writing an effective literature review part i mapping the gap

Writing an effective literature review : Part I: Mapping the gap

Affiliation.

• 1 Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, Health Sciences Addition, Western University, London, Ontario, Canada. [email protected].
• PMID: 29260402
• PMCID: PMC5807267
• DOI: 10.1007/s40037-017-0401-x

Publication types

• Publishing / trends
• Research Design / standards*
• Systematic Reviews as Topic*
• Writing / standards*

• Print this article

The Writer’s Craft

Writing an effective literature review: part i: mapping the gap.

• Lorelei Lingard
• Page/Article: 47-49
• DOI: 10.1007/S40037-017-0401-X

Europe PMC requires Javascript to function effectively.

Either your web browser doesn't support Javascript or it is currently turned off. In the latter case, please turn on Javascript support in your web browser and reload this page.

Search life-sciences literature (43,931,735 articles, preprints and more)

• Free full text
• Citations & impact
• Similar Articles

Writing an effective literature review : Part I: Mapping the gap.

Author information, affiliations.

• Lingard L 1

Perspectives on Medical Education , 01 Feb 2018 , 7(1): 47-49 https://doi.org/10.1007/s40037-017-0401-x   PMID: 29260402  PMCID: PMC5807267

Abstract 

Free full text .

Writing an effective literature review

• Lorelei Lingard

Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, Health Sciences Addition, Western University, London, Ontario Canada

In the Writer’s Craft section we offer simple tips to improve your writing in one of three areas: Energy, Clarity and Persuasiveness. Each entry focuses on a key writing feature or strategy, illustrates how it commonly goes wrong, teaches the grammatical underpinnings necessary to understand it and offers suggestions to wield it effectively. We encourage readers to share comments on or suggestions for this section on Twitter, using the hashtag: #how’syourwriting?

This Writer’s Craft instalment is the first in a two-part series that offers strategies for effectively presenting the literature review section of a research manuscript. This piece alerts writers to the importance of not only summarizing what is known but also identifying precisely what is not, in order to explicitly signal the relevance of their research. In this instalment, I will introduce readers to the mapping the gap metaphor, the knowledge claims heuristic, and the need to characterize the gap.

• Mapping the gap

The purpose of the literature review section of a manuscript is not to report what is known about your topic. The purpose is to identify what remains unknown— what academic writing scholar Janet Giltrow has called the ‘knowledge deficit’ — thus establishing the need for your research study [ 1 ]. In an earlier Writer’s Craft instalment, the Problem-Gap-Hook heuristic was introduced as a way of opening your paper with a clear statement of the problem that your work grapples with, the gap in our current knowledge about that problem, and the reason the gap matters [ 2 ]. This article explains how to use the literature review section of your paper to build and characterize the Gap claim in your Problem-Gap-Hook. The metaphor of ‘mapping the gap’ is a way of thinking about how to select and arrange your review of the existing literature so that readers can recognize why your research needed to be done, and why its results constitute a meaningful advance on what was already known about the topic.

Many writers have learned that the literature review should describe what is known. The trouble with this approach is that it can produce a laundry list of facts-in-the-world that does not persuade the reader that the current study is a necessary next step. Instead, think of your literature review as painting in a map of your research domain: as you review existing knowledge, you are painting in sections of the map, but your goal is not to end with the whole map fully painted. That would mean there is nothing more we need to know about the topic, and that leaves no room for your research. What you want to end up with is a map in which painted sections surround and emphasize a white space, a gap in what is known that matters. Conceptualizing your literature review this way helps to ensure that it achieves its dual goal: of presenting what is known and pointing out what is not—the latter of these goals is necessary for your literature review to establish the necessity and importance of the research you are about to describe in the methods section which will immediately follow the literature review.

To a novice researcher or graduate student, this may seem counterintuitive. Hopefully you have invested significant time in reading the existing literature, and you are understandably keen to demonstrate that you’ve read everything ever published about your topic! Be careful, though, not to use the literature review section to regurgitate all of your reading in manuscript form. For one thing, it creates a laundry list of facts that makes for horrible reading. But there are three other reasons for avoiding this approach. First, you don’t have the space. In published medical education research papers, the literature review is quite short, ranging from a few paragraphs to a few pages, so you can’t summarize everything you’ve read. Second, you’re preaching to the converted. If you approach your paper as a contribution to an ongoing scholarly conversation,[ 2 ] then your literature review should summarize just the aspects of that conversation that are required to situate your conversational turn as informed and relevant. Third, the key to relevance is to point to a gap in what is known. To do so, you summarize what is known for the express purpose of identifying what is not known . Seen this way, the literature review should exert a gravitational pull on the reader, leading them inexorably to the white space on the map of knowledge you’ve painted for them. That white space is the space that your research fills.

• Knowledge claims

To help writers move beyond the laundry list, the notion of ‘knowledge claims’ can be useful. A knowledge claim is a way of presenting the growing understanding of the community of researchers who have been exploring your topic. These are not disembodied facts, but rather incremental insights that some in the field may agree with and some may not, depending on their different methodological and disciplinary approaches to the topic. Treating the literature review as a story of the knowledge claims being made by researchers in the field can help writers with one of the most sophisticated aspects of a literature review—locating the knowledge being reviewed. Where does it come from? What is debated? How do different methodologies influence the knowledge being accumulated? And so on.

Consider this example of the knowledge claims (KC), Gap and Hook for the literature review section of a research paper on distributed healthcare teamwork:

KC: We know that poor team communication can cause errors. KC: And we know that team training can be effective in improving team communication. KC: This knowledge has prompted a push to incorporate teamwork training principles into health professions education curricula. KC: However, most of what we know about team training research has come from research with co-located teams—i. e., teams whose members work together in time and space. Gap: Little is known about how teamwork training principles would apply in distributed teams, whose members work asynchronously and are spread across different locations. Hook: Given that much healthcare teamwork is distributed rather than co-located, our curricula will be severely lacking until we create refined teamwork training principles that reflect distributed as well as co-located work contexts.

The ‘We know that …’ structure illustrated in this example is a template for helping you draft and organize. In your final version, your knowledge claims will be expressed with more sophistication. For instance, ‘We know that poor team communication can cause errors’ will become something like ‘Over a decade of patient safety research has demonstrated that poor team communication is the dominant cause of medical errors.’ This simple template of knowledge claims, though, provides an outline for the paragraphs in your literature review, each of which will provide detailed evidence to illustrate a knowledge claim. Using this approach, the order of the paragraphs in the literature review is strategic and persuasive, leading the reader to the gap claim that positions the relevance of the current study. To expand your vocabulary for creating such knowledge claims, linking them logically and positioning yourself amid them, I highly recommend Graff and Birkenstein’s little handbook of ‘templates’ [ 3 ].

As you organize your knowledge claims, you will also want to consider whether you are trying to map the gap in a well-studied field, or a relatively understudied one. The rhetorical challenge is different in each case. In a well-studied field, like professionalism in medical education, you must make a strong, explicit case for the existence of a gap. Readers may come to your paper tired of hearing about this topic and tempted to think we can’t possibly need more knowledge about it. Listing the knowledge claims can help you organize them most effectively and determine which pieces of knowledge may be unnecessary to map the white space your research attempts to fill. This does not mean that you leave out relevant information: your literature review must still be accurate. But, since you will not be able to include everything, selecting carefully among the possible knowledge claims is essential to producing a coherent, well-argued literature review.

• Characterizing the gap

Once you’ve identified the gap, your literature review must characterize it. What kind of gap have you found? There are many ways to characterize a gap, but some of the more common include:

a pure knowledge deficit—‘no one has looked at the relationship between longitudinal integrated clerkships and medical student abuse’

a shortcoming in the scholarship, often due to philosophical or methodological tendencies and oversights—‘scholars have interpreted x from a cognitivist perspective, but ignored the humanist perspective’ or ‘to date, we have surveyed the frequency of medical errors committed by residents, but we have not explored their subjective experience of such errors’

a controversy—‘scholars disagree on the definition of professionalism in medicine …’

a pervasive and unproven assumption—‘the theme of technological heroism—technology will solve what ails teamwork—is ubiquitous in the literature, but what is that belief based on?’

To characterize the kind of gap, you need to know the literature thoroughly. That means more than understanding each paper individually; you also need to be placing each paper in relation to others. This may require changing your note-taking technique while you’re reading; take notes on what each paper contributes to knowledge, but also on how it relates to other papers you’ve read, and what it suggests about the kind of gap that is emerging.

In summary, think of your literature review as mapping the gap rather than simply summarizing the known. And pay attention to characterizing the kind of gap you’ve mapped. This strategy can help to make your literature review into a compelling argument rather than a list of facts. It can remind you of the danger of describing so fully what is known that the reader is left with the sense that there is no pressing need to know more. And it can help you to establish a coherence between the kind of gap you’ve identified and the study methodology you will use to fill it.

• Acknowledgements

Thanks to Mark Goldszmidt for his feedback on an early version of this manuscript.

PhD, is director of the Centre for Education Research & Innovation at Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, and professor for the Department of Medicine at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada.

Full text links 

Read article at publisher's site: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40037-017-0401-x

Citations & impact 

Impact metrics, citations of article over time, alternative metrics.

