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LITERATURE REVIEW SOFTWARE FOR BETTER RESEARCH

“Litmaps is a game changer for finding novel literature... it has been invaluable for my productivity.... I also got my PhD student to use it and they also found it invaluable, finding several gaps they missed”

Varun Venkatesh

Austin Health, Australia

As a full-time researcher, Litmaps has become an indispensable tool in my arsenal. The Seed Maps and Discover features of Litmaps have transformed my literature review process, streamlining the identification of key citations while revealing previously overlooked relevant literature, ensuring no crucial connection goes unnoticed. A true game-changer indeed!

Ritwik Pandey

Doctoral Research Scholar – Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning

Using Litmaps for my research papers has significantly improved my workflow. Typically, I start with a single paper related to my topic. Whenever I find an interesting work, I add it to my search. From there, I can quickly cover my entire Related Work section.

David Fischer

Research Associate – University of Applied Sciences Kempten

“It's nice to get a quick overview of related literature. Really easy to use, and it helps getting on top of the often complicated structures of referencing”

Christoph Ludwig

Technische Universität Dresden, Germany

“This has helped me so much in researching the literature. Currently, I am beginning to investigate new fields and this has helped me hugely”

Aran Warren

Canterbury University, NZ

“I can’t live without you anymore! I also recommend you to my students.”

Professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong

“Seeing my literature list as a network enhances my thinking process!”

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

“Incredibly useful tool to get to know more literature, and to gain insight in existing research”

KU Leuven, Belgium

“As a student just venturing into the world of lit reviews, this is a tool that is outstanding and helping me find deeper results for my work.”

Franklin Jeffers

South Oregon University, USA

“Any researcher could use it! The paper recommendations are great for anyone and everyone”

Swansea University, Wales

“This tool really helped me to create good bibtex references for my research papers”

Ali Mohammed-Djafari

Director of Research at LSS-CNRS, France

“Litmaps is extremely helpful with my research. It helps me organize each one of my projects and see how they relate to each other, as well as to keep up to date on publications done in my field”

Daniel Fuller

Clarkson University, USA

As a person who is an early researcher and identifies as dyslexic, I can say that having research articles laid out in the date vs cite graph format is much more approachable than looking at a standard database interface. I feel that the maps Litmaps offers lower the barrier of entry for researchers by giving them the connections between articles spaced out visually. This helps me orientate where a paper is in the history of a field. Thus, new researchers can look at one of Litmap's "seed maps" and have the same information as hours of digging through a database.

Baylor Fain

Postdoctoral Associate – University of Florida

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Literature Review Generator

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Our Literature Review Generator is an AI-powered tool that streamlines and simplifies the creation of literature reviews by automatically collecting, analyzing, summarizing, and synthesizing all the relevant academic sources on a specific topic within the parameters you define.  It saves you additional time by highlighting themes, trends, and gaps in existing literature, giving you a head start on getting to the finish line.

How to Use Literature Review Generator

1.  Input Your Topic: Start by entering your clearly worded, specific topic or research question into the tool’s engine.  This tells the AI exactly what it needs to look for when processing the databases to which it has access.

2.  Set Parameters: Customize your search and tailor it to your needs by further specifying parameters such as date range, publication type, and academic disciplines so that every academic article gathered is suitable to the review you want to write.

3.  Review and Refine: Once the initial results are generated, review the summary and synthesis.  If the results are just what you wanted, you’re good to go.  If, however, you feel it could be tightened up a bit or expanded, try refining your search criteria based on the preliminary findings.  Consider narrowing down or expanding the scope of the literature reviewed—for example, by including research from other fields and disciplines, adjusting the data range, or including or removing certain keywords from your directions.

4.  Export Summary: After finalizing the search parameters and reviewing the output, simply export the organized summary. This summary will include all the main themes, identifiable research gaps, trends, and highlights important to any review.  You can use it as a foundation or a guide for writing your own detailed literature review.

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Introduction

Writing a literature review can feel like scaling a mountain of research papers.  You’re all alone at the base of an enormous pile of academic articles.  The horizon looks ominous, and you’re running out of time.  Before your face is a ton of information that you still need to synthesize. 

Ever been there?  We have, and we know the feeling.  That’s why we introduced our literature review generators as AI-powered tools that revolutionize this crucial research phase.  Need an “automate literature review” option in your life?  Presto!  We’ve got it for you.

This guide will explain how literature review generators work, their benefits, and how you can choose the right one for your needs.  Whether you’re in a time crunch or struggling to bring all the research together, our literature review generator can save the day.

What is a Literature Review Generator?

We know what you’re thinking.  A lit review generator?  There’s no way that can work!

What we say:  don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.

Simple Definition

A literature review generator is a simple AI-driven tool that can help students and researchers by identifying, analyzing, summarizing, and synthesizing scholarly literature in any field or discipline.

How It Works

Data collection.

First, our literature review AI tool scans online databases, journals, and academic repositories to find the precise articles related to the topic as you (the user) define or describe it.  The generator is able to use natural language processing (NLP) techniques to understand the content and context of documents so that only the most relevant materials that fall within the parameters the user selects are extracted.

Once the data is collected, the generator looks at key themes, common and disparate methodologies, findings, and trends within the literature selected.  Machine learning algorithms allow it to group texts based on similarity, patterns, and important information.

Summarization

The tool then summarizes the collected literature by giving a concise description of each work.  It pinpoints key findings, and notes areas of agreement or disagreement among researchers. It organizes this information so that it is easy to understand for the average user.

The benefits of our literature review generator are that it dramatically reduces your research time.  It quickly picks out the important themes and trends in the literature that would otherwise require extensive toil on your part.  It easily highlights research gaps.  And, best of all, it gives you an organized foundation for your own review.

Why Use a Literature Review Generator?

This is the perfect tool for researchers working under tight deadlines. When time is of the essence, you need a tool that knows how to move swiftly and efficiently. That’s exactly what our literature review generator offers. It automates the laborious process of collecting and analyzing scholarly articles, saving precious time without compromising the quality of your review.

Thorough Exploration

AI can analyze vast amounts of literature faster than manual review, highlighting connections you might miss. This tool does not just superficially scan documents; it delves deep to unearth patterns, trends, and critical insights that might take a human reader significantly longer to identify. This comprehensive exploration ensures that your review is well-rounded and informed by a wide array of sources.

Structure and Focus

Generators can help frame your review based on identified themes, improving clarity. By organizing the literature around key themes and trends, the generator makes it easier to structure your review logically. This not only aids in writing a coherent document but also helps in highlighting the areas of consensus and debate within the literature, sharpening the focus of your research.

Academic Development

Our generator is also a valuable learning tool that will help you understand how literature reviews are composed. Beyond just providing a shortcut to a completed review, it offers insights into the mechanics of academic writing and research. By observing how the tool organizes and synthesizes information, researchers can enhance their own skills in literature review composition, critical analysis, and academic writing, making it an invaluable asset for academic growth and development.

Choosing the Right Literature Review Generator

Key factors.

A literature review generator should be easy to use, reliable and accurate in its results, and customizable.  It should also have the scope to cover your specific field.  In addition to all this, it should have features like citation formatting to save you any extra leg work down the road.

What Makes Our Generator So Powerful

Our AI-driven generator uses the latest developments in machine learning to sift through reams of data at the click of a button.  It has been designed with end user experience in mind:  it understands the syntax and jargon of academic writing, which is another huge plus, and it can condense and adapt that information into an easy-to-understand output suited to your precise needs.

Getting the Most Out of Our Literature Review Generator

Step-by-step walk-through.

Our generator is simple to use.  Type in a description of your subject.  Pose your research question, or simply list the keywords that are most relevant.  You can then define the parameters of your search to include only journal articles published within the last 3, 5, or 10 years—or however far back you want to go.

For example, if I need a literature review on the pros and cons of telehealth during COVID, I would simply write that exactly into designated box.  I might then specify “American studies only” or “articles published in health journals only” to further limit the search.  I then may type that I want five articles published within the last five years reviewed.  Tap send and let it get to work.

It is usually the case that the more specific you are the better your results.  However, if it seems that the returns just aren’t good enough, consider broadening your search terms so that the generator is freer to explore. 

Another thing to remember is that when interpreting generated outputs you should keep in mind that the generator might mimic the technical language of the publication it reviews.  If you want to integrate the outputs into a cohesive review, revise them into your own words so that it makes sense to you.

Literature Review Generators:  Tool, Not Replacement

Our AI-driven generator is an invaluable aid, but remember that nothing can replace the analysis and synthesis of real researchers when they write their own review.  Our generators can steer you in the right direction, but ultimately you are responsible for getting your ship to port.  We can show you how it’s done, but in the end this is your work to complete and make perfect.

The value in using a literature review generator is that with NLP it can read reams of data faster than you could get through a single Abstract.  All you have to do is go through it and revise so that this remains your work.

Don’t delay!  We invite you to try our tool now:  click the link/button above to get started.

Remember, our tool is here to help ease your workload.  We know that writing literature reviews from scratch takes time and energy that few people actually have.  With our tech, we can get you over the biggest hurdles so that the finish line becomes clear and reachable.  No more panic—no more worry!

AI Literature Review Generator

Generate high-quality literature reviews fast with ai.

• Academic Research: Create a literature review for your thesis, dissertation, or research paper.
• Professional Research: Conduct a literature review for a project, report, or proposal at work.
• Content Creation: Write a literature review for a blog post, article, or book.
• Personal Research: Conduct a literature review to deepen your understanding of a topic of interest.

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A Reading Space to Ideate, Create Knowledge, and Collaborate on Your Research

• Smartly organize your research
• Receive recommendations that cannot be ignored
• Collaborate with your team to read, discuss, and share knowledge

From Surface-Level Exploration to Critical Reading - All in one Place!

Fine-tune your literature search.

Our AI-powered reading assistant saves time spent on the exploration of relevant resources and allows you to focus more on reading.

Select phrases or specific sections and explore more research papers related to the core aspects of your selections. Pin the useful ones for future references.

Our platform brings you the latest research related to your and project work.

Speed up your literature review

Quickly generate a summary of key sections of any paper with our summarizer.

Make informed decisions about which papers are relevant, and where to invest your time in further reading.

Get key insights from the paper, quickly comprehend the paper’s unique approach, and recall the key points.

Bring order to your research projects

Organize your reading lists into different projects and maintain the context of your research.

Quickly sort items into collections and tag or filter them according to keywords and color codes.

Experience the power of sharing by finding all the shared literature at one place.

Decode papers effortlessly for faster comprehension

Highlight what is important so that you can retrieve it faster next time.

Select any text in the paper and ask Copilot to explain it to help you get a deeper understanding.

Ask questions and follow-ups from AI-powered Copilot.

Collaborate to read with your team, professors, or students

Share and discuss literature and drafts with your study group, colleagues, experts, and advisors. Recommend valuable resources and help each other for better understanding.

Work in shared projects efficiently and improve visibility within your study group or lab members.

Keep track of your team's progress by being constantly connected and engaging in active knowledge transfer by requesting full access to relevant papers and drafts.

Find papers from across the world's largest repositories

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Everything you add or create on Enago Read is private by default. It is visible if and when you share it with other users.

You can put Creative Commons license on original drafts to protect your IP. For shared files, Enago Read always maintains a copy in case of deletion by collaborators or revoked access.

We use state-of-the-art security protocols and algorithms including MD5 Encryption, SSL, and HTTPS to secure your data.

🤖 AI Literature Review Generator

Unleash the power of AI with our Literature Review Generator. Effortlessly access comprehensive and meticulously curated literature reviews to elevate your research like never before!

The landscape of knowledge is vast, diverse, and ever-changing. Navigating it can seem daunting yet exciting, like reading a suspense-filled novel. Welcome to the world of a literature review, a fundamental tool that manages complexity, uncovers answers, and expands understanding in any research venture. A literature review generator simplifies this process and makes it more accessible.

Explore the review of existing literature, moving from the general to the specific, the known to the unknown. A literature review bridges the gap between raw data and informed conclusions. It defines research objectives, highlights key themes of the content, identifies gaps, and outlines future study areas.

What is a Literature Review?

A literature review is a comprehensive analysis and evaluation of scholarly articles, books, and other sources concerning a particular field of study or a research question. This process involves discussing the state of the art of an area of research and identifying pivotal works and researchers in the domain.

The primary purpose of a literature review is to provide a comprehensive overview of the knowledge that already exists on your chosen subject.

This type of review usually serves as the starting point for many forms of academic research and forms a vital part of dissertations, thesis, research articles, and other documents. Its significance lies in its ability to concentrate the existing knowledge on a subject and reveal gaps that need further research.

A well-crafted literature review also clarifies the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates, and establishes a framework for interpreting the findings of your study in the context of what is already known.

Why Use a Literature Review Generator?

Universities and academic institutions require students to develop literature reviews — these targeted examinations of other studies related to your current research provide a robust foundation for your work.

While these are satisfactory to develop your academic writing skills, they can be time-consuming and challenging due to the extensive research involved. With the contemporary integration of technological tools into our daily lives, literature review generators have become a lifeline for many students.

Now, let’s take a closer look at why you should embrace these generators in the literature review process, and explore the benefits that they pose.

• Ease of Information Gathering : Comprehensive studies require extensive reading and diligent research, which often takes hours to complete. Literature review generators automate the information-gathering process, retrieving relevant articles, journals, and related publications in a matter of seconds. This ensures a momentous saving of time and relieves the user from the tedious job of slogging through numerous resources.
• Coherent and Well-Structured Reviews : Structuring the review in a logical and coherent manner can be a difficult task. These intelligent tools present well-structured reviews, offering well-organized input which can guide you in writing your own well-formulated literature review.
• Finds Good Matches : A literature review generator is designed to find the most relevant literature content according to your research topic. The expertise of these software tools allows users to ease the process of finding relevant scholarly articles and other documents, making it more accurate and faster than doing it manually.
• Reduces Errors and Improves Quality : Humans are prone to making mistakes, especially when tasked with analyzing extensive volumes of data. Literature review generators minimize errors by ensuring access to the most accurate data and providing proper citations hence enhancing the quality of the review.
• Pedagogical Benefits : Using a Literature review generator does not only provide a quick fix for students but it also serves as a tool for learning. It allows the users to understand how professional literature reviews should be structured and can guide them in crafting their work.

How To Use This AI Generator:

• Click “Use Generator” to create a project instantly in your workspace.
• Click “Save Generator” to create a reusable template for you and your team.
• Customize your project , make it your own, and get work done!

10 Best Literature Review Tools for Researchers

Boost your research game with these Best Literature Review Tools for Researchers! Uncover hidden gems, organize your findings, and ace your next research paper!

Researchers struggle to identify key sources, extract relevant information, and maintain accuracy while manually conducting literature reviews. This leads to inefficiency, errors, and difficulty in identifying gaps or trends in existing literature.

Table of Contents

Top 10 Literature Review Tools for Researchers: In A Nutshell (2023)

#1. Semantic Scholar – A free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature

Semantic Scholar is a cutting-edge literature review tool that researchers rely on for its comprehensive access to academic publications. With its advanced AI algorithms and extensive database, it simplifies the discovery of relevant research papers. 

Not all scholarly content may be indexed, and occasional false positives or inaccurate associations can occur. Furthermore, the tool primarily focuses on computer science and related fields, potentially limiting coverage in other disciplines. 

#2. Elicit – Research assistant using language models like GPT-3

However, users should be cautious when using Elicit. It is important to verify the credibility and accuracy of the sources found through the tool, as the database encompasses a wide range of publications. 

