what is an review essay

How to Write Critical Reviews

When you are asked to write a critical review of a book or article, you will need to identify, summarize, and evaluate the ideas and information the author has presented. In other words, you will be examining another person’s thoughts on a topic from your point of view.

Your stand must go beyond your “gut reaction” to the work and be based on your knowledge (readings, lecture, experience) of the topic as well as on factors such as criteria stated in your assignment or discussed by you and your instructor.

Make your stand clear at the beginning of your review, in your evaluations of specific parts, and in your concluding commentary.

Remember that your goal should be to make a few key points about the book or article, not to discuss everything the author writes.

Understanding the Assignment

To write a good critical review, you will have to engage in the mental processes of analyzing (taking apart) the work–deciding what its major components are and determining how these parts (i.e., paragraphs, sections, or chapters) contribute to the work as a whole.

Analyzing the work will help you focus on how and why the author makes certain points and prevent you from merely summarizing what the author says. Assuming the role of an analytical reader will also help you to determine whether or not the author fulfills the stated purpose of the book or article and enhances your understanding or knowledge of a particular topic.

Be sure to read your assignment thoroughly before you read the article or book. Your instructor may have included specific guidelines for you to follow. Keeping these guidelines in mind as you read the article or book can really help you write your paper!

Also, note where the work connects with what you’ve studied in the course. You can make the most efficient use of your reading and notetaking time if you are an active reader; that is, keep relevant questions in mind and jot down page numbers as well as your responses to ideas that appear to be significant as you read.

Please note: The length of your introduction and overview, the number of points you choose to review, and the length of your conclusion should be proportionate to the page limit stated in your assignment and should reflect the complexity of the material being reviewed as well as the expectations of your reader.

Write the introduction

Below are a few guidelines to help you write the introduction to your critical review.

Introduce your review appropriately

Begin your review with an introduction appropriate to your assignment.

If your assignment asks you to review only one book and not to use outside sources, your introduction will focus on identifying the author, the title, the main topic or issue presented in the book, and the author’s purpose in writing the book.

If your assignment asks you to review the book as it relates to issues or themes discussed in the course, or to review two or more books on the same topic, your introduction must also encompass those expectations.

Explain relationships

For example, before you can review two books on a topic, you must explain to your reader in your introduction how they are related to one another.

Within this shared context (or under this “umbrella”) you can then review comparable aspects of both books, pointing out where the authors agree and differ.

In other words, the more complicated your assignment is, the more your introduction must accomplish.

Finally, the introduction to a book review is always the place for you to establish your position as the reviewer (your thesis about the author’s thesis).

As you write, consider the following questions:

• Is the book a memoir, a treatise, a collection of facts, an extended argument, etc.? Is the article a documentary, a write-up of primary research, a position paper, etc.?
• Who is the author? What does the preface or foreword tell you about the author’s purpose, background, and credentials? What is the author’s approach to the topic (as a journalist? a historian? a researcher?)?
• What is the main topic or problem addressed? How does the work relate to a discipline, to a profession, to a particular audience, or to other works on the topic?
• What is your critical evaluation of the work (your thesis)? Why have you taken that position? What criteria are you basing your position on?

Provide an overview

In your introduction, you will also want to provide an overview. An overview supplies your reader with certain general information not appropriate for including in the introduction but necessary to understanding the body of the review.

Generally, an overview describes your book’s division into chapters, sections, or points of discussion. An overview may also include background information about the topic, about your stand, or about the criteria you will use for evaluation.

The overview and the introduction work together to provide a comprehensive beginning for (a “springboard” into) your review.

• What are the author’s basic premises? What issues are raised, or what themes emerge? What situation (i.e., racism on college campuses) provides a basis for the author’s assertions?
• How informed is my reader? What background information is relevant to the entire book and should be placed here rather than in a body paragraph?

Write the body

The body is the center of your paper, where you draw out your main arguments. Below are some guidelines to help you write it.

Organize using a logical plan

Organize the body of your review according to a logical plan. Here are two options:

• First, summarize, in a series of paragraphs, those major points from the book that you plan to discuss; incorporating each major point into a topic sentence for a paragraph is an effective organizational strategy. Second, discuss and evaluate these points in a following group of paragraphs. (There are two dangers lurking in this pattern–you may allot too many paragraphs to summary and too few to evaluation, or you may re-summarize too many points from the book in your evaluation section.)
• Alternatively, you can summarize and evaluate the major points you have chosen from the book in a point-by-point schema. That means you will discuss and evaluate point one within the same paragraph (or in several if the point is significant and warrants extended discussion) before you summarize and evaluate point two, point three, etc., moving in a logical sequence from point to point to point. Here again, it is effective to use the topic sentence of each paragraph to identify the point from the book that you plan to summarize or evaluate.

Questions to keep in mind as you write

With either organizational pattern, consider the following questions:

• What are the author’s most important points? How do these relate to one another? (Make relationships clear by using transitions: “In contrast,” an equally strong argument,” “moreover,” “a final conclusion,” etc.).
• What types of evidence or information does the author present to support his or her points? Is this evidence convincing, controversial, factual, one-sided, etc.? (Consider the use of primary historical material, case studies, narratives, recent scientific findings, statistics.)
• Where does the author do a good job of conveying factual material as well as personal perspective? Where does the author fail to do so? If solutions to a problem are offered, are they believable, misguided, or promising?
• Which parts of the work (particular arguments, descriptions, chapters, etc.) are most effective and which parts are least effective? Why?
• Where (if at all) does the author convey personal prejudice, support illogical relationships, or present evidence out of its appropriate context?

Keep your opinions distinct and cite your sources

Remember, as you discuss the author’s major points, be sure to distinguish consistently between the author’s opinions and your own.

Keep the summary portions of your discussion concise, remembering that your task as a reviewer is to re-see the author’s work, not to re-tell it.

And, importantly, if you refer to ideas from other books and articles or from lecture and course materials, always document your sources, or else you might wander into the realm of plagiarism.

Include only that material which has relevance for your review and use direct quotations sparingly. The Writing Center has other handouts to help you paraphrase text and introduce quotations.

Write the conclusion

You will want to use the conclusion to state your overall critical evaluation.

You have already discussed the major points the author makes, examined how the author supports arguments, and evaluated the quality or effectiveness of specific aspects of the book or article.

Now you must make an evaluation of the work as a whole, determining such things as whether or not the author achieves the stated or implied purpose and if the work makes a significant contribution to an existing body of knowledge.

Consider the following questions:

• Is the work appropriately subjective or objective according to the author’s purpose?
• How well does the work maintain its stated or implied focus? Does the author present extraneous material? Does the author exclude or ignore relevant information?
• How well has the author achieved the overall purpose of the book or article? What contribution does the work make to an existing body of knowledge or to a specific group of readers? Can you justify the use of this work in a particular course?
• What is the most important final comment you wish to make about the book or article? Do you have any suggestions for the direction of future research in the area? What has reading this work done for you or demonstrated to you?

Academic and Professional Writing

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Book Reviews

What this handout is about.

This handout will help you write a book review, a report or essay that offers a critical perspective on a text. It offers a process and suggests some strategies for writing book reviews.

What is a review?

A review is a critical evaluation of a text, event, object, or phenomenon. Reviews can consider books, articles, entire genres or fields of literature, architecture, art, fashion, restaurants, policies, exhibitions, performances, and many other forms. This handout will focus on book reviews. For a similar assignment, see our handout on literature reviews .

Above all, a review makes an argument. The most important element of a review is that it is a commentary, not merely a summary. It allows you to enter into dialogue and discussion with the work’s creator and with other audiences. You can offer agreement or disagreement and identify where you find the work exemplary or deficient in its knowledge, judgments, or organization. You should clearly state your opinion of the work in question, and that statement will probably resemble other types of academic writing, with a thesis statement, supporting body paragraphs, and a conclusion.

Typically, reviews are brief. In newspapers and academic journals, they rarely exceed 1000 words, although you may encounter lengthier assignments and extended commentaries. In either case, reviews need to be succinct. While they vary in tone, subject, and style, they share some common features:

• First, a review gives the reader a concise summary of the content. This includes a relevant description of the topic as well as its overall perspective, argument, or purpose.
• Second, and more importantly, a review offers a critical assessment of the content. This involves your reactions to the work under review: what strikes you as noteworthy, whether or not it was effective or persuasive, and how it enhanced your understanding of the issues at hand.
• Finally, in addition to analyzing the work, a review often suggests whether or not the audience would appreciate it.

Becoming an expert reviewer: three short examples

Reviewing can be a daunting task. Someone has asked for your opinion about something that you may feel unqualified to evaluate. Who are you to criticize Toni Morrison’s new book if you’ve never written a novel yourself, much less won a Nobel Prize? The point is that someone—a professor, a journal editor, peers in a study group—wants to know what you think about a particular work. You may not be (or feel like) an expert, but you need to pretend to be one for your particular audience. Nobody expects you to be the intellectual equal of the work’s creator, but your careful observations can provide you with the raw material to make reasoned judgments. Tactfully voicing agreement and disagreement, praise and criticism, is a valuable, challenging skill, and like many forms of writing, reviews require you to provide concrete evidence for your assertions.

Consider the following brief book review written for a history course on medieval Europe by a student who is fascinated with beer:

Judith Bennett’s Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England: Women’s Work in a Changing World, 1300-1600, investigates how women used to brew and sell the majority of ale drunk in England. Historically, ale and beer (not milk, wine, or water) were important elements of the English diet. Ale brewing was low-skill and low status labor that was complimentary to women’s domestic responsibilities. In the early fifteenth century, brewers began to make ale with hops, and they called this new drink “beer.” This technique allowed brewers to produce their beverages at a lower cost and to sell it more easily, although women generally stopped brewing once the business became more profitable.

The student describes the subject of the book and provides an accurate summary of its contents. But the reader does not learn some key information expected from a review: the author’s argument, the student’s appraisal of the book and its argument, and whether or not the student would recommend the book. As a critical assessment, a book review should focus on opinions, not facts and details. Summary should be kept to a minimum, and specific details should serve to illustrate arguments.

Now consider a review of the same book written by a slightly more opinionated student:

Judith Bennett’s Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England: Women’s Work in a Changing World, 1300-1600 was a colossal disappointment. I wanted to know about the rituals surrounding drinking in medieval England: the songs, the games, the parties. Bennett provided none of that information. I liked how the book showed ale and beer brewing as an economic activity, but the reader gets lost in the details of prices and wages. I was more interested in the private lives of the women brewsters. The book was divided into eight long chapters, and I can’t imagine why anyone would ever want to read it.

There’s no shortage of judgments in this review! But the student does not display a working knowledge of the book’s argument. The reader has a sense of what the student expected of the book, but no sense of what the author herself set out to prove. Although the student gives several reasons for the negative review, those examples do not clearly relate to each other as part of an overall evaluation—in other words, in support of a specific thesis. This review is indeed an assessment, but not a critical one.

Here is one final review of the same book:

One of feminism’s paradoxes—one that challenges many of its optimistic histories—is how patriarchy remains persistent over time. While Judith Bennett’s Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England: Women’s Work in a Changing World, 1300-1600 recognizes medieval women as historical actors through their ale brewing, it also shows that female agency had its limits with the advent of beer. I had assumed that those limits were religious and political, but Bennett shows how a “patriarchal equilibrium” shut women out of economic life as well. Her analysis of women’s wages in ale and beer production proves that a change in women’s work does not equate to a change in working women’s status. Contemporary feminists and historians alike should read Bennett’s book and think twice when they crack open their next brewsky.

This student’s review avoids the problems of the previous two examples. It combines balanced opinion and concrete example, a critical assessment based on an explicitly stated rationale, and a recommendation to a potential audience. The reader gets a sense of what the book’s author intended to demonstrate. Moreover, the student refers to an argument about feminist history in general that places the book in a specific genre and that reaches out to a general audience. The example of analyzing wages illustrates an argument, the analysis engages significant intellectual debates, and the reasons for the overall positive review are plainly visible. The review offers criteria, opinions, and support with which the reader can agree or disagree.

Developing an assessment: before you write

There is no definitive method to writing a review, although some critical thinking about the work at hand is necessary before you actually begin writing. Thus, writing a review is a two-step process: developing an argument about the work under consideration, and making that argument as you write an organized and well-supported draft. See our handout on argument .

What follows is a series of questions to focus your thinking as you dig into the work at hand. While the questions specifically consider book reviews, you can easily transpose them to an analysis of performances, exhibitions, and other review subjects. Don’t feel obligated to address each of the questions; some will be more relevant than others to the book in question.

• What is the thesis—or main argument—of the book? If the author wanted you to get one idea from the book, what would it be? How does it compare or contrast to the world you know? What has the book accomplished?
• What exactly is the subject or topic of the book? Does the author cover the subject adequately? Does the author cover all aspects of the subject in a balanced fashion? What is the approach to the subject (topical, analytical, chronological, descriptive)?
• How does the author support their argument? What evidence do they use to prove their point? Do you find that evidence convincing? Why or why not? Does any of the author’s information (or conclusions) conflict with other books you’ve read, courses you’ve taken or just previous assumptions you had of the subject?
• How does the author structure their argument? What are the parts that make up the whole? Does the argument make sense? Does it persuade you? Why or why not?
• How has this book helped you understand the subject? Would you recommend the book to your reader?