Smart citations by scite.ai Smart citations by scite.ai include citation statements extracted from the full text of the citing article. The number of the statements may be higher than the number of citations provided by EuropePMC if one paper cites another multiple times or lower if scite has not yet processed some of the citing articles. Explore citation contexts and check if this article has been supported or disputed. https://scite.ai/reports/10.1007/s40037-017-0401-x

Article citations, turning to 'trusted others': a narrative review of providing social support to first responders..

Tjin A , Traynor A , Doyle B , Mulhall C , Eppich W , O'Toole M

Int J Environ Res Public Health , 19(24):16492, 08 Dec 2022

Cited by: 0 articles | PMID: 36554368 | PMCID: PMC9778548

Looking Abroad for Inspiration to Enhance the Scholarly Work We Do at Home.

Am J Pharm Educ , 87(4):ajpe9219, 14 Nov 2022

Cited by: 0 articles | PMID: 36375845 | PMCID: PMC10159041

Free full text in Europe PMC

The story behind the synthesis: writing an effective introduction to your scoping review.

Lingard L , Colquhoun H

Perspect Med Educ , 11(5):289-294, 12 Aug 2022

Cited by: 0 articles | PMID: 35960445 | PMCID: PMC9582165

An introduction to text analytics for educators.

McLaughlin JE , Lyons K , Lupton-Smith C , Fuller K

Curr Pharm Teach Learn , 14(10):1319-1325, 15 Sep 2022

Cited by: 0 articles | PMID: 36280557 | PMCID: PMC9904956

Review Free full text in Europe PMC

Beyond the CLAIM: A comprehensive needs assessment strategy for creating an Advanced Medical Education Research Training Program (ARMED-MedEd).

Chan TM , Jordan J , Clarke SO , Lawson L , Coates WC , Yarris LM , Santen SA , Gottlieb M , Emergency Medicine Health Professions Education Research Consortium (EMPERC)

AEM Educ Train , 6(1):e10720, 01 Feb 2022

Cited by: 3 articles | PMID: 35233477 | PMCID: PMC8863356

Similar Articles 

To arrive at the top five similar articles we use a word-weighted algorithm to compare words from the Title and Abstract of each citation.

Writing an effective literature review : Part II: Citation technique.

Perspect Med Educ , 7(2):133-135, 01 Apr 2018

Cited by: 4 articles | PMID: 29500746 | PMCID: PMC5889378

Nurs Res , 59(4):233, 01 Jul 2010

Cited by: 3 articles | PMID: 20585220

Systematic review of the effectiveness of training programs in writing for scholarly publication, journal editing, and manuscript peer review (protocol).

Galipeau J , Moher D , Skidmore B , Campbell C , Hendry P , Cameron DW , Hébert PC , Palepu A

Syst Rev , 2:41, 17 Jun 2013

Cited by: 7 articles | PMID: 23773340 | PMCID: PMC3691595

Lessons from a life in research: getting things straight.

Thompson JC

Pharos Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Med Soc , 65(3):20-25, 01 Jan 2002

Cited by: 0 articles | PMID: 12298403

Enhancing your manuscript with graphic elements, part 1: tables.

J Am Osteopath Assoc , 113(1):54-57, 01 Jan 2013

Cited by: 2 articles | PMID: 23329805

Europe PMC is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Have a language expert improve your writing

Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, generate accurate citations for free.

• Knowledge Base

Methodology

• How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

Published on January 2, 2023 by Shona McCombes . Revised on September 11, 2023.

What is a literature review? A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research that you can later apply to your paper, thesis, or dissertation topic .

There are five key steps to writing a literature review:

• Search for relevant literature
• Evaluate sources
• Identify themes, debates, and gaps
• Outline the structure
• Write your literature review

A good literature review doesn’t just summarize sources—it analyzes, synthesizes , and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

Instantly correct all language mistakes in your text

Upload your document to correct all your mistakes in minutes

Table of contents

What is the purpose of a literature review, examples of literature reviews, step 1 – search for relevant literature, step 2 – evaluate and select sources, step 3 – identify themes, debates, and gaps, step 4 – outline your literature review’s structure, step 5 – write your literature review, free lecture slides, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions, introduction.

• Quick Run-through
• Step 1 & 2

When you write a thesis , dissertation , or research paper , you will likely have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:

• Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and its scholarly context
• Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
• Position your work in relation to other researchers and theorists
• Show how your research addresses a gap or contributes to a debate
• Evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of the scholarly debates around your topic.

Writing literature reviews is a particularly important skill if you want to apply for graduate school or pursue a career in research. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below.

Receive feedback on language, structure, and formatting

Professional editors proofread and edit your paper by focusing on:

• Academic style
• Vague sentences
• Style consistency

See an example

Writing literature reviews can be quite challenging! A good starting point could be to look at some examples, depending on what kind of literature review you’d like to write.

• Example literature review #1: “Why Do People Migrate? A Review of the Theoretical Literature” ( Theoretical literature review about the development of economic migration theory from the 1950s to today.)
• Example literature review #2: “Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines” ( Methodological literature review about interdisciplinary knowledge acquisition and production.)
• Example literature review #3: “The Use of Technology in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Thematic literature review about the effects of technology on language acquisition.)
• Example literature review #4: “Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Chronological literature review about how the concept of listening skills has changed over time.)

You can also check out our templates with literature review examples and sample outlines at the links below.

Download Word doc Download Google doc

Before you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic .

If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research paper, you will search for literature related to your research problem and questions .

Make a list of keywords

Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research question. Include each of the key concepts or variables you’re interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list as you discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.

• Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
• Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
• Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth

Search for relevant sources

Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some useful databases to search for journals and articles include:

• Your university’s library catalogue
• Google Scholar
• Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
• Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
• EconLit (economics)
• Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)

You can also use boolean operators to help narrow down your search.

Make sure to read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.

You likely won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on your topic, so it will be necessary to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your research question.

For each publication, ask yourself:

• What question or problem is the author addressing?
• What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
• What are the key theories, models, and methods?
• Does the research use established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
• What are the results and conclusions of the study?
• How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?

Make sure the sources you use are credible , and make sure you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.

You can use our template to summarize and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using. Click on either button below to download.

Take notes and cite your sources

As you read, you should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.

It is important to keep track of your sources with citations to avoid plagiarism . It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography , where you compile full citation information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the process.

The only proofreading tool specialized in correcting academic writing - try for free!

The academic proofreading tool has been trained on 1000s of academic texts and by native English editors. Making it the most accurate and reliable proofreading tool for students.

Try for free

To begin organizing your literature review’s argument and structure, be sure you understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:

• Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches become more or less popular over time?
• Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
• Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
• Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
• Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be addressed?

This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.

• Most research has focused on young women.
• There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
• But there is still a lack of robust research on highly visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat—this is a gap that you could address in your own research.

There are various approaches to organizing the body of a literature review. Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).

Chronological

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order.

Try to analyze patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.

If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.

For example, if you are reviewing literature about inequalities in migrant health outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economic access.

Methodological

If you draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a variety of research methods , you might want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from different approaches. For example:

• Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
• Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources

Theoretical

A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework . You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.

You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.

Like any other academic text , your literature review should have an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion . What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.

The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.

Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.

As you write, you can follow these tips:

• Summarize and synthesize: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
• Analyze and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers — add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
• Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
• Write in well-structured paragraphs: use transition words and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts

In the conclusion, you should summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance.

When you’ve finished writing and revising your literature review, don’t forget to proofread thoroughly before submitting. Not a language expert? Check out Scribbr’s professional proofreading services !

This article has been adapted into lecture slides that you can use to teach your students about writing a literature review.

Scribbr slides are free to use, customize, and distribute for educational purposes.

Open Google Slides Download PowerPoint

If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Sampling methods
• Simple random sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Cluster sampling
• Likert scales
• Reproducibility

 Statistics

• Null hypothesis
• Statistical power
• Probability distribution
• Effect size
• Poisson distribution

Research bias

• Optimism bias
• Cognitive bias
• Implicit bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Anchoring bias
• Explicit bias

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .

It is often written as part of a thesis, dissertation , or research paper , in order to situate your work in relation to existing knowledge.

There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:

• To familiarize yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
• To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
• To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
• To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
• To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.

The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your thesis or dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

A literature review is a survey of credible sources on a topic, often used in dissertations , theses, and research papers . Literature reviews give an overview of knowledge on a subject, helping you identify relevant theories and methods, as well as gaps in existing research. Literature reviews are set up similarly to other  academic texts , with an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion .

An  annotated bibliography is a list of  source references that has a short description (called an annotation ) for each of the sources. It is often assigned as part of the research process for a  paper .  

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

McCombes, S. (2023, September 11). How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates. Scribbr. Retrieved April 15, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/dissertation/literature-review/

Is this article helpful?

Shona McCombes

Other students also liked, what is a theoretical framework | guide to organizing, what is a research methodology | steps & tips, how to write a research proposal | examples & templates, what is your plagiarism score.

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• Perspect Med Educ
• v.11(5); 2022 Oct

The story behind the synthesis: writing an effective introduction to your scoping review

Lorelei lingard.