#3. Scite.Ai – Your personal research assistant

However, while Scite.Ai offers numerous advantages, there are a few aspects to be cautious about. As with any data-driven tool, occasional errors or inaccuracies may arise, necessitating researchers to cross-reference and verify results with other reputable sources. 

Rayyan offers the following paid plans:

#4. DistillerSR – Literature Review Software

Despite occasional technical glitches reported by some users, the developers actively address these issues through updates and improvements, ensuring a better user experience. 

#5. Rayyan – AI Powered Tool for Systematic Literature Reviews

However, it’s important to be aware of a few aspects. The free version of Rayyan has limitations, and upgrading to a premium subscription may be necessary for additional functionalities. 

#6. Consensus – Use AI to find you answers in scientific research

With Consensus, researchers can save significant time by efficiently organizing and accessing relevant research material.People consider Consensus for several reasons. 

Consensus offers both free and paid plans:

#7. RAx – AI-powered reading assistant

#8. lateral – advance your research with ai.

Additionally, researchers must be mindful of potential biases introduced by the tool’s algorithms and should critically evaluate and interpret the results. 

#9. Iris AI – Introducing the researcher workspace

Researchers are drawn to this tool because it saves valuable time by automating the tedious task of literature review and provides comprehensive coverage across multiple disciplines. 

#10. Scholarcy – Summarize your literature through AI

Scholarcy’s automated summarization may not capture the nuanced interpretations or contextual information presented in the full text. 

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, conducting a comprehensive literature review is a crucial aspect of any research project, and the availability of reliable and efficient tools can greatly facilitate this process for researchers. This article has explored the top 10 literature review tools that have gained popularity among researchers.

Q1. What are literature review tools for researchers?

Q2. what criteria should researchers consider when choosing literature review tools.

When choosing literature review tools, researchers should consider factors such as the tool’s search capabilities, database coverage, user interface, collaboration features, citation management, annotation and highlighting options, integration with reference management software, and data extraction capabilities. 

Q3. Are there any literature review tools specifically designed for systematic reviews or meta-analyses?

Meta-analysis support: Some literature review tools include statistical analysis features that assist in conducting meta-analyses. These features can help calculate effect sizes, perform statistical tests, and generate forest plots or other visual representations of the meta-analytic results.

Q4. Can literature review tools help with organizing and annotating collected references?

Integration with citation managers: Some literature review tools integrate with popular citation managers like Zotero, Mendeley, or EndNote, allowing seamless transfer of references and annotations between platforms.

Literature Review Generator by AHelp

Features of Our Literature Review Generator

Advanced power of AI

Simplified information gathering

Enhanced quality

Rrl generator – your friend in academic writing.

Literature reviews can be tricky. They require your full attention and dedication, leaving no place for distractions. And with so many assignments on your hands, it must be very hard to concentrate just on this one thing.

No need to worry though. With our RRL AI Generator creating any type of paper that requires scrupulous literature will be as easy as it gets.

How to Work With Literature Review Generator

We designed our platform in a way that wouldn’t require you to spend much time figuring out how to work with it. What you have to do is just specify your topic, the subject of your literature review, and any further instructions on the style, formatting, and structure. After that you enter the number of pages you need to be written and, if there’s a requirement for that, formatting style. Wait for around 2 minutes and that’s all – our AI will give you the paper crafted according to your specifications.

What Makes AI Literature Review Generator Special

You are probably wondering how our AI bot is better than basically any other AI-powered solution you can find online. Well, we won’t say that our tool is a magical service that can do everything better. To be fair, as any AI it is not yet ideal. Still, our platform is more tailored to academic writing than most of the other bots. With its help, you can not just simply produce text, but also receive a paper with sources and properly organized formatting. This makes it a perfect match for those who specifically need help with tough papers, such as literature reviews, research abstracts, and analysis essays.

Why Use the Free Online Literature Review Generator 

With our Free Online Literature Review you will be able to finish your literature review assignments in just a few minutes. This will allow you to dedicate your free time to a) proofreading, and b) finishing or starting on more important tasks and projects. This tool can also help you understand the direction of your work, its structure, and possible sources you can use. In general, it is a more efficient way of doing your homework and organizing the writing process that can help you get better grades and improve your writing skills.

Free Literature Review Generator

Is there a free AI tool for literature review?

Yes, of course, some tools will help you with your literature review. One of the great solutions is the AHelp Literature Review Generator. It offers a quick and simple work process, where you can specify all the requirements for your paper, and then receive a fully completed task in just 2 minutes. It is a specially fitting service for those looking for a budget-friendly tool.

How to create a literature review?

Crafting a literature review calls for a systematic approach to examining existing scholarly work on a specific topic. Thus, start by defining a clear research question or thesis statement to guide your focus. Conduct a thorough search of relevant databases and academic journals to gather sources that address your topic. Read and analyze these sources, noting key themes, methodologies, and conclusions. Organize the literature by themes or methods, and synthesize the findings to provide a critical overview of the existing research. Your review should give context to the research within the field, noting areas of consensus, debate, and gaps in knowledge. Finally, write your literature review, integrating your analysis with your thesis statement, providing a clear and structured narrative that offers insights into the research topic.

Can I write a literature review in 5 days?

It is possible to write a literature review in 5 days, but you will need careful planning and dedication. Start by quickly defining your topic and research question. Dedicate a day to intensive research, finding and selecting relevant sources. Spend the next two days reading and summarizing these sources. On the fourth day, organize your notes and outline the review, focusing on arranging the main findings around key themes. Use the final day to write and revise your literature review, so that it is logically structured.

What are the 5 rules for writing a literature review?

When writing a literature review, you initially need to follow these essential rules: First, maintain a clear focus and structure. Your review should be organized around your thesis statement or key question, with each section logically leading to the next. Second, be critical and analytical rather than merely descriptive. Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the research, the methodologies used, and the conclusions drawn. Third, include credible and versatile sources to represent a balanced view of the topic. Fourth, synthesize the information from your sources to create a narrative that adds value to your field of study. Finally, your writing should be clear, concise, and plagiarism-free, with all the sources appropriately cited.

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• 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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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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 .  

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All-in-one Literature Review Software

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MAXQDA The All-in-one Literature Review Software

MAXQDA is the best choice for a comprehensive literature review. It works with a wide range of data types and offers powerful tools for literature review, such as reference management, qualitative, vocabulary, text analysis tools, and more.

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As your all-in-one literature review software, MAXQDA can be used to manage your entire research project. Easily import data from texts, interviews, focus groups, PDFs, web pages, spreadsheets, articles, e-books, and even social media data. Connect the reference management system of your choice with MAXQDA to easily import bibliographic data. Organize your data in groups, link relevant quotes to each other, keep track of your literature summaries, and share and compare work with your team members. Your project file stays flexible and you can expand and refine your category system as you go to suit your research.

Developed by and for researchers – since 1989

Having used several qualitative data analysis software programs, there is no doubt in my mind that MAXQDA has advantages over all the others. In addition to its remarkable analytical features for harnessing data, MAXQDA’s stellar customer service, online tutorials, and global learning community make it a user friendly and top-notch product.

Sally S. Cohen – NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing

Literature Review is Faster and Smarter with MAXQDA

Easily import your literature review data

With a literature review software like MAXQDA, you can easily import bibliographic data from reference management programs for your literature review. MAXQDA can work with all reference management programs that can export their databases in RIS-format which is a standard format for bibliographic information. Like MAXQDA, these reference managers use project files, containing all collected bibliographic information, such as author, title, links to websites, keywords, abstracts, and other information. In addition, you can easily import the corresponding full texts. Upon import, all documents will be automatically pre-coded to facilitate your literature review at a later stage.

Capture your ideas while analyzing your literature

Great ideas will often occur to you while you’re doing your literature review. Using MAXQDA as your literature review software, you can create memos to store your ideas, such as research questions and objectives, or you can use memos for paraphrasing passages into your own words. By attaching memos like post-it notes to text passages, texts, document groups, images, audio/video clips, and of course codes, you can easily retrieve them at a later stage. Particularly useful for literature reviews are free memos written during the course of work from which passages can be copied and inserted into the final text.

Find concepts important to your generated literature review

When generating a literature review you might need to analyze a large amount of text. Luckily MAXQDA as the #1 literature review software offers Text Search tools that allow you to explore your documents without reading or coding them first. Automatically search for keywords (or dictionaries of keywords), such as important concepts for your literature review, and automatically code them with just a few clicks. Document variables that were automatically created during the import of your bibliographic information can be used for searching and retrieving certain text segments. MAXQDA’s powerful Coding Query allows you to analyze the combination of activated codes in different ways.

Aggregate your literature review

When conducting a literature review you can easily get lost. But with MAXQDA as your literature review software, you will never lose track of the bigger picture. Among other tools, MAXQDA’s overview and summary tables are especially useful for aggregating your literature review results. MAXQDA offers overview tables for almost everything, codes, memos, coded segments, links, and so on. With MAXQDA literature review tools you can create compressed summaries of sources that can be effectively compared and represented, and with just one click you can easily export your overview and summary tables and integrate them into your literature review report.

Powerful and easy-to-use literature review tools

Quantitative aspects can also be relevant when conducting a literature review analysis. Using MAXQDA as your literature review software enables you to employ a vast range of procedures for the quantitative evaluation of your material. You can sort sources according to document variables, compare amounts with frequency tables and charts, and much more. Make sure you don’t miss the word frequency tools of MAXQDA’s add-on module for quantitative content analysis. Included are tools for visual text exploration, content analysis, vocabulary analysis, dictionary-based analysis, and more that facilitate the quantitative analysis of terms and their semantic contexts.

Visualize your literature review

As an all-in-one literature review software, MAXQDA offers a variety of visual tools that are tailor-made for qualitative research and literature reviews. Create stunning visualizations to analyze your material. Of course, you can export your visualizations in various formats to enrich your literature review analysis report. Work with word clouds to explore the central themes of a text and key terms that are used, create charts to easily compare the occurrences of concepts and important keywords, or make use of the graphical representation possibilities of MAXMaps, which in particular permit the creation of concept maps. Thanks to the interactive connection between your visualizations with your MAXQDA data, you’ll never lose sight of the big picture.

AI Assist: literature review software meets AI

AI Assist – your virtual research assistant – supports your literature review with various tools. AI Assist simplifies your work by automatically analyzing and summarizing elements of your research project and by generating suggestions for subcodes. No matter which AI tool you use – you can customize your results to suit your needs.

Free tutorials and guides on literature review

MAXQDA offers a variety of free learning resources for literature review, making it easy for both beginners and advanced users to learn how to use the software. From free video tutorials and webinars to step-by-step guides and sample projects, these resources provide a wealth of information to help you understand the features and functionality of MAXQDA for literature review. For beginners, the software’s user-friendly interface and comprehensive help center make it easy to get started with your data analysis, while advanced users will appreciate the detailed guides and tutorials that cover more complex features and techniques. Whether you’re just starting out or are an experienced researcher, MAXQDA’s free learning resources will help you get the most out of your literature review.

Free MAXQDA Trial for Windows and Mac

Get your maxqda license, compare the features of maxqda and maxqda analytics pro, faq: literature review software.

Literature review software is a tool designed to help researchers efficiently manage and analyze the existing body of literature relevant to their research topic. MAXQDA, a versatile qualitative data analysis tool, can be instrumental in this process.

Literature review software, like MAXQDA, typically includes features such as data import and organization, coding and categorization, advanced search capabilities, data visualization tools, and collaboration features. These features facilitate the systematic review and analysis of relevant literature.

Literature review software, including MAXQDA, can assist in qualitative data interpretation by enabling researchers to organize, code, and categorize relevant literature. This organized data can then be analyzed to identify trends, patterns, and themes, helping researchers draw meaningful insights from the literature they’ve reviewed.

Yes, literature review software like MAXQDA is suitable for researchers of all levels of experience. It offers user-friendly interfaces and extensive support resources, making it accessible to beginners while providing advanced features that cater to the needs of experienced researchers.

Getting started with literature review software, such as MAXQDA, typically involves downloading and installing the software, importing your relevant literature, and exploring the available features. Many software providers offer tutorials and documentation to help users get started quickly.

For students, MAXQDA can be an excellent literature review software choice. Its user-friendly interface, comprehensive feature set, and educational discounts make it a valuable tool for students conducting literature reviews as part of their academic research.

MAXQDA is available for both Windows and Mac users, making it a suitable choice for Mac users looking for literature review software. It offers a consistent and feature-rich experience on Mac operating systems.

When it comes to literature review software, MAXQDA is widely regarded as one of the best choices. Its robust feature set, user-friendly interface, and versatility make it a top pick for researchers conducting literature reviews.

Yes, literature reviews can be conducted without software. However, using literature review software like MAXQDA can significantly streamline and enhance the process by providing tools for efficient data management, analysis, and visualization.

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5 literature review tools to ace your research (+2 bonus tools)

Table of Contents

Your literature review is the lore behind your research paper . It comes in two forms, systematic and scoping , both serving the purpose of rounding up previously published works in your research area that led you to write and finish your own.

A literature review is vital as it provides the reader with a critical overview of the existing body of knowledge, your methodology, and an opportunity for research applications.

Some steps to follow while writing your review:

• Pick an accessible topic for your paper
• Do thorough research and gather evidence surrounding your topic
• Read and take notes diligently
• Create a rough structure for your review
• Synthesis your notes and write the first draft
• Edit and proofread your literature review

To make your workload a little lighter, there are many literature review AI tools. These tools can help you find academic articles through AI and answer questions about a research paper.  

Best literature review tools to improve research workflow

A literature review is one of the most critical yet tedious stages in composing a research paper. Many students find it an uphill task since it requires extensive reading and careful organization .

Using some of the best literature review tools listed here, you can make your life easier by overcoming some of the existing challenges in literature reviews. From collecting and classifying to analyzing and publishing research outputs, these tools help you with your literature review and improve your productivity without additional effort or expenses.

1. SciSpace

SciSpace is an AI for academic research that will help find research papers and answer questions about a research paper. You can discover, read, and understand research papers with SciSpace making it an excellent platform for literature review. Featuring a repository with over 270 million research papers, it comes with your AI research assistant called Copilot that offers explanations, summaries , and answers as you read.

Get started now:

Find academic articles through AI

SciSpace has a dedicated literature review tool that finds scientific articles when you search for a question. Based on semantic search, it shows all the research papers relevant for your subject. You can then gather quick insights for all the papers displayed in your search results like methodology, dataset, etc., and figure out all the papers relevant for your research.

Identify relevant articles faster

Abstracts are not always enough to determine whether a paper is relevant to your research question. For starters, you can ask questions to your AI research assistant, SciSpace Copilot to explore the content and better understand the article. Additionally, use the summarize feature to quickly review the methodology and results of a paper and decide if it is worth reading in detail.

Learn in your preferred language

A big barrier non-native English speakers face while conducting a literature review is that a significant portion of scientific literature is published in English. But with SciSpace Copilot, you can review, interact, and learn from research papers in any language you prefer — presently, it supports 75+ languages. The AI will answer questions about a research paper in your mother tongue.

Integrates with Zotero

Many researchers use Zotero to create a library and manage research papers. SciSpace lets you import your scientific articles directly from Zotero into your SciSpace library and use Copilot to comprehend your research papers. You can also highlight key sections, add notes to the PDF as you read, and even turn helpful explanations and answers from Copilot into notes for future review.

Understand math and complex concepts quickly

Come across complex mathematical equations or difficult concepts? Simply highlight the text or select the formula or table, and Copilot will provide an explanation or breakdown of the same in an easy-to-understand manner. You can ask follow-up questions if you need further clarification.

Discover new papers to read without leaving

Highlight phrases or sentences in your research paper to get suggestions for related papers in the field and save time on literature reviews. You can also use the 'Trace' feature to move across and discover connected papers, authors, topics, and more.