Beyond the internal workings of the book, you may also consider some information about the author and the circumstances of the text’s production:

• Who is the author? Nationality, political persuasion, training, intellectual interests, personal history, and historical context may provide crucial details about how a work takes shape. Does it matter, for example, that the biographer was the subject’s best friend? What difference would it make if the author participated in the events they write about?
• What is the book’s genre? Out of what field does it emerge? Does it conform to or depart from the conventions of its genre? These questions can provide a historical or literary standard on which to base your evaluations. If you are reviewing the first book ever written on the subject, it will be important for your readers to know. Keep in mind, though, that naming “firsts”—alongside naming “bests” and “onlys”—can be a risky business unless you’re absolutely certain.

Writing the review

Once you have made your observations and assessments of the work under review, carefully survey your notes and attempt to unify your impressions into a statement that will describe the purpose or thesis of your review. Check out our handout on thesis statements . Then, outline the arguments that support your thesis.

Your arguments should develop the thesis in a logical manner. That logic, unlike more standard academic writing, may initially emphasize the author’s argument while you develop your own in the course of the review. The relative emphasis depends on the nature of the review: if readers may be more interested in the work itself, you may want to make the work and the author more prominent; if you want the review to be about your perspective and opinions, then you may structure the review to privilege your observations over (but never separate from) those of the work under review. What follows is just one of many ways to organize a review.

Introduction

Since most reviews are brief, many writers begin with a catchy quip or anecdote that succinctly delivers their argument. But you can introduce your review differently depending on the argument and audience. The Writing Center’s handout on introductions can help you find an approach that works. In general, you should include:

• The name of the author and the book title and the main theme.
• Relevant details about who the author is and where they stand in the genre or field of inquiry. You could also link the title to the subject to show how the title explains the subject matter.
• The context of the book and/or your review. Placing your review in a framework that makes sense to your audience alerts readers to your “take” on the book. Perhaps you want to situate a book about the Cuban revolution in the context of Cold War rivalries between the United States and the Soviet Union. Another reviewer might want to consider the book in the framework of Latin American social movements. Your choice of context informs your argument.
• The thesis of the book. If you are reviewing fiction, this may be difficult since novels, plays, and short stories rarely have explicit arguments. But identifying the book’s particular novelty, angle, or originality allows you to show what specific contribution the piece is trying to make.
• Your thesis about the book.

Summary of content

This should be brief, as analysis takes priority. In the course of making your assessment, you’ll hopefully be backing up your assertions with concrete evidence from the book, so some summary will be dispersed throughout other parts of the review.

The necessary amount of summary also depends on your audience. Graduate students, beware! If you are writing book reviews for colleagues—to prepare for comprehensive exams, for example—you may want to devote more attention to summarizing the book’s contents. If, on the other hand, your audience has already read the book—such as a class assignment on the same work—you may have more liberty to explore more subtle points and to emphasize your own argument. See our handout on summary for more tips.

Analysis and evaluation of the book

Your analysis and evaluation should be organized into paragraphs that deal with single aspects of your argument. This arrangement can be challenging when your purpose is to consider the book as a whole, but it can help you differentiate elements of your criticism and pair assertions with evidence more clearly. You do not necessarily need to work chronologically through the book as you discuss it. Given the argument you want to make, you can organize your paragraphs more usefully by themes, methods, or other elements of the book. If you find it useful to include comparisons to other books, keep them brief so that the book under review remains in the spotlight. Avoid excessive quotation and give a specific page reference in parentheses when you do quote. Remember that you can state many of the author’s points in your own words.

Sum up or restate your thesis or make the final judgment regarding the book. You should not introduce new evidence for your argument in the conclusion. You can, however, introduce new ideas that go beyond the book if they extend the logic of your own thesis. This paragraph needs to balance the book’s strengths and weaknesses in order to unify your evaluation. Did the body of your review have three negative paragraphs and one favorable one? What do they all add up to? The Writing Center’s handout on conclusions can help you make a final assessment.

Finally, a few general considerations:

• Review the book in front of you, not the book you wish the author had written. You can and should point out shortcomings or failures, but don’t criticize the book for not being something it was never intended to be.
• With any luck, the author of the book worked hard to find the right words to express her ideas. You should attempt to do the same. Precise language allows you to control the tone of your review.
• Never hesitate to challenge an assumption, approach, or argument. Be sure, however, to cite specific examples to back up your assertions carefully.
• Try to present a balanced argument about the value of the book for its audience. You’re entitled—and sometimes obligated—to voice strong agreement or disagreement. But keep in mind that a bad book takes as long to write as a good one, and every author deserves fair treatment. Harsh judgments are difficult to prove and can give readers the sense that you were unfair in your assessment.
• A great place to learn about book reviews is to look at examples. The New York Times Sunday Book Review and The New York Review of Books can show you how professional writers review books.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Drewry, John. 1974. Writing Book Reviews. Boston: Greenwood Press.

Hoge, James. 1987. Literary Reviewing. Charlottesville: University Virginia of Press.

Sova, Dawn, and Harry Teitelbaum. 2002. How to Write Book Reports , 4th ed. Lawrenceville, NY: Thomson/Arco.

Walford, A.J. 1986. Reviews and Reviewing: A Guide. Phoenix: Oryx Press.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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• Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide
• Introduction

Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide — Introduction

• Getting Started
• How to Pick a Topic
• Strategies to Find Sources
• Evaluating Sources & Lit. Reviews
• Tips for Writing Literature Reviews
• Writing Literature Review: Useful Sites
• Citation Resources
• Other Academic Writings

What are Literature Reviews?

So, what is a literature review? "A literature review is an account of what has been published on a topic by accredited scholars and researchers. In writing the literature review, your purpose is to convey to your reader what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. As a piece of writing, the literature review must be defined by a guiding concept (e.g., your research objective, the problem or issue you are discussing, or your argumentative thesis). It is not just a descriptive list of the material available, or a set of summaries." Taylor, D.  The literature review: A few tips on conducting it . University of Toronto Health Sciences Writing Centre.

Goals of Literature Reviews

What are the goals of creating a Literature Review?  A literature could be written to accomplish different aims:

• To develop a theory or evaluate an existing theory
• To summarize the historical or existing state of a research topic
• Identify a problem in a field of research 

Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1997). Writing narrative literature reviews .  Review of General Psychology , 1 (3), 311-320.

What kinds of sources require a Literature Review?

• A research paper assigned in a course
• A thesis or dissertation
• A grant proposal
• An article intended for publication in a journal

All these instances require you to collect what has been written about your research topic so that you can demonstrate how your own research sheds new light on the topic.

Types of Literature Reviews

What kinds of literature reviews are written?

Narrative review: The purpose of this type of review is to describe the current state of the research on a specific topic/research and to offer a critical analysis of the literature reviewed. Studies are grouped by research/theoretical categories, and themes and trends, strengths and weakness, and gaps are identified. The review ends with a conclusion section which summarizes the findings regarding the state of the research of the specific study, the gaps identify and if applicable, explains how the author's research will address gaps identify in the review and expand the knowledge on the topic reviewed.

• Example : Predictors and Outcomes of U.S. Quality Maternity Leave: A Review and Conceptual Framework:  10.1177/08948453211037398  

Systematic review : "The authors of a systematic review use a specific procedure to search the research literature, select the studies to include in their review, and critically evaluate the studies they find." (p. 139). Nelson, L. K. (2013). Research in Communication Sciences and Disorders . Plural Publishing.

• Example : The effect of leave policies on increasing fertility: a systematic review:  10.1057/s41599-022-01270-w

Meta-analysis : "Meta-analysis is a method of reviewing research findings in a quantitative fashion by transforming the data from individual studies into what is called an effect size and then pooling and analyzing this information. The basic goal in meta-analysis is to explain why different outcomes have occurred in different studies." (p. 197). Roberts, M. C., & Ilardi, S. S. (2003). Handbook of Research Methods in Clinical Psychology . Blackwell Publishing.

• Example : Employment Instability and Fertility in Europe: A Meta-Analysis:  10.1215/00703370-9164737

Meta-synthesis : "Qualitative meta-synthesis is a type of qualitative study that uses as data the findings from other qualitative studies linked by the same or related topic." (p.312). Zimmer, L. (2006). Qualitative meta-synthesis: A question of dialoguing with texts .  Journal of Advanced Nursing , 53 (3), 311-318.

• Example : Women’s perspectives on career successes and barriers: A qualitative meta-synthesis:  10.1177/05390184221113735

Literature Reviews in the Health Sciences

• UConn Health subject guide on systematic reviews Explanation of the different review types used in health sciences literature as well as tools to help you find the right review type
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• Next: How to Pick a Topic >>
• Last Updated: Sep 21, 2022 2:16 PM
• URL: https://guides.lib.uconn.edu/literaturereview

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Structure of a Critical Review

Critical reviews, both short (one page) and long (four pages), usually have a similar structure. Check your assignment instructions for formatting and structural specifications. Headings are usually optional for longer reviews and can be helpful for the reader.

Introduction

The length of an introduction is usually one paragraph for a journal article review and two or three paragraphs for a longer book review. Include a few opening sentences that announce the author(s) and the title, and briefly explain the topic of the text. Present the aim of the text and summarise the main finding or key argument. Conclude the introduction with a brief statement of your evaluation of the text. This can be a positive or negative evaluation or, as is usually the case, a mixed response.

Present a summary of the key points along with a limited number of examples. You can also briefly explain the author’s purpose/intentions throughout the text and you may briefly describe how the text is organised. The summary should only make up about a third of the critical review.

The critique should be a balanced discussion and evaluation of the strengths, weakness and notable features of the text. Remember to base your discussion on specific criteria. Good reviews also include other sources to support your evaluation (remember to reference).

You can choose how to sequence your critique. Here are some examples to get you started:

• Most important to least important conclusions you make about the text.
• If your critique is more positive than negative, then present the negative points first and the positive last.
• If your critique is more negative than positive, then present the positive points first and the negative last.
• If there are both strengths and weakness for each criterion you use, you need to decide overall what your judgement is. For example, you may want to comment on a key idea in the text and have both positive and negative comments. You could begin by stating what is good about the idea and then concede and explain how it is limited in some way. While this example shows a mixed evaluation, overall you are probably being more negative than positive.
• In long reviews, you can address each criterion you choose in a paragraph, including both negative and positive points. For very short critical reviews (one page or less), where your comments will be briefer, include a paragraph of positive aspects  and another of negative.
• You can also include recommendations for how the text can be improved in terms of ideas, research approach; theories or frameworks used can also be included in the critique section.

Conclusion & References

This is usually a very short paragraph.

• Restate your overall opinion of the text.
• Briefly present recommendations.
• If necessary, some further qualification or explanation of your judgement can be included. This can help your critique sound fair and reasonable.

If you have used other sources in you review you should also include a list of references at the end of the review.

Summarising and paraphrasing for the critical review

The best way to summarise

• Scan the text. Look for information that can be deduced from the introduction, conclusion, title, and headings. What do these tell you about the main points of the article?
• Locate the topic sentences and highlight the main points as you read.
• Reread the text and make separate notes of the main points. Examples and evidence do not need to be included at this stage. Usually they are used selectively in your critique.

Paraphrasing means putting it into your own words. Paraphrasing offers an alternative to using direct quotations in your summary (and the critique) and can be an efficient way to integrate your summary notes.

The best way to paraphrase

• Review your summary notes
• Rewrite them in your own words and in complete sentences
• Use reporting verbs and phrases, e.g. 'The author describes…', 'Smith argues that …'.
• Use quotation marks if If you include unique or specialist phrases from the text.

  Next: Some general criteria for evaluating texts

Essay and assignment writing guide.

• Essay writing basics
• Essay and assignment planning
• Answering assignment questions
• Editing checklist
• Structure of a critical review
• General criteria for evaluating
• Sample extracts
• Annotated bibliography
• Reflective writing
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• Critical Reviews

How to Write an Article Review (With Examples)

Last Updated: April 24, 2024 Fact Checked

Preparing to Write Your Review

Writing the article review, sample article reviews, expert q&a.

This article was co-authored by Jake Adams . Jake Adams is an academic tutor and the owner of Simplifi EDU, a Santa Monica, California based online tutoring business offering learning resources and online tutors for academic subjects K-College, SAT & ACT prep, and college admissions applications. With over 14 years of professional tutoring experience, Jake is dedicated to providing his clients the very best online tutoring experience and access to a network of excellent undergraduate and graduate-level tutors from top colleges all over the nation. Jake holds a BS in International Business and Marketing from Pepperdine University. There are 12 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 3,104,491 times.

An article review is both a summary and an evaluation of another writer's article. Teachers often assign article reviews to introduce students to the work of experts in the field. Experts also are often asked to review the work of other professionals. Understanding the main points and arguments of the article is essential for an accurate summation. Logical evaluation of the article's main theme, supporting arguments, and implications for further research is an important element of a review . Here are a few guidelines for writing an article review.

Education specialist Alexander Peterman recommends: "In the case of a review, your objective should be to reflect on the effectiveness of what has already been written, rather than writing to inform your audience about a subject."

Article Review 101

• Read the article very closely, and then take time to reflect on your evaluation. Consider whether the article effectively achieves what it set out to.
• Write out a full article review by completing your intro, summary, evaluation, and conclusion. Don't forget to add a title, too!
• Proofread your review for mistakes (like grammar and usage), while also cutting down on needless information.