1 Centre for Education Research & Innovation, and Department of Medicine, Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry and Faculty of Education, Western University, London, Canada

Heather Colquhoun

2 Department of Occupational Science & Occupational Therapy, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

In the Writer’s Craft section we offer simple tips to improve your writing in one of three areas: Energy, Clarity and Persuasiveness. Each entry focuses on a key writing feature or strategy, illustrates how it commonly goes wrong, teaches the grammatical underpinnings necessary to understand it and offers suggestions to wield it effectively. We encourage readers to share comments on or suggestions for this section on Twitter, using the hashtag: #how’syourwriting?

In a recent writing workshop, a participant was applying the “mapping the gap” heuristic in the introduction of his paper. Mapping the gap is a strategy for writing a succinct, compelling literature review in a paper’s Introduction: the writer briefly and selectively summarizes what’s known in order to outline the white space—the gap—that the research fills [ 1 ]. But this writer had done a scoping review, and he was struggling to make the heuristic fit. “ How do I summarize what is already known, ” he said, “ without giving away what my scoping review found? The gap is one of my results, isn’t it ?”

Good question. And for anyone writing or giving feedback on scoping reviews, a rather pressing one. This form of knowledge synthesis is proliferating in health research generally and health professions education (HPE) research specifically, and a recent review suggests that published scoping review manuscripts in HPE often lack a strong introductory rationale for the work [ 2 ]. This may be in part because guidance for writers regarding this section of a scoping review is sorely lacking. The problem isn’t a lack of frameworks or guidelines for conducting and reporting scoping reviews: these are available in abundance, with ongoing updates and refinements [ 3 , 4 ]. But in all cases the emphasis is predominantly on methods: the idea of the scoping review as a story to be told is missing.

Two main sources of scoping review guidance illustrate this point. The Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) guidelines for designing scoping reviews [ 4 ] give more attention to title than introduction: the advice is mainly that the latter “should be comprehensive and should cover the main elements of the topic, important definitions, and the existing knowledge in the field” (11.3.4). The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) checklist [ 5 ] focuses significantly more attention on Methods and Results than on Introductory framing. Writers find only two items to guide them: we are to “describe the rationale for the review in the context of what is already known… and explain why the review questions/objectives lend themselves to a scoping review approach”; and we should provide “an explicit statement of the questions and objectives being addressed with reference to their key elements (e.g., population or participants, concepts, and context)” ( p  469). However, as my workshop participant pointed out, the devil is in the details. Where’s the line between describing a rationale in “context of what is already known” and giving away your results, or even negating the value of doing a scoping review in the first place? How much, and which, literature needs to be introduced to establish the “key elements… population or participants, concepts, and context” for the review questions and objectives? In a nutshell, how does the author set up the story of a scoping review? To date, the scoping review guidance literature privileges study—and ignores story. But every good manuscript needs both.

In this Writer’s Craft, we offer writers advice for crafting a clear, compelling story in the Introduction of their scoping review paper. This advice is relevant for any scoping review, thus our illustrations come from a variety of fields.

Articulate the problem/gap/hook

Scoping reviews are a synthesis of knowledge. Therefore, the introduction’s main purpose is to offer an argument for why we need a synthesis of the knowledge on a particular concept. The Problem-Gap-Hook heuristic [ 6 ] can help efficiently lay out this argument.

Let’s begin with the Gap, as it is the same for every scoping review: the lack of synthesis of existing literature. This should be signaled clearly with language such as “Amid such debates, the scholarly community lacks a large-scale, systematic overview of the [arts & humanities] literature” [ 7 ] ( p  1213) or “there is little evidence on how the Bangladeshi community gain access to diabetes-related information and services” [ 8 ] ( p  157), or “one area of medical education research that has not yet been systematically examined is family medicine” [ 9 ]( p  1). It is possible to leave the Gap unstated; readers will be able to infer it as it is similar across scoping reviews. However, making it explicit offers the opportunity to characterize it precisely as Maggio et al. [ 2 ] do in their scoping review of HPE scoping reviews ( p  690):

the extant research on scoping reviews provides limited information about their nature, including how they are conducted, if they are funded, or why medical educators decide to undertake this type of knowledge synthesis in the first place. This lack of direct insight makes it difficult to know where the field stands and may hamper attempts to take evidence-informed steps to improve the conduct, reporting and utility of scoping reviews in medical education.

Explicitly naming and characterizing the gap is particularly important in a scoping review of scoping reviews, to convince the reader that, amid a sea of reviews, we need another. As scoping reviews proliferate, so too will scoping reviews of scoping reviews, making a strongly characterized gap an essential ingredient of these stories.

While the Gap for a scoping review is invariably some lack of synthesis, this in itself does not justify doing a scoping review. Lots of literature remains unsynthesized; why does it matter in this case? Writers must articulate the Problem that arises because of the lack of synthesis. It is not sufficient to say, for instance, that “Hundreds of knowledge translation (KT) theories exist across a broad range of paradigms including organizational theory, learning theory, and social cognitive theory, but they have yet to be synthesized”. You must make explicit the problem created by an abundance of unsynthesized theoretical KT literature: something like, “Scholars struggle to use KT theory effectively, faced with hundreds of possibilities and no synthesis to guide them”. Look at published scoping reviews to see how other authors express the problem: it might be that the field lacks conceptual consensus, or practices are inconsistent, or controversies remain unresolved, or understanding is inhibited by implicit blind spots, or research is proceeding without programmatic direction. For example, Van Schalkwyk et al. [ 10 ] conducted their scoping review of transformative learning as pedagogy because they realized that “understanding of the construct differed amongst us and lacked a clear theoretically grounded comprehension” ( p  538); Sebok-Syer et al. [ 11 ] argued that a scoping review was needed around measuring interdependence because “variability in both terminology and approaches among researchers may contribute to assessment challenges” ( p  1124); and Young et al. [ 12 ] declared that, although it has been much studied, “little consensus exists regarding the definition of clinical reasoning” ( p  2). Reading critically can help expand your repertoire of phrases for this key part of your Introduction.

The Hook is the ‘so what’ of your scoping review—the statement of why it matters to solve the Problem you’ve identified. The Hook can be expressed either in terms of possibility (e.g., “With a synthesis, we will be able to …”) or caution (e.g., “Without a synthesis, we risk …”). A good scoping review Hook focuses on what the results of the review will be used for, and writers should aim for specific examples of value. Saying that your review will “be useful to a broad audience of educators” is too vague. Be more precise and persuasive. Howell et al. [ 13 ] express “ an urgent need for a guiding taxonomy of core PRO domains and dimensions in cancer” ( p  77); Gottlieb et al. [ 14 ] argue that “ Given the profound impact of burnout on medicine, understanding imposter syndrome within the context of physicians and physicians in training is critical ”( p  117); Maggio et al. [ 2 ] set out to “ identify areas for improvement in the conduct and reporting of scoping reviews in medical education, thereby helping to ensure that those produced are relevant to and practical” ( p  690); and Young et al. [ 12 ] assert that “a careful mapping of the concept of clinical reasoning across professions is necessary to support both profession-specific and interprofessional learning, assessment, and research” ( p  2). A negative hook, with its articulation of problems or negative impacts associated with not having synthesized the literature, may be particularly effective. If we convert Young et al.’s hook to negative, we get something like “without this careful mapping, learning, assessment and research cannot advance coherently ”. Which do you find more compelling?

Structure the story

The Problem, Gap and Hook are important, but they are only three of the sentences in your Introduction. What goes in the other sentences, and how should you organize them?

According to scoping review guidelines [ 4 , 5 ], the introductory literature review of your paper must do three things: 1) provide relevant details about the “population or participants, concepts, and context” (PCC); 2) establish that there is sufficient literature to warrant a review; and 3) acknowledge any pre-existing reviews and distinguish them from yours. Let’s walk through each of these, unpacking Young et al.’s three-paragraph scoping review introduction as a primary illustration and using additional examples to help you build your Introduction repertoire (Fig.  1 ).

An effective scoping review Introduction, from Young et al. [ 12 ]

Use the PCC framework

According to Peters et al. [ 15 ], “use of the PCC mnemonic clearly identifies the focus and context of a review” (p2122). We like to think of it as orienting the reader to the setting and main characters of your story. Young et al. establish the PCC in their first paragraph: they describe the population/participants (health professionals), the main concept (clinical reasoning), and the context (health professions education, including both policy frameworks and teaching/assessment activities). Many scoping review introductions take multiple paragraphs to establish the PCC, starting more generally and then narrowing. This inverted triangle is common in scoping review introductions: for example, O’Brien et al.’s [ 16 ] two-paragraph introduction which begins with a paragraph describing the broader context of HIV, followed by a paragraph narrowing in on the concept of rehabilitation in HIV. An inverted triangle introduction doesn’t need to be long: in three paragraphs Maggio et al.’s [ 2 ] introduction sketches the rise of scoping reviews in medical education, narrows to scoping review methods and then narrows further to methodological and reporting concerns. By contrast, Alam et al.’s [ 8 ] scoping review opens with a protracted inverted triangle which traverses concepts of diabetes, health access, and minority groups before finally coming to its focus in the 10th paragraph of the literature review: British Bangladeshi’s access to diabetes-related healthcare information and services. Particularly if your paper is a conventional length for a health research journal (3000–4000 words), this is a long wait for the appearance of the main character of your scoping review story. Aim for a 3–4 paragraph introduction, use the inverted triangle structure as an organizing logic, and choose stress positions for key sentences (like Young et al.’s problem sentence that concludes the second paragraph).