SciSpace Copilot is now available as a Chrome extension , allowing you to access its features directly while you browse scientific literature anywhere across the web.

Get citation-backed answers

When you're conducting a literature review, you want credible information with proper references.  Copilot ensures that every piece of information provided by SciSpace Copilot is backed by a direct reference, boosting transparency, accuracy, and trustworthiness.

Ask a question related to the paper you're delving into. Every response from Copilot comes with a clickable citation. This citation leads you straight to the section of the PDF from which the answer was extracted.

By seamlessly integrating answers with citations, SciSpace Copilot assures you of the authenticity and relevance of the information you receive.

2. Mendeley

Mendeley Citation Manager is a free web and desktop application. It helps simplify your citation management workflow significantly. Here are some ways you can speed up your referencing game with Mendeley.

Generate citations and bibliographies

Easily add references from your Mendeley library to your Word document, change your citation style, and create a bibliography, all without leaving your document.

Retrieve references

It allows you to access your references quickly. Search for a term, and it will return results by referencing the year, author, or source.

Add sources to your Mendeley library by dragging PDF to Mendeley Reference Manager. Mendeley will automatically remove the PDF(s) metadata and create a library entry.‌

Read and annotate documents

It helps you highlight and comment across multiple PDFs while keep them all in one place using Mendeley Notebook . Notebook pages are not tied to a reference and let you quote from many PDFs.

A big part of many literature review workflows, Zotero is a free, open-source tool for managing citations that works as a plug-in on your browser. It helps you gather the information you need, cite your sources, lets you attach PDFs, notes, and images to your citations, and create bibliographies.

Import research articles to your database

Search for research articles on a keyword, and add relevant results to your database. Then, select the articles you are most interested in, and import them into Zotero.

Add bibliography in a variety of formats

With Zotero, you don’t have to scramble for different bibliography formats. Simply use the Zotero-Word plug-in to insert in-text citations and generate a bibliography.

Share your research

You can save a paper and sync it with an online library to easily share your research for group projects. Zotero can be used to create your database and decrease the time you spend formatting citations.

Sysrev is an AI too for article review that facilitates screening, collaboration, and data extraction from academic publications, abstracts, and PDF documents using machine learning. The platform is free and supports public and Open Access projects only.

Some of the features of Sysrev include:

Group labels

Group labels can be a powerful concept for creating database tables from documents. When exported and re-imported, each group label creates a new table. To make labels for a project, go into the manage -> labels section of the project.

Group labels enable project managers to pull table information from documents. It makes it easier to communicate review results for specific articles.

Track reviewer performance

Sysrev's label counting tool provides filtering and visualization options for keeping track of the distribution of labels throughout the project's progress. Project managers can check their projects at any point to track progress and the reviewer's performance.

Tool for concordance

The Sysrev tool for concordance allows project administrators and reviewers to perform analysis on their labels. Concordance is measured by calculating the number of times users agree on the labels they have extracted.

Colandr is a free, open-source, internet-based analysis and screening software used as an AI for academic research. It was designed to ease collaboration across various stages of the systematic review procedure. The tool can be a little complex to use. So, here are the steps involved in working with Colandr.

Create a review

The first step to using Colandr is setting up an organized review project. This is helpful to librarians who are assisting researchers with systematic reviews.

The planning stage is setting the review's objectives along with research queries. Any reviewer can review the details of the planning stage. However, they can only be modified by the author for the review.

Citation screening/import

In this phase, users can upload their results from database searches. Colandr also offers an automated deduplication system.

Full-text screening

The system in Colandr will discover the combination of terms and expressions that are most useful for the reader. If an article is selected, it will be moved to the final step.

Data extraction/export

Colandr data extraction is more efficient than the manual method. It creates the form fields for data extraction during the planning stage of the review procedure. Users can decide to revisit or modify the form for data extraction after completing the initial screening.

Bonus literature review tools

SRDR+ is a web-based tool for extracting and managing systematic review or meta-analysis data. It is open and has a searchable archive of systematic reviews and their data.

7. Plot Digitizer

Plot Digitizer is an efficient tool for extracting information from graphs and images, equipped with many features that facilitate data extraction. The program comes with a free online application, which is adequate to extract data quickly.

Final thoughts

Writing a literature review is not easy. It’s a time-consuming process, which can become tiring at times. The literature review tools mentioned in this blog do an excellent job of maximizing your efforts and helping you write literature reviews much more efficiently. With them, you can breathe a sigh of relief and give more time to your research.

As you dive into your literature review, don’t forget to use SciSpace ResearchGPT to streamline the process. It facilitates your research and helps you explore key findings, summary, and other components of the paper easily.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. what is rrl in research.

RRL stands for Review of Related Literature and sometimes interchanged with ‘Literature Review.’ RRL is a body of studies relevant to the topic being researched. These studies may be in the form of journal articles, books, reports, and other similar documents. Review of related literature is used to support an argument or theory being made by the researcher, as well as to provide information on how others have approached the same topic.

2. What are few softwares and tools available for literature review?

• SciSpace Discover

• Mendeley

• Zotero

• Sysrev

• Colandr

• SRDR+

3. How to generate an online literature review?

The Scispace Discover tool, which offers an excellent repository of millions of peer-reviewed articles and resources, will help you generate or create a literature review easily. You may find relevant information by utilizing the filter option, checking its credibility, tracing related topics and articles, and citing in widely accepted formats with a single click.

4. What does it mean to synthesize literature?

To synthesize literature is to take the main points and ideas from a number of sources and present them in a new way. The goal is to create a new piece of writing that pulls together the most important elements of all the sources you read. Make recommendations based on them, and connect them to the research.

5. Should we write abstract for literature review?

Abstracts, particularly for the literature review section, are not required. However, an abstract for the research paper, on the whole, is useful for summarizing the paper and letting readers know what to expect from it. It can also be used to summarize the main points of the paper so that readers have a better understanding of the paper's content before they read it.

6. How do you evaluate the quality of a literature review?

• Whether it is clear and well-written.

• Whether Information is current and up to date.

• Does it cover all of the relevant sources on the topic.

• Does it provide enough evidence to support its conclusions.

7. Is literature review mandatory?

Yes. Literature review is a mandatory part of any research project. It is a critical step in the process that allows you to establish the scope of your research and provide a background for the rest of your work.

8. What are the sources for a literature review?

• Reports

• Theses

• Conference proceedings

• Company reports

• Some government publications

• Journals

• Books

• Newspapers

• Articles by professional associations

• Indexes

• Databases

• Catalogues

• Encyclopaedias

• Dictionaries

• Bibliographies

• Citation indexes

• Statistical data from government websites

9. What is the difference between a systematic review and a literature review?

A systematic review is a form of research that uses a rigorous method to generate knowledge from both published and unpublished data. A literature review, on the other hand, is a critical summary of an area of research within the context of what has already been published.

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Revolutionize Your Research with Jenni AI

Literature Review Generator

Welcome to Jenni AI, the ultimate tool for researchers and students. Our AI Literature Review Generator is designed to assist you in creating comprehensive, high-quality literature reviews, enhancing your academic and research endeavors. Say goodbye to writer's block and hello to seamless, efficient literature review creation.

Loved by over 1 million academics

Endorsed by Academics from Leading Institutions

Join the Community of Scholars Who Trust Jenni AI

Elevate Your Research Toolkit

Discover the Game-Changing Features of Jenni AI for Literature Reviews

Advanced AI Algorithms

Jenni AI utilizes cutting-edge AI technology to analyze and suggest relevant literature, helping you stay on top of current research trends.

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Idea Generation

Overcome writer's block with AI-generated prompts and ideas that align with your research topic, helping to expand and deepen your review.

Citation Assistance

Get help with proper citation formats to maintain academic integrity and attribute sources correctly.

Our Pledge to Academic Integrity

At Jenni AI, we are deeply committed to the principles of academic integrity. We understand the importance of honesty, transparency, and ethical conduct in the academic community. Our tool is designed not just to assist in your research, but to do so in a way that respects and upholds these fundamental values.

How it Works

Start by creating your account on Jenni AI. The sign-up process is quick and user-friendly.

Define Your Research Scope

Enter the topic of your literature review to guide Jenni AI’s focus.

Citation Guidance

Receive assistance in citing sources correctly, maintaining the academic standard.

Easy Export

Export your literature review to LaTeX, HTML, or .docx formats

Interact with AI-Powered Suggestions

Use Jenni AI’s suggestions to structure your literature review, organizing it into coherent sections.

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Frequently asked questions

What exactly does jenni ai do, is jenni ai suitable for all academic disciplines, is there a trial period or a free version available.

How does Jenni AI help with writer's block?

Can Jenni AI write my literature review for me?

How often is the literature database updated in Jenni AI?

How user-friendly is Jenni AI for those not familiar with AI tools?

Jenni AI: Standing Out From the Competition

In a sea of online proofreaders, Jenni AI stands out. Here’s how we compare to other tools on the market:

Feature Featire

COMPETITORS

Advanced AI-Powered Assistance

Uses state-of-the-art AI technology to provide relevant literature suggestions and structural guidance.

May rely on simpler algorithms, resulting in less dynamic or comprehensive support.

User-Friendly Interface

Designed for ease of use, making it accessible for users with varying levels of tech proficiency.

Interfaces can be complex or less intuitive, posing a challenge for some users.

Transparent and Flexible Pricing

Offers a free trial and clear, flexible pricing plans suitable for different needs.

Pricing structures can be opaque or inflexible, with fewer user options.

Unparalleled Customization

Offers highly personalized suggestions and adapts to your specific research needs over time.

Often provide generic suggestions that may not align closely with individual research topics.

Comprehensive Literature Access

Provides access to a vast and up-to-date range of academic literature, ensuring comprehensive research coverage.

Some may have limited access to current or diverse research materials, restricting the scope of literature reviews.

Ready to Transform Your Research Process?

Don't wait to elevate your research. Sign up for Jenni AI today and discover a smarter, more efficient way to handle your academic literature reviews.

Screen, analyse and summarise articles faster with Scholarcy

Try it for free, subscribe today.

Scholarcy is used by students around the world to read and analyse research papers in less time. Upload your articles to Scholarcy to:

• Cut your reading time in half and feel more in control
• Identify the papers that matter in less time
• Jump straight to the most important information
• Compare a collection of articles more easily

With Scholarcy Library, you can import all your papers and search results, and quickly screen them with the automatically generated ‘key takeaway’ headline.

Take the stress out of your literature review

While there are lots of tools that help you discover articles for your research, how do you analyse and synthesise the information from all of those papers?

3 easy ways to import articles

Scholarcy lets you quickly import your articles for screening and analysing.

Import papers in PDF, Word, HTML and LaTeX format

Import search results from PubMed or any service that provides results in RIS or BibTeX format

Import publisher RSS feeds

Build your literature matrix in minutes

Our Excel export feature generates a literature synthesis matrix for you, so you can

Compare papers side by side for their study sizes, key contributions, limitations, and more.

Export literature-review ready data in Excel, Word, RIS or Markdown format

Integrates with your reference manager and ‘second brain’ tools such as Roam, Notion and Obsidian

Carrying out a systematic review?

Scholarcy breaks papers down into our unique summary flashcard format.

The Study subjects and analysis tab shows you study population, intervention, outcome, and statistical analyses from the paper.

And the Excel synthesis matrix generated shows the key methods and quantitative findings of each paper, side by side.

Build a knowledge graph from your papers

If you’re a fan of the latest generation of knowledge management tools such as  Roam  or  Obsidian , you’ll love our  Markdown  export.

This creates a knowledge graph of all the papers in your library by connecting them via key terms, methods, and shared citations.

What People Are Saying

“Quick processing time, successfully summarized important points.”

“It’s really good for case study analysis, thank you for this too.”

“I love this website so much it has made my research a lot easier thanks!”

“The instant feedback I get from this tool is amazing.”

“Thank you for making my life easier.”

AI Assistance in Academia for Searching Credible Scholarly Sources

The journey of academia is a grand quest for knowledge, more specifically an adventure to find the right information through credible sources, and that’s where scholarly sources walk in. As the name suggests, it simply means that such sources are written by scholars and experts of a specialized field. These sources are in the form of journal articles, books, conference publications, or websites. Such resources undergo a stringent peer-review process by a panel of subject matter experts. Thus, the findings presented are credible and refined. In contrast, popular sources, such as newspapers, magazines, and blogs, often lack the meticulous scrutiny of peer review and may prioritize approachability over technical accuracy.

Let’s explore the key points of difference between scholarly sources and popular sources:

Table of Contents

Why Cite Scholarly Sources When Writing Your Research Paper?

Selecting scholarly sources is a strategic decision that affects your research outcome, as it builds the foundation of your academic work. It plays a crucial role for individuals at every stage of their academic journey, benefiting both early-career and established researchers. It allows scholars to actively participate in academic conversations by sharing valuable insights in their field, inspiring others in the research area to make advancements. Furthermore, for a university student, making their first stride in scholarly research, it enhances their knowledge and serves as a gateway to join the scholarly community.

Curious about the nuances of literature review in academia? Take our short quiz now to deepen your understanding of this essential academic practice.

Fill the Details to Check Your Score

Exploring Barriers in Scholarly Literature Search

Exploring today’s vast information landscape is like finding a needle in a haystack. This mirrors the challenges researchers face with the overwhelming number of scholarly articles in today’s digital age. According to the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics , scientists publish nearly 3 million publications each year. A simple query search on platforms like Google Scholar can result in an overwhelming number of articles, posing a challenge to navigate through them and gain a comprehensive overview. Furthermore, such scholarly search platforms often fail to reveal new findings in a particular field as the system tends to favor highly cited , older articles.

Modern researchers and students face further complex challenges as science becomes more specialized, introducing peculiar jargon and keywords. This coupled with the multidisciplinary nature of research, can result in overlooking valuable findings from other fields due to specific jargon and knowledgebase constraints. Other challenges include identifying and selecting relevant resources due to the diverse formats in which information is presented (journal articles, preprints, conference posters, etc.), selecting which literature to choose with precision to prevent unintended plagiarism , and software limitations in managing literature sources in different formats.

Understanding the Use of AI Research Assistance Tools for Reliable Scholarly Sources

In this world of the internet, where a single click generates thousands of search results, AI research assistance tools can guide you through this chaos to the right scholarly source. These tools automate the process of identifying reliable papers, finding and summarizing relevant sections of a research paper , analyzing it to bridge knowledge gaps, and generating potential project ideas. Listed below are the pros and cons of such tools to help you make informed decisions when incorporating these tools into your research workflow:

4 Essential Research Assistance AI Tools

Currently, there are numerous AI-based tools with a wide range of capabilities for literature review assistance , each tailored to specific requirements. It is imperative to make an informed decision based on certain evaluation parameters that sets each of these tools apart. Simplifying this choice for you, we have compared 4 most useful AI research assistance tools to understand their distinctiveness:

Here is a comprehensive analysis of 4 most useful AI research assistance tools for a thorough understanding of their capabilities:

1. Semantic Scholar

Semantic scholar is an AI-powered search engine that:

• Conducts contextual analysis of papers.
• Offers advanced citation analysis and automates the process of identifying relevant research papers from its database of over 200 million papers for literature reviews.
• Bridges knowledge gaps and prompts project ideas.

2. Enago Read

Enago Read offers several features to enhance the experience of researchers for literature exploration and research process. They include:

• Summarizes key sections of papers, allowing for quick insight into the content of a research article.
• Supports inline attachments, ensuring a seamless organization of project-related files.
• Provides AI-powered suggestions to discover related research material and stay updated with relevant news from the large data repository of 170+ million research papers.
• Promotes enhanced collaboration and structured note-taking for better team communication, accelerating the process of literature review and critical reading.
• Streamlines the management of references , contributing to a more efficient and organized research workflow.