• Article reviews present more than just an opinion. You will engage with the text to create a response to the scholarly writer's ideas. You will respond to and use ideas, theories, and research from your studies. Your critique of the article will be based on proof and your own thoughtful reasoning.
• An article review only responds to the author's research. It typically does not provide any new research. However, if you are correcting misleading or otherwise incorrect points, some new data may be presented.
• An article review both summarizes and evaluates the article.

• Summarize the article. Focus on the important points, claims, and information.
• Discuss the positive aspects of the article. Think about what the author does well, good points she makes, and insightful observations.
• Identify contradictions, gaps, and inconsistencies in the text. Determine if there is enough data or research included to support the author's claims. Find any unanswered questions left in the article.

• Make note of words or issues you don't understand and questions you have.
• Look up terms or concepts you are unfamiliar with, so you can fully understand the article. Read about concepts in-depth to make sure you understand their full context.

• Pay careful attention to the meaning of the article. Make sure you fully understand the article. The only way to write a good article review is to understand the article.

• With either method, make an outline of the main points made in the article and the supporting research or arguments. It is strictly a restatement of the main points of the article and does not include your opinions.
• After putting the article in your own words, decide which parts of the article you want to discuss in your review. You can focus on the theoretical approach, the content, the presentation or interpretation of evidence, or the style. You will always discuss the main issues of the article, but you can sometimes also focus on certain aspects. This comes in handy if you want to focus the review towards the content of a course.
• Review the summary outline to eliminate unnecessary items. Erase or cross out the less important arguments or supplemental information. Your revised summary can serve as the basis for the summary you provide at the beginning of your review.

• What does the article set out to do?
• What is the theoretical framework or assumptions?
• Are the central concepts clearly defined?
• How adequate is the evidence?
• How does the article fit into the literature and field?
• Does it advance the knowledge of the subject?
• How clear is the author's writing? Don't: include superficial opinions or your personal reaction. Do: pay attention to your biases, so you can overcome them.

• For example, in MLA , a citation may look like: Duvall, John N. "The (Super)Marketplace of Images: Television as Unmediated Mediation in DeLillo's White Noise ." Arizona Quarterly 50.3 (1994): 127-53. Print. [9] X Trustworthy Source Purdue Online Writing Lab Trusted resource for writing and citation guidelines Go to source

• For example: The article, "Condom use will increase the spread of AIDS," was written by Anthony Zimmerman, a Catholic priest.

• Your introduction should only be 10-25% of your review.
• End the introduction with your thesis. Your thesis should address the above issues. For example: Although the author has some good points, his article is biased and contains some misinterpretation of data from others’ analysis of the effectiveness of the condom.

• Use direct quotes from the author sparingly.
• Review the summary you have written. Read over your summary many times to ensure that your words are an accurate description of the author's article.

• Support your critique with evidence from the article or other texts.
• The summary portion is very important for your critique. You must make the author's argument clear in the summary section for your evaluation to make sense.
• Remember, this is not where you say if you liked the article or not. You are assessing the significance and relevance of the article.
• Use a topic sentence and supportive arguments for each opinion. For example, you might address a particular strength in the first sentence of the opinion section, followed by several sentences elaborating on the significance of the point.

• This should only be about 10% of your overall essay.
• For example: This critical review has evaluated the article "Condom use will increase the spread of AIDS" by Anthony Zimmerman. The arguments in the article show the presence of bias, prejudice, argumentative writing without supporting details, and misinformation. These points weaken the author’s arguments and reduce his credibility.

• Make sure you have identified and discussed the 3-4 key issues in the article.

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://libguides.cmich.edu/writinghelp/articlereview
• ↑ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4548566/
• ↑ Jake Adams. Academic Tutor & Test Prep Specialist. Expert Interview. 24 July 2020.
• ↑ https://guides.library.queensu.ca/introduction-research/writing/critical
• ↑ https://www.iup.edu/writingcenter/writing-resources/organization-and-structure/creating-an-outline.html
• ↑ https://writing.umn.edu/sws/assets/pdf/quicktips/titles.pdf
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_works_cited_periodicals.html
• ↑ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4548565/
• ↑ https://writingcenter.uconn.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/593/2014/06/How_to_Summarize_a_Research_Article1.pdf
• ↑ https://www.uis.edu/learning-hub/writing-resources/handouts/learning-hub/how-to-review-a-journal-article
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/editing-and-proofreading/

About This Article

If you have to write an article review, read through the original article closely, taking notes and highlighting important sections as you read. Next, rewrite the article in your own words, either in a long paragraph or as an outline. Open your article review by citing the article, then write an introduction which states the article’s thesis. Next, summarize the article, followed by your opinion about whether the article was clear, thorough, and useful. Finish with a paragraph that summarizes the main points of the article and your opinions. To learn more about what to include in your personal critique of the article, keep reading the article! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Review Essays for the Biological Sciences

A review essay for the biological sciences serves to discuss and synthesize key findings on a particular subject. Review papers are helpful to the writer and their colleagues in gaining critical awareness in specialized fields that may or may not be their own.

This guide explains what a review essay is and identifies several approaches to writing a review essay. Although much of the information is geared directly to the biological sciences, it is generally applicable to review essays in all fields.

What is a Review Essay?

A review essay is a synthesis of primary sources (mainly research papers presented in academic journals) on a given topic. A biological review essay demonstrates that the writer has thorough understanding of the literature and can formulate a useful analysis. While no new research is presented by the writer, the field benefits from the review by recieving a new perspective. There are several approaches one may take when writing a biological review:

A State of the art review

A state of the art review considers mainly the most current research in a given area. The review may offer new perspectives on an issue or point out an area in need of further research.

A Historical review

A historical review is a survey of the development of a particular field of study. It may examine the early stages of the field, key findings to present, key theoretical models and their evolution, etc.

A Comparison of perspectives review

A comparison of perspectives review contrasts various ways of looking at a certain topic. If in fact there is a debate over some process or idea, a comparison of perspectives review may illustrate the research that supports both sides. A comparison of perspectives review may introduce a new perspective by way of comparing it to another.

A Synthesis of two fields review

Many times researchers in different fields may be working on similar problems. A synthesis of two fields review provides insights into a given topic based on a review of the literature from two or more disciplines.

A Theoretical model building review

A theoretical model building review examines the literature within a given area with the intention of developing new theoretical assumptions.

Key considerations for writing a biological review essay

This guide will inform you of certain things not to miss when writing a review essay. It will also give you some information about using and documenting your sources.

Keep your focus narrow.

When writing a review essay it is important to keep the scope of the topic narrow enough so that you can discuss it thoroughly. For example a topic such as air quality in factories could be narrowed significantly to something like carbon dioxide levels in auto manufacturing plants .

A good way to narrow your focus is to start with a broad topic that is of some interest to you, then read some of the literature in the field. Look for a thread of the discussion that points to a more specific topic.

Analyze, synthesize, and interpret.

A review essay is not a pure summary of the information you read for your review. You are required to analyze, synthesize, and interpret the information you read in some meaningful way.

It is not enough to simply present the material you have found, you must go beyond that and explain its relevance and significance to the topic at hand.

Establish a clear thesis from the onset of your writing and examine which pieces of your reading help you in developing and supporting the ideas in your thesis.

Use only academic sources.

A review essay reviews the academic body of literature—articles and research presented in academic journals. Lay periodicals such as, Discover , Scientific America , or Popular Science , are not adequate sources for an academic review essay.

If you are having trouble finding the academic journals in your field, ask one of your professors or a reference librarian.

Document your sources.

The material that you discuss in a review essay is obviously not your own, therefore it is crucial to document your sources properly. Proper documentation is crucial for two reasons: 1. It prevents the writer from being accused of plagiarism and 2. It gives the reader the opportunity to locate the sources the writer has reviewed because they may find them valuable in their own academic pursuits. Proper documentation depends on which style guide you are following.

Quote sparingly and properly.

No one wants to read a paper that is simply a string of quotes; reserve direct quotations for when you want to create a big impact. Often times the way a quote is written will not fit with the language or the style of your paper so paraphrase the authors words carefully and verbage as necessary to create a well formed paragraph.

Choose an informative title.

The title you choose for your review essay should give some indication of what lies ahead for the reader. You might consider the process you took in narrowing your topic to help you with your title—think of the title as something specific rather than a vague representation of your paper's topic. For example the title Wastewater Treatment might be more informative if rewritten as The Removal of Cloroform Bacteria as Practiced by California's Municipal Water Treatment Facilities .

Consider your audience.

More than likely your audience will be your academic peers, therefore you can make a couple assumptions and choose a writing style that suits the audience. Though your audience may lack the detailed knowledge you have about your topic, they do have similar background knowledge to you. You can assume that you audience understands much of the technical language you have to use to write about your topic and you do not have to go into great detail about background information.

Elements of a review essay

This guide explains each section of a review essay and gives specific information about what should be included in each.

On the title page include the title, your name, and the date. Your instructor may have additional requirements (such as the course number, etc.) so be sure to follow the guidelines on the assignment sheet. Professional journals may also have more specific requirements for the title page.

An abstract is a brief summary of your review. The abstract should include only the main points of your review. Think of the abstract as a chance for the reader to preview your paper and decide if they want to read on for the details.

Introduction

The introduction of your review should accomplish three things:

• It may sound redundant to "introduce" your topic in the introduction, but often times writer's fail to do so. Let the reader in on background information specific to the topic, define terms that may be unfamiliar to them, explain the scope of the discussion, and your purpose for writing the review.
• Think of your review essay as a statement in the larger conversation of your academic community. Your review is your way of entering into that conversation and it is important to briefly address why your review is relevant to the discussion. You may feel the relevance is obvious because you are so familiar with the topic, but your readers have not yet established that familiarity.
• The thesis is the main idea that you want to get across to your reader. your thesis should be a clear statement of what you intend to prove or illustrate by your review. By revealing your thesis in the introduction the reader knows what to expect in the rest of the paper.

The discussion section is the body of your paper. The discussion section contains information that develops and supports your thesis. While there is no particular form that a discussion section must take there are several considerations that a writer must follow when building a discussion.

• A review essay is not simply a summary of literature you have reviewed. Be careful not to leave out your own analysis of the ideas presented in the literature. Synthesize the material from all the works—what are the connections you see, or the connections you are trying to illustrate, among your readings.

A review essay is not a pure summary of the information you read for your review. You are required to analyze, synthesize, and interpret the information you read in some meaningful way. It is not enough to simply present the material you have found, you must go beyond that and explain its relevance and significance to the topic at hand. Establish a clear thesis from the onset of your writing and examine which pieces of your reading help you in developing and supporting the ideas in your thesis.

• Keep your discussion focused on your topic and more importantly your thesis. Don't let tangents or extraneous material get in the way of a concise, coherent discussion. A well focused paper is crucial in getting your message across to your reader.
• Keeping your points organized makes it easier for the reader to follow along and make sense of your review. Start each paragraph with a topic sentence that relates back to your thesis. The headings used for this guide give you some idea of how to organize the overall paper, but as far as the discussion section goes use meaningful subheadings that relate to your content to organize your points.
• Your thesis should illustrate your objectives in writing the review and your discussion should serve to accomplish your objectives. Make sure your keep your discussion related to the thesis in order to meet your objectives. If you find that your discussion does not relate so much to your thesis, don't panic, you might want to revise your thesis instead of reworking the discussion.

Conclusions

Because the conclusions section often gets left for last it is often the weakest part of a student review essay. It is as crucial a part of the paper as any and should be treated as such.

A good conclusion should illustrate the key connections between your major points and your thesis as well as they key connections between your thesis and the broader discussion—what is the significance of your paper in a larger context? Make some conclusions —where have you arrived as a result of writing this paper?

Be careful not to present any new information in the conclusion section.

Here you report all the works you have cited in your paper. The format for a references page varies by discipline as does how you should cite your references within the paper.

Citation Information

Neal Bastek. (1994-2024). Review Essays for the Biological Sciences. The WAC Clearinghouse. Colorado State University. Available at https://wac.colostate.edu/repository/writing/guides/.

Copyright Information

Copyright © 1994-2024 Colorado State University and/or this site's authors, developers, and contributors . Some material displayed on this site is used with permission.

• University of Texas Libraries

Literature Reviews

• What is a literature review?
• Steps in the Literature Review Process
• Define your research question
• Determine inclusion and exclusion criteria
• Choose databases and search
• Review Results
• Synthesize Results
• Analyze Results
• Librarian Support

What is a Literature Review?

A literature or narrative review is a comprehensive review and analysis of the published literature on a specific topic or research question. The literature that is reviewed contains: books, articles, academic articles, conference proceedings, association papers, and dissertations. It contains the most pertinent studies and points to important past and current research and practices. It provides background and context, and shows how your research will contribute to the field. 