Establish that the literature can support a scoping review

There is no magic number of studies that constitutes a threshold for scoping, so the writer must convince the reader that the literature is sufficient. In their second introductory paragraph, Young et al. make this argument. The first sentence notes the “variety” of ways the concept has been discussed; the third sentence characterizes the literature as “large” with an “early” emphasis on “cognitive processes”; the fourth notes that the concept has been approached as both “process” and “outcome”, that it has been variously framed and “interpreted for multiple audiences”. Notice that the detailed content of the literature is not given away: the map is sketched only enough to show its “broad and substantive” contours and set up the problem of “little consensus … regarding the definition of clinical reasoning”. The Young et al. example establishes that there is an abundance of literature for scoping. But that’s not always the case. If you’ve scoped a limited literature, your argument must acknowledge that the literature is limited while explaining why it is still worthwhile to review. For example, O’Brien et al.’s [ 16 ] introduction acknowledges that there is only a “small amount of evidence” and that “relatively little research focuses on rehabilitation in HIV care” ( p  449). Explaining that “this field is still emerging”, they position the review as “an initial step” aimed at “understanding the research priorities” ( p  449). And, reflecting the limited literature, they also employ key informant consultation to help identify key research priorities and gaps in the field.

Acknowledge previous reviews

If yours is the first review of the concept with reference to the particular context and participants you’ve outlined, you can simply say so, as Shorey et al. [ 17 ] do with their assertion that “there are no existing reviews that have consolidated evidence from studies across all medical faculties” ( p  767). However, if the literature has already been reviewed, your effort to justify the need for your review needs a bit more attention. Young et al.’s third introductory paragraph recognizes the existence of other reviews and conceptual analyses of clinical reasoning, points out their “limited” focus on medicine, and argues for the need for a synthesis of “literature across Health Professions”. This justification is followed by a positive Hook that labels what’s distinctive about their review: “a careful mapping of the concept of clinical reasoning across professions is necessary to support both profession-specific and interprofessional learning, assessment, and research.”

How you handle previous reviews in your introduction is particularly important in scoping reviews of scoping reviews. The third paragraph of Maggio et al.’s [ 2 ] Introduction makes space for their review by pointing explicitly to “the rise” in scoping reviews in medical education, acknowledging the presence and value of “discipline-specific and cross-disciplinary scoping reviews of scoping reviews”, and arguing that existing reviews are either “several years old” or “focused solely” on one discipline ( p  690). By asserting that “the multi-disciplinary nature of medical education research” suggests “differences [that] warranted further exploration” ( p  690), they claim a unique space for their own work amid what the reader may see as a crowded synthesis landscape. Similarly, Howell et al. [ 13 ] acknowledge that “our work built on earlier studies, but unlike earlier reviews we used formal methods to gain consensus on core PRO domains and related subdimensions” ( p  77), and Chan et al. [ 18 ] recognize that “there have been some reviews about the use of social media for education” but explain that “none have sought to fully encompass the breadth of how these technologies have affected the full spectrum of education” ( p  21). As these examples show, the acknowledgement of existing reviews must be accompanied by a clear statement of what your review adds, which should be tied to the problem you’ve outlined.

Create alignment

The final ingredient of an effective introduction is alignment among the “rationale”, “research question”, and “objectives” of the review [ 3 ]. These terms are used variably in scoping reviews, reporting guidelines, and reviews of scoping reviews. For our purposes, we use “rationale” to mean why we’ve done a scoping review—what problem does it address? (This is also sometimes referred to as “purpose” in published scoping reviews.) We use “research question” to mean the specific question guiding the search, and we use “objectives” synonymously with “sub-questions” to represent specific foci of inquiry.

Let’s analyze an example where alignment is achieved. Versteeg et al. [ 19 ] briefly summarize the literature and land on this statement of the problem: “Overall, the broad range of terms associated with spaced learning, the multiple definitions and variety of applications used in HPE can hinder the operationalisation of spaced learning” ( p  206). With this problem in mind, their rationale is “to investigate how spaced learning is defined and applied across HPE contexts”, which they phrase as an overarching question: “How is spaced learning defined and applied in HPE?” ( p  206). They then articulate “specific research questions: (RQ1A) Which concepts are used to define spaced learning and associated terms? (RQ1B) To what extent do these terms show conceptual overlap? (RQ2) Which theoretical frameworks are used to frame spaced learning? (RQ3) Which spacing formats are utilised in spaced learning research?” ( p  206) This example is well-aligned: “definition and application of spaced learning” remains consistently in focus, and refinements such as “conceptual overlap” and “theoretical frameworks” are further and logical specifications of the overall focus. This example illustrates Levac et al.’s [ 3 ] advice to balance broad research questions with clearly articulated scope of the inquiry and link the rationale to the research questions.

Alignment seems straightforward when it is done well, but it can be tricky. Maggio et al. [ 2 ] noted room for improvement in the alignment between rationales and research questions in almost 65% of HPE scoping reviews. Echoing Levac et al. [ 3 ], they suspected that one reason for this misalignment is “rationales that are applicable broadly to a variety of knowledge synthesis methodologies and not necessarily specific to scoping reviews” ( p  695). One strategy for testing your own alignment is to explain why you selected scoping review methodology: as Maggio et al. suggest, tell the reader “what factors influenced [the] decision to undertake a scoping review (e.g., the nature of the literature, the intricacies of the topic, the expertise of their research team, and/or their personal needs such as a graduate student familiarising herself with a topic)” ( p  695). Another reason for misalignment is a research question that is too generic and not balanced by clearly articulated objectives that delimit the scope of the inquiry. For example, a generic question like “what is known about medical tourism” cannot support a strong search strategy: the scope needs to be tightened (e.g., medical tourism by Canadians for surgical procedures) in order to focus the work. Finally, even when you try to “balance” a broad question with focused objectives or sub-questions as Levac et al. have advised, be careful that your sub-questions still align with the rationale. If they feel more like detours than logical specifications of the overall focus, then you have a misalignment. For example, a sub-question about the ethics of medical tourism by Canadians for surgical procedures might feel misaligned if the rationale for the scoping review does not have any ethical flavour. Remember: alignment (or its lack) is judged by how well the rationale, question and sub-questions fit the overall story you’re laying out in the introduction—how coherently do they follow from your Problem, Gap and Hook?

A final note on alignment as it relates to the consultation exercise. The consultation is a unique strength of the scoping review. However, differing points of view have been expressed on its optional [ 20 ] or essential [ 3 ] nature, and it does not appear in the PRISMA-ScR [ 5 ] reporting guideline which can leave writers unsure about its role. As you frame the story for a review that included consultation, readers should see this step as aligned and necessary. For instance, you may anticipate a limited literature for scoping and thus seek insights from stakeholder consultation as primary data [ 15 ]. You may have scoped an ample literature but identified missing perspectives or voices that you explored using consultation [ 7 ]. Or you may use stakeholders to contextualize review findings in order to fully address the question being asked, as in Maggio et al.’s [ 2 ] consultation with “seven stakeholders to understand if and in what ways our findings resonated with their experiences conducting scoping reviews” ( p  691). The consultation exercise will be described in your methods, but the introduction should set the reader up to expect it. For example, O’Brien et al.’s [ 16 ] rationale is to “advance policy and practice for people living with HIV” ( p  449), which aligns well with their decision to consult with people with HIV to contextualize the literature and create a patient partner-informed research agenda.

Every scoping review manuscript needs a  story to frame the study. This Writer’s Craft offers strategies for telling this story in your introduction (Tab.  1 ). Use the Problem/Gap/Hook heuristic to establish why we need a synthesis in the first place. Structure the story so that it introduces setting and main characters, establishes that there is sufficient literature for a review, and acknowledges pre-existing reviews. Align the rationale for the work, the research question and the specific sub-questions or objectives—there should be no jarring detours from the storyline. Finally, keep it short: three or four paragraphs should suffice. Your introduction doesn’t need to detail the specifics; it should just sketch the curvature. And don’t worry about ‘giving away’ your results; your introduction is the story, not the synthesis.

The story behind the synthesis: Strategies for an effective scoping review Introduction

Acknowledgements

We thank K. O’Brien for review and feedback on a draft of this manuscript.

Search for a specific blog post here…

Starting Strong With An Amazing Literature Review

Hello Qualitative Mind,

Today, we’re going to start talking about specifics of writing qualitative research proposals. It seems fitting to start with the literature review. Generally speaking, research proposals start with or include a short literature review that leads to the overall purpose of the study and/or research questions/objectives. 

I have a confession to make before moving forward with this post: to me, writing an effective literature review has always been the most challenging and least pleasant. However, I’ve used a set of strategies that, over the years, have helped me to better tackle this common section in academic writing. 

I recently came across “The Writer’s Craft” series written by Dr. Lorelei Lingard and published in the journal  Perspectives on Medical Education.  It’s incredibly helpful, and these next paragraphs are inspired by  “Writing an Effective Literature Review: Part I: Mapping the Gap.”  Dr. Lingard discusses that an interesting literature review emphasizes what IS known about the literature in one’s area as much as what IS NOT known. We commonly read literature reviews that seem like a list of facts. Although these facts can be interesting, they don’t come together in a way that makes sense to the reader and enables our understanding of why the research proposed or presented matters. 