Scite is an AI research tool that:

• Provides services to enhance the research experience, including smart citations that support, contrast, and mention relevant content
• Presents citation contexts with accompanying text excerpts, allowing for a more in-depth understanding from over 181 million papers.
• Facilitates thorough literature reviews, making it a valuable tool for researchers engaging in systematic reviews and meta-analyses

4. Connected Papers

Connected Papers aids in identifying gaps in literature reviews in the following ways:

• Provides valuable insights for your scholarly venture
• Visualizes the research landscape, helping you identify key papers and trends
• Deepens your understanding of research relationships by exploring paper interconnections

While many AI research assistant tools help in identifying and storing scholarly sources, the real challenge is in efficiently connecting them. You must try and choose a platform that acts as an all-in-one solution. A platform that promotes your research needs, enabling you to execute literature analysis, collaborate with your team, identify research gaps, draft, and explore the journey of research.

Have you used any of the mentioned AI research assistance tools to find reliable scholarly sources and analyze them? Let us know how this article has contributed to your journey in finding the right research source for you. Also, don’t forget to share your preferred AI tool for academic research on Enago Academy’s Open Platform .

Frequently Asked Questions

Scholarly sources are academic sources written by subject-matter experts, and are subject to the process of peer review. This process ensures that the information in such sources is updated, scientifically accurate, and of excellent quality.

The examples of scholarly sources include journal articles, books, conference publications, dissertations, and even websites.

Citing sources is ethically important as it enhances the credibility of your work and prevents plagiarism. It also ensures that the credit is given where it is due.

Scholarly sources are important for academic research as they present accurate and updated information that is free of bias and is objective in nature.

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AI-Based Literature Review Tools

• Dialogues: Insightful Facts
• How to Craft Prompts
• Plugins / Extensions for AI-powered Searches
• Cite ChatGPT in APA / MLA
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• Author Profile

Selected AI-Based Literature Review Tools

Updates: See news or release of AI (Beta) across various academic research databases including Web of Science , Scopus , Ebsco , ProQues t, OVID , Dimensions , JStor , Westlaw , and LexisNexis . ********* ********** ********** ********** **********   

Disclaimer: TAMU libraries do not have subscription access to the AI-powered tools listed below the divider line. The guide serves solely as an informational resource. It is recommended that you assess these tools and their usage methodologies independently. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

• https://www.openread.academy/
• Accessed institutionally by Harvard, MIT, University of Oxford, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, and more. ..
• AI-powered Academic Searching + Web Searching - Over 300 million papers and real-time web content.
• Each keyword search or AI query generates a synthesis report with citations. To adjust the search results, simply click the Re-generate button to refresh the report and all citations. After that click on Follow-Up Questions to go deeper into a particular area or subject.
• Use Paper Q&A to interact with a text directly, e.g. " What does this paper say about machine translation ?"
• When you read a paper, under Basic Information select any of the following tools to help your reading: Basic Information > Related Paper Graph> Paper Espresso > Paper Q&A , and > Notes.
• Click on Translation to put a text or search results into another language.
• Read or upload a document and let Paper Espresso analyze it for you. It will convert the content into a standard academic report format for easy reference: Background and Context > Research Objectives and Hypotheses > Methodology > Results and Findings > Discussion and Interpretation > Contributions to the field > Structure and Flow > Achievements and Significance , and > Limitations and Future Work.  

SEMANTIC SCHOLAR

• SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE SEARCH ENGINE - finding semantically similar research papers.
• " A free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature."  <https://www.semanticscholar.org/>. But login is required in order to use all functions.
• Over 200 millions of papers from all fields of science, the data of which has also served as a wellspring for the development of other AI-driven tools.

The 4000+ results can be sorted by Fields of Study, Date Range, Author, Journals & Conferences

Save the papers in your Library folder. The Research Feeds will recommend similar papers based on the items saved.

Example - SERVQUAL: A multiple-item scale for measuring consumer perceptions of service quality Total Citations: 22,438   [Note: these numbers were gathered when this guide was created] Highly Influential Citations 2,001 Background Citations 6,109 Methods Citations 3,273  Results Citations 385

TLDRs (Too Long; Didn't Read) Try this example . Press the pen icon to reveal the highlighted key points . TLDRs "are super-short summaries of the main objective and results of a scientific paper generated using expert background knowledge and the latest GPT-3 style NLP techniques. This new feature is available in beta for nearly 60 million papers in computer science, biology, and medicine..." < https://www.semanticscholar.org/product/tldr>  

• AI-POWERED RESEARCH ASSISTANT - finding papers, filtering study types, automating research flow, brainstorming, summarizing and more.
• " Elicit is a research assistant using language models like GPT-3 to automate parts of researchers’ workflows. Currently, the main workflow in Elicit is Literature Review. If you ask a question, Elicit will show relevant papers and summaries of key information about those papers in an easy-to-use table."   <https://elicit.org/faq#what-is-elicit.>; Find answers from 175 million papers. FAQS
• Example - How do mental health interventions vary by age group?    /   Fish oil and depression Results: [Login required] (1) Summary of top 4 papers > Paper #1 - #4 with Title, abstract, citations, DOI, and pdf (2) Table view: Abstract / Interventions / Outcomes measured / Number of participants (3) Relevant studies and citations. (4) Click on Search for Paper Information to find - Metadata about Sources ( SJR etc.) >Population ( age etc.) >Intervention ( duration etc.) > Results ( outcome, limitations etc.) and > Methodology (detailed study design etc.) (5) Export as BIB or CSV
• How to Search / Extract Data / List of Concept Search -Enter a research question >Workflow: Searching > Summarizing 8 papers> A summary of 4 top papers > Final answers. Each result will show its citation counts, DOI, and a full-text link to Semantic Scholar website for more information such as background citations, methods citation, related papers and more. - List of Concepts search - e.g. adult learning motivation . The results will present a list the related concepts. - Extract data from a pdf file - Upload a paper and let Elicit extract data for you.
• Export Results - Various ways to export results.
• How to Cite - Includes the elicit.org URL in the citation, for example: Ought; Elicit: The AI Research Assistant; https://elicit.org; accessed xxxx/xx/xx  

CONSENSUS.APP

ACADEMIC SEARCH ENGINE- using AI to find insights in research papers.

"We are a search engine that is designed to accept research questions, find relevant answers within research papers, and synthesize the results using the same language model technology." <https://consensus.app/home/blog/maximize-your-consensus-experience-with-these-best-practices/>

• Example - Does the death penalty reduce the crime?   /  Fish oil and depression  /    (1) Extracted & aggregated findings from relevant papers. (2) Results may include AIMS, DESIGN, PARTICIPANTS, FINDINGS or other methodological or report components. (3) Summaries and Full Text
• How to Search Direct questions - Does the death penalty reduce the crime? Relationship between two concepts - Fish oil and depression / Does X cause Y? Open-ended concepts - effects of immigration on local economics Tips and search examples from Consensus' Best Practice   
• Synthesize (beta) / Consensus Meter When the AI recognizes certain types of research questions, this functionality may be activated. It will examine a selection of some studies and provide a summary along with a Consensus Meter illustrating their collective agreement. Try this search: Is white rice linked to diabetes? The Consensus Meter reveals the following outcomes after analyzing 10 papers: 70% indicate a positive association, 20% suggest a possible connection, and 10% indicate no link.

Prompt “ write me a paragraph about the impact of climate change on GDP with citations “  

CITATIONS IN CONTEXT

Integrated with Research Solutions.

Over 1.2 billion Citation Statements and metadata from over 181 million papers suggested reference.

How does it work? - "scite uses access to full-text articles and its deep learning model to tell you, for a given publication: - how many times it was cited by others - how it was cited by others by displaying the text where the citation happened from each citing paper - whether each citation offers supporting or contrasting evidence of the cited claims in the publication of interest, or simply mention it."   <https://help.scite.ai/en-us/article/what-is-scite-1widqmr/>

EXAMPLE of seeing all citations and citation statements in one place

More information: Scite: A smart citation index that displays the context of citations and classifies their intent using deep learning  

• GPT3.5 by OpenAI. Knowledge cutoff date is September 2021.
• Input/ Output length - ChatGPT-3.5 allows a maximum token limit of 4096 tokens. According to ChatGPT " On average, a token in English is roughly equivalent to 4 bytes or characters. English words are typically around 5 characters long. This means that, very roughly, you could fit around 800 to 1000 English words within 4096 tokens." 
• According to ChatGPT, the generated responses are non-deterministic by default. So if you run the searches again and get slightly or very different results, it's likely due to this factor.
• ChatGPT may find non-existent references.
• According to this study < https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2304/2304.06794.pdf > "ChatGPT cites the most-cited articles and journals, relying solely on Google Scholar's citation counts" within the field of environmental science.  
• Example - "INTERVIEW WITH CHATGPT" as a Research Method & Teaching Tool Some researchers began to use this approach to obtain their research data. Try this Google Scholar search link "interview with ChatGPT"   or see two articles below: (1) Chatting about ChatGPT: how may AI and GPT impact academia and libraries? BD Lund, T Wang - Library Hi Tech News, 2023 (2) An interview with ChatGPT: discussing artificial intelligence in teaching, research, and practice , G Scaringi, M Loche - 2023  

Increased risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) Increased risk of premature birth Increased risk of low birth weight Increased risk of respiratory problems in newborns Increased risk of respiratory problems in infants exposed to secondhand smoke Increased risk of developing asthma and other respiratory illnesses later in life for infants exposed to secondhand smoke [Note : ChatGPT may generate non-existent references or false knowledge. To find out why Large Language Models hallucinate, check out this Wiki article: Hallucination (artificial intelligence) and this blog post -   A Gentle Introduction to Hallucinations in Large Language Models by Adrian Tam ]

Infant death Neonatal mortality (referring specifically to deaths within the first 28 days of life) Perinatal mortality (referring to deaths occurring during the period from 22 completed weeks of gestation to 7 completed days after birth) Early childhood mortality (referring to deaths occurring within the first five years of life) Child mortality (referring to deaths occurring before the age of 18) [Press the Regenerate button to get more.]

• Example -  RELATED WORDS What are the related words of infant mortality? Neonatal mortality, Post-neonatal mortality, Stillbirths, Low birth weight, Malnutrition, Infectious diseases, Vaccination, Maternal health,  Access to healthcare, Poverty, Social inequality, Sanitation, Hygiene, Water quality, Childbirth complications, Congenital abnormalities, Birth defects, Maternal age, Under-five mortality, Child mortality, Perinatal mortality, Preterm birth, Low birth weight, Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), Maternal mortality, Postnatal care, Malnutrition, Immunization, Access to healthcare, Clean water and sanitation, Congenital anomalies, Infant health disparities, Infant mortality rate (IMR), Infant survival.  

(("Infant Death"[Mesh] OR "Sudden Infant Death Syndrome"[Mesh] OR "Infant Mortality"[Mesh] OR "Perinatal Mortality"[Mesh] OR "Neonatal Mortality"[Mesh] OR "Fetal Mortality"[Mesh] OR "Infant Death" OR "Sudden Infant Death Syndrome" OR "Infant Mortality" OR "Perinatal Mortality" OR "Neonatal Mortality" OR "Fetal Mortality") AND ("Risk Factors"[Mesh] OR "Etiology"[Mesh] OR "Prevention and Control"[Mesh] OR "Interventions"[Mesh] OR "Public Health"[Mesh] OR "Health Disparities"[Mesh] OR "Healthcare Disparities"[Mesh] OR "Poverty"[Mesh] OR "Malnutrition"[Mesh] OR "Infection"[Mesh] OR "Congenital Abnormalities"[Mesh] OR "Prematurity"[Mesh] OR "Low Birth Weight"[Mesh] OR "Maternal Education"[Mesh] OR "Maternal Health"[Mesh] OR "Risk Factors" OR "Etiology" OR "Prevention and Control" OR "Interventions" OR "Public Health" OR "Health Disparities" OR "Healthcare Disparities" OR "Poverty" OR "Malnutrition" OR "Infection" OR "Congenital Abnormalities" OR "Prematurity" OR "Low Birth Weight" OR "Maternal Education" OR "Maternal Health")) Comments and Suggestions: #1 -This search string may not work on all database platforms. For example, Medline (OVID) may not be able to run it, Medline & CINAHL (EBSCO) can run it without any problems while PubMed will run it but it will indicate which MeSH terms are not indexed. See PubMed's search History and Details under Advanced . #2 - This is just one possible combination. You may need to adjust it based on your task and the databases you are using . #3 - It might be easier if you break the task into 3 parts: ask for synonyms > ask for thesauri terms > and ask it to combine them.

Examples - DATABASE RECOMMENDATIONS Heath Science - Which databases to use to find articles on the EFFECTS OF MATERNAL SMOKING ON INFANT DEATH? PubMed: This is a database of biomedical literature from the National Library of Medicine. It includes articles from medical journals and other sources on a wide range of health-related topics. Embase: This is a database of biomedical literature that covers more international and pharmaceutical content than PubMed. It includes articles from medical journals and other sources on a wide range of health-related topics. Cochrane Library : This is a collection of databases that provides systematic reviews and meta-analyses of healthcare interventions, including interventions related to maternal smoking and infant death. Scopus: This is a multidisciplinary database that covers research from a wide range of fields, including health sciences. It includes articles from scientific journals, books, and conference proceedings. Web of Science: This is a database that covers research from a wide range of fields, including health sciences. It includes articles from scientific journals, books, and conference proceedings. CINAHL: This is a database of nursing and allied health literature, including articles on maternal smoking and infant death. [Note: The response above was copied and pasted directly from ChatGPT. No editing was added.] Education -- I am doing a meta-analysis on k-12 STEM education. What databases should I use? ERIC : This is a database of education research and information, including articles from journals, reports, and conference papers. It is a commonly used database for educational research. Education Source : This is a comprehensive database of education research and information, including articles from journals, books, and conference papers. Web of Science: This is a multidisciplinary database that covers research from a wide range of fields, including education. It includes articles from scientific journals, books, and conference proceedings. Scopus: This is another multidisciplinary database that covers research from a wide range of fields, including education. It includes articles from scientific journals, books, and conference proceedings. PsycINFO: This is a database of psychology research, including articles from journals, books, and dissertations. It can be useful for research on STEM education that includes psychological factors. Cochrane Library : This is a collection of databases that provides systematic reviews and meta-analyses of healthcare interventions including interventions related to education. [Author's note: You could also ask for the GREY LITERATURE sources related to the topic above,]

Example: ACT-AS-AN-EXPERT PROMPT Here's an alternative way to consolidate all the questions into a single consultation by using this popular Act-As-An-Expert prompt, aka, system message prompt:  I am going to conduct a systematic review on games and mathematics related to K-12 education  I want you to act as a systematic review expert . I will ask you some questions related to my research topic and you advise me on how to do it. 

[You may ask one question at a time] My first question is "which databases should I use?"  My second question is "what are the relevant subject terms, descriptors and key words?" My third question is "how to do data extraction?" ..... , .... Please note that the above prompts are merely for illustrative purposes. Actual questions may contain more specific instructions. As an example, for the first question, could you provide guidance on how to identify relevant publications? Specifically, can you provide a list of the primary databases and grey literature sources related to my topic?  