A literature review should: 

• Provide a comprehensive and updated review of the literature;
• Explain why this review has taken place;
• Articulate a position or hypothesis;
• Acknowledge and account for conflicting and corroborating points of view

From  S age Research Methods

Purpose of a Literature Review

A literature review can be written as an introduction to a study to:

• Demonstrate how a study fills a gap in research
• Compare a study with other research that's been done

Or it can be a separate work (a research article on its own) which:

• Organizes or describes a topic
• Describes variables within a particular issue/problem

Limitations of a Literature Review

Some of the limitations of a literature review are:

• It's a snapshot in time. Unlike other reviews, this one has beginning, a middle and an end. There may be future developments that could make your work less relevant.
• It may be too focused. Some niche studies may miss the bigger picture.
• It can be difficult to be comprehensive. There is no way to make sure all the literature on a topic was considered.
• It is easy to be biased if you stick to top tier journals. There may be other places where people are publishing exemplary research. Look to open access publications and conferences to reflect a more inclusive collection. Also, make sure to include opposing views (and not just supporting evidence).

Source: Grant, Maria J., and Andrew Booth. “A Typology of Reviews: An Analysis of 14 Review Types and Associated Methodologies.” Health Information & Libraries Journal, vol. 26, no. 2, June 2009, pp. 91–108. Wiley Online Library, doi:10.1111/j.1471-1842.2009.00848.x.

Meryl Brodsky : Communication and Information Studies

Hannah Chapman Tripp : Biology, Neuroscience

Carolyn Cunningham : Human Development & Family Sciences, Psychology, Sociology

Larayne Dallas : Engineering

Janelle Hedstrom : Special Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Ed Leadership & Policy ​

Susan Macicak : Linguistics

Imelda Vetter : Dell Medical School

For help in other subject areas, please see the guide to library specialists by subject .

Periodically, UT Libraries runs a workshop covering the basics and library support for literature reviews. While we try to offer these once per academic year, we find providing the recording to be helpful to community members who have missed the session. Following is the most recent recording of the workshop, Conducting a Literature Review. To view the recording, a UT login is required.

• October 26, 2022 recording
• Last Updated: Oct 26, 2022 2:49 PM
• URL: https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/literaturereviews

Reference management. Clean and simple.

Literature review

How to write a literature review in 6 steps

How do you write a good literature review? This step-by-step guide on how to write an excellent literature review covers all aspects of planning and writing literature reviews for academic papers and theses.

How to write a systematic literature review [9 steps]

How do you write a systematic literature review? What types of systematic literature reviews exist and where do you use them? Learn everything you need to know about a systematic literature review in this guide

What is a literature review? [with examples]

Not sure what a literature review is? This guide covers the definition, purpose, and format of a literature review.

How to Write a Book Review: Awesome Guide

A book review allows students to illustrate the author's intentions of writing the piece, as well as create a criticism of the book — as a whole. In other words, form an opinion of the author's presented ideas. Check out this guide from EssayPro - book review writing service to learn how to write a book review successfully.

What Is a Book Review?

You may prosper, “what is a book review?”. Book reviews are commonly assigned students to allow them to show a clear understanding of the novel. And to check if the students have actually read the book. The essay format is highly important for your consideration, take a look at the book review format below.

Book reviews are assigned to allow students to present their own opinion regarding the author’s ideas included in the book or passage. They are a form of literary criticism that analyzes the author’s ideas, writing techniques, and quality. A book analysis is entirely opinion-based, in relevance to the book. They are good practice for those who wish to become editors, due to the fact, editing requires a lot of criticism.

Book Review Template

The book review format includes an introduction, body, and conclusion.

• Introduction
• Describe the book cover and title.
• Include any subtitles at this stage.
• Include the Author’s Name.
• Write a brief description of the novel.
• Briefly introduce the main points of the body in your book review.
• Avoid mentioning any opinions at this time.
• Use about 3 quotations from the author’s novel.
• Summarize the quotations in your own words.
• Mention your own point-of-view of the quotation.
• Remember to keep every point included in its own paragraph.
• In brief, summarize the quotations.
• In brief, summarize the explanations.
• Finish with a concluding sentence.
• This can include your final opinion of the book.
• Star-Rating (Optional).

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How to Write a Book Review: Step-By-Step

Writing a book review is something that can be done with every novel. Book reviews can apply to all novels, no matter the genre. Some genres may be harder than others. On the other hand, the book review format remains the same. Take a look at these step-by-step instructions from our professional writers to learn how to write a book review in-depth.

Step 1: Planning

Create an essay outline which includes all of the main points you wish to summarise in your book analysis. Include information about the characters, details of the plot, and some other important parts of your chosen novel. Reserve a body paragraph for each point you wish to talk about.

Consider these points before writing:

• What is the plot of the book? Understanding the plot enables you to write an effective review.
• Is the plot gripping? Does the plot make you want to continue reading the novel? Did you enjoy the plot? Does it manage to grab a reader’s attention?
• Are the writing techniques used by the author effective? Does the writer imply factors in-between the lines? What are they?
• Are the characters believable? Are the characters logical? Does the book make the characters are real while reading?
• Would you recommend the book to anyone? The most important thing: would you tell others to read this book? Is it good enough? Is it bad?
• What could be better? Keep in mind the quotes that could have been presented better. Criticize the writer.

Step 2: Introduction

Presumably, you have chosen your book. To begin, mention the book title and author’s name. Talk about the cover of the book. Write a thesis statement regarding the fictitious story or non-fictional novel. Which briefly describes the quoted material in the book review.

Step 3: Body

Choose a specific chapter or scenario to summarise. Include about 3 quotes in the body. Create summaries of each quote in your own words. It is also encouraged to include your own point-of-view and the way you interpret the quote. It is highly important to have one quote per paragraph.

Step 4: Conclusion

Write a summary of the summarised quotations and explanations, included in the body paragraphs. After doing so, finish book analysis with a concluding sentence to show the bigger picture of the book. Think to yourself, “Is it worth reading?”, and answer the question in black and white. However, write in-between the lines. Avoid stating “I like/dislike this book.”

Step 5: Rate the Book (Optional)

After writing a book review, you may want to include a rating. Including a star-rating provides further insight into the quality of the book, to your readers. Book reviews with star-ratings can be more effective, compared to those which don’t. Though, this is entirely optional.

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Dive into literary analysis with EssayPro . Our experts can help you craft insightful book reviews that delve deep into the themes, characters, and narratives of your chosen books. Enhance your understanding and appreciation of literature with us.

Writing Tips

Here is the list of tips for the book review:

• A long introduction can certainly lower one’s grade: keep the beginning short. Readers don’t like to read the long introduction for any essay style.
• It is advisable to write book reviews about fiction: it is not a must. Though, reviewing fiction can be far more effective than writing about a piece of nonfiction
• Avoid Comparing: avoid comparing your chosen novel with other books you have previously read. Doing so can be confusing for the reader.
• Opinion Matters: including your own point-of-view is something that is often encouraged when writing book reviews.
• Refer to Templates: a book review template can help a student get a clearer understanding of the required writing style.
• Don’t be Afraid to Criticize: usually, your own opinion isn’t required for academic papers below Ph.D. level. On the other hand, for book reviews, there’s an exception.
• Use Positivity: include a fair amount of positive comments and criticism.
• Review The Chosen Novel: avoid making things up. Review only what is presented in the chosen book.
• Enjoyed the book? If you loved reading the book, state it. Doing so makes your book analysis more personalized.

Writing a book review is something worth thinking about. Professors commonly assign this form of an assignment to students to enable them to express a grasp of a novel. Following the book review format is highly useful for beginners, as well as reading step-by-step instructions. Writing tips is also useful for people who are new to this essay type. If you need a book review or essay, ask our book report writing services ' write paper for me ' and we'll give you a hand asap!

We also recommend that everyone read the article about essay topics . It will help broaden your horizons in writing a book review as well as other papers.

Book Review Examples

Referring to a book review example is highly useful to those who wish to get a clearer understanding of how to review a book. Take a look at our examples written by our professional writers. Click on the button to open the book review examples and feel free to use them as a reference.

Book review

Kenneth Grahame’s ‘The Wind in the Willows’

Kenneth Grahame’s ‘The Wind in the Willows’ is a novel aimed at youngsters. The plot, itself, is not American humor, but that of Great Britain. In terms of sarcasm, and British-related jokes. The novel illustrates a fair mix of the relationships between the human-like animals, and wildlife. The narrative acts as an important milestone in post-Victorian children’s literature.

Book Review

Dr. John’s ‘Pollution’

Dr. John’s ‘Pollution’ consists of 3 major parts. The first part is all about the polluted ocean. The second being about the pollution of the sky. The third part is an in-depth study of how humans can resolve these issues. The book is a piece of non-fiction that focuses on modern-day pollution ordeals faced by both animals and humans on Planet Earth. It also focuses on climate change, being the result of the global pollution ordeal.

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How To Write A Book Review?

What to include in a book review, what is a book review.

is an expert in nursing and healthcare, with a strong background in history, law, and literature. Holding advanced degrees in nursing and public health, his analytical approach and comprehensive knowledge help students navigate complex topics. On EssayPro blog, Adam provides insightful articles on everything from historical analysis to the intricacies of healthcare policies. In his downtime, he enjoys historical documentaries and volunteering at local clinics.

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What is a Literature Review? How to Write It (with Examples)

A literature review is a critical analysis and synthesis of existing research on a particular topic. It provides an overview of the current state of knowledge, identifies gaps, and highlights key findings in the literature. 1 The purpose of a literature review is to situate your own research within the context of existing scholarship, demonstrating your understanding of the topic and showing how your work contributes to the ongoing conversation in the field. Learning how to write a literature review is a critical tool for successful research. Your ability to summarize and synthesize prior research pertaining to a certain topic demonstrates your grasp on the topic of study, and assists in the learning process. 

Table of Contents

• What is the purpose of literature review? 
• a. Habitat Loss and Species Extinction: 
• b. Range Shifts and Phenological Changes: 
• c. Ocean Acidification and Coral Reefs: 
• d. Adaptive Strategies and Conservation Efforts: 

How to write a good literature review 

• Choose a Topic and Define the Research Question: 
• Decide on the Scope of Your Review: 
• Select Databases for Searches: 
• Conduct Searches and Keep Track: 
• Review the Literature: 
• Organize and Write Your Literature Review: 
• How to write a literature review faster with Paperpal? 
• Frequently asked questions 

What is a literature review?

A well-conducted literature review demonstrates the researcher’s familiarity with the existing literature, establishes the context for their own research, and contributes to scholarly conversations on the topic. One of the purposes of a literature review is also to help researchers avoid duplicating previous work and ensure that their research is informed by and builds upon the existing body of knowledge.

What is the purpose of literature review?

A literature review serves several important purposes within academic and research contexts. Here are some key objectives and functions of a literature review: 2  

1. Contextualizing the Research Problem: The literature review provides a background and context for the research problem under investigation. It helps to situate the study within the existing body of knowledge. 

2. Identifying Gaps in Knowledge: By identifying gaps, contradictions, or areas requiring further research, the researcher can shape the research question and justify the significance of the study. This is crucial for ensuring that the new research contributes something novel to the field. 

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3. Understanding Theoretical and Conceptual Frameworks: Literature reviews help researchers gain an understanding of the theoretical and conceptual frameworks used in previous studies. This aids in the development of a theoretical framework for the current research. 

4. Providing Methodological Insights: Another purpose of literature reviews is that it allows researchers to learn about the methodologies employed in previous studies. This can help in choosing appropriate research methods for the current study and avoiding pitfalls that others may have encountered. 

5. Establishing Credibility: A well-conducted literature review demonstrates the researcher’s familiarity with existing scholarship, establishing their credibility and expertise in the field. It also helps in building a solid foundation for the new research. 

6. Informing Hypotheses or Research Questions: The literature review guides the formulation of hypotheses or research questions by highlighting relevant findings and areas of uncertainty in existing literature. 

Literature review example

Let’s delve deeper with a literature review example: Let’s say your literature review is about the impact of climate change on biodiversity. You might format your literature review into sections such as the effects of climate change on habitat loss and species extinction, phenological changes, and marine biodiversity. Each section would then summarize and analyze relevant studies in those areas, highlighting key findings and identifying gaps in the research. The review would conclude by emphasizing the need for further research on specific aspects of the relationship between climate change and biodiversity. The following literature review template provides a glimpse into the recommended literature review structure and content, demonstrating how research findings are organized around specific themes within a broader topic. 

Literature Review on Climate Change Impacts on Biodiversity:

Climate change is a global phenomenon with far-reaching consequences, including significant impacts on biodiversity. This literature review synthesizes key findings from various studies: 

a. Habitat Loss and Species Extinction:

Climate change-induced alterations in temperature and precipitation patterns contribute to habitat loss, affecting numerous species (Thomas et al., 2004). The review discusses how these changes increase the risk of extinction, particularly for species with specific habitat requirements. 

b. Range Shifts and Phenological Changes:

Observations of range shifts and changes in the timing of biological events (phenology) are documented in response to changing climatic conditions (Parmesan & Yohe, 2003). These shifts affect ecosystems and may lead to mismatches between species and their resources. 

c. Ocean Acidification and Coral Reefs:

The review explores the impact of climate change on marine biodiversity, emphasizing ocean acidification’s threat to coral reefs (Hoegh-Guldberg et al., 2007). Changes in pH levels negatively affect coral calcification, disrupting the delicate balance of marine ecosystems. 

d. Adaptive Strategies and Conservation Efforts:

Recognizing the urgency of the situation, the literature review discusses various adaptive strategies adopted by species and conservation efforts aimed at mitigating the impacts of climate change on biodiversity (Hannah et al., 2007). It emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary approaches for effective conservation planning. 

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Writing a literature review involves summarizing and synthesizing existing research on a particular topic. A good literature review format should include the following elements. 

Introduction: The introduction sets the stage for your literature review, providing context and introducing the main focus of your review. 

• Opening Statement: Begin with a general statement about the broader topic and its significance in the field. 
• Scope and Purpose: Clearly define the scope of your literature review. Explain the specific research question or objective you aim to address. 
• Organizational Framework: Briefly outline the structure of your literature review, indicating how you will categorize and discuss the existing research. 
• Significance of the Study: Highlight why your literature review is important and how it contributes to the understanding of the chosen topic. 
• Thesis Statement: Conclude the introduction with a concise thesis statement that outlines the main argument or perspective you will develop in the body of the literature review. 

Body: The body of the literature review is where you provide a comprehensive analysis of existing literature, grouping studies based on themes, methodologies, or other relevant criteria. 

• Organize by Theme or Concept: Group studies that share common themes, concepts, or methodologies. Discuss each theme or concept in detail, summarizing key findings and identifying gaps or areas of disagreement. 
• Critical Analysis: Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each study. Discuss the methodologies used, the quality of evidence, and the overall contribution of each work to the understanding of the topic. 
• Synthesis of Findings: Synthesize the information from different studies to highlight trends, patterns, or areas of consensus in the literature. 
• Identification of Gaps: Discuss any gaps or limitations in the existing research and explain how your review contributes to filling these gaps. 
• Transition between Sections: Provide smooth transitions between different themes or concepts to maintain the flow of your literature review. 

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Conclusion: The conclusion of your literature review should summarize the main findings, highlight the contributions of the review, and suggest avenues for future research. 

• Summary of Key Findings: Recap the main findings from the literature and restate how they contribute to your research question or objective. 
• Contributions to the Field: Discuss the overall contribution of your literature review to the existing knowledge in the field. 
• Implications and Applications: Explore the practical implications of the findings and suggest how they might impact future research or practice. 
• Recommendations for Future Research: Identify areas that require further investigation and propose potential directions for future research in the field. 
• Final Thoughts: Conclude with a final reflection on the importance of your literature review and its relevance to the broader academic community. 

Conducting a literature review

Conducting a literature review is an essential step in research that involves reviewing and analyzing existing literature on a specific topic. It’s important to know how to do a literature review effectively, so here are the steps to follow: 1  

Choose a Topic and Define the Research Question:

• Select a topic that is relevant to your field of study. 
• Clearly define your research question or objective. Determine what specific aspect of the topic do you want to explore? 

Decide on the Scope of Your Review:

• Determine the timeframe for your literature review. Are you focusing on recent developments, or do you want a historical overview? 
• Consider the geographical scope. Is your review global, or are you focusing on a specific region? 
• Define the inclusion and exclusion criteria. What types of sources will you include? Are there specific types of studies or publications you will exclude? 

Select Databases for Searches:

• Identify relevant databases for your field. Examples include PubMed, IEEE Xplore, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. 
• Consider searching in library catalogs, institutional repositories, and specialized databases related to your topic. 

Conduct Searches and Keep Track:

• Develop a systematic search strategy using keywords, Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT), and other search techniques. 
• Record and document your search strategy for transparency and replicability. 
• Keep track of the articles, including publication details, abstracts, and links. Use citation management tools like EndNote, Zotero, or Mendeley to organize your references. 

Review the Literature:

• Evaluate the relevance and quality of each source. Consider the methodology, sample size, and results of studies. 
• Organize the literature by themes or key concepts. Identify patterns, trends, and gaps in the existing research. 
• Summarize key findings and arguments from each source. Compare and contrast different perspectives. 
• Identify areas where there is a consensus in the literature and where there are conflicting opinions. 
• Provide critical analysis and synthesis of the literature. What are the strengths and weaknesses of existing research? 

Organize and Write Your Literature Review:

• Literature review outline should be based on themes, chronological order, or methodological approaches. 
• Write a clear and coherent narrative that synthesizes the information gathered. 
• Use proper citations for each source and ensure consistency in your citation style (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.). 
• Conclude your literature review by summarizing key findings, identifying gaps, and suggesting areas for future research. 

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The literature review sample and detailed advice on writing and conducting a review will help you produce a well-structured report. But remember that a good literature review is an ongoing process, and it may be necessary to revisit and update it as your research progresses. By combining effortless research with an easy citation process, Paperpal Research streamlines the literature review process and empowers you to write faster and with more confidence. Try Paperpal Research now and see for yourself.  

Frequently asked questions

A literature review is a critical and comprehensive analysis of existing literature (published and unpublished works) on a specific topic or research question and provides a synthesis of the current state of knowledge in a particular field. A well-conducted literature review is crucial for researchers to build upon existing knowledge, avoid duplication of efforts, and contribute to the advancement of their field. It also helps researchers situate their work within a broader context and facilitates the development of a sound theoretical and conceptual framework for their studies.

Literature review is a crucial component of research writing, providing a solid background for a research paper’s investigation. The aim is to keep professionals up to date by providing an understanding of ongoing developments within a specific field, including research methods, and experimental techniques used in that field, and present that knowledge in the form of a written report. Also, the depth and breadth of the literature review emphasizes the credibility of the scholar in his or her field.  

Before writing a literature review, it’s essential to undertake several preparatory steps to ensure that your review is well-researched, organized, and focused. This includes choosing a topic of general interest to you and doing exploratory research on that topic, writing an annotated bibliography, and noting major points, especially those that relate to the position you have taken on the topic. 

Literature reviews and academic research papers are essential components of scholarly work but serve different purposes within the academic realm. 3 A literature review aims to provide a foundation for understanding the current state of research on a particular topic, identify gaps or controversies, and lay the groundwork for future research. Therefore, it draws heavily from existing academic sources, including books, journal articles, and other scholarly publications. In contrast, an academic research paper aims to present new knowledge, contribute to the academic discourse, and advance the understanding of a specific research question. Therefore, it involves a mix of existing literature (in the introduction and literature review sections) and original data or findings obtained through research methods. 

Literature reviews are essential components of academic and research papers, and various strategies can be employed to conduct them effectively. If you want to know how to write a literature review for a research paper, here are four common approaches that are often used by researchers.  Chronological Review: This strategy involves organizing the literature based on the chronological order of publication. It helps to trace the development of a topic over time, showing how ideas, theories, and research have evolved.  Thematic Review: Thematic reviews focus on identifying and analyzing themes or topics that cut across different studies. Instead of organizing the literature chronologically, it is grouped by key themes or concepts, allowing for a comprehensive exploration of various aspects of the topic.  Methodological Review: This strategy involves organizing the literature based on the research methods employed in different studies. It helps to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of various methodologies and allows the reader to evaluate the reliability and validity of the research findings.  Theoretical Review: A theoretical review examines the literature based on the theoretical frameworks used in different studies. This approach helps to identify the key theories that have been applied to the topic and assess their contributions to the understanding of the subject.  It’s important to note that these strategies are not mutually exclusive, and a literature review may combine elements of more than one approach. The choice of strategy depends on the research question, the nature of the literature available, and the goals of the review. Additionally, other strategies, such as integrative reviews or systematic reviews, may be employed depending on the specific requirements of the research.

The literature review format can vary depending on the specific publication guidelines. However, there are some common elements and structures that are often followed. Here is a general guideline for the format of a literature review:  Introduction:   Provide an overview of the topic.  Define the scope and purpose of the literature review.  State the research question or objective.  Body:   Organize the literature by themes, concepts, or chronology.  Critically analyze and evaluate each source.  Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the studies.  Highlight any methodological limitations or biases.  Identify patterns, connections, or contradictions in the existing research.  Conclusion:   Summarize the key points discussed in the literature review.  Highlight the research gap.  Address the research question or objective stated in the introduction.  Highlight the contributions of the review and suggest directions for future research.

Both annotated bibliographies and literature reviews involve the examination of scholarly sources. While annotated bibliographies focus on individual sources with brief annotations, literature reviews provide a more in-depth, integrated, and comprehensive analysis of existing literature on a specific topic. The key differences are as follows: 

References 

• Denney, A. S., & Tewksbury, R. (2013). How to write a literature review.  Journal of criminal justice education ,  24 (2), 218-234. 
• Pan, M. L. (2016).  Preparing literature reviews: Qualitative and quantitative approaches . Taylor & Francis. 
• Cantero, C. (2019). How to write a literature review.  San José State University Writing Center . 

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How to write a review article?

In the medical sciences, the importance of review articles is rising. When clinicians want to update their knowledge and generate guidelines about a topic, they frequently use reviews as a starting point. The value of a review is associated with what has been done, what has been found and how these findings are presented. Before asking ‘how,’ the question of ‘why’ is more important when starting to write a review. The main and fundamental purpose of writing a review is to create a readable synthesis of the best resources available in the literature for an important research question or a current area of research. Although the idea of writing a review is attractive, it is important to spend time identifying the important questions. Good review methods are critical because they provide an unbiased point of view for the reader regarding the current literature. There is a consensus that a review should be written in a systematic fashion, a notion that is usually followed. In a systematic review with a focused question, the research methods must be clearly described. A ‘methodological filter’ is the best method for identifying the best working style for a research question, and this method reduces the workload when surveying the literature. An essential part of the review process is differentiating good research from bad and leaning on the results of the better studies. The ideal way to synthesize studies is to perform a meta-analysis. In conclusion, when writing a review, it is best to clearly focus on fixed ideas, to use a procedural and critical approach to the literature and to express your findings in an attractive way.

The importance of review articles in health sciences is increasing day by day. Clinicians frequently benefit from review articles to update their knowledge in their field of specialization, and use these articles as a starting point for formulating guidelines. [ 1 , 2 ] The institutions which provide financial support for further investigations resort to these reviews to reveal the need for these researches. [ 3 ] As is the case with all other researches, the value of a review article is related to what is achieved, what is found, and the way of communicating this information. A few studies have evaluated the quality of review articles. Murlow evaluated 50 review articles published in 1985, and 1986, and revealed that none of them had complied with clear-cut scientific criteria. [ 4 ] In 1996 an international group that analyzed articles, demonstrated the aspects of review articles, and meta-analyses that had not complied with scientific criteria, and elaborated QUOROM (QUality Of Reporting Of Meta-analyses) statement which focused on meta-analyses of randomized controlled studies. [ 5 ] Later on this guideline was updated, and named as PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses). [ 6 ]

Review articles are divided into 2 categories as narrative, and systematic reviews. Narrative reviews are written in an easily readable format, and allow consideration of the subject matter within a large spectrum. However in a systematic review, a very detailed, and comprehensive literature surveying is performed on the selected topic. [ 7 , 8 ] Since it is a result of a more detailed literature surveying with relatively lesser involvement of author’s bias, systematic reviews are considered as gold standard articles. Systematic reviews can be diivded into qualitative, and quantitative reviews. In both of them detailed literature surveying is performed. However in quantitative reviews, study data are collected, and statistically evaluated (ie. meta-analysis). [ 8 ]

Before inquring for the method of preparation of a review article, it is more logical to investigate the motivation behind writing the review article in question. The fundamental rationale of writing a review article is to make a readable synthesis of the best literature sources on an important research inquiry or a topic. This simple definition of a review article contains the following key elements:

• The question(s) to be dealt with
• Methods used to find out, and select the best quality researches so as to respond to these questions.
• To synthetize available, but quite different researches

For the specification of important questions to be answered, number of literature references to be consulted should be more or less determined. Discussions should be conducted with colleagues in the same area of interest, and time should be reserved for the solution of the problem(s). Though starting to write the review article promptly seems to be very alluring, the time you spend for the determination of important issues won’t be a waste of time. [ 9 ]

The PRISMA statement [ 6 ] elaborated to write a well-designed review articles contains a 27-item checklist ( Table 1 ). It will be reasonable to fulfill the requirements of these items during preparation of a review article or a meta-analysis. Thus preparation of a comprehensible article with a high-quality scientific content can be feasible.

PRISMA statement: A 27-item checklist

Contents and format

Important differences exist between systematic, and non-systematic reviews which especially arise from methodologies used in the description of the literature sources. A non-systematic review means use of articles collected for years with the recommendations of your colleagues, while systematic review is based on struggles to search for, and find the best possible researches which will respond to the questions predetermined at the start of the review.

Though a consensus has been reached about the systematic design of the review articles, studies revealed that most of them had not been written in a systematic format. McAlister et al. analyzed review articles in 6 medical journals, and disclosed that in less than one fourth of the review articles, methods of description, evaluation or synthesis of evidence had been provided, one third of them had focused on a clinical topic, and only half of them had provided quantitative data about the extend of the potential benefits. [ 10 ]

Use of proper methodologies in review articles is important in that readers assume an objective attitude towards updated information. We can confront two problems while we are using data from researches in order to answer certain questions. Firstly, we can be prejudiced during selection of research articles or these articles might be biased. To minimize this risk, methodologies used in our reviews should allow us to define, and use researches with minimal degree of bias. The second problem is that, most of the researches have been performed with small sample sizes. In statistical methods in meta-analyses, available researches are combined to increase the statistical power of the study. The problematic aspect of a non-systematic review is that our tendency to give biased responses to the questions, in other words we apt to select the studies with known or favourite results, rather than the best quality investigations among them.

As is the case with many research articles, general format of a systematic review on a single subject includes sections of Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion ( Table 2 ).

Structure of a systematic review

Preparation of the review article

Steps, and targets of constructing a good review article are listed in Table 3 . To write a good review article the items in Table 3 should be implemented step by step. [ 11 – 13 ]

Steps of a systematic review

The research question

It might be helpful to divide the research question into components. The most prevalently used format for questions related to the treatment is PICO (P - Patient, Problem or Population; I-Intervention; C-appropriate Comparisons, and O-Outcome measures) procedure. For example In female patients (P) with stress urinary incontinence, comparisons (C) between transobturator, and retropubic midurethral tension-free band surgery (I) as for patients’ satisfaction (O).

Finding Studies

In a systematic review on a focused question, methods of investigation used should be clearly specified.

Ideally, research methods, investigated databases, and key words should be described in the final report. Different databases are used dependent on the topic analyzed. In most of the clinical topics, Medline should be surveyed. However searching through Embase and CINAHL can be also appropriate.

While determining appropriate terms for surveying, PICO elements of the issue to be sought may guide the process. Since in general we are interested in more than one outcome, P, and I can be key elements. In this case we should think about synonyms of P, and I elements, and combine them with a conjunction AND.

One method which might alleviate the workload of surveying process is “methodological filter” which aims to find the best investigation method for each research question. A good example of this method can be found in PubMed interface of Medline. The Clinical Queries tool offers empirically developed filters for five different inquiries as guidelines for etiology, diagnosis, treatment, prognosis or clinical prediction.

Evaluation of the Quality of the Study

As an indispensable component of the review process is to discriminate good, and bad quality researches from each other, and the outcomes should be based on better qualified researches, as far as possible. To achieve this goal you should know the best possible evidence for each type of question The first component of the quality is its general planning/design of the study. General planning/design of a cohort study, a case series or normal study demonstrates variations.

A hierarchy of evidence for different research questions is presented in Table 4 . However this hierarchy is only a first step. After you find good quality research articles, you won’t need to read all the rest of other articles which saves you tons of time. [ 14 ]

Determination of levels of evidence based on the type of the research question

Formulating a Synthesis

Rarely all researches arrive at the same conclusion. In this case a solution should be found. However it is risky to make a decision based on the votes of absolute majority. Indeed, a well-performed large scale study, and a weakly designed one are weighed on the same scale. Therefore, ideally a meta-analysis should be performed to solve apparent differences. Ideally, first of all, one should be focused on the largest, and higher quality study, then other studies should be compared with this basic study.

Conclusions

In conclusion, during writing process of a review article, the procedures to be achieved can be indicated as follows: 1) Get rid of fixed ideas, and obsessions from your head, and view the subject from a large perspective. 2) Research articles in the literature should be approached with a methodological, and critical attitude and 3) finally data should be explained in an attractive way.

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Writing a Literature Review

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A literature review is a document or section of a document that collects key sources on a topic and discusses those sources in conversation with each other (also called synthesis ). The lit review is an important genre in many disciplines, not just literature (i.e., the study of works of literature such as novels and plays). When we say “literature review” or refer to “the literature,” we are talking about the research ( scholarship ) in a given field. You will often see the terms “the research,” “the scholarship,” and “the literature” used mostly interchangeably.

Where, when, and why would I write a lit review?

There are a number of different situations where you might write a literature review, each with slightly different expectations; different disciplines, too, have field-specific expectations for what a literature review is and does. For instance, in the humanities, authors might include more overt argumentation and interpretation of source material in their literature reviews, whereas in the sciences, authors are more likely to report study designs and results in their literature reviews; these differences reflect these disciplines’ purposes and conventions in scholarship. You should always look at examples from your own discipline and talk to professors or mentors in your field to be sure you understand your discipline’s conventions, for literature reviews as well as for any other genre.

A literature review can be a part of a research paper or scholarly article, usually falling after the introduction and before the research methods sections. In these cases, the lit review just needs to cover scholarship that is important to the issue you are writing about; sometimes it will also cover key sources that informed your research methodology.

Lit reviews can also be standalone pieces, either as assignments in a class or as publications. In a class, a lit review may be assigned to help students familiarize themselves with a topic and with scholarship in their field, get an idea of the other researchers working on the topic they’re interested in, find gaps in existing research in order to propose new projects, and/or develop a theoretical framework and methodology for later research. As a publication, a lit review usually is meant to help make other scholars’ lives easier by collecting and summarizing, synthesizing, and analyzing existing research on a topic. This can be especially helpful for students or scholars getting into a new research area, or for directing an entire community of scholars toward questions that have not yet been answered.

What are the parts of a lit review?

Most lit reviews use a basic introduction-body-conclusion structure; if your lit review is part of a larger paper, the introduction and conclusion pieces may be just a few sentences while you focus most of your attention on the body. If your lit review is a standalone piece, the introduction and conclusion take up more space and give you a place to discuss your goals, research methods, and conclusions separately from where you discuss the literature itself.

Introduction:

• An introductory paragraph that explains what your working topic and thesis is
• A forecast of key topics or texts that will appear in the review
• Potentially, a description of how you found sources and how you analyzed them for inclusion and discussion in the review (more often found in published, standalone literature reviews than in lit review sections in an article or research paper)
• 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 sentence to draw connections, comparisons, and contrasts.

Conclusion:

• Summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance
• Connect it back to your primary research question

How should I organize my lit review?

Lit reviews can take many different organizational patterns depending on what you are trying to accomplish with the review. Here are some examples:

• Chronological : The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time, which helps familiarize the audience with the topic (for instance if you are introducing something that is not commonly known in your field). If you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order. Try to analyze the patterns, turning points, and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred (as mentioned previously, this may not be appropriate in your discipline — check with a teacher or mentor if you’re unsure).
• Thematic : If you have found some recurring central themes that you will continue working with throughout your piece, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic. For example, if you are reviewing literature about women and religion, key themes can include the role of women in churches and the religious attitude towards women.
• Qualitative versus quantitative research
• Empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the research by sociological, historical, or cultural sources
• Theoretical : In many humanities articles, the literature review is the foundation for the theoretical framework. You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts. You can argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach or combine various theorical concepts to create a framework for your research.

What are some strategies or tips I can use while writing my lit review?

Any lit review is only as good as the research it discusses; make sure your sources are well-chosen and your research is thorough. Don’t be afraid to do more research if you discover a new thread as you’re writing. More info on the research process is available in our "Conducting Research" resources .

As you’re doing your research, create an annotated bibliography ( see our page on the this type of document ). Much of the information used in an annotated bibliography can be used also in a literature review, so you’ll be not only partially drafting your lit review as you research, but also developing your sense of the larger conversation going on among scholars, professionals, and any other stakeholders in your topic.

Usually you will need to synthesize research rather than just summarizing it. This means drawing connections between sources to create a picture of the scholarly conversation on a topic over time. Many student writers struggle to synthesize because they feel they don’t have anything to add to the scholars they are citing; here are some strategies to help you:

• It often helps to remember that the point of these kinds of syntheses is to show your readers how you understand your research, to help them read the rest of your paper.
• Writing teachers often say synthesis is like hosting a dinner party: imagine all your sources are together in a room, discussing your topic. What are they saying to each other?
• Look at the in-text citations in each paragraph. Are you citing just one source for each paragraph? This usually indicates summary only. When you have multiple sources cited in a paragraph, you are more likely to be synthesizing them (not always, but often
• Read more about synthesis here.

The most interesting literature reviews are often written as arguments (again, as mentioned at the beginning of the page, this is discipline-specific and doesn’t work for all situations). Often, the literature review is where you can establish your research as filling a particular gap or as relevant in a particular way. You have some chance to do this in your introduction in an article, but the literature review section gives a more extended opportunity to establish the conversation in the way you would like your readers to see it. You can choose the intellectual lineage you would like to be part of and whose definitions matter most to your thinking (mostly humanities-specific, but this goes for sciences as well). In addressing these points, you argue for your place in the conversation, which tends to make the lit review more compelling than a simple reporting of other sources.

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Emilia Pérez had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. Here's our review...

French director Jacques Audiard ( A Prophet , Rust and Bone ) leaves his comfort zone far behind with his new film. A fully engaging two-hour musical set in Mexico City, complete with dance numbers and a storyline that ranges from gender reassignment to cartel violence, it’s as daring as they come. With a wonderful cast led by Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez, and the terrific Spanish actor Karla Sofía Gascón, it’s a film that wows in multiple ways. 

The plot gets truly underway as Rita (Saldaña), a dedicated counsellor at law, is summoned by a mysterious voice on the phone. No sooner does she arrive at a newsstand than she is press-ganged into a vehicle, where she meets drug lord Manitas Del Monte (Gascón). 

Two years earlier, he began hormone treatment and wants Rita to find him a surgeon to complete his journey to live “the life nature wouldn’t give me”. Completing his transition, Del Monte becomes Emilia Pérez and starts life over. Even wife Jessi (Gomez) is made to think her husband has been killed. 

With stellar songs by French singer Camille, a highly original score by Clément Ducol, and striking choreography by Damien Jalet, Emilia Pérez shifts effortlessly from musical extravagances to a gritty underworld milieu. 

The latter comes to the fore when the story moves on several years, finding Pérez keen to start a campaign to locate those who have “disappeared” in Mexico’s shady crime-riddled system. Saldaña and Gomez deliver forceful performances (both in Spanish), but even they are outflanked by Gascón. A miraculous movie.

Emilia Pérez's release date is currently TBC.

James Mottram is a freelance film journalist, author of books that dive deep into films like Die Hard and Tenet, and a regular guest on the Total Film podcast. You'll find his writings on GamesRadar+ and Total Film, and in newspapers and magazines from across the world like The Times, The Independent, The i, Metro, The National, Marie Claire, and MindFood. 

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Challenging Minority Rule: Developing AI Standards that Serve the Majority World

This essay considers the emerging transnational governance frameworks for AI that are being developed under the auspices of a handful of powerful regulatory blocs, namely the United States, the European Union, and China, which are best positioned to influence emerging global standards.  It argues that these represent a relatively homogenous set of global interests, and that while attempts to develop binding rules of the road are laudable, the world would be better served if the standard-setting processes represented a more diverse set of stakeholders, and that perspectives from the people of the Global South, otherwise known as the Majority World, should be an essential component to developing new standards to govern the development and deployment of A.I. technologies.

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About the author.

Michael Karanicolas is the Executive Director of the UCLA Institute for Technology Law & Policy, and an affiliated fellow with the Yale Information Society Project. Thanks to Chinmayi Arun, Tomiwa Ilori, Vidushi Marda, Andrew Selbst, Nathan Siegel, and John Villasenor for their helpful comments and support to improve this Essay. All errors are solely the responsibility of the author.

Voices In, Voices Out: Impacted Stakeholders and the Governance of AI

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The Pitfalls of the European Union’s Risk-Based Approach to Digital Rulemaking

Abstract The European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act takes a so-called risk-based approach to regulating artificial intelligence. In addition to being celebrated by industry, this risk-based approach is likely to spread due to the ‘Brussels...

Addressing the Challenge of Protecting Fundamental Rights Through AI Regulation in the European Union

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Introduction: Generating Governance - An Essay Series on Strategies and Challenges in AI Regulation

In this essay series, the authors explore different aspects of emerging AI governance regimes.  Though about quite different topics, the essays have many common threads. Several of the essays demonstrate that many of the difficulties with AI...

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Same as It Ever Was? Eternal Recurrence in Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy

By Claire Hall

While Friedrich Nietzsche popularised the notion of an “eternal return” — in which one’s life would occur again, forever, exactly as it did before — the concept was itself a repetition. Claire Hall explores various shades of this idea in ancient philosophy, from Pythagorean metempsychosis to Stoic predictions about a cosmological reset.

May 15, 2024

Stereograph of Carlo Franzoni's 1819 marble sculpture of Clio, the Muse of History, standing in a winged chariot atop a clock, at the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., ca. 1860–90 — Source .

Albert Einstein kept changing his mind about the fate of the universe. As a young man, he had — like most other people at the time — believed the universe was static, a fixed size. By the end of his life, Einstein accepted the Big Bang, and had adopted the (now standard) view that the universe will keep growing outward, continuing to expand forever, its lights growing fainter until, eventually, they all fade to an endless inky black. But in between, in the early 1930s, he endorsed a rather different idea: that the universe goes through cosmic cycles.

In a cyclical model, our universe began with a Big Bang and continues to expand — but at some point it will stop. It will then contract, reversing its direction of travel, until eventually all matter collapses into a single point: a Big Crunch. But that is not simply the end of the universe: it is also a new starting point— it triggers another Big Bang, and another universe blooms. This pattern repeats, and repeats. Einstein wasn’t the first to suggest this idea using modern physics. It had been proposed by Alexander Friedmann, a Russian cosmologist whose work was fundamental for establishing the idea of the Big Bang. Friedmann had already been contemplating the physics of cosmic cycles when he died from an unlucky accident: some years earlier on his honeymoon, he had caught typhoid fever from an infected pear bought at a railway station — and in 1925 the infection took over his body.

Recurrence — the idea that the universe will die and be reborn, time and time again — might have been new to physics, but it is not a new idea. Globally, it is found in a number of religions, including Hinduism and Buddhism. It was also the subject of philosophical speculation in the premodern world. In particular, in the works of Greek and Roman philosophers, attempts were made to distinguish between different kinds of recurrence. There is the first kind we have already met through modern physics: the idea that the universe as a whole will die and be reborn. But this idea as it appears in Einstein and Friedmann does not make any claim that particular events, objects, or people will recur. What the physicists were interested in was a reshuffling of the cosmos.

Plate from Robert Fludd, Utriusque Cosmi (1617) — Source .

A second type of recurrence is reincarnation, a concept common to many religions. Here the focus is not the world as a whole, but the human or animal soul: each soul is reincarnated, living varying lives in sequences that are determined or governed by some cosmic balance. This can be found alongside an idea of cosmic recurrence, as in Hinduism and Buddhism, but is also consistent with a belief in an eternal world (such as in Jainism or some indigenous Aboriginal religions) or with a stable created world (such as in Sikhism, certain branches of Judaism, and in some of the traditional religions indigenous to the Americas, including that of the Inupiaq people of Alaska). But a third, more extreme idea, is that of exact recurrence — the whole world dies and begins again, and with it every event happens again the same way, in the exact same sequence, forever. Unlike the abstract cosmic rebirth of the physicists, both reincarnation and strict recurrence offer us a reason for the randomness of life’s fortunes, a way to believe that things happen not out of pure chance, but because something from a previous cycle provides a template for the present. Recurrence offers us a bigger picture, a greater web in which to link the vastness of Friedmann’s astrophysical research with the feather-lightness of the chance that killed him.

Greco-Roman writers treated the idea of eternal recurrence in a variety of ways. In a loose sense, many ancient writers observed that there are elements of circularity built into any idea of time measurement. Eudemus, a pupil of Aristotle, recognised this wider context, and put it clearly: “sameness is spoken of in different ways, and it does seem that a time [period] the same in kind recurs, e.g. summer, winter, and the other seasons.” 1 Aristotle himself said that time was “a sort of circle”. 2 Plato had called it “the moving image of eternity”, clearly linking time to the circular movements of the heavens. 3 Early Greek texts on the weather and seasons elaborate this idea of a cycle of time. Hesiod’s Works and Days , for example, presents an almanac of recurring signs for the farmer, while the long-established festival calendars of the Greek city states were often inscribed and displayed, providing a visual clue to the sameness of each changing year.

Greek thinkers also theorised recurrence in the sense of reincarnation. One of the important features of Pythagorean thought is the idea of metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls. Unfortunately, Pythagoreanism is particularly difficult to reconstruct: much was unwritten, and what was written has in large part been lost. After its first flush of popularity in the pre-Classical Greek world, centuries of often contradictory stories accreted around the cult figure of Pythagoras, silting up the historical record. (Later interpretations of Pythagoreanism are, of course, interesting in their own right as entryways into the teeming philosophical world of Late Antiquity, but they tell us very little about what Greeks of the sixth century BCE really thought). Pythagoreanism’s doctrines shaped a number of the genuinely secretive mystery cults of the Greek world, including Orphism and the Eleusinian mysteries, whose ideas about reincarnation are mostly lost to time. Reincarnation is, therefore, one of those topics on which the Greek texts whisper rather than shout.

Roman mosaic of Orpheus surrounded by animals, from the Piazza della Vittoria in Palermo, ca. 200–250 — Source .

But the philosophical schools that developed after Plato’s time took a more precise and pedantic approach. “I will talk, staff in hand, to you sitting like this, and everything else will be alike.” With these words, Eudemus summarised the view of a group of Stoic philosophers that all the events in the world would exactly recur, again and again. As he details, some Pythagoreans seem to have believed not only in reincarnation, but in exact recurrence: that things would be numerically the same, with the relative order of events exactly mapped between one iteration of the universe and the next. It was an idea reportedly taken up by Chrysippus (ca. 279–206 BCE), the most renowned of all the Stoic philosophers, although other Stoics disagreed. The Stoic version of recurrence had a terrifying additional element to it: the ekpyrosis or great conflagration. Stoics argued that ekpyrosis was a process in which the entire universe periodically goes up in flames and a new world emerges from its ashes like a phoenix — in fact, a lot like the Big Crunch. Many Stoic views are available to us only in later summaries. Hippolytus, a Christian writer of the second century CE, describes the Stoic doctrine, capturing the way in which the passing away of the old and the birth of the new are intertwined:

[The Stoics] expect that there will be a conflagration and a purification of this world, some say entirely, others say in part, and they . . . call the destruction and the subsequent generation of another [world] from it a purification. 4

Writing around the same time as Hippolytus, Alexander of Aphrodisias, a pagan commentator on Aristotle, elaborates on the Chrysippean view:

[Some Stoics] held that after the conflagration all the same things come to be again in the world numerically, so that even the same peculiarly qualified individual as before exists and comes to be again in that world. 5

Some Stoic philosophers explain the theory behind this periodic conflagration with a mysterious astronomical concept: the Great Year. The Great Year appears as a framing device in The Cradle of Life , the 2003 Tomb Raider sequel film starring Angelina Jolie: in a hidden ice cavern, a giant model of the solar system ticks down to the time when the orbits of all nine planets will align. In the ancient world, there were only five known planets (Saturn, Jupiter, Venus, Mars, Mercury) plus the two luminaries (the Sun and the Moon). If you started a timer at the moment that they were all lined up, their extremely different orbits mean that it would then take approximately 36,000 years before they returned to the same perfect line. The term “Great Year” was used to describe this particular alignment, but it was also used to refer to the time interval that it would take for any particular arrangement of the planets in the sky to occur again. Plato describes it as the “perfect number of time” in the Timaeus , a work which revolves around demonstrating the perfect harmony of the cosmos. 6 Cicero, more practically-minded, says the following:

On the diverse motions of the planets the mathematicians have based what they call the Great Year, which is completed when the sun, moon and five planets having all finished their courses have returned to the same positions relative to one another. The length of this period is hotly debated, but it must necessarily be a fixed and definite time. 7

The Great Year carries in it some idea of a celestial reset, hence its association with ekpyrosis . Although it’s tempting to picture the Stoic ekpyrosis like the death of the dinosaurs in Disney’s Fantasia , with streams drying up and creatures’ scorched flesh falling from their bones, most Stoics were actually rather sober about the whole thing. While the ever-dramatic Seneca luridly imagines cities “swallowed up in yawning chasms” and the inhabited world “cover[ered] with floods”, Marcus Aurelius is more representative of the tradition as a whole: he calmly suggests that everything “will evaporate . . . or it will be scattered”. 8 The time period involved, 36,000 years, is large enough to be basically non-threatening: just as we are able to dismiss without too much fear the idea of the universe eventually collapsing in a heat death in billions of years’ time, the ancients were also reassured by the enormity of the Great Year.

Illustration by Fred T. Jane for George Griffith’s Olga Romanoff (1897) — Source .

This Stoic idea of cosmic cycles — of something like a general refreshing of the universe — became part of the common currency of ancient thought. But for those who wanted to get into detail, recurrence had its conceptual problems. Particularly tricky was the strict form: the exact recurrence that some of the Stoics and Pythagoreans seem to have endorsed. Various philosophers weighed in on these difficulties: first and most fundamentally, if everything recurs exactly, does that not also mean time itself recurs? In that case, does everything actually happen more than once in any meaningful way? If we can only distinguish two otherwise identical events by saying that one happens before the other, that suggests we need an outside observer or a continuous measure of time in order to distinguish sameness and difference. These are exactly grounds on which Eudemus objects to the idea of strict recurrence:

For when the motion is one and the same, and similarly there are many things which are the same, their before and after is one and the same, and hence so is their number. So everything is the same, which means that the time is as well.

Some of this difficulty, as the philosophers realised, is to do with language: what does it mean to claim something happens again or earlier or later in a series of cyclical sequences that occur outside time? Aristotle used this linguistic problem as a way of demarcating between two different types of time. Sometimes we use the term “time” ( chronos ), he argued, when really we mean the scale we’re using to measure change — this is the sense of time we are employing when we say that it took Zeno four minutes to run the race, or that Seneca was in the bath for an hour. But the other type of time is the abstract concept, the thing that he sees as being outside of us, which marches ever onward. As he says:

Time is the measurement of circular motion [of the heavens], and is itself measured by a circular motion [of the heavens] . . . there is nothing else to be seen in what is measured except for the measure. 9

One response to the conceptual problem Aristotle raises was to deny that everything would be exactly the same in a recurring universe — to avoid the question of whether time starts again by positing that there are minutely different universes potentially (even if not practically) distinguishable against a continuous backdrop of ongoing time. This cop-out route seems to have been taken by some of the Stoics. The Christian philosopher Origen of Alexandria (180–250 CE) reports that: “to avoid supposing that Socrates will live again, [some Stoics] say that it will be someone indistinguishable from Socrates, who will marry someone indistinguishable from Xanthippe, and will be accused by men indistinguishable from Anytus and Meletus.” 10

But Origen explained this idea in order to reject it: for him, any kind of recurrence was incompatible with Christian doctrine, in which time had a distinct sense of direction. Most early Christians felt the same. Primarily, they were deeply uncomfortable with any idea of recurrence that included reincarnation: Christians instead believed that a person’s soul would go to heaven (or to hell, which became increasingly dominant in Christian thought as the Middle Ages wore on). The millenarian movement that was so popular in the early Church also supported the idea of the bodily resurrection of all Christians at the time of Jesus’ Second Coming. Reincarnation — where the soul travels through many bodies — was fundamentally incompatible with the idea of resurrection, which kept body and soul connected, even after death. Christian literature of the first few centuries abounds in half-comic, half-ghastly thought experiments about the mechanics of this final universal sorting and reckoning, including a fascination with how the bodies of cannibals and their victims are arranged in heaven.

Michelangelo, The Last Judgement (detail), ca. 1536–41 — Source .

But more strict ideas of recurrence were also unacceptable to Christians: it was totally incompatible with Christian doctrine to suggest that the Creation could be repeated, or that the Second Coming would in truth be one of infinitely many appearances of Christ. In fact, this strong Christian commitment toward the fixed linear structure of time represents an enormous shift in Western thought. Pre-Christian pagans and Jews had articulated a mix of ideas about cyclical and linear time, but in general nearly all ancient Mediterranean cultures had a profound orientation toward the past. Christianity changed that: it was now important to understand our lives on earth in the context of the afterlife, and, beyond it all, structuring it all, God’s final judgement. Time was linear, but chance was also never random — the world ran under the watchful eye of an omniscient God. Ideas about recurrence and reincarnation would fall out of favour in the West for over 1500 years.

Fifty years before Einstein embraced the idea of cosmic cycles, Nietzsche argued for a return to ideas of recurrence. God was dead and with him went the afterlife and its promised judgement of a lifetime of Christian morality. Nietzsche was worried that with this loss, solipsism could sneak in: for him, it was intolerable to think of life as arbitrary or ephemeral. Returning to recurrence was a way to put his own spin on the pre-Christian search for the meaning of life. Nietzsche used Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883–85) to argue that instead of making us feel depressed and trapped, eternal recurrence should be seen as a call to action. He uses recurrence in the strict sense: the exact repetition of the same sequence of events forever. When he first raises the idea in The Gay Science (1882), he imagines a demon explaining this fatalistic doctrine:

You will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in [your life], but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence. 11

Our first reaction to this disclosure, suggests Nietzsche, would be a kind of debilitating horror. But it might then present us with an opportunity for transformation, a challenge to live in such a way as to make time’s recurrence a gift. It is not the ephemerality of life that forces us to live wisely, argues Nietzsche, but the idea of it repeating forever. If you know that you must re-live again and again, your every choice becomes loaded with meaning: you are called on to live totally — fully, joyously, and virtuously. For those who are not crushed by the proposition, recurrence is not a curse but an endless blessing.

Notes Show Notes

• Eudemus as preserved in Simplicius, On Physics 732.26-733.1.
• Aristotle, Physics 4.14.
• Plato, Timaeus 37d.
• Hippolytus, Refutation of all Heresies 1.21.3-5.
• Alexander of Aphrodisias, Commentary on Aristotle’s Prior Analytics 180.33-6.
• Plato, Timaeus 39d.
• Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 2.51.
• Seneca, Marcia 21.6. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.4.
• Aristotle, Physics 4.12.
• Contra Celsum IV.68.
• Friedrich Nietzsche, Die fröliche Wissenschaft § 341.

Public Domain Works

• The Internet Classics Archive
• Internet Archive

Further Reading

This collection of articles is an important milestone in the history of the study of time conceptions in Greek and Roman Antiquity. It spans from Homer to Neoplatonism. Conceptions of time are considered from different points of view and sources. Reflections on time were both central and various throughout the history of ancient philosophy. Time was a topic, but also material for poets, historians and doctors. Importantly, the contributions also explore implicit conceptions and how language influences our thought categories.