In order to explain this, Dr. Lingard used the colouring a map analogy. So, when writing a literature review, we want to colour the areas around the “blank” area our research intends to fill by situating the knowledge that already exists and showcasing what we are aiming to explore and advance. The reader needs to feel pulled towards the blank area, and understand why they should care about the purpose of your research. Personally, I always thought of the inverse triangle when writing my literature review. I start with the big picture, often with statistics from population-based studies, and then gradually move to the local context. However, I can see how the colouring the map analogy may lead to a more fluid and engaging literature review. 

The reader needs to understand why they should care about the purpose of your research.

We’re talking here about writing qualitative research proposals, so what do you need to do in the literature review when it comes to balancing quantitative and qualitative studies? I believe the answer to this question will vary from area to area. I have a health sciences background and, as a result, my literature review tends to have a good balance (I would say 40/60) between quantitative and qualitative research. Depending on the topic, it might be more or less of one or the other. In some fields qualitative research might be all there is while, in others, you might literally be one of not-too-many.

One of the things I learned from Dr. Alex Clark, a professor at the University of Alberta and current Associate Vice-President (Research), in a workshop about writing successful qualitative proposals is to showcase the theoretical underpinning or framework that is guiding my work. {You might not have that and, if you don’t, please DO NOT go crazy looking for one.} This isn’t always clear to us at the beginning of a qualitative research project but as the research happens we might be able to better recognize elements of theories or frameworks in our findings. At this point, it’s worth adding the theory or framework connected to your work to your literature review. You need to remember that your theoretical underpinning or framework could be what sets you apart from someone who is doing similar work elsewhere. 

Another scenario to consider when writing the literature review is that you might have something that you are brushing off in your proposal {and coloring too lightly}. In that case, consider revisiting your writing and “coloring” that section with a brighter, more strategic color.

As I said in the introductory paragraph, your literature review will naturally lead to the overall purpose and objectives of your research. You’re doing qualitative research, so there will not be a hypothesis yet a reviewer out there might be looking for that. Unfortunately, my early experience as a PhD Student taught me that uncomfortable lesson (as I mentioned in the previous blog post). Because of that, I try to make my overall purpose and objectives/research questions visually obvious. As such, I commonly use subheadings and numbered bullets that try to convey the message “This is important. And I didn’t forget a hypothesis!” One of the things that I learned in that uncomfortable lesson was that I could format paragraphs in a way that would offer my reader the sense of “breathing room” they might need. That meant an extra space between sections (if possible), bold words where it mattered and headings and subheadings. 

Last but not least, I did say earlier on that I’ve struggled with writing literature reviews. I think part of my struggle comes from reading something and writing about it without coming too close to the original source (and risking being too similar; a euphemism for plagiarism) while keeping my thoughts truthful to the source. One strategy I’ve used to curb this problem is breaking my reading and writing time up. I usually read a certain number of papers about an area of my map (going back to Dr. Lingard’s analogy), make extensive notes, and then summarize and reorganize them before my writing time. 

This post has a lot of information so let’s recap some key things we discussed today:

Use your literature review to map the gap effectively by including both known and unknown facts/areas in your literature.

Create a storyline that pulls the reader to the “blank” area your research intends to fill. In other words, help them to easily understand why they should care about your proposed project.

Include (or don’t include) quantitative studies in your literature review by understanding your own field of work.

If you have a theoretical underpinning or framework that is shaping your qualitative research, consider emphasizing it.

Be strategic in your formatting, especially when presenting your purpose, research questions, and/or objectives.

Try to learn what works best for you when it comes to balancing reading the literature and writing about it.

You CAN write an effective qualitative research proposal and we are here, rooting for your success!

Maira Quintanilha

Literature Reviews

• Introduction
• Literature Review Steps
• Researching Your Topic
• Organizing the Lit. Review
• Tips for writing the literature review
• Literature Review Sources
• Staying Current
• Library Liasions This link opens in a new window

Assistant Director of Library Services

A literature review serves several purposes. For example, it

• provides thorough knowledge of previous studies; introduces seminal works.
• helps focus one’s own research topic.
• identifies a conceptual framework for one’s own research questions or problems; indicates potential directions for future research.
• suggests previously unused or underused methodologies, designs, quantitative and qualitative strategies.
• identifies gaps in previous studies; identifies flawed methodologies and/or theoretical approaches; avoids replication of mistakes.
• helps the researcher avoid repetition of earlier research.
• suggests unexplored populations.
• determines whether past studies agree or disagree; identifies controversy in the literature.
• tests assumptions; may help counter preconceived ideas and remove unconscious bias
• What is a Literature Review & Searching the Literature
• Synthesizing the Literature
• 10-Step Guide to Making Your Literature Review Write Itself By Elizabeth Hicks, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
• Approaching literature review for academic purposes: The Literature Review Checklist
• Carry out a literature search
• How to conduct an effective literature search
• Writing an effective literature review : Part II: Citation technique.
• Writing an effective literature review Part I: Mapping the gap
• Writing narrative literature reviews for peer-reviewed journals: secrets of the trade
• The Four-Part Literature Review Process: Breaking It Down for Students
• Next: Literature Review Steps >>
• Last Updated: Jun 26, 2023 3:40 PM
• URL: https://goodwin.libguides.com/literaturereview

FLEX (MEDD 419, MEDD 429, MEDD 449)

Introduction.

• Planning for Original Research
• Finding Literature
• Evaluating Literature

Types of Reviews

Review outline, the process, writing the review, additional resources.

• Reference Management & Style Guides
• Disseminating Your Work
• Connecting to Library Resources

Literature reviews explore the extent of research conducted on a given subject, synthesizing findings, and identifying trends and gaps in the research. They are an essential component of any research inquiry and fundamental to Evidence-Based Practice.

Reviews span in scope from narrative to scoping to systematic and many in between, with no standardized definitions. At the two polar ends of the spectrum, we have:

• Narrative reviews: Loosely defined or undefined searching methodology, lacking criticism and/or synthesis.
• Systematic reviews: Explicit search methodology, inclusion criteria and critical evaluation and summation.

To read more about types of literature reviews, check out Literature Reviews Explained  or the classic article  A typology of reviews: an analysis of 14 review types and associated methodologies .

Know what your project requires

Your FLEX project will determine where on the spectrum your review lies. Demonstrating an awareness of key issues before joining a project may require a narrative review. Participating in a meta-analysis may require a systematic review. The former may be done individually in a short amount of time. The latter will be collaborative and may span the better part of year.

In either case, a review is not a commentary or opinion piece based on a select set of references supporting a given argument. It is an attempt to objectively draw conclusions from the literature reviewed.

Be systematic

No matter the nature of your review, be clear in you intentions and systematic in your approach. Establishing author motivation and detailing one’s methodology lends both transparency and rigour to the review and reviewer.

Have an introduction and methodology section that outlines the 'why' and 'how': why the review is needed; where you searched; how you searched; and what your selection criteria was.

The skeletal framework of a review includes the title, introduction, methods, discussion, and conclusion.

Indicate in the title that the work is a review.

Concisely outline the need for or purpose of the review. Answer why the review is being undertaken.

Methodology

Indicate where you searched and what concepts or terms you searched for. Define your inclusion/exclusion criteria. Ask yourself, 'will this outline allow the reader to replicate my search?' The answer should be 'Yes'. If the review is more narrative, this 'Yes' will have qualifiers.

Put the literature in conversation along identified themes as defined by the original research question. Evaluate research on an individual level and a collective level. Note limitations of studies. Identify where in the review process there is potential for bias; this should be documented as part of the full review process.

How do the themes in the discussion relate to the purpose established in the introduction? Where does the research converge, where is there discord, where are there gaps - what are the implications for practice, further research or policy? What you sum up will depend on your original question and the scope of the review.

Clearly articulate your question

If clinical, your question should be very concise. If exploratory, your terminology may be more vague. In either case, your question should be simple in structure and direct. Articulating a clear question generally means doing a preliminary search of the literature alongside discussion either with your advisor or librarian. Check out this tutorial for using PICO to help with this.

Identify the type of research that will best answer your question

This is your inclusions/exclusion criteria. If clinical, ask what sorts of studies provide the best evidence for your inquiry. If exploratory, think about intellectual paradigm or author motivation. For all review types, consider aspects of publication type, language, geography, and date.

Conduct your research

Identify where to look and the concepts/terms that best match your inquiry.

Gather your research

Use a citation manager to collate your findings, track notes and commentary, and help you generate in text citations and a bibliography.

Read and annotate

Develop a system for tracking themes. This may be through your citation management software, paper index cards, an excel sheet or a word document, whichever works best for you. Record a summary of each work, and critically evaluate the ideas, methods and results. Use a tool and terminology that will allow you to group themes together.

One popular tool is the Matrix Method, a table with headers to group identified themes.

See: Health sciences literature review made easy: the matrix method, by Judith Garrard.

Write your review

Put pen to paper.

The structure of a review greatly impacts the information it conveys. They can be arranged chronologically or thematically. In general, a chronological approach should be avoided as the intention of a review is to engage the findings in the research with a critical evaluation in such a way that merges congruent ideas, polarizes incongruent ideas, and highlights gaps.

Use clear and concise language.

Need help? In addition to contacting your librarian, each campus offers writing services through online resources, tutorials and mentoring.

• UNBC Writing Support
• UVic Centre for Academic Communication
• UBC Vancouver Learning Commons
• UBC Okanagan Centre for Scholarly Communication

Online guides to conducting systematic reviews

• Knowledge Synthesis: Systematic, Scoping & Other Reviews  - this guide from UBC Library contains detailed information on every step of the process
• Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions

Books and articles on writing reviews in the health sciences

Parker R, Sikora L. Literature Reviews: Key Considerations and Tips From Knowledge Synthesis Librarians .  Journal of graduate medical education . 2022;14:32-35.

Purssell, Edward, et al.  How to Perform a Systematic Literature Review: A Guide for Healthcare Researchers, Practitioners and Students .   Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2020.

Green BN, Johnson CD, Adams A. Writing narrative literature reviews for peer-reviewed journals: secrets of the trade . Journal of Chiropractic Medicine. 2006;5(3):101–17.

Grant MJ, Booth A. A typology of reviews: an analysis of 14 review types and associated methodologies . Health Information & Libraries Journal. 2009 Jun;26(2):91–108.

Choi AR, Cheng DL, Greenberg PB. Twelve tips for medical students to conduct a systematic review .  Medical teacher . 2019;41:471-475.

Gordon M, Grafton-Clarke C, Hill E, Gurbutt D, Patricio M, Daniel M. Twelve tips for undertaking a focused systematic review in medical education .  Medical teacher . 2019;41:1232-1238.

Ferrari R. Writing narrative style literature reviews.   Medical writing (Leeds) . 2015;24:230-235.

Lingard L. Writing an effective literature review: Part I: Mapping the gap .  Perspectives on medical education . 2018;7:47-49.

Lingard L. Writing an effective literature review: Part II: Citation technique .  Perspectives on medical education . 2018;7:133-135.

Lingard L. Joining a conversation: the problem/gap/hook heuristic .  Perspectives on medical education . 2015;4:252-253.

Munn Z, Pollock D, Khalil H, et al. What are scoping reviews? Providing a formal definition of scoping reviews as a type of evidence synthesis .  JBI evidence synthesis . 2022.

• << Previous: Evaluating Literature
• Next: Reference Management & Style Guides >>
• Last Updated: Mar 11, 2024 2:26 PM
• URL: https://guides.library.ubc.ca/flex

The story behind the synthesis: writing an effective introduction to your scoping review

• The Writer’s Craft
• Open access
• Published: 12 August 2022
• Volume 11 , pages 289–294, ( 2022 )

Cite this article

You have full access to this open access article

• Lorelei Lingard   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4150-3355 1 &
• Heather Colquhoun 2  

7746 Accesses

27 Altmetric

Explore all metrics

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

In the Writer’s Craft section we offer simple tips to improve your writing in one of three areas: Energy, Clarity and Persuasiveness. Each entry focuses on a key writing feature or strategy, illustrates how it commonly goes wrong, teaches the grammatical underpinnings necessary to understand it and offers suggestions to wield it effectively. We encourage readers to share comments on or suggestions for this section on Twitter, using the hashtag: #how’syourwriting?

In a recent writing workshop, a participant was applying the “mapping the gap” heuristic in the introduction of his paper. Mapping the gap is a strategy for writing a succinct, compelling literature review in a paper’s Introduction: the writer briefly and selectively summarizes what’s known in order to outline the white space—the gap—that the research fills [ 1 ]. But this writer had done a scoping review, and he was struggling to make the heuristic fit. “ How do I summarize what is already known, ” he said, “ without giving away what my scoping review found? The gap is one of my results, isn’t it ?”

Good question. And for anyone writing or giving feedback on scoping reviews, a rather pressing one. This form of knowledge synthesis is proliferating in health research generally and health professions education (HPE) research specifically, and a recent review suggests that published scoping review manuscripts in HPE often lack a strong introductory rationale for the work [ 2 ]. This may be in part because guidance for writers regarding this section of a scoping review is sorely lacking. The problem isn’t a lack of frameworks or guidelines for conducting and reporting scoping reviews: these are available in abundance, with ongoing updates and refinements [ 3 , 4 ]. But in all cases the emphasis is predominantly on methods: the idea of the scoping review as a story to be told is missing.

Two main sources of scoping review guidance illustrate this point. The Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) guidelines for designing scoping reviews [ 4 ] give more attention to title than introduction: the advice is mainly that the latter “should be comprehensive and should cover the main elements of the topic, important definitions, and the existing knowledge in the field” (11.3.4). The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) checklist [ 5 ] focuses significantly more attention on Methods and Results than on Introductory framing. Writers find only two items to guide them: we are to “describe the rationale for the review in the context of what is already known… and explain why the review questions/objectives lend themselves to a scoping review approach”; and we should provide “an explicit statement of the questions and objectives being addressed with reference to their key elements (e.g., population or participants, concepts, and context)” ( p  469). However, as my workshop participant pointed out, the devil is in the details. Where’s the line between describing a rationale in “context of what is already known” and giving away your results, or even negating the value of doing a scoping review in the first place? How much, and which, literature needs to be introduced to establish the “key elements… population or participants, concepts, and context” for the review questions and objectives? In a nutshell, how does the author set up the story of a scoping review? To date, the scoping review guidance literature privileges study—and ignores story. But every good manuscript needs both.

In this Writer’s Craft, we offer writers advice for crafting a clear, compelling story in the Introduction of their scoping review paper. This advice is relevant for any scoping review, thus our illustrations come from a variety of fields.

Articulate the problem/gap/hook

Scoping reviews are a synthesis of knowledge. Therefore, the introduction’s main purpose is to offer an argument for why we need a synthesis of the knowledge on a particular concept. The Problem-Gap-Hook heuristic [ 6 ] can help efficiently lay out this argument.

Let’s begin with the Gap, as it is the same for every scoping review: the lack of synthesis of existing literature. This should be signaled clearly with language such as “Amid such debates, the scholarly community lacks a large-scale, systematic overview of the [arts & humanities] literature” [ 7 ] ( p  1213) or “there is little evidence on how the Bangladeshi community gain access to diabetes-related information and services” [ 8 ] ( p  157), or “one area of medical education research that has not yet been systematically examined is family medicine” [ 9 ]( p  1). It is possible to leave the Gap unstated; readers will be able to infer it as it is similar across scoping reviews. However, making it explicit offers the opportunity to characterize it precisely as Maggio et al. [ 2 ] do in their scoping review of HPE scoping reviews ( p  690):

the extant research on scoping reviews provides limited information about their nature, including how they are conducted, if they are funded, or why medical educators decide to undertake this type of knowledge synthesis in the first place. This lack of direct insight makes it difficult to know where the field stands and may hamper attempts to take evidence-informed steps to improve the conduct, reporting and utility of scoping reviews in medical education.

Explicitly naming and characterizing the gap is particularly important in a scoping review of scoping reviews, to convince the reader that, amid a sea of reviews, we need another. As scoping reviews proliferate, so too will scoping reviews of scoping reviews, making a strongly characterized gap an essential ingredient of these stories.

While the Gap for a scoping review is invariably some lack of synthesis, this in itself does not justify doing a scoping review. Lots of literature remains unsynthesized; why does it matter in this case? Writers must articulate the Problem that arises because of the lack of synthesis. It is not sufficient to say, for instance, that “Hundreds of knowledge translation (KT) theories exist across a broad range of paradigms including organizational theory, learning theory, and social cognitive theory, but they have yet to be synthesized”. You must make explicit the problem created by an abundance of unsynthesized theoretical KT literature: something like, “Scholars struggle to use KT theory effectively, faced with hundreds of possibilities and no synthesis to guide them”. Look at published scoping reviews to see how other authors express the problem: it might be that the field lacks conceptual consensus, or practices are inconsistent, or controversies remain unresolved, or understanding is inhibited by implicit blind spots, or research is proceeding without programmatic direction. For example, Van Schalkwyk et al. [ 10 ] conducted their scoping review of transformative learning as pedagogy because they realized that “understanding of the construct differed amongst us and lacked a clear theoretically grounded comprehension” ( p  538); Sebok-Syer et al. [ 11 ] argued that a scoping review was needed around measuring interdependence because “variability in both terminology and approaches among researchers may contribute to assessment challenges” ( p  1124); and Young et al. [ 12 ] declared that, although it has been much studied, “little consensus exists regarding the definition of clinical reasoning” ( p  2). Reading critically can help expand your repertoire of phrases for this key part of your Introduction.

The Hook is the ‘so what’ of your scoping review—the statement of why it matters to solve the Problem you’ve identified. The Hook can be expressed either in terms of possibility (e.g., “With a synthesis, we will be able to …”) or caution (e.g., “Without a synthesis, we risk …”). A good scoping review Hook focuses on what the results of the review will be used for, and writers should aim for specific examples of value. Saying that your review will “be useful to a broad audience of educators” is too vague. Be more precise and persuasive. Howell et al. [ 13 ] express “ an urgent need for a guiding taxonomy of core PRO domains and dimensions in cancer” ( p  77); Gottlieb et al. [ 14 ] argue that “ Given the profound impact of burnout on medicine, understanding imposter syndrome within the context of physicians and physicians in training is critical ”( p  117); Maggio et al. [ 2 ] set out to “ identify areas for improvement in the conduct and reporting of scoping reviews in medical education, thereby helping to ensure that those produced are relevant to and practical” ( p  690); and Young et al. [ 12 ] assert that “a careful mapping of the concept of clinical reasoning across professions is necessary to support both profession-specific and interprofessional learning, assessment, and research” ( p  2). A negative hook, with its articulation of problems or negative impacts associated with not having synthesized the literature, may be particularly effective. If we convert Young et al.’s hook to negative, we get something like “without this careful mapping, learning, assessment and research cannot advance coherently ”. Which do you find more compelling?

