Literature Searching and Reviews

“State of the art, research review and literature review are all generic terms for types of literature review on a research topic. They cover varying degrees of detail and can include results from both qualitative and quantitative studies. 

The vast majority of dissertations and other publications in the humanities contain some form of literature review in which the author discusses the existing research in the field and places their own research in relation to it. This literature review can be more or less explicit in the text, where it can be a larger or smaller section. It can also be an entire article in itself. Depending on the tradition of the subject, the literature review may include an account of the literature search process, but this is not always a requirement.

In addition, many research applications are required to include an overview of existing research and point out any gaps in it, thereby supporting the relevance of the application. In these cases, the literature review is often called “state-of-the-art” and in some PhD theses the term “research review” is used. There is no single term in the humanities, but many different ones, depending on the tradition of the subject area and the individual research project. In recent years, there have been more and more interdisciplinary research projects that draw on academic traditions from different faculties, and it can be important to be aware of your own academic tradition and how it differs from the collaborating field. We call this a review with a fairly neutral professional respect for each individual research field.

However, common to all types of literature reviews, regardless of name, is that they serve to place the individual project in the theoretical, methodological and empirical fields of the research landscape, and thereby also delimit the project in relation to related fields. Another common aspect of literature reviews in the humanities is that they very rarely (if ever) claim to review all literature in the field, unlike a meta-study ("Systematic Review") in the health sciences, which aims to gather all available knowledge on a topic (e.g. a drug's effects and side effects). The vast majority of literature reviews in the humanities instead highlight the most important and, for example, the most recent contributions to research in the field in question.

A literature review typically consists of a written product (article, chapter or section), but before you get to that part, there is a process to go through. We therefore distinguish between the product (the actual literature review) and the process, which will be a systematic literature search. You are welcome to contact the library if you need guidance for your literature search.

• Barry, Erin S., Jerusalem Merkebu, and Lara Varpio. "Understanding state-of-the-art literature reviews." Journal of Graduate Medical Education 14.6 (2022): 659-662
• Booth, A., & James, M. M.-S. (2022). Systematic approaches to a successful literature review (Third edition, Andrew Booth, Anthea Sutton, Mark Clowes, Marrissa Martyn-St James ed.). SAGE.
• Drejer, C. M. (2023). Litteratursøgning for samfundsvidenskaberne (1. udgave ed.). Samfundslitteratur. 
• Thomas, G. (2017). *The Literature Review’, pp. 57-68 in How to do your research project: A guide for students in education and applied social sciences. (3rd. Ed.) SAGE Publications Ltd.
• Wang, L., Kolios, A., Liu, X., Venetsanos, D., & Rui, C. (2022). Reliability of offshore wind turbine support structures: A state-of-the-art review. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 161, 112250.