will have replaced oil as the world’s primary on-demand energy currency. Or is hydrogen really a utopia [7]?

(Source: Melih Soner Celiktas, Gunnur Kocar. Hydrogen is not an utopia for Turkey. International Journal of hydrogen energy 35 (2010) 9–18)

Example 2

Empirical literature indicates that abusive parents engage in more negative interactions (Bousha & Twentyman, 1984) and fewer positive interactions with their children than non-abusive parents (Allesandri, 1992; Bousha & Twentyman, 1984). Wolfe (1987) noted that “it appears to be the relative absence of positive interactions that sets members of abusive families apart from matched, non-abusive controls rather than the dramatic display of open conflict and aggression” (p. 77). Milner and Chilamkurti (1991) provided support for this observation, finding that relatively low rates of positive interactions (e.g., cohesion, expressiveness) appeared to characterize abusive families more accurately than observed differences in negative interactions. For these reasons, a popular approach to the treatment of abusive families has been parent-training interventions (Dore & Lee, 1999). By training parents, it is possible to enhance abusive parents’ functioning, reduce negative parenting, and increase the numbers of positive interactions (Milner, 2000), resulting in better outcomes for children. Also, this format makes it possible to educate parents about appropriate developmental expectations (Fox, Fox, & Anderson, 1991), child management strategies (Azar, 1989), and increase parents’ self-awareness (Thomas, 1996).

(Source: Susan G. Timmer, Anthony J. Urquiza, Nancy M. Zebell, Jean M. McGrath. Parent-Child Interaction Therapy: Application to maltreating parent-child dyads. Child Abuse & Neglect 29 (2005) 825–842)

Please read the article about writing the literature review on the University of Toronto website: http://www.writing.utoronto.ca/advice/specific-types-of-writing/literature-review. What tips from these recommendations can be useful for you?

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