Example - GREY LITERATURE Please show me all the resources that offer grey literature for conducting research in the field of education     ERIC (Education Resources Information Center): https://eric.ed.gov/     OpenGrey: http://www.opengrey.eu/     British Education Index: https://www.ebscohost.com/academic/british-education-index     WorldCat: https://www.worldcat.org/     ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global: https://www.proquest.com/products-services/pqdtglobal.html     EThOS (Electronic Theses Online Service): https://ethos.bl.uk/     Institutional Repositories of universities and academic institutions (search for specific institution repositories)     American Educational Research Association (AERA): https://www.aera.net/     National Education Association (NEA): https://www.nea.org/     Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD): http://www.ascd.org/     RAND Corporation: https://www.rand.org/     National Center for Education Research (NCER): https://ies.ed.gov/ncer/     National Center for Education Statistics (NCES): https://nces.ed.gov/     European Educational Research Association (EERA): https://www.eera-ecer.de/     UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP): http://www.iiep.unesco.org/     Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD): https://www.oecd.org/education/     Education Development Center (EDC): https://www.edc.org/     National Institute for Educational Policy Research (NIER) - Japan: https://www.nier.go.jp/     Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER): https://www.acer.org/     Canadian Education Association (CEA): https://www.cea-ace.ca/ My topic is about stem education. Which grey literature databases should I use?    STEM Education Research Centre (SERC) Grey Literature Database    National STEM Education Research Repository (NSERR)    National Science Digital Library (NSDL)    STEM Education Resource Center (SERC) GrayLit Network    STEM Education Grey Literature Library

See other Comparison Examples under Bing AI.

Examples - ZERO SHOT, ONE SHOT & FEW SHOT PROMPTING for literature review See the examples on the left panel- How to Fine Tune Prompts  

Bing Chat / Copilot

• Bing Chat has become Copilot.
• CONVERSATIONAL LLM 4.0 + SEARCH ENGINE. Connects to the Internet.
• Three conversation modes: More Creative, More Balanced or More Precise.
• Comparison - Prompt: My topic is about psychology. Which grey literature databases should I use? More Precise - PsycExtra, NIH Library and links to library guides, .gov and .org websites More Balanced - PsycExtra and three main research guides that mention psychology grey literature sources. More Creative- PsycExtra, LILACS, and Worldcat + definition of grey literature + suggestions on searching for professional association websites, newsletters, magazines, standards and guidelines, and other sources that may contain relevant information for your topic.
• Some examples below were tested in Bing Chat only.  
• Example - factors of infant mortality Infant mortality is a term that refers to the death of infants before their first birthday. The leading causes of infant mortality include birth asphyxia, pneumonia, congenital malformations, term birth complications such as abnormal presentation of the fetus umbilical cord prolapse, or prolonged labor, neonatal infection, diarrhea, malaria, measles, and malnutrition1. Many situational factors lead to infant mortality such as the pregnant woman’s level of education, environmental conditions, political infrastructure, and level of medical support1. In the United States, a primary determinant of infant mortality risk is infant birth weight with lower birth weights increasing the risk of infant mortality. The determinants of low birth weight include socioeconomic, psychological, behavioral and environmental factors2.  
• Example: PEER REVIEWED SOURCES I need to find some peer reviewed articles about infant mortality? The answer includes 5 articles. The first one is “Causes of death and infant mortality rates among full-term births in the United States between 2010 and 2012: An observational study” by Neha Bairoliya and Günther Fink1. A click on  " Tell me more about the first article " leads to this summary: " The first article is titled “Causes of death and infant mortality rates among full-term births in the United States between 2010 and 2012: An observational study” and was published in PLOS Medicine on March 20, 2018. The authors are Neha Bairoliya and Günther Fink. The study used linked birth and death records for the period 2010–2012 to identify the state- and cause-specific burden of infant mortality among full-term infants (born at 37–42 weeks of gestation) in the United States. The researchers found that the full-term infant mortality rate (FTIMR) was 2.2 per 1,000 live births overall and ranged between 1.29 (Connecticut) and 3.77 (Mississippi) at the state level. Sudden unexpected death in infancy (SUDI) accounted for 43% of FTIM; congenital malformations and perinatal conditions accounted for 31% and 11.3% of FTIM, respectively. The largest mortality differentials between states with good and states with poor FTIMR were found for SUDI, with particularly large risk differentials for deaths due to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and suffocation." More searches: Please find five empirical studies focusing on the factors influencing adult learners engaged in online education. Please locate five scholarly articles on stress management among college students site:pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

The ERIC Thesaurus contains nearly 12,000 terms, including more than 4,500 descriptors and 7,000 synonyms1. You can use the term “Academic Achievement” or its synonyms such as “Educational Achievement”, “Student Achievement”, “Academic Performance”, “Academic Success”, “Learning Achievement” and more. [ Note : The follow-up responses include some additional sources. See two below: https://www.powerthesaurus.org/academic_achievement https://eric.ed.gov/?ti=Achievement+Gap   including https://eric.ed.gov/?ti=Academic+Achievement |

My topic is about psychology.  Which grey literature databases should I use?

ChatGPT PsycEXTRA : This database is produced by the American Psychological Association (APA) and includes grey literature such as conference papers, white papers, and government reports. OpenGrey : This database provides access to grey literature produced in Europe, including reports, theses, and conference papers Grey Literature Report : This database is produced by The New York Academy of Medicine and includes reports, conference papers, and other grey literature on health and biomedical topics, including psychology. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global : This database provides access to graduate-level research, including theses and dissertations related to psychology. Google Scholar: While not exclusively a grey literature database, Google Scholar can be a useful tool for finding conference papers and other grey literature related to psychology. National Technical Information Service (NTIS) : This database provides access to technical reports produced by U.S. government agencies, including those related to psychology. Bing AI   - [asked in the Precise mode] For psychology, some recommended grey literature databases include PsycEXTRA and PsyArXiv . PsycEXTRA is a database of grey literature material relating to psychology, behavioral sciences and health. PsyArXiv is a psychology archive designed to facilitate rapid dissemination of psychological research. What other models have been developed based on SERVQUAL?

ChatGPT SERVPERF: This is a modified version of SERVQUAL that measures service performance instead of service quality. It was developed by Cronin and Taylor (1992) and is based on the same five dimensions as SERVQUAL. SERVPERF-GAP: This model, developed by Caruana and Ewing (2006), extends the SERVQUAL model to include three additional gaps that can occur when customers evaluate service quality. E-SERVQUAL: This model, developed by Parasuraman et al. (2005), adapts the SERVQUAL scale to measure the quality of online services. SERVCO: This is a modified version of SERVQUAL that includes a sixth dimension, "cost," in addition to the five original dimensions. It was developed by Sureshchandar et al. (2002) to address the importance of cost in service quality evaluation. SERVQ-HC: This is a modified version of SERVQUAL that is specifically designed for evaluating the quality of health care services. It was developed by Cronin et al. (2000) and includes 20 items across five dimensions. Bing AI The Nordic model of service quality2. The hierarchical model of service quality3. The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI)4.

     Bing AI Sidebar - CHAT, THINK, & WRITE

• Examples of Using AI sidebar to Recap Google Scholar findings

Chat - If you highlight a study in the search results of Google Scholar, you will be prompted with a question by AI sidebar asking if you want to send the selected text to it. If you choose to do so, you can then select either  EXPLAIN or EXPAND to learn more about the chosen article. It's worth noting that EXPAND provides more detailed information. You can then click on any of the follow-up links to delve further into the selected article or topic. If the text of the chosen study is written in a foreign language, the AI sidebar can also provide an explanation of the text in English. Another option for extracting the key points from a selected article is to submit the URL of the PDF. Insights - Use the insights button to get more ideas about the topic. Compose - Tell the Edge sidebar your topic and let its Compose tool to generate a draft for you. Google Scholar Button- See also the Plugins and Extension page for how to perform a combined search using Google, Google Scholar, and ChatGPT .

Example: FINDING SIMILAR ARTICLES Find similar articles like this one - [then paste in the abstract ] Note - Use this prompt with Bing chat since real-time web info is required.

Examples: SUMMARIZE + REFERENCE Use a basic prompt like " Please summarize . ..." or add a REFERENCE TEXT that provides the necessary information about what you want it to focus or how the summary or resolution should look like. The reference could be a quote, an excerpt, a partial sentence, a conversation, an abstract, a code snippet and so on. Formula : Specify a role > assign a task > provide a reference text. Example#1 - Scholarly Journal Quote

STEP 1 Prompt: As a research assistant specializing in renewable energy, your task is to locate comparable research studies based on the provided abstract from an article: "This paper discusses the perspective of renewable energy (wind, solar, wave and biomass) in the making of strategies for a sustainable development. Such strategies typically involve three major technological changes: energy savings on the demand side, efficiency improvements in the energy production, and replacement of fossil fuels by various sources of renewable energy."

Bing Chat then found 3 documents: the ScienceDirect paper where the abstract came from and two other documents from un.org and frontiersin.org respectively.

STEP 2 Prompt: Please synthesize the findings of the three studies provided above.

Bing Chat: "Sure! Here is a synthesis of the findings from the three studies:

All three studies emphasize the importance of renewable energy in achieving sustainable development and mitigating climate change. They all discuss various strategies and actions that can be taken to increase the use of renewable energy sources and reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

Henrik Lund’s paper discusses the perspective of renewable energy (wind, solar, wave and biomass) in the making of strategies for a sustainable development. Such strategies typically involve three major technological changes: energy savings on the demand side, efficiency improvements in the energy production, and .....

The United Nations outlines five critical actions the world needs to prioritize now to transform our energy systems and speed up the shift to renewable energy: Make renewable energy technology a global public good, Improve global access to components and raw materials......

“Sustainable Energy Transition for Renewable and Low Carbon Grid” discusses that a sustainable global electricity transition will entail increased use of renewable energy sources particularly wind and solar, nuclear energy as a low carbon energy source, electrification of transport and.......

In summary , these studies suggest that transitioning to renewable energy sources is crucial for sustainable development and mitigating climate change. This can be achieved through various strategies such as increasing energy efficiency, improving access to renewable technology and materials, leveling the playing field for renewables, ending fossil fuel subsidies, and redirecting investments towards renewables." Example #2 Y ou are an expert researcher, given the following article, please discuss its key findings. Reference: How Large Language Models are Transforming Machine-Paraphrased Plagiarism at https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.03568 This is another way to put REFERENCE TEXT. As a side not, role specifying or the use of persona is important as it can impact the level of responses obtained. Just imagine if the designated role were " You are a high school student... ." Example #3 Please read this article and summarize it f or me - "Who Should I Trust: AI or Myself? Leveraging Human and AI Correctness Likelihood to Promote Appropriate Trust in AI-Assisted Decision-Making" and then find 5 similar studies and please also summarize each for me.

CONNECTED PAPERS

• RELATED STUDIES
• Uses visual graphs or other ways to show relevant studies. The database is connected to the Semantic Scholar Paper Corpus which has compiled hundreds of millions of published papers across many science and social science fields.
• See more details about how it works .  
• Example - SERVQUAL and then click on SELECT A PAPER TO BUILD THE GRAPH > The first paper was selected. Results: (1) Origin paper - SERVQUAL: A multiple-item scale for measuring consumer perceptions of service quality + Connected papers with links to Connected Papers / PDF / DOI or Publisher's site / Semantic Scholar / Google Scholar. (2) Graph showing the origin paper + connected papers with links to the major sources . See above. (3) Links to Prior Works and Derivative Works See the detailed citations by Semantic Scholar on the origin SERVQUAL paper on the top of this page within Semantic Scholars.
• How to Search Search by work title. Enter some keywords about a topic.
• Download / Save Download your saved Items in Bib format.  

PAPER DIGEST

• SUMMARY & SYNTHESIS
• " Knowledge graph & natural language processing platform tailored for technology domain . <"https://www.paperdigest.org/> Areas covered: technology, biology/health, all sciences areas, business, humanities/ social sciences, patents and grants ...

• LITERATURE REVIEW - https://www.paperdigest.org/review/ Systematic Review - https://www.paperdigest.org/literature-review/
• SEARCH CONSOLE - https://www.paperdigest.org/search/ Conference Digest - NIPS conference papers ... Tech AI Tools: Literature Review  | Literature Search | Question Answering | Text Summarization Expert AI Tools: Org AI | Expert search | Executive Search, Reviewer Search, Patent Lawyer Search...

Daily paper digest / Conference papers digest / Best paper digest / Topic tracking. In Account enter the subject areas interested. Daily Digest will upload studies based on your interests.

RESEARCH RABBIT

• CITATION-BASED MAPPING: SIMILAR / EARLY / LATER WORKS
• " 100s of millions of academic articles and covers more than 90%+ of materials that can be found in major databases used by academic institutions (such as Scopus, Web of Science, and others) ." See its FAQs page. Search algorithms were borrowed from NIH and Semantic Scholar.

The default “Untitled Collection” will collect your search histories, based on which Research Rabbit will send you recommendations for three types of related results: Similar Works / Earlier Works / Later Works, viewable in graph such as Network, Timeline, First Authors etc.

Zotero integration: importing and exporting between these two apps.

• Example - SERVQUAL: A multiple-item scale for measuring consumer perceptions of service quality [Login required] Try it to see its Similar Works, Earlier Works and Later Works or other documents.
• Export Results - Findings can be exported in BibTxt, RIS or CSV format.

CITING GENERATIVE AI

• How to cite ChatGPT  [APA] - https://apastyle. apa.org/blog /how-to-cite-chatgpt  
• How to Cite Generative AI  [MLA]  https://style. mla.org /citing-generative-ai/
• Citation Guide - Citing ChatGPT and Other Generative AI (University of Queensland, Australia)
• Next: Dialogues: Insightful Facts >>
• Last Updated: Jun 20, 2024 12:58 PM
• URL: https://tamu.libguides.com/c.php?g=1289555

• Research toolkit

12 PhD tools to supercharge your literature review

Professor dawid hanak.

• May 24, 2022
• No Comments

A literature review is an inherent part of each research project. This is because it helps you to understand the relevant background of the broader research area and the associated political, environmental, societal, technological and economic contexts.

Why is literature review important? Do I have to include a literature review in my research proposal? Do I have to do it at the very beginning of the project?

These were the main questions that revolved around my head when I was at the very beginning of my academic career. And it seems that it was not just me asking such questions. I often hear them in discussions with current PhDs and others doing research. 

It may seem that the literature review is a daunting challenge. I have seen recommendations to outsource your literature review or leave it until the very of your research project. It is sometimes regarded as an unnecessary activity that “prevents” you from doing the actual research, which may be draining your motivation. Read how to stay motivated here!

If you think in this way, I want you to ask yourself the following question and answer it honestly:

“Do I want to contribute towards the scientific discovery, or do I just want to get a PhD title?”

Believe me, there is a massive difference in the attitude between these goals.

A comprehensive literature review is THE FOUNDATION of your research project because it enables you to:

• understand the context and fundamental knowledge associated with your research;
• understand what work has already been done in the area of your project;
• notice any trends and correlations in the past work;
• determine research gaps and underlying challenges that need to be solved;
• identify the best (or worst) approach to tackle particular challenge; and finally,
• scope your project, clearly define your aim and objectives that when completed, will push the boundary of knowledge!

I trust you now agree with me that the literature review is essential! When executed competently, it will set a clear direction for your project and enable you to complete it on time and to a high quality.

Now, to reduce the burden associated with searching for the literature and organising your references, there are several tools that will improve your productivity when writing a literature review for your project.

Below I present the tools that I currently use (or used to use) when writing a literature review. I hope you will find it useful.

If there are any tools that you use to do a literature review, please share them in the comment!

Table of Contents

Where to start the literature review?

As already indicated in its name, a literature review aims to survey or overview the published literature in your chosen area of research.

