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Systematic literature reviews

Refine on document type

Some article databases allow you to refine your search on document types. Note that the databases are inconsistent in how they define and identify review articles, so you have to critically evaluate your search results to be sure that what you have found is a review article.

The document type may be called "Review articles", "Review", "Systematic review" or "Literature review". In some cases the document type is available in the "Advanced search" or under "Methodology". 

On Google Scholar you may refine the result list after you have done a search, by selecting "Review articles" 

Observe that refining on this document type, may not always return relevant results. See for example Web of Science's classification criteria of a Review: 

"A renewed study of material previously studied. Includes review articles and surveys of previously published literature. Usually will not present any new information on a subject.

An item is classified as a review if it meets any of the following criteria:

  • it cites more than 100 references
  • it appears in a review publication or a review section of a journal
  • the word review or overview appears in its title
  • the abstract states that it is a review or survey "

The fact that only one of the criteria needs to be met, may lead to articles that are not in fact literature reviews, but rather review of a procedure or a concept. Therefore, be critical to the result list when refining on this document type.

Note that some databases do not have the option of searching for a specific document type, for example Business Source Complete. If that is the case, follow the steps described below.

Text search in the article's title or abstract


Review articles typically, but not always, contain the word "review" or "literature review" in their titles. In the abstract, the scope of the article may be described in many ways. Below are some examples:

  1. "This article is a review of the literature on ..."
  2. "A survey through the latest research in the area shows that..."
  3. "This paper reviews the literature on (...) and sets that literature into a theoretical context."


This demonstrates that various words and expressions may be used, which challenges the way you should search for these articles. Other words that could be used to search 

  • "research review'"
  • "literature survey*
  • "literature overview"
  • "state of the art "
  • "recent research"
  • summar*
  • assess*
  • synthesis*

Search examples:

1.  "corporate responsibility" and "literature review"
The topic is combined with "literature review". The quotation marks allow you to search for the expressions as phrases, i.e. in that exact order.

2.   "corporate responsibility" and literature and review*
The quotation marks are left out around literature review, in order to capture phrases where the words do not appear next to each other. See text example 1 and 3 above. The truncation mark * following review, returns results on variations of the word, such as "reviews" and "reviewing".

Searching in Norwegian coulc also be an alternative. Use Google, Google Scholar or a Norwegian article database, such as Idunn.no. In Norwegian these articles are often called "systematisk kunnskapsoppsummering" eller "systematisk litteraturoversikt".

 

Review Journals

Academic journals may typically publish a mixture of research articles and review articles. However, there are journals where the main scope is to publish review articles. Note that although a journal has "review" in its title, it does not necessarily mean that it publishes review articles only.

We've listed a few examples below: