Writing a literature review involves finding relevant publications such as books and journal articles critically analyzing them and explaining what you found there are five key steps search for relevant literature evaluate sources identify themes debates and gaps outline the structure write your literature review. Writing a literature review a literature review is a document or section of a document that collects key sources on a topic and discusses those sources in conversation with each other also called synthesisthe lit review is an important genre in many disciplines not just literature ie the study of works of literature such as novels and plays. Conducting a literature review involves collecting evaluating and analysing publications such as books and journal articles that relate to your research question there are five main steps in the process of writing a literature review search for relevant literature evaluate sources identify themes debates and gaps outline the structure. In writing a literature review the works opinions and the findings of all of those other authors should be incorporated into a separated topic by topic compared and critically analyzed together literature reviews should be concise every point argument and topic in your work should be coupled with a review of literature in relation to it