When performing one, you will also efficiently synthesise the information in that literature in an organised manner and critically analyse the published information and data. Such a critical analysis will help you identify and gaps, limitations and contrasting points of views.

I want to emphasise here that in academic writing, the peer-reviewed information carries the most value and should be a primary source of your information. But there are also other sources that you may, and sometimes should consider.

Therefore, understanding where to look for the literature is crucial to performing the literature review efficiently.

Scopus (owned by Elsevier) is the largest database of peer-reviewed literature that includes titles, abstracts and citation information. It is a comprehensive source of the literature in science, engineering, technology, medical sciences, social sciences, and art and humanities.

It includes approximately 38,060 journals and allows you to understand the journal standing by presenting a total number of citations, cite score, and journal ranking in a specific research area.

Below you can see how you can assess the quality of the source on an example of Applied Energy, one of the prestigious journals that are highly regarded in my field of study.

An exciting feature of Scopus is that you can set up regular alerts for specific search strings. These will get delivered directly to your mailbox!

Web of Science

Web of Science is an independent platform run by Clarivate Analytics (Thomson Reuters) that gives you access to multiple databases with comprehensive citation data for 12,000 high impact journals and 160,000 conference proceedings .

Similarly to Scopus, it covers a broad range of research areas, from social science, arts and humanities, through science to engineering.

A useful feature is that in addition to information on what scholarly papers cited your work, it gives you an indication on where your research was shared or used (i.e. as a reference on Wikipedia!).

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is very similar to the conventional Google search engine, but its primary aim is to provide a search for academic literature.

In addition to peer-reviewed literature, you may find there doctoral theses and master dissertations, white papers, technical reports, preprints, books and other documents from scholarly websites.

I want you to be aware that there is a risk that some of the documents in the Google Scholar search results may not be peer reviewed or accurate. Therefore, as always, be critical in your assessment of the literature.

An interesting feature of Google Scholar is the option to follow the academics whose work is relevant to your project.

Most of us use Google on a daily basis. I believe you have already tried to use it for searching scholarly sources for your literature review. You can use it in a similar way to Google Scholar.

However, you may be directed to other depositories, publisher websites and grey literature. In my research, I tend to use it when I want to explore a particular topic, without going into many details.

ResearchGate

ResearchGate is a professional network for scientists and researchers, with over 17 million members worldwide. It aims to support knowledge sharing, networking, and collaboration.

It can be seen as an extensive database of papers, presentations and information on projects in your research area. It also stimulates academic discussion via the option to ask questions and help others to solve their problems. 

An interesting feature of ResearchGate is the fact that you can simply request a copy of the academic paper or a conference paper directly from the author if it is not available elsewhere.

Moreover, you may also find job opportunities that fit your profile!

Academia is a professional network for academics to share research papers. At the time of writing this blog, over 123 million academics already signed up to this platform.

Similarly to ResearchGate, Academia enables you to download papers that are not available elsewhere and see who is reading your articles.

ArXiv is a popular preprint service in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering, systems science and economics.

It currently comprises about 1.7m of scholarly articles. Although you may access these manuscripts for free, it is essential to highlight that, most likely, these have not been peer-reviewed or are currently being peer reviewed.

Preprints is a multidisciplinary platform for sharing preprints in vast areas of science, technology, engineering, art and humanities.

By sharing the early version of research outputs, you may stay more up to date with your research area. As in the case of ArXiV, when writing your literature review bear in mind that these sources are not peer-reviewed.

How to write the literature review efficiently?

As you start exploring the literature in your research area, you should ensure that you can keep track of what you have read and organise the research data. This will help you to increase the efficiency of writing the literature review!

There are lots of tools available that can help you to become more productive when writing your literature review and your papers overall.

Here are the tools that I use to manage my literature sources when I write the literature review for my research.

Mendeley is a free reference management tool that can help you to capture the bibliographic information of the articles you read, keep their copies in PDFs, highlight and comment on the most relevant information.

It is easy to integrate with browsers for data capture and MS Word for adding the references into your text as you go along writing the literature review. You can say goodbye to juggling the references manually and wasting hours of your valuable time just to re-number all references. And it will generate bibliography for your literature review automatically!

It is also a professional network that will support your networking and collaboration activities and will enable you to discover the latest research. Importantly, you can directly import that research to your reference list! 

Endnote is a commercial reference management tool which enables you to capture, manage and organise your references when writing your literature review.

It does pretty much similar work as Mendeley, but its free version is somewhat limited.

MS Excel is a tool within MS Office where you can use a spreadsheet for calculations, data analysis, visualisation, and programming.

As it lets you create tables, it is a perfect tool for collecting, organising and analysing data for your literature review.

If you keep your spreadsheet updated throughout your literature review, you may even include it in your final review as a summary table. These are very handy for the readers!

Google Sheets

Google Sheets is a similar tool to MS Excel but is available free of charge with your Google account. It will be equally useful for your literature review, as it lets you prepare summary tables and analyse your data. The only difference is that it runs only in Cloud.  

Key takeways…

I want you to remember that the literature review does not need to be a tedious exercise that you “have to do” in your project. This part of your research project will help you to scope and drive your project forward.

The research tools I included here are the ones I use in my work. I trust you found the list useful and will use some of them to improve your productivity!

If you are using research tools that are not listed here, I would be more than happy to hear about them. Make sure you share them in the comment!

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What Is A Literature Review?

A plain-language explainer (with examples).

By:  Derek Jansen (MBA) & Kerryn Warren (PhD) | June 2020 (Updated May 2023)

If you’re faced with writing a dissertation or thesis, chances are you’ve encountered the term “literature review” . If you’re on this page, you’re probably not 100% what the literature review is all about. The good news is that you’ve come to the right place.

Literature Review 101

• What (exactly) is a literature review
• What’s the purpose of the literature review chapter
• How to find high-quality resources
• How to structure your literature review chapter
• Example of an actual literature review

What is a literature review?

The word “literature review” can refer to two related things that are part of the broader literature review process. The first is the task of  reviewing the literature  – i.e. sourcing and reading through the existing research relating to your research topic. The second is the  actual chapter  that you write up in your dissertation, thesis or research project. Let’s look at each of them:

Reviewing the literature

The first step of any literature review is to hunt down and  read through the existing research  that’s relevant to your research topic. To do this, you’ll use a combination of tools (we’ll discuss some of these later) to find journal articles, books, ebooks, research reports, dissertations, theses and any other credible sources of information that relate to your topic. You’ll then  summarise and catalogue these  for easy reference when you write up your literature review chapter. 

The literature review chapter

The second step of the literature review is to write the actual literature review chapter (this is usually the second chapter in a typical dissertation or thesis structure ). At the simplest level, the literature review chapter is an  overview of the key literature  that’s relevant to your research topic. This chapter should provide a smooth-flowing discussion of what research has already been done, what is known, what is unknown and what is contested in relation to your research topic. So, you can think of it as an  integrated review of the state of knowledge  around your research topic. 

What’s the purpose of a literature review?

The literature review chapter has a few important functions within your dissertation, thesis or research project. Let’s take a look at these:

Purpose #1 – Demonstrate your topic knowledge

The first function of the literature review chapter is, quite simply, to show the reader (or marker) that you  know what you’re talking about . In other words, a good literature review chapter demonstrates that you’ve read the relevant existing research and understand what’s going on – who’s said what, what’s agreed upon, disagreed upon and so on. This needs to be  more than just a summary  of who said what – it needs to integrate the existing research to  show how it all fits together  and what’s missing (which leads us to purpose #2, next). 

Purpose #2 – Reveal the research gap that you’ll fill

The second function of the literature review chapter is to  show what’s currently missing  from the existing research, to lay the foundation for your own research topic. In other words, your literature review chapter needs to show that there are currently “missing pieces” in terms of the bigger puzzle, and that  your study will fill one of those research gaps . By doing this, you are showing that your research topic is original and will help contribute to the body of knowledge. In other words, the literature review helps justify your research topic.  

Purpose #3 – Lay the foundation for your conceptual framework

The third function of the literature review is to form the  basis for a conceptual framework . Not every research topic will necessarily have a conceptual framework, but if your topic does require one, it needs to be rooted in your literature review. 

For example, let’s say your research aims to identify the drivers of a certain outcome – the factors which contribute to burnout in office workers. In this case, you’d likely develop a conceptual framework which details the potential factors (e.g. long hours, excessive stress, etc), as well as the outcome (burnout). Those factors would need to emerge from the literature review chapter – they can’t just come from your gut! 

So, in this case, the literature review chapter would uncover each of the potential factors (based on previous studies about burnout), which would then be modelled into a framework. 

Purpose #4 – To inform your methodology

The fourth function of the literature review is to  inform the choice of methodology  for your own research. As we’ve  discussed on the Grad Coach blog , your choice of methodology will be heavily influenced by your research aims, objectives and questions . Given that you’ll be reviewing studies covering a topic close to yours, it makes sense that you could learn a lot from their (well-considered) methodologies.

So, when you’re reviewing the literature, you’ll need to  pay close attention to the research design , methodology and methods used in similar studies, and use these to inform your methodology. Quite often, you’ll be able to  “borrow” from previous studies . This is especially true for quantitative studies , as you can use previously tried and tested measures and scales. 

How do I find articles for my literature review?

Finding quality journal articles is essential to crafting a rock-solid literature review. As you probably already know, not all research is created equally, and so you need to make sure that your literature review is  built on credible research . 

We could write an entire post on how to find quality literature (actually, we have ), but a good starting point is Google Scholar . Google Scholar is essentially the academic equivalent of Google, using Google’s powerful search capabilities to find relevant journal articles and reports. It certainly doesn’t cover every possible resource, but it’s a very useful way to get started on your literature review journey, as it will very quickly give you a good indication of what the  most popular pieces of research  are in your field.

One downside of Google Scholar is that it’s merely a search engine – that is, it lists the articles, but oftentimes  it doesn’t host the articles . So you’ll often hit a paywall when clicking through to journal websites. 

Thankfully, your university should provide you with access to their library, so you can find the article titles using Google Scholar and then search for them by name in your university’s online library. Your university may also provide you with access to  ResearchGate , which is another great source for existing research. 

Remember, the correct search keywords will be super important to get the right information from the start. So, pay close attention to the keywords used in the journal articles you read and use those keywords to search for more articles. If you can’t find a spoon in the kitchen, you haven’t looked in the right drawer. 

Need a helping hand?

How should I structure my literature review?

Unfortunately, there’s no generic universal answer for this one. The structure of your literature review will depend largely on your topic area and your research aims and objectives.

You could potentially structure your literature review chapter according to theme, group, variables , chronologically or per concepts in your field of research. We explain the main approaches to structuring your literature review here . You can also download a copy of our free literature review template to help you establish an initial structure.

In general, it’s also a good idea to start wide (i.e. the big-picture-level) and then narrow down, ending your literature review close to your research questions . However, there’s no universal one “right way” to structure your literature review. The most important thing is not to discuss your sources one after the other like a list – as we touched on earlier, your literature review needs to synthesise the research , not summarise it .

Ultimately, you need to craft your literature review so that it conveys the most important information effectively – it needs to tell a logical story in a digestible way. It’s no use starting off with highly technical terms and then only explaining what these terms mean later. Always assume your reader is not a subject matter expert and hold their hand through a journe y of the literature while keeping the functions of the literature review chapter (which we discussed earlier) front of mind.

Example of a literature review

In the video below, we walk you through a high-quality literature review from a dissertation that earned full distinction. This will give you a clearer view of what a strong literature review looks like in practice and hopefully provide some inspiration for your own. 

Wrapping Up

In this post, we’ve (hopefully) answered the question, “ what is a literature review? “. We’ve also considered the purpose and functions of the literature review, as well as how to find literature and how to structure the literature review chapter. If you’re keen to learn more, check out the literature review section of the Grad Coach blog , as well as our detailed video post covering how to write a literature review . 

Psst… there’s more!

This post is an extract from our bestselling short course, Literature Review Bootcamp . If you want to work smart, you don't want to miss this .

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• Open access
• Published: 26 June 2024

WHO, WHEN, HOW: a scoping review on flexible at-home respite for informal caregivers of older adults

• Maude Viens 1 , 2 ,
• Alexandra Éthier 1 , 2 ,
• Véronique Provencher 1 , 2 &
• Annie Carrier 1 , 2  

BMC Health Services Research volume  24 , Article number:  767 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

183 Accesses

Metrics details

As the world population is aging, considerable efforts need to be put towards developing and maintaining evidenced-based care for older adults. Respite services are part of the selection of homecare offered to informal caregivers. Although current best practices around respite are rooted in person centeredness, there is no integrated synthesis of its flexible components. Such a synthesis could offer a better understanding of key characteristics of flexible respite and, as such, support its implementation and use.

To map the literature around the characteristics of flexible at-home respite for informal caregivers of older adults, a scoping study was conducted. Qualitative data from the review was analyzed using content analysis. The characterization of flexible at-home respite was built on three dimensions: WHO , WHEN and HOW . To triangulate the scoping results, an online questionnaire was distributed to homecare providers and informal caregivers of older adults.

A total of 42 documents were included in the review. The questionnaire was completed by 105 participants. The results summarize the characteristics of flexible at-home respite found in the literature. Flexibility in respite can be understood through three dimensions: (1) WHO is tendering it, (2) WHEN it is tendered and (3) HOW it is tendered. Firstly, human resources ( WHO ) must be compatible with the homecare sector as well as being trained and qualified to offer respite to informal caregivers of older adults. Secondly, flexible respite includes considerations of time, duration, frequency, and predictability ( WHEN ). Lastly, flexible at-home respite exhibits approachability, appropriateness, affordability, availability, and acceptability ( HOW ). Overall, flexible at-home respite adjusts to the needs of the informal caregiver and care recipient in terms of WHO , WHEN , and HOW .

This review is a step towards a more precise definition of flexible at-home respite. Flexibility of homecare, in particular respite, must be considered when designing, implementing and evaluating services.

Peer Review reports

It is an undeniable fact that the world population is aging [ 1 ]. The World Health Organization [ 1 ] estimates that from 2015 to 2050, the percentage of people over 60 years of age will nearly double (from 12 to 22%). Governments must therefore put in place policies, laws and funding infrastructures to provide evidence-based social services and healthcare that are in line with best practices to allow people to age in place [ 2 ]. Aging in place refers to “the ability to live in one’s own home and community safely, independently, and comfortably, regardless of age, income, or ability level” [ 3 ]. Relevant literature indicates that people do not want to age or end their lives in institutionalized care; most wish to receive care in their home and remain in their community with their informal caregivers [ 4 ].

There is then a need to adequately support informal caregivers (caregiver) in the crucial role that they have in allowing older adults to age in their own home. A caregiver is “a person who provides some type of unpaid, ongoing assistance with activities of daily living or instrumental activities of daily living” [ 5 ]. In their duties, caregivers of older adults are responsible for a considerable amount of homecare [ 6 ]: Transportation, management of appointments and bills, domestic chores, etc. Private and public organizations offer a plethora of services to support caregivers of older adults (e.g., support groups, housekeeping, etc.), including respite. Respite is a service for caregivers consisting in “the temporary provision of care for a person, at home or in an institution, by people other than the primary caregiver” [ 7 ]. Maayan and collaborators [ 7 ] characterize all respite services according to three dimensions: (1) WHERE : The place; in a private home, a daycare centre or a residential setting, (2) WHEN : The duration and planning; ranging from a couple of hours to a number of weeks, planned or unplanned, and finally, (3) WHO : The person providing the service; this may be trained or untrained individuals, paid staff or volunteers. Respite is widely recognized as necessary to support caregivers of older adults [ 8 , 9 ]. Indeed, a large number of studies identify the need and use for respite [ 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 ]. For example, Dal Santo and colleagues (2007) found that caregivers of older adults ( n  = 1643) used respite to manage stressful caregiving situations, but also to have a “time away”, without having to worry about their caregiving role [ 13 ]. At-home respite seems to be favoured over other forms of respite, even with the perceived drawbacks, such as the privacy breach of having a care worker in one’s home [ 14 , 15 ].