Structure the story

The Problem, Gap and Hook are important, but they are only three of the sentences in your Introduction. What goes in the other sentences, and how should you organize them?

According to scoping review guidelines [ 4 , 5 ], the introductory literature review of your paper must do three things: 1) provide relevant details about the “population or participants, concepts, and context” (PCC); 2) establish that there is sufficient literature to warrant a review; and 3) acknowledge any pre-existing reviews and distinguish them from yours. Let’s walk through each of these, unpacking Young et al.’s three-paragraph scoping review introduction as a primary illustration and using additional examples to help you build your Introduction repertoire (Fig.  1 ).

An effective scoping review Introduction, from Young et al. [ 12 ]

Use the PCC framework

According to Peters et al. [ 15 ], “use of the PCC mnemonic clearly identifies the focus and context of a review” (p2122). We like to think of it as orienting the reader to the setting and main characters of your story. Young et al. establish the PCC in their first paragraph: they describe the population/participants (health professionals), the main concept (clinical reasoning), and the context (health professions education, including both policy frameworks and teaching/assessment activities). Many scoping review introductions take multiple paragraphs to establish the PCC, starting more generally and then narrowing. This inverted triangle is common in scoping review introductions: for example, O’Brien et al.’s [ 16 ] two-paragraph introduction which begins with a paragraph describing the broader context of HIV, followed by a paragraph narrowing in on the concept of rehabilitation in HIV. An inverted triangle introduction doesn’t need to be long: in three paragraphs Maggio et al.’s [ 2 ] introduction sketches the rise of scoping reviews in medical education, narrows to scoping review methods and then narrows further to methodological and reporting concerns. By contrast, Alam et al.’s [ 8 ] scoping review opens with a protracted inverted triangle which traverses concepts of diabetes, health access, and minority groups before finally coming to its focus in the 10th paragraph of the literature review: British Bangladeshi’s access to diabetes-related healthcare information and services. Particularly if your paper is a conventional length for a health research journal (3000–4000 words), this is a long wait for the appearance of the main character of your scoping review story. Aim for a 3–4 paragraph introduction, use the inverted triangle structure as an organizing logic, and choose stress positions for key sentences (like Young et al.’s problem sentence that concludes the second paragraph).

Establish that the literature can support a scoping review

There is no magic number of studies that constitutes a threshold for scoping, so the writer must convince the reader that the literature is sufficient. In their second introductory paragraph, Young et al. make this argument. The first sentence notes the “variety” of ways the concept has been discussed; the third sentence characterizes the literature as “large” with an “early” emphasis on “cognitive processes”; the fourth notes that the concept has been approached as both “process” and “outcome”, that it has been variously framed and “interpreted for multiple audiences”. Notice that the detailed content of the literature is not given away: the map is sketched only enough to show its “broad and substantive” contours and set up the problem of “little consensus … regarding the definition of clinical reasoning”. The Young et al. example establishes that there is an abundance of literature for scoping. But that’s not always the case. If you’ve scoped a limited literature, your argument must acknowledge that the literature is limited while explaining why it is still worthwhile to review. For example, O’Brien et al.’s [ 16 ] introduction acknowledges that there is only a “small amount of evidence” and that “relatively little research focuses on rehabilitation in HIV care” ( p  449). Explaining that “this field is still emerging”, they position the review as “an initial step” aimed at “understanding the research priorities” ( p  449). And, reflecting the limited literature, they also employ key informant consultation to help identify key research priorities and gaps in the field.

Acknowledge previous reviews

If yours is the first review of the concept with reference to the particular context and participants you’ve outlined, you can simply say so, as Shorey et al. [ 17 ] do with their assertion that “there are no existing reviews that have consolidated evidence from studies across all medical faculties” ( p  767). However, if the literature has already been reviewed, your effort to justify the need for your review needs a bit more attention. Young et al.’s third introductory paragraph recognizes the existence of other reviews and conceptual analyses of clinical reasoning, points out their “limited” focus on medicine, and argues for the need for a synthesis of “literature across Health Professions”. This justification is followed by a positive Hook that labels what’s distinctive about their review: “a careful mapping of the concept of clinical reasoning across professions is necessary to support both profession-specific and interprofessional learning, assessment, and research.”

How you handle previous reviews in your introduction is particularly important in scoping reviews of scoping reviews. The third paragraph of Maggio et al.’s [ 2 ] Introduction makes space for their review by pointing explicitly to “the rise” in scoping reviews in medical education, acknowledging the presence and value of “discipline-specific and cross-disciplinary scoping reviews of scoping reviews”, and arguing that existing reviews are either “several years old” or “focused solely” on one discipline ( p  690). By asserting that “the multi-disciplinary nature of medical education research” suggests “differences [that] warranted further exploration” ( p  690), they claim a unique space for their own work amid what the reader may see as a crowded synthesis landscape. Similarly, Howell et al. [ 13 ] acknowledge that “our work built on earlier studies, but unlike earlier reviews we used formal methods to gain consensus on core PRO domains and related subdimensions” ( p  77), and Chan et al. [ 18 ] recognize that “there have been some reviews about the use of social media for education” but explain that “none have sought to fully encompass the breadth of how these technologies have affected the full spectrum of education” ( p  21). As these examples show, the acknowledgement of existing reviews must be accompanied by a clear statement of what your review adds, which should be tied to the problem you’ve outlined.

Create alignment

The final ingredient of an effective introduction is alignment among the “rationale”, “research question”, and “objectives” of the review [ 3 ]. These terms are used variably in scoping reviews, reporting guidelines, and reviews of scoping reviews. For our purposes, we use “rationale” to mean why we’ve done a scoping review—what problem does it address? (This is also sometimes referred to as “purpose” in published scoping reviews.) We use “research question” to mean the specific question guiding the search, and we use “objectives” synonymously with “sub-questions” to represent specific foci of inquiry.

Let’s analyze an example where alignment is achieved. Versteeg et al. [ 19 ] briefly summarize the literature and land on this statement of the problem: “Overall, the broad range of terms associated with spaced learning, the multiple definitions and variety of applications used in HPE can hinder the operationalisation of spaced learning” ( p  206). With this problem in mind, their rationale is “to investigate how spaced learning is defined and applied across HPE contexts”, which they phrase as an overarching question: “How is spaced learning defined and applied in HPE?” ( p  206). They then articulate “specific research questions: (RQ1A) Which concepts are used to define spaced learning and associated terms? (RQ1B) To what extent do these terms show conceptual overlap? (RQ2) Which theoretical frameworks are used to frame spaced learning? (RQ3) Which spacing formats are utilised in spaced learning research?” ( p  206) This example is well-aligned: “definition and application of spaced learning” remains consistently in focus, and refinements such as “conceptual overlap” and “theoretical frameworks” are further and logical specifications of the overall focus. This example illustrates Levac et al.’s [ 3 ] advice to balance broad research questions with clearly articulated scope of the inquiry and link the rationale to the research questions.

Alignment seems straightforward when it is done well, but it can be tricky. Maggio et al. [ 2 ] noted room for improvement in the alignment between rationales and research questions in almost 65% of HPE scoping reviews. Echoing Levac et al. [ 3 ], they suspected that one reason for this misalignment is “rationales that are applicable broadly to a variety of knowledge synthesis methodologies and not necessarily specific to scoping reviews” ( p  695). One strategy for testing your own alignment is to explain why you selected scoping review methodology: as Maggio et al. suggest, tell the reader “what factors influenced [the] decision to undertake a scoping review (e.g., the nature of the literature, the intricacies of the topic, the expertise of their research team, and/or their personal needs such as a graduate student familiarising herself with a topic)” ( p  695). Another reason for misalignment is a research question that is too generic and not balanced by clearly articulated objectives that delimit the scope of the inquiry. For example, a generic question like “what is known about medical tourism” cannot support a strong search strategy: the scope needs to be tightened (e.g., medical tourism by Canadians for surgical procedures) in order to focus the work. Finally, even when you try to “balance” a broad question with focused objectives or sub-questions as Levac et al. have advised, be careful that your sub-questions still align with the rationale. If they feel more like detours than logical specifications of the overall focus, then you have a misalignment. For example, a sub-question about the ethics of medical tourism by Canadians for surgical procedures might feel misaligned if the rationale for the scoping review does not have any ethical flavour. Remember: alignment (or its lack) is judged by how well the rationale, question and sub-questions fit the overall story you’re laying out in the introduction—how coherently do they follow from your Problem, Gap and Hook?

