SCHOLARLY LITERATURE REVIEW

Scholarly Literature Review Discussion Thread

A literature review is a synthesis of scholarly sources addressing a topic or theory of interest (Fink, 2014). It is a collection of selected materials that are considered most significant and relevant to the topic, which the researcher uses to demonstrate what has already been done on the topic. God Himself lays the Biblical foundation for literature reviews by encouraging Christians to acknowledge the contribution of others in their daily living in Ruth 2, which states that the Lord repay you for what you have done, and a full reward be given to you by the Lord (Ruth 2: 12). In summary, a literature review provides a glimpse of what other researchers have done and the existing knowledge gaps, which provide the rationale for conducting the current research (Fink, 2014).

From my perspective, a literature review is more than a simple summary of relevant scholarly sources. Instead, it is a synthesis of relevant sources that requires the reviewer to trace...

Knowledge gaps in literature review are the gaps that exist in the study area as a result of varying findings across reviewed literature or an understudying of the topic area....…area in general (Ridley, 2012). It is important to assess relevance based on multiple factors including article age, provenance, objectivity, value, and the appropriateness of the adopted methodology. The final step then is to arrange the final list of sources logically in a way that depicts progression of the idea under study and in a chronological order from the least to the most recent, delineating the findings as well as the strengths and weaknesses of each reviewed article. It is prudent to establish synthesis by showing how each article feeds into the other such as how they relate in terms of findings and how one takes care of the weaknesses…