Studies suggest that caregivers of older adults seek flexibility as a main component of respite [ 16 , 17 , 18 ]. Flexibility, in line with person-centered care, allows respite that addresses their needs, rather than being services that are prescribed according to other criteria [ 16 , 17 ]. Thus, flexibility, both in accessing and in the respite itself, is essential [ 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 ]. Although there seems to be a consensus around the broader definition of respite, there is no literature reviewing the characteristics of flexible at-home respite. Some studies and reports from organizations and governments document the flexible characteristics of their models, but there are few literature reviews that address them, specifically [ 18 , 22 , 24 ]. Both reviews by Shaw et al. [ 18 ] and Neville et al. [ 19 ] concede that an operational definition of respite ( WHEN , WHERE , WHO ) is not clear. Neville et al. [ 19 ] conclude that “respite has the potential to be delivered in flexible and positive ways”, without addressing these ways. The absence of a unified definition for flexible at-home respite contributes to the challenges of implementing and evaluating services, as well as measuring their effect. Although respite services are deemed necessary, they are seldom used [ 19 , 25 , 26 , 27 ]; as little as 6% of all caregivers receiving any kind support services in Canada actually use them. In scientific literature, the under-usage of respite services is a shared reality around the world [ 28 ]. One of the main reasons for this under-usage is the overall lack of flexibility in both obtaining and using respite [ 29 , 30 ]. Synthesizing the characteristics of flexible at-home respite services is the first steppingstone to a common operational definition. This could contribute to increasing respite use through the implementation or enrichment of programs in ways that answer the dyad’s (caregiver and older adult) needs.

Consequently, to support the implementation and evaluation of homecare programs, the objective of this study was to synthesize the knowledge on the characteristics of flexible at-home respite services offered to caregivers of older adults.

A scoping review [ 32 , 33 , 34 ] was conducted, as part of a larger multi-method participatory research known as the AMORA project [ 31 ] to characterize flexible at-home respite. Scoping reviews allow to map the extent of literature on a specific topic [ 32 , 34 ]. The six steps proposed by Levac et al. [ 32 ] were followed: [ 1 ] Identifying the research question; [ 2 ] searching and [ 3 ] selecting pertinent documents; [ 4 ] extracting ( or charting ) relevant data; [ 5 ] collating, summarizing and reporting findings; [ 6 ] consultation with stakeholders. The sixth step is optional.

Identifying the research question

The research question was: “What are the characteristics of flexible at-home respite services offered to caregivers of older adults?” As the research was conducted, this question was divided into three sub-questions:

WHO is tendering flexible respite?

WHEN is flexible respite tendered?

HOW is flexible respite tendered?

Identifying relevant documents

The search strategy consisted of two methods. First, the key words (1) respite (2) informal caregivers (3) older adults in the title or abstract allowed to identify relevant documents (Table  1 ). Initially included, the term “ flexib *” was removed from the search, given the low number generated (60 versus 1,179 documents without). The first author and a librarian specialized in health sciences research documentation conducted the literature research in July of 2021 and updated it in December of 2022 in 6 databases ( Ageline , Cochrane , CINAHL , Medline , PsychInfo , and Abstracts in Social Gerontology ). The expanded research strategy then consisted of the identification of relevant documents from the selected bibliography and one article that was found by searching for unavailable references (alternative article).

Study selection

To review the most recent literature on flexible at-home respite service characteristics, the research team focused on writings within a 20-year span, as have other reviews (e.g., [ 35 , 36 ]); documents thus had to be published between 2001 and 2022. The research team selected documents written in French or English, only. Included documents had to come from either (1) scientific literature (i.e., articles in an academic journal presenting an empirical study or reviews) or (2) reports and briefs from government, homecare organizations or research centres. All study designs were included. The research team convened that at-home respite is an (1) individual (i.e., not in a group) service (although, theoretically, two persons living in the same household could receive it) from (2) a professional or a volunteer that occurs (3) in the home and that (4) it requires no transport for the dyad. To select documents related to flexible at-home respite, the research team identified those in which the respite displayed an ability to adapt to the dyad’s needs on at least one characteristic of the service, as presented by Maayan and collaborators ( WHERE [Not relevant to this review, as it focuses on at-home respite] , WHO , WHEN ). The team concluded that these three dimensions lacked the precision to globally characterize the service. Indeed, they did not describe access to or activities occurring during respite, or, as the team called it, the HOW (Fig.  1 ). Excluded documents were those covering several services at once, preventing the differentiation of elements that were specific to at-home respite services. As this is a scoping review, the research team did not include a critical appraisal of individual sources of evidence [ 32 , 34 ].

Following the step-by-step Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMAScR) guidelines [ 37 ], the research team met to define the selection strategy. First, they screened the documents by their titles and abstracts, before determining their eligibility, based on their full text. Considering the limited human and financial resources, at each step of the PRISMAScR, a second team member assessed 10% of the documents independently to co-validate the selection; the goal was to reach 80% of agreement between both team members regarding document inclusion or exclusion. If an agreement was not reached, they would meet to obtain a consensus. The research team used Zotero reference management software to store documents as well as a cloud-based website to collaborate on the selection.

Conceptual mapping of results: HOW , WHEN , WHO

Charting the data

The first author charted (or extracted) both quantitative and qualitative data. To quantitatively characterize documents, contextual data (country of origin, year of publication, type of documents, etc.) was extracted in a Microsoft Excel table. For the qualitative data, the research team created an extraction table in Microsoft Word that included the three dimensions of respite ( WHO , WHEN and HOW) and one “ other ” dimension, as to not force any excerpts under the three dimensions. To co-validate the data charting, the second and third authors replicated 10% of the process. Expressly, the first author extracted elements related to a flexible characteristic of the at-home respite ( WHO , WHEN , HOW or other ). Considering limited resources, the third and second authors both co-validated the extraction of 10% of the documents. Authors met to reach a consensus where a disagreement arose.

Collating, summarizing, and reporting the results

The research team used content analysis to “attain a condensed and broad description of the phenomenon” [ 38 ]. To do so, data was prepared (familiarization with the data and extraction of pertinent excerpts) and organized (classification of excerpts) to build a characterization of flexible at-home respite. In this scoping review, a deductive content analysis began with three main categories ( WHO , WHEN , HOW ), with the addition of the temporary “ other ” category. Content analysis aimed to divide these categories into several generic categories, which subdivided into sub-categories (Fig.  2 ), inductively. This allowed to define the three main categories. While the WHO and the WHEN categories describe the service itself (time, duration, qualified staff, etc.), the HOW category is specific to the interface between the organization offering respite and the dyad (assessing the needs of the dyad, coordinating care, etc.). An interface is a situation where two “subjects” interact and affect each other [ 39 ]. In the context of homecare services, Levesque, Harris and Russell (2013) have defined that interface as access [ 40 ]. Therefore, to define the generic categories of the HOW , the team used the five dimensions of their access to care framework: Approachability, appropriateness, affordability, availability and acceptability [ 40 ]. Approachability relates to users recognizing the existence and accessibility of a service [ 40 ]. Appropriateness encompasses the alignment between services and users’ needs, considering timeliness and assessment of needs [ 40 ]. Affordability pertains to users’ economic capacity to allocate resources for accessing suitable services [ 40 ]. Availability signifies that services can be reached, both physically and in a timely manner [ 40 ]. Acceptability involves cultural and social factors influencing users’ willingness to accept services [ 40 ]. In other words, the HOW category focuses on the organizational or professional aspects of the service and how they can be adapted to the dyad.

To co-validate the classification, the research team met until they were all satisfied with the categorization. The first author then completed the classification. After classifying 20% of the documents, the second author would comment the classification. When the authors reached an agreement, the first author would move on to the classification of another 20%. First and second authors would meet when disagreements about classification and categories arose, to confer and adjust. Finally, all categories were discussed with the third author, until a consensus was reached. Once categorization was achieved, the team prepared a synthesis report. In this report, the team defined the main categories ( WHO , WHEN, HOW , other ) and their generic and sub-categories (Fig.  2 ) with pertinent excerpts from the reviewed literature. In summary, the results of the scoping review characterize flexible at-home respite under three attributes: WHO , WHEN and HOW .

Content analysis: Types of categories according to Elo and Kyngäs (2007) ( with examples from results )

Consultation

Rather than conducting a focus group as suggested by Levac and collaborators [ 32 ], the team chose to triangulate the results with those from a survey as a consultation strategy. Specifically, the research team took advantage of a survey being conducted with relevant stakeholders in the larger study (AMORA project), as it allowed to respect the scoping review’s allocated resources. The survey aimed to define flexible at-home respite and the factors affecting its implementation and delivery. A committee including a researcher, a doctoral student and a representative of an organization funding homecare services in Québec (Canada), developed the survey following the three stages proposed by Corbière and Fraccaroli [ 41 ]. It originally included a total of 21 items: Thirteen [ 13 ] close-ended and 8 open-ended questions. Of these 8, 2 addressed the characteristics of an ideal at-home service and suggestions regarding respite and were used here for triangulation purposes. The questionnaire was published online, in French, on the Microsoft Forms ® platform in the summer of 2020. Recruitment of participants (caregivers and people from the homecare sector) was done via email, by contacting regional organizations (Eastern Townships, Québec, Canada). In addition, the 18 senior consultation tables spread throughout the territory of the province of Québec were solicited; working in collaboration with governmental instances in charge of services to older adults and caregivers, these tables bring together representatives for associations, groups or organizations concerned with their living conditions.

The goal was to triangulate the scoping review’s results, i.e., to identify what was common between the literature and real-world experiences, and, as such, to bring contextual value to the results. Accordingly, the team analyzed data using mixed categorization [ 42 ]. The categories from the scoping review served as a starting point (closed categorization), leaving room to create new categories, as the analysis progressed (open categorization). Once all the data (scoping and survey) was categorized, the team identified the characteristics according to sources. To do so, the team tabulated the reoccurrence of each category in the survey, in the scoping review, or in both. They then integrated the results to provide one unified categorization of flexible at-home respite. The AMORA project was approved by the research ethics committee of the Integrated University Health and Social Services Centre (CIUSSS) of the Eastern Townships (project number: 2021–3703).

Of the 1,301 papers retrieved through the database searches, 1,146 were not eligible based on title and abstract, while 116 were excluded after reading their full texts, resulting in 39 included documents (Fig.  3 ). Documents were mainly excluded because they did not provide details about the respite service and its flexibility. The expanded search yielded three additional documents, resulting in a total of 42 documents, included in this scoping review. This section details (1) the characteristics of the selected documents and (2) the characterization of flexible at-home respite.

Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMAScR) flow chart of the scoping review process [ 37 ]

Characteristics of selected documents

The majority (86%) of the documents in the review (Table  2 ) are from after 2005, with only 14% of the documents published before 2005, and are from 9 countries; United States ( n  = 18; 42%), United Kingdom ( n  = 11; 26%), Australia ( n  = 4; 10%), Canada ( n  = 2; 5%), Ireland ( n  = 2; 5%), France ( n  = 2; 5%), Belgium ( n  = 2; 5%), Germany ( n  = 1; 2%), New Zealand ( n  = 1). The types of documents were diverse: 68% ( n  = 28) were empirical studies, 31% ( n  = 13) theoretical papers and 1% ( n  = 2) government briefs. Most ( n  = 23; 56%) of the documents did not specify their research approach, while 10 and 9 took, respectively, a qualitative (23%) or quantitative approach (21%). Most documents address respite in the context of caregiving for someone living with Alzheimer’s disease or other neurocognitive disorders ( n  = 25; 60%), while some targeted older adults in general ( n  = 14; 34%), people in palliative care ( n  = 4; 9%) or other older adult populations (for example, veterans) ( n  = 3; 1%). Respite was usually tendered by community organizations specialized in homecare ( n  = 32; 78%). Although the majority of the documents ( n  = 31; 75%) did not address the type of region (rural, urban, or mixed) surrounding the caregivers, those who did ( n  = 11; 26%) mainly reported being in a mixed environment ( n  = 9; 21%).

Characteristics of survey participants

Although all 100 participants completed the questionnaire, 71 participants answered at least 1 of the 2 open-ended questions: Each question had 66 and 41 answers. Of those 71 participants, most of them were women ( n  = 60; 85%). All participants were aged on average 55 years old (SD = 15). They were mostly from the Eastern Townships area ( n  = 56; 79%). Most participants were either caregivers ( n  = 24; 34%) or homecare workers ( n  = 28; 39%), while some were service administrators ( n  = 11; 15%), and some reported being both caregivers as well as working in the formal caregiving sector ( n  = 7; 10%). Only one person reported themselves as an older adult having a caregiver.

Characterization of flexible at-home respite

The characterization of flexible at-home respite will be presented below in three main categories which are WHO , WHEN , and HOW . Of note, 10 (24%) of the included documents had three categories of flexible components, 16 (38%) had 2 categories and 1 category. Almost all documents discussed the HOW of flexible at-home respite ( n  = 40, 95%). Out of the 33 categories constructed with the scoping review, only 6 (18%) were not reported in the questionnaire: (1) planned respite ( WHEN ), (2) screening of dyads ( HOW ), (3) determining frequency of respite ( HOW ), (4) coordination of care ( HOW ), (5) voucher approach ( HOW ) and (6) acceptability to low-income households ( HOW ). Moreover, the questionnaire added three characteristics that were not present in the scoping review: (1) respite needs to be approachable, (2) the organization must be prompt** and adhocratic** and (3) able to deliver respite regardless of the season** (availability). Generic or sub-categories present only in the scoping review are identified with 1 asterisk (*), while those present only in the questionnaire have 2 (**).

In the selected documents, the WHO dimension of flexible at-home respite services can be broken down into three qualifiers: (1) Compatible , (2) qualified and (3) trained (Table  3 ). This dimension includes all human resources contributing to homecare (administrative staff, governing bodies, paid and volunteer care workers). First, the workforce behind flexible respite is compatible , meaning it has personal characteristics and profiles relevant to homecare for caregivers of older adults [ 17 , 53 , 62 , 63 , 68 ]. Gendron and Adam explain this by describing how the role of the care worker in Baluchon Alzheimer™ goes beyond training: “The nature of their work with [Baluchon Alzheimer™] requires particular human and professional qualities that are quite as important as academic credentials” [ 53 ]. Personal characteristics such as flexibility [ 53 , 62 , 63 , 68 ], empathy and patience [ 17 , 53 , 62 ] are deemed essential attributes. Secondly, the workforce is qualified : It has the necessary skills, abilities and knowledge from past professional [ 14 , 45 , 62 , 70 ] and personal experience [ 62 ] to work, or volunteer, with caregivers of older adults. For a program like Baluchon Alzheimer™, “the backgrounds of the baluchonneuses vary […]; all have experience in gerontology” [ 53 ]. Other areas of qualification in the included documents are a nursing background [ 18 , 45 ] or knowledge related to dementia [ 69 ]. Finally, flexible at-home respite requires a trained workforce engaged in the process of acquiring knowledge and learning the skills to provide respite services to caregivers of older adults. For example, homecare organizations can offer specific training on various topics, depending on their target clientele: Dementia [ 44 ], palliative care [ 59 ], or homecare in general [ 44 ].

