AAE 780: Research Colloquium (Spring 2025) : Home

What does a literature review do or achieve (broadly speaking)? It should...

• Set the context for the study, demarcate the scope of the investigation, and provide a justification for those decisions.
• Situate the literature in scholarly/historical context.
• Report the claims made in the existing literature.
• Examine the research methods used.
• Distinguish what has been learned and accomplished in the area of study from what still needs to be learned and accomplished.
• Summarize and synthesize the existing literature in a way that permits a new perspective.

Evidence synthesis (including systematic reviews and other review types within the systematic review family) is a form of literature review. Like all literature reviews, evidence synthesis projects involve collecting previously published information and reading, evaluating, and aggregating the information. Unlike traditional narrative literature reviews, however, evidence synthesis projects involve the following: 

• Answers a research question by synthesizing information from previously published information either qualitatively, quantitatively, or with mixed methods, using methodological and statistical tools to do so; 
• Requires a highly regimented, exhaustive, and documented literature search process, intended to be transparent and replicable by others, as part of the overall research methodology; and
• Uses a priori inclusion and exclusion criteria to select the articles used in the review. This process is also part of its research methodology.

Support services through our campus libraries for these review types.

• Evidence Synthesis, Systematic Reviews Services Guide
  This guide introduces the process of conducting a systematic review or other evidence synthesis, focusing on disciplines outside of the health sciences.

While a full systematic review may not necessarily satisfy criteria for dissertation research in a discipline (as independent scholarship), the methods described in the libraries' guide to evidence synthesis & systematic reviews can help to ensure that your review of the literature is comprehensive, less biased, transparent, and replicable.

It is all about reproducibility and transparency! If using AI tools during any phase of your review process, it will be essential to disclose how and when you will have used any tool--whether it be for helping you to generate search terms and search syntax, for screening records, or for generating text in the manuscript.