A final note on alignment as it relates to the consultation exercise. The consultation is a unique strength of the scoping review. However, differing points of view have been expressed on its optional [ 20 ] or essential [ 3 ] nature, and it does not appear in the PRISMA-ScR [ 5 ] reporting guideline which can leave writers unsure about its role. As you frame the story for a review that included consultation, readers should see this step as aligned and necessary. For instance, you may anticipate a limited literature for scoping and thus seek insights from stakeholder consultation as primary data [ 15 ]. You may have scoped an ample literature but identified missing perspectives or voices that you explored using consultation [ 7 ]. Or you may use stakeholders to contextualize review findings in order to fully address the question being asked, as in Maggio et al.’s [ 2 ] consultation with “seven stakeholders to understand if and in what ways our findings resonated with their experiences conducting scoping reviews” ( p  691). The consultation exercise will be described in your methods, but the introduction should set the reader up to expect it. For example, O’Brien et al.’s [ 16 ] rationale is to “advance policy and practice for people living with HIV” ( p  449), which aligns well with their decision to consult with people with HIV to contextualize the literature and create a patient partner-informed research agenda.

Every scoping review manuscript needs a  story to frame the study. This Writer’s Craft offers strategies for telling this story in your introduction (Tab.  1 ). Use the Problem/Gap/Hook heuristic to establish why we need a synthesis in the first place. Structure the story so that it introduces setting and main characters, establishes that there is sufficient literature for a review, and acknowledges pre-existing reviews. Align the rationale for the work, the research question and the specific sub-questions or objectives—there should be no jarring detours from the storyline. Finally, keep it short: three or four paragraphs should suffice. Your introduction doesn’t need to detail the specifics; it should just sketch the curvature. And don’t worry about ‘giving away’ your results; your introduction is the story, not the synthesis.

Lingard L. Writing an effective literature review: Part I: Mapping the gap. Perspect Med Educ. 2018;7:47–9.

Article   Google Scholar  

Maggio LA, Larsen K, Thomas A, Costello JA, Artino AR. Scoping reviews in medical education: A scoping review. Med Educ. 2021;55:689–700.

Levac D, Colquhoun H, O’Brien KK. Scoping studies: advancing the methodology. Implement Sci. 2010;5:69.

Peters MDJ, Godfrey C, McInerney P, Munn Z, Tricco AC, Khalil H. Chapter 11: Scoping reviews (2020 version). In: Aromataris E, Munn Z, editors. JBI manual for evidence synthesis. Adelaide: JBI; 2020. https://doi.org/10.46658/JBIMES-20-12 . available from https://synthesismanual.jbi.global .

Chapter   Google Scholar  

Tricco AC, Lillie E, Zarin W, et al. PRISMA extension for scoping reviews (PRISMA-ScR): checklist and explanation. Ann Intern Med. 2018;169:467–73.

Lingard L. Joining a conversation: the problem/gap/hook heuristic. Perspect Med Educ. 2015;4:252–3.

Moniz T, Golafshani M, Gaspar CM, et al. How are the arts and humanities used in medical education? Results of a scoping review. Acad Med. 2021; https://doi.org/10.1097/ACM.0000000000004118 .

Alam R, Speed S, Beaver K. A scoping review on the experiences and preferences in accessing diabetes-related healthcare information and services by British Bangladeshis. Health Soc Care Community. 2012;20:155–71.

Webster F, Krueger P, MacDonald H, et al. A scoping review of medical education research in family medicine. BMC Med Educ. 2015;15:79.

Van Schalkwyk SC, Hafler J, Brewer TF, et al. Bellagio global health education initiative. Transformative learning as pedagogy for the health professions: a scoping review. Med Educ. 2019;53:547–58.

Sebok-Syer SS, Shaw JM, Asghar F, Panza M, Syer MD, Lingard L. A scoping review of approaches for measuring ‘interdependent’ collaborative performances. Med Educ. 2021;55:1123–30.

Young ME, Thomas A, Lubarsky S, et al. Mapping clinical reasoning literature across the health professions: a scoping review. BMC Med Educ. 2020;20:107.

Howell D, Fitch M, Bakker D, et al. Core domains for a person-focused outcome measurement system in cancer (PROMS-Cancer Core) for routine care: a scoping review and Canadian Delphi Consensus. Value Health. 2013;16:76–87.

Gottlieb M, Chung A, Battaglioli N, Sebok-Syer SS, Kalantari A. Impostor syndrome among physicians and physicians in training: A scoping review. Med Educ. 2020;54:116–24.

Peters MDJ, Marnie C, Tricco AC, et al. Updated methodological guidance for the conduct of scoping reviews. JBI Evid Synth. 2020;18:2119–26.

O’Brien K, Wilkins A, Zack E, Solomon P. Scoping the field: identifying key research priorities in HIV and rehabilitation. AIDS Behav. 2010;14:448–58.

Shorey S, Lau TC, Lau ST, Ang E. Entrustable professional activities in health care education: a scoping review. Med Educ. 2019;53:766–77.

Chan TM, Dzara K, Dimeo SP, Bhalerao A, Maggio LA. Social media in knowledge translation and education for physicians and trainees: a scoping review. Perspect Med Educ. 2019;9:20–30.

Versteeg M, Hendriks RA, Thomas A, Ommering BWC, Steendijk P. Conceptualising spaced learning in health professions education: A scoping review. Med Educ. 2020;54:205–16.

Arksey H, O’Malley L. Scoping studies: towards a methodological framework. Int J Soc Res Methodol. 2005;8:19–32.

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank K. O’Brien for review and feedback on a draft of this manuscript.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Centre for Education Research & Innovation, and Department of Medicine, Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry and Faculty of Education, Western University, London, Canada

Lorelei Lingard

Department of Occupational Science & Occupational Therapy, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

Heather Colquhoun

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lorelei Lingard .

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Lingard, L., Colquhoun, H. The story behind the synthesis: writing an effective introduction to your scoping review. Perspect Med Educ 11 , 289–294 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40037-022-00719-7

Download citation

Received : 27 May 2022

Revised : 09 June 2022

Accepted : 13 June 2022

Published : 12 August 2022

Issue Date : October 2022

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s40037-022-00719-7

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research

• Advanced search
• Peer review
• Record : found
• Abstract : found
• Article : found

Writing an effective literature review : Part I: Mapping the gap

Read this article at.

• Download PDF
• Review article
• Invite someone to review

Author and article information

Contributors.

PhD, is director of the Centre for Education Research & Innovation at Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, and professor for the Department of Medicine at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada.

Affiliations

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

Custom metadata

Comment on this article.

• University of Texas Libraries
• UT Libraries

Literature Reviews

• Dell Medical School Library
• LibKey Nomad - Full Text
• What's New?
• Clinical Practice Guidelines
• Clinical Trials
• Drug Information
• Health and Medical Law
• Point-of-Care Tools
• Test Prep Resources
• Video, Audio, and Images
• Search Tips
• PubMed Guide This link opens in a new window
• Ask the Question
• Acquire the Evidence
• Appraise the Evidence
• Evidence Hierarchy
• EBM Bibliography
• Child Neurology
• Dermatology
• Emergency Medicine
• Family Medicine
• Internal Medicine
• Obstetrics & Gynecology
• Ophthalmology
• Orthopaedic Surgery
• Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation
• Mobile Apps
• Citation Managers This link opens in a new window
• Citation Manuals
• General Resources
• Study Types
• Systematic Reviews
• Scoping Reviews
• Rapid Reviews
• Integrative Reviews
• Technical Reports
• Case Reports
• Getting Published
• Selecting a Journal
• Open Access Publishing
• Avoiding Low Quality Open Access
• High Quality Open Access Journals
• Keeping Up with the Literature
• Health Statistics
• Research Funding This link opens in a new window
• Author Metrics
• Article Metrics
• Journal Metrics
• Scholarly Profile Tools
• Health Humanities This link opens in a new window
• Health Equity This link opens in a new window
• UT-Authored Articles
• Resources for DMS COVID-19 Elective
• Types of Literature Reviews
• How to Write a Literature Review
• How to Write the Introduction to a Research Article
• The Pandora's Box of Evidence Synthesis and the case for a living Evidence Synthesis Taxonomy | BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine, 2023
• Meeting the review family: exploring review types and associated information retrieval requirements | Health Information and Libraries Journal, 2019
• A typology of reviews: an analysis of 14 review types and associated methodologies | Health Information and Libraries Journal, 2009
• Conceptual recommendations for selecting the most appropriate knowledge synthesis method to answer research questions related to complex evidence | Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 2016
• Methods for knowledge synthesis: an overview | Heart & Lung: The Journal of Critical Care, 2014
• Not sure what type of review to conduct? Brief descriptions of each type plus tools to help you decide

• Ten simple rules for writing a literature review | PLoS Computational Biology, 2013
• The Purpose, Process, and Methods of Writing a Literature Review | AORN Journal. 2016
• Why, When, Who, What, How, and Where for Trainees Writing Literature Review Articles. | Annals of Biomed Engineering, 2019
• So You Want to Write a Narrative Review Article? | Journal of Cardiothoracic and Anesthesia, 2021
• An Introduction to Writing Narrative and Systematic Reviews - Tasks, Tips and Traps for Aspiring Authors | Heart, Lung, and Circulation, 2018

• The Literature Review: A Foundation for High-Quality Medical Education Research | Journal of Graduate Medical Education, 2016
• Writing an effective literature review : Part I: Mapping the gap | Perspectives on Medical Education, 2018
• Writing an effective literature review : Part II: Citation technique | Perspectives on Medical Education, 2018
• Last Updated: Apr 15, 2024 10:20 PM
• URL: https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/medicine