Writing a Literature Review: Structure & Writing
 
Most literature reviews are designed to bring together the information from a lot of different sources, and to give the reader an overview of a particular subject.  These articles also tend to have a thesis, that builds on the body of work, and adds something to the overall knowledge in the field. In this class we will be writing several review papers, but these will generally be about a small number of references, and I do not expect you to add to the field. However, it is useful to have some sort of Thesis, or topic that is the main thing you want to get across. This will help to focus your writing.
 
Your whole article should revolve around your thesis or topic. Think about what is the most important thing(s) to get across to your reader.
 
The whole thing should be a series of paragraphs, and it is useful to break these up into sections. In order to practice this going forward I am going to have you include section headers. In our case the total should be around 1-2 single spaced pages
 
In your assignment descriptions I will give you further advice on what should be included in each of these sections, as it will vary a little with each assignment.
 
1. Title: This should give your reader enough detail to understand the topic of your paper without excessive detail. Think of this as the “headline” that will draw your reader in. It  should be no more then the width of your paper, and I would recommend writing this and the abstract LAST
 
2. Abstract. A brief summary of your thesis, the major studies investigated, and conclusions drawn. Your abstract and title are the first impressions your paper will make on the reader. You want to give them a sense of what they will learn from making the investment of reading your whole paper. In most papers there is a word limit to this (usually 250 words), for our papers we don’t need quite that much space and I would try to limit these to 2-3 sentences or about 60 words. 
 
 3. Introduction. This section should introduce the topic and your thesis. It should clearly define exactly what this article will discuss, outline the order in which you will discuss it, and give the reader any background information needed to understand the coming sections.  In our case this should be one to two paragraphs long or about 1/4 of the total paper.
 
4. Body: This is where you tell your reader the main points about your topic, and give them the data to support your conclusions.…so this would be the likely place for materials and observations, or  a specific description of the experiments that support your conclusion, or the specific proteins that are involved in a process. Here is where you will really tell your reader what they need to know about your topic. This should be about 1/2 of the total length.
 
5. Discussion and Conclusions: You should conclude your review by restating your thesis and the purpose of the article, then discuss the conclusions you have drawn. You should also discuss the implications of your topic and how it fits into the bigger picture, and why we should care about this at all. This should be about a paragraph, maybe 1/5 of the total
 
6. References: At the end, be sure to list all of the references that you used. It does not matter exactly which format you use, but you should use one of the standard formats. Many formats mention that these need to be on a separate page, but I think it is fine to include them just in a separate section at the end of your paper. Below is a guide for a standard journal article citaiton. More detailed information can be found by looking you apa citation guides on the internet
 
Author, A.A.. (Publication Year). Article title. Periodical Title, Volume(Issue), pp.-pp.
 
Some common issues include, how to cite website sources. Here is a link to more information
 
http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2010/11/how-to-cite-something-you-found-on-a-website-in-apa-style.html
 
And here are some examples they give on citation
 
Author, A. (date). Title of document [Format description]. Retrieved from http://URL
 
If there is no author
 
Freakonomics. (2010, October 29). E-ZPass is a life-saver (literally) [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/e-zpass-is-a-life-saver-literally/
 
If there is no date
 
The College of William and Mary. (n.d.). College mission statement. Retrieved from http://www.wm.edu/about/administration/provost/mission/index.php
 
IN LINE CITATIONS
 
Within the Intro, Body and Conclusions you will likely be talking fairly directly about the work that you are reading. YOU CAN NOT USE QUOTATIONS! YOU MUST WRITE IN YOUR OWN WORDS. Even when you have written it in your own words, if you are talking directly about specific information that you found in a specific source you will need to include an inline citation. You do not need to cite general knowledge (Ex: insulin binds to the insulin receptor). However, anytime you are talking about work that was done specifically in a paper you should cite that paper for each sentence (Ex: The external domain of the insulin receptor is specifically important for insulin binding and recognition) For some general guidelines on what to cite and what not to, look at your sources, if they feel the need to cite it, maybe you should too.
 
For in-line citations journal articles can be cited by author and date (Lewis, 2014). Websites and other on-line material should be cited by author and date if possible, and by title if no author is available. Remember, what you are trying to do is give your reader the information they need to find this source in your bibliography, while taking up the least amount of space possible in the actual text.
 
 
A quick note on Wikipedia – I think Wikipedia is a fine place to start to get a good overview of a problem or issue. If you do use it, please include it in your bibliography, even if you do not cite it directly. In general, however, you do want to confirm the information you find on Wikipedia using more reliable sources.
 
Below is an article from the apastyle website that I think says it well.
 
 
I stole this directly from  http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2009/10/how-to-cite-wikipedia-in-apa-style.html
 
How to Cite Wikipedia in APA Style
by Timothy McAdoo

First things first. Is it a good idea to cite Wikipedia in your research paper? Generally speaking, no. In fact, if you’re writing a paper as a class assignment, your teacher may specifically prohibit citing Wikipedia (See my note above – Alaron). Scholarly papers should generally rely on peer-reviewed and other scholarly work vetted by experts in the field.
Does this mean Wikipedia contains bad information? Not at all. It is a great way to get an overview of a topic that might be new to you. And, because many Wikipedia entries contain thorough citations, they can be good starting points to find the original source materials you do want to use. Don’t quote or paraphrase from the Wikipedia entry in your paper, but check the entry’s Reference section to find links to more authoritative sources. And be sure to find and read these sources to verify the facts, figures, and points of view they present.