For over two and a half millennia human beings have attempted to invent strategies to "discover" the truth of time, to determine whether time is infinite, whether eternity is the infinite duration of a continuous present, or whether it too rises and falls with the cycles of universal creation and destruction. Time-Fetishes recounts the history of a tradition that runs counter to the dominant tradition in Western metaphysics, which has sought to purify eternity of its temporal character. From the pre-Socratics to Ovid and Plotinus, and from Shakespeare to Hegel, Schelling, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida, Time-Fetishes traces the secret tradition of the idea of eternal recurrence and situates it as the grounding thought of Western philosophy and literature.

The Public Domain Review receives a small percentage commission from sales made via the links to Bookshop.org (10%) and Amazon (4.5%). Thanks for supporting the project! For more recommended books, see all our “ Further Reading ” books, and browse our dedicated Bookshop.org stores for US and UK readers.

Claire Hall is a research fellow at Durham and a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. She is working on a book on ancient ideas about the future and future prediction, and has published on the history of prophecy, astrology, and dream interpretation.

The text of this essay is published under a CC BY-SA license, see here for details.

• Religion, Myth & Legend

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Criminal law is all about setting the rules and regulations for society related to what’s legally allowed and what’s not. Students pursuing this study mainly focus on various legislative approaches set for the criminal world. But when it comes to writing a criminal law essay, it gets tricky because it demands you to work on its legal rules and analyse them carefully. Students mostly find it extremely tough due to no room for a mistake there.

The following are some important statistics related to criminal law:

• The market size of legal services in 2024 is $786.51 billion , which will grow by a CAGR of 4.52%, reaching 08 billion during 2024-2029.
• The market size of crime risk reports was USD 6 billion in 2023 , which will grow to 10.12 billion by 2024 , with a CAGR of 17.7%.

Coming back towards criminal law essay writing, even the most intelligent students sometimes get lower grades in such tasks. It mostly happens due to a lack of knowledge and skills and not getting enough guidance from the instructors. In such cases, getting assistance from expert essay writers is preferable. They have the best essay writing skills, which is crucial for criminal law and morality essays to ensure 100% success.

In this step-by-step guide, we will discuss writing a perfect criminal law essay and also explore its topics and trending questions.

A Step-by-Step Guide for Criminal Law Essay Writing

Wondering how to write a criminal law essay? Follow the steps given below for a complete guide on your essay writing:

Just like the initial preparations that we often do before a function, essay writing also demands prewriting preparations. It is the phase in which students spend select their topic of research and make a proper plan to write their essays. However, you need to carefully select a topic of your choice for your criminal law essay. Right after selecting your essay topic, you should start doing research on it to cover this topic from every aspect. It will help you to fully understand your topic which will help you in the writing phase.

After that, make a proper structure for your essay and write a first draft of it. Then, give proper time for its editing and proofreading phase for success. You should also explore some strong and weak points of your topic to add more value to your essay. By following all these prewriting steps, you will be ready to start moving towards the actual essay writing.

Criminal Law Essay Structure

Just like any other law essay, criminal law also demands a complete focus on the basic essay structure to cover all the necessary criminal law essay questions and answers. For proper structure and formatting, you should consult your institute for the guidelines. A common structure that we often use for essay writing consists of the following parts:

• Abstract (if needed)

Introduction

• Three or more body paragraphs
• Analysis of your sources
• Conclusions
• Reference page

Start with Research and Analysis

Every masterpiece comes from extensive research on the topic. So, if you are serious about getting the best grades in your criminal law essay, you need to spend more time on this research phase to have a thorough understanding of the topic. In this journey, you should follow all the relevant books, literature, news, articles, journals, case laws and legal documents. Along with it, don’t forget to note down important points side by side related to your topic that you may need later.

After compiling all the data, you should examine the information for further investigation. You should find something crazy for your topic, like legal hearings, relevant case studies and arguments. Critically look at this available data from different aspects and note down all the advantages and disadvantages given in it.

Compose Your Essay Perfectly

For essay writing, you should look at the structure we have discussed above. The first step was writing a title page that mostly consisted of your name, essay topic, submission date, level of education and the name of your institute. After that, if your teachers require you to write an abstract, you should summarise the whole essay in one page for it. Then, the actual part of essay writing begins with an introduction that ends at the conclusion part.

To properly structure your criminal law essay, you should strictly follow these guidelines:

It is the actual beginning of your essay that focuses on the purpose of your study. First of all, introduce your topic of discussion, discuss the questions you will cover and then state your aims for this study. You should clearly add your thesis statement to clarify your main points of study here.

Your introduction should not be boring or confusing because it is the part that will attract your readers and encourage them to read it till the end. So, make the start of your criminal law essay engaging as much as you can.

Background Data

Here, you should add the research data relevant to your topic, such as background knowledge of the laws, case law, and legal precepts. This part shows that you have done enough research and know everything about your topic. So, to express your knowledge, you should understand it first and then state and prove your arguments with the already existing data.

Main Body Section

This is the middle part of your criminal law essay, which mostly consists of 3 or more paragraphs, typically depending on your topic and essay length. Make short and purposeful paragraphs here to concentrate on a different facet of the subject every time.

Also, provide a coherent and logical presentation of your points backed up by research-based data. During this whole process, you should keep focussing on creating a logical flow among all these paragraphs.

Analysis and Discussion

To properly discuss your topic, you should critically analyse all the legal points and arguments made in the essay’s main body. Analyse the advantages and disadvantages of each argument and discuss them as neutral. Your one-sided response will ruin your whole criminal law essay, so avoid doing such acts. Instead, you should discuss everything clearly to ensure your success in it.

It is the last writing phase where you should summarise the whole essay in a few words. It is not the abstract where we only present a summary. No, a good conclusion also includes a thesis statement and also highlights the main results of your essay. But at this point, you should avoid adding any new information because it will leave a negative impact. Furthermore, always prefer to focus on the importance of your results and also discuss the recommendations for further research here.

Add Proper References

Just like any other type of academic writing, criminal law essays also have some data from the existing knowledge that needs proper citations. You may have added a few points as proof of your answers. If you write them without giving credit to their actual authors, it will lead you towards plagiarism. Instead of doing this crime, we prefer to add references to all the data borrowed from others.

It will not only help you to avoid plagiarism but also adds more value and credibility to your criminal law essay. To add these references, you should use your institute’s citation style that your instructors have provided. It may include Chicago, MLA, APA, Harvard or any other. Furthermore, you should be consistent throughout this phase and use the same style for all the references used.

Go Through Editing and Proofreading

After finishing your first draft, give yourself some rest to ease your brain and nerves. After that, start revising and editing your criminal law essay with a fresh mind. You should read aloud to point out mistakes in your writing. To edit and proofread it well, you should mainly focus on removing all the typos, grammar, spelling and punctuation mistakes. Also, make sure that you have properly followed your institute’s writing, citation and formatting styles.

For this purpose, you can also seek law essay writing help from a legal resource, as they have years of experience in this field. They have all the expertise to write and edit your essay excellently and ensure your top grades through their work.

Top 8 Criminal Law Essay Topics

We understand that finding the right topic becomes difficult for law students especially when they working on their criminal law essay. So, to ease your burden, we have come up with a list of unique but trending topics in this field. The following are the top 8 criminal justice essay topics:

• Criminal Justice System Racism Issues
• Exploring the Role of Voluntary and Involuntary Actions in Criminal Law
• The Controversy Surrounding Involuntary Manslaughter
• Comparing Key Differences and Implications for Civil Cases and Criminal Law
• Delving into the Intersection of Morality and the Law in Criminal Justice Research
• Understanding the Law Enforcement and Ramifications for Unlawful Killing
• Analysing the Ethical, Legal, and Practical Considerations for the Death Penalty
• Exploring the Purpose of Criminal Law Protection

Criminal Law Essay Examples

The following is an example taken from research about criminal law essay writing. Robin Antony Duff from the University of Stirling is its author:

How to Answer a Criminal Law Essay Question?

As a law student, you must understand the basics behind criminal law and should have the essay-writing skills needed to solve the required questions. So, do you have a question to answer in your criminal law essay? Follow the following simplest guide on how to answer such questions:

• First of all, you should read the assigned essay topic or question many times to understand what you have asked.
• If there are some facts or stats given, read and try to understand them.
• You should mainly focus on the legal issue that your question is talking about.
• Think about or even write some relevant laws that you know about such criminal issues discussed in the given question.
• After that, you should list and analyse the important facts related to that particular legal problem.
• Match the law to the facts and analyse what the outcome would be based on this combination.
• In case you don’t understand what to do, you can seek guidance from UK-based essay writing services .

What is Criminal Law, and What is its Role?

Criminal law covers a wide range of legal matters, from minor offences to serious crimes like murder and fraud. American Public University defines criminal law as behaviours that threaten people’s safety and well-being. Within criminal law, there are various types of crimes, such as murder, theft, drug offences, and fraud, each with its own penalties.

The goal of criminal law is to keep society safe from harm caused by criminal acts. It is meant to stop individuals from doing crimes by punishing criminals for these false acts. It also helps to change their behaviours for an overall positive impact on society.

What is the Difference Between Civil and Criminal Law Essays?

• Civil law: Civil law deals with the common disputes happening between two people or companies. In this type, the victim needs to compensate the affected ones. For example, Landlord issues, property disputes, divorce, and personal injury all come under civil law.
• Criminal law: This is the branch of law that deals with the crimes or criminal offences that are committed against the whole population or society. As a result, those criminals get legal punishments from law establishment. For example, incarceration, fines and the death penalty in some major cases.

Bottom Line

We all are aware of the fact that criminal law plays a vital role in our society to upload various laws. When law students get to write on such an important topic, they mostly get poor grades in these criminal law essays.

So, we thought to provide you with a comprehensive guide about this essay writing that no one has discussed before. It will help you to simplify your essay writing process and make it more interesting. By following these expert tips and step-by-step guide, you will be all set on a journey towards success.

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Scrabble, anonymous.

The art and life of Mark di Suvero

Images courtesy of Brad Phillips.

This morning, before breakfast, I played nineteen games of Scrabble on my phone. I won thirteen. It took less than an hour. Over the past twenty-five years, I’ve played Scrabble every day, predominantly on ISC.RO, a website hosted in Romania that allows for games that are no longer than three minutes. On my phone, I use the Scrabble app and play a bot set to “expert . ” I had meant to play only two or three games today, but as has been happening since 1999, I found that impossible.

These facts embarrass me, and I’m concerned I might appear to be bragging, announcing that I can finish a Scrabble game against a highly skilled bot in less time than it takes to brush one’s teeth. I’m not bragging. I’m confessing to being addicted to an ostensible word game that occupies more space in my brain than I’d prefer. Addicts are necessarily experts when it comes to the things that enslave them. No sommelier or “mixologist” can testify to any aspect of an alcoholic beverage with more expertise than a run-of-the-mill drunk playing keno in a dive bar.

Run-of-the-mill drunk in a dive bar. I was one once. I’d wake up determined to have just two or three drinks, then have many, many more than two or three. As with playing Scrabble, doing otherwise felt impossible. In Alcoholics Anonymous, we’re told that it’s common to substitute one addiction for another. Surely, I tell myself, this new unmanageability is preferable to the old one. It’s possible I’m right. It’s also possible I’m wrong.

Scrabble is a family favorite game played on a board composed of two hundred and twenty-five squares. There are one hundred tiles, each printed with a letter (save the two blanks) that is assigned a numerical value. The most common letters ( A , E , R ) are worth one point. The most uncommon ( Q , Z ) are worth ten. Players start—and until the end remain—with seven letters that they use to create words by building on previously played words, hoping to place one or more of their tiles on any of the colored squares, thereby multiplying their score.

This morning—before those nineteen games, the instant I woke up—I realized that the letters in CAUTIONED can be rearranged to spell EDUCATION . This seemed vastly better than waking up with no memory of the previous night, worried about what I may have done or said. Nonetheless, the thinking is obsessive and constant. The unwilling, unconscious anagramming of words is the primary side effect of a life devoted to Scrabble. This is ultimately what the game is about: memorizing words with no concern for their meaning.

If you play Scrabble seriously, no question from an opponent is more tedious than “What does that word mean?” Despite being a game centered on words, Scrabble isn’t about words; it’s about strategy, probability, and memorization. Misunderstanding this fact about the game leads people to unpleasant realizations.

For example, in August 2023, Isaac Aronow wrote about Scrabble for the New York Times. He’d seen a nine-minute video posted by The New Yorker titled “ Professional Scrabble Players Replay Their Greatest Moves ” and, shocked that there were professional Scrabble players, became determined to get good at the game. Aronow stated that because of his job as a writer and an editor, words were “important” to him, and he believed this might be helpful in Scrabble. He then outlined the humiliation he experienced playing online and admitted to having been full of hubris. Aronow was not good and didn’t improve.

I am also a writer and occasionally an editor. I know that this has no effect on my Scrabble game. If anything, the inverse is true: having learned the word bezique from playing Scrabble, I once used it in a short story about a private detective working on a case in Lisbon.

When playing Scrabble, language explodes then settles quietly on your rack, having been decommissioned. Each letter is a weapon only in the service of point accumulation and can no longer convey meaning by joining with its fellow letters. A word on a Scrabble board is a mathematical fact, not a unit of expression.

Last Thursday I visited the New York Scrabble Club, affiliated with the North American Scrabble Players Association (NASPA), of which I am a member. It was my first visit. I joined the club in May 2023. For eleven months, I planned to go, then did not go. Unlike Isaac Aronow, I was