The WHEN dimension of flexible at-home respite contains 4 temporal features: (1) Time , (2) duration , (3) frequency and (4) predictability (Table  4 ). First, flexible respite is available on a wide range of possible time slots. For example, the service is “available 24 hours, but typically from 9 am to 10 pm” [ 64 ]. Secondly, flexible respite is accessible on a wide range of possible durations . The Community Dementia Support Service (CDSS) is an example of flexibility in duration by “[being] totally flexible, being available from 2 to 15 hours per week” [ 69 ]. Thirdly, the service is offered in different frequencies : It can be either recurrent or occasional, or a combination of both [ 18 , 64 , 66 ]. The last feature of the WHEN dimension is flexibility in predictability ; the respite service can be planned* or not. A study on respite services in South Australia found that most providers (93%) planned the respite care with the dyad, but that emergency or crisis services were still offered by 35% of them [ 50 ].

At-home respite is flexible when it demonstrates approachability : Caregivers can identify that some form of respite exists and can be reached (Table  5 ). For the respite service to be approachable, the organization needs to be reaching out to dyads; it proactively makes sure that caregivers of older adults have information on services, know of their existence and that they can be used. For example, the El Portal program put in place “advisory groups that included the local clergy, representatives from businesses, caregivers, and service providers who were used for outreach work” [ 66 ]. The organization also screens* dyads to assess their eligibility for respite, as well as for other services from the same program or organization. For example, the North Carolina (U.S.A.) Project C.A.R.E. has an initial assessment that considers the range of homecare services available, rather than just assessing for eligibility for a program [ 57 ]. In addition, flexible respite requires the organization to set attainable and inclusive requirements for eligibility, as to not discourage use [ 24 , 57 , 61 , 66 ]. Finally, the organization communicates consistently with the dyad. As Shanley explains in their literature review, “there are clear and open ways for carers to express concerns about the service, and an open mechanism is available for dealing with these concerns constructively” [ 17 ]. In addition, the survey participants discussed two other characteristics. First, for respite to be approachable, the organization is prompt**, respecting a reasonable delay between the request and the beginning of the service (wait list). Second, it is adhocratic**, meaning the organization does not depend on complex systems of rules and procedures to operate i.e., bureaucracy.

The second access dimension of flexible at-home respite is appropriateness (Table  6 ): The fit between respite services and the dyad’s needs, its timeliness, the amount of care spent in assessing their needs and determining the correct respite service. For the respite service to be appropriate, the organization assesses needs by collecting details about the dyad’s needs; this can include, but is not limited to, clinical, psychological, or social evaluation. The organization then proposes respite services from a wide range of options or packages: A multi-respite package, as presented by Arksey et al., can simply be the combination of at least two different respite services [ 44 ]. For the service to be appropriate, the organization also paces the respite. Apprehension towards service appropriateness can be mitigated by a gradual introduction to homecare, for example when the respite is presented as a trial [ 68 ]. The organization determines the service with the dyad and defines its different characteristics ( WHEN * , WHO ) so interventions correspond to their needs. The organization then determines the appropriate activities to do with the dyad during the respite. For example, the caregiver of older adults can be encouraged to use respite time for leisure (sleep, physical activity, etc.) [ 45 ], while the care worker supports the beneficiary in engaging in an activity such as a walk or a board game [ 14 ]. Furthermore, the organization coordinates* the services for the dyad and acts as a “respite broker” to arrange all aspects of care; this is especially relevant for programs that include a “care budget” that can be used at the caregivers’ discretion [ 58 ]. Finally, for the respite to be appropriate, the organization assures that it is in continuity with other health services, by connecting the dyads to pertinent resources. As described by Shaw, respite should be “embedded in a context that includes assessment, carer education, case management and counselling” [ 18 ].

The third access dimension of flexible at-home respite is affordability , referring to the economic capacity of the dyad to spend resources to use appropriate respite services (Table  7 ). The included documents only explored the direct cost of respite: The amount of money a dyad must pay to receive services. For the respite to be affordable, its direct cost is either (1) adapted, where the cost is modulated according to the dyad’s financial resources, for example on a sliding scale, based on income or (2) nonexistent [ 44 ].

Next, flexible at-home respite must demonstrate availability (Table  8 ): Services can be reached both physically and in a timely manner. Firstly, the organization offers respite in the dyads’ geographic area. Shanley described an at-home mobile respite program designed to reach rural and remote areas, where two care workers visit different locations for set periods of time [ 17 ]. Moreover, one sub-characteristic identified exclusively by the survey participants was seasonality. Indeed, the dyad has access to respite, regardless of the season**. Thus, the geography category is broken down between the access to service (1) in rural or remote areas and (2) notwithstanding the season. Flexibility in availability also requires that the dyads have access to unlimited respite time; the organization does not assign a finite bank of hours. Finally, the organization proposes diverse payment methods to the dyads. The consumer-directed approach is a way that homecare organizations offer flexibility. A care budget is allocated to the caregiver to purchase hours from homecare agencies or to hire their own respite workers. This includes payments to family members or friends to provide respite care [ 79 ]. An example of a type of consumer-directed approach is the use of vouchers*: Credit notes or coupons to purchase service hours from homecare agencies [ 44 ].

Finally, access to flexible at-home respite also relates to acceptability (Table  9 ): The cultural and social factors determining the possibility for the dyad to accept respite and the perception of the appropriateness of seeking services. For the respite to be acceptable, the organization targets and caters to the cultural diversity represented in their local population. The organization is also able to identify and to accommodate underserved groups. In the included documents, underserved groups lacked access to respite for two reasons: (1) Geographic isolation or (2) the requirements to be eligible to “traditional homecare” does not apply to them, for example, for younger people with dementia and people with HIV/AIDS [ 17 ]. The organization can target and cater to low-income households*. Rosenthal Gelman and his collaborators detail a program where, after realizing that low-income caregivers have greater unmet needs, special funds were set aside for respite care vouchers to be distributed [ 70 ].

This scoping review conducted with Levac and colleagues’ method [ 32 ] synthesized the knowledge on the characteristics of flexible at-home respite services offered to caregivers of older adults, from 42 documents. The results provide a synthesis of the characteristics of flexible at-home respite discussed in the literature. The three dimensions of flexibility in respite relate to (1) WHO is tendering it, (2) WHEN it is tendered and (3) HOW it is tendered. First, human resources ( WHO ) must be compatible with the homecare sector as well as being trained and qualified to offer respite to caregivers of older adults. The second feature of flexible respite is temporality ( WHEN ): The time, duration, frequency, and predictability of the service. The last dimension, access ( HOW ), refers to the interface between the respite and the users. Flexible at-home respite exhibits approachability, appropriateness, affordability, availability, and acceptability. In the light of what we learned, flexible at-home respite could be characterized as a service that has the ability to adjust to the needs of the dyad on all three dimensions ( W HO , WHEN , HOW ). However, this seems to be more of an ideal than a reflection of reality.

The survey provided complementary results to the review; the concordance between the two is strong (27/33 = 82%). Six [ 6 ] characteristics were missing from the survey results, including planned respite and the voucher approach ( HOW ). Moreover, the survey added three elements to the review results: The organization’s adhocracy ( HOW ) and promptness ( HOW ) as well as its ability to offer services, regardless of the season ( HOW ). These mismatches might reflect the Québec (and possibly Canadian) landscape of homecare. For example, in the Québec homecare system, respite is mostly planned, it is therefore not surprising that people only mention that unplanned respite is lacking. The “voucher system” was not mentioned in the survey, probably in part because it does not exist in the province of Québec. Additionally, navigating the healthcare system to have free or affordable homecare can be treacherous [ 80 ]. In short, older adults have to go through (1) evaluation(s) by a social worker from a hospital or another public healthcare organization and (2) various administrative tasks ( adhocratic ) [ 2 ], before possibly being put on a waiting list ( prompt ) [ 81 ]. In addition, Canada can experience harsh winters ( seasonality ) that can make transport, which is an integral part of homecare, particularly laborious. Although those categories could reflect the particularity of homecare in Canada, a promising follow up on this review would be to compare the characteristics of flexible respite from one territory to another. It would contribute to providing a more operational definition of flexible at-home respite.

The remainder of this discussion will focus on two main points before touching on the limitations and strengths of this review. First, flexibility in at-home respite seems exceptional. Second, respite care workers are as skilled as they are underappreciated.

This review, in coherence with the literature, highlights the fact that respite services generally lack flexibility: This is the conclusion of several studies on respite [ 7 , 64 , 82 ]. A pattern seems to emerge in the countries represented in the review: Community organizations specialized in homecare (public and/or privately funded) offer respite on predetermined time slots, usually prescribed between traditional office hours (9 AM to 6 PM) [ 50 ]. This lack of flexibility could be explained in part by the rigidity of the structure of homecare services and the fact that its funding does not allow for customizable and punctual services [ 17 , 62 , 73 ]. Nevertheless, there were some examples of flexible respite models, such as Baluchon Alzheimer™ and consumer-directed approaches. Baluchon Alzheimer™ offers long-term at-home respite (4 to 14 days) by qualified and trained baluchonneuses . Prior to the relay of the caregivers, the baluchonneuse takes the time to learn about the dyad, including their environment and routine [ 53 , 62 ]. Caregivers report feeling refreshed upon their return and appreciate the diaries (or logbooks) that the baluchonneuse meticulously fills out [ 53 ]. Another example would be consumer-directed approaches, where caregivers are attributed a budget to hire their own care worker. Allowing caregivers to choose their care worker (either from a self-employed carer or family and friends) can increase the quality of care and satisfaction, while providing relatively affordable care, especially in a situation of labour shortage [ 51 , 79 ]. Even though these two models are a demonstration of how respite can be adapted to the caregiver-senior dyad, for the most part, flexibility is lacking on all three dimensions of respite ( WHO , WHEN , HOW ).

Secondly, the results from the scoping review highlight how homecare as a profession is often overlooked. Indeed, the reviewed documents state the necessary set of skills to offer respite; the level described is one of highly specialized care professionals with important liability. These skills must also transcend advanced knowledge and qualifications, to include interpersonal capabilities [ 17 , 53 , 62 , 63 , 68 ]. Furthermore, care workers must also be flexible to offer a wide range of service time and duration, in addition to being ready to provide “on-the-go” respite [ 53 , 68 ]. Yet, the occupation of homecare worker is an underappreciated and underpaid position [ 83 ]. Community care, like respite, is generally not a priority for social and healthcare funding [ 24 ]. This can be explained in part by the neoliberal approach to care in which the target is to minimize spending and maximize (measurable) outcomes [ 84 ]. Homecare outcomes are often overlooked in favour of service delivery evaluation, in part because they are difficult to measure [ 44 ]. This approach can also lead to prioritizing third party contracting instead of including respite in the range of public services, as to save on expenses related to employment (insurance and other benefits) [ 85 ]. Another contributor is that funding is used for service administration and not to adequately provide services or remunerate care workers [ 86 ]. Finally, care workers are mostly women, known for doing the invisible work that is at the heart of respite care (emotional support, etc.) [ 87 ]. A telling example from the reviewed documents is that Baluchon Alzheimer™ refers to their care workers as baluchonneuses (feminine form) and not baluchoneurs (masculine form) [ 53 ]. Consequently, the homecare sector is faced with recruitment and retention challenges [ 44 , 64 , 88 ]. Authors of the documents included in the review addressed the fact that flexibility in service meant that service providers had to function with excess capacity; for example, by building an “employee bank” to cover all the hours of the day and emergency calls [ 44 ]. Ultimately, staff turnover and shortage caused in part by the work being underappreciated could create a vicious cycle, leading to inflexibility in respite. In short, overlooking and underestimating the crucial and specialized work of homecare workers can contribute to staff turnover, which in turn could result in a lack of flexibility of at-home respite.

Limitations and strengths

The review’s methodological approach has some limitations and strengths. First, according to Levac, Colquhoun and O’Brien [ 32 ], research teams could conduct a sixth step in their scoping study, consisting in consulting experts through a focus group or workshop. This last phase aims at providing further insight into the review’s results and to begin the knowledge translation process. The team did not conduct a traditional consultation phase. Instead, they triangulated the review’s results through a questionnaire. This method was of interest, because of the natural concordance between the results and the considerable number of participants ( n  = 100). The survey still allowed to refine the characterization of respite, but further knowledge transfer to homecare actors and caregivers is necessary. Although innovative, there is a need to further investigate the validity of this approach as a consultation phase. Secondly, the theme of flexible at-home respite may have narrowed the search and identification of relevant documentation, and therefore caused the team to overlook some of the literature. Empirical studies and reviews on respite seldom include a detailed description of services [ 89 , 90 , 91 ]. This made it challenging to understand what services are like, operationally, for the dyad and to judge their flexibility. In addition, it complexified the extraction of relevant data, as descriptions were sparse and scattered throughout the documents. The team worked to mitigate these limitations in the documentation research and data charting phase. To begin, they sorted through all the literature on at-home respite for caregivers of older adults. In other words, the team not only searched for, but also included any explicit mention of flexibility. After selection, the extraction tables allowed enough versatility to include all the flexible characteristics of service, regardless of their placement in the text (introduction, methodology or discussion) or length. Another limitation is that, due to resource constraints, only 10% of the document selection and extraction was assessed by two reviewers, although a minimum of 80% of agreement was met and discussions were used to reach consensus where a disagreement arose. To conclude, strengths of this review include the extensiveness and diversity of the documents and its rigorous methodology, co-validated by a peer and an experienced researcher, with assistance from a specialized librarian.

This review has both scientific and practical implications. From a scientific point of view, the results contribute to the body of knowledge on flexible respite service models for caregivers of seniors, an under-documented topic. To our knowledge, this is the first review that aims to characterize flexible at-home respite. Our results suggest the relevance of further documenting the factors influencing the implementation and delivery of flexible respite services, as well as the consequences of the lack of flexibility in respite services, which may lead to service underuse. Moreover, researchers could focus on documenting respite programs in countries that are not represented in this review. There were notably no documents from the continents of Asia and Africa. Unfortunately, good practices can go unreported in peer-reviewed publications; therefore, a review focusing on government reports and publications aimed at professionals could shed some light on promising respite models. From a practical point of view, this review serves as a starting point for the implementation of flexible home respite that is tailored to the caregivers’ and older adults’ needs. Our characterization of flexible at-home respite can be used to guide the improvement of existing respite services and to design new resources that reflect best practices in homecare, ultimately contributing to successful aging in place for older adults.

Data availability

The data supporting this study’s findings are available from the corresponding author, upon reasonable request.

Abbreviations

Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews

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Acknowledgements

The team thanks the Université de Sherbrooke’s library and archives service for their support. The team also want to thank everyone who participated in the survey.

This article describes a part of a larger study on flexible respite funded by the Fonds de la recherche du Québec (#309508) – Santé and the Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines du Canada (#892-2019-3075). Annie Carrier and Véronique Provencher are Fonds de recherche du Québec – Santé Junior 1 and Junior 2 researchers (#296437 and #297008, respectively). Alexandra Éthier is a Canadian Institutes of Health Research - Research Graduate Scholarships – Doctoral Program recipient (#476590 − 71729).

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Maude Viens, Alexandra Éthier, Véronique Provencher & Annie Carrier

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MV conducted the review and co-wrote the article with AE. AE co-validated the study selection and co-wrote the article. AC co-validated the study selection, data charting and reviewed the article. VP reviewed the article. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Viens, M., Éthier, A., Provencher, V. et al. WHO, WHEN, HOW: a scoping review on flexible at-home respite for informal caregivers of older adults. BMC Health Serv Res 24 , 767 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-024-11058-0

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Received : 05 June 2023

Accepted : 29 April 2024

Published : 26 June 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-024-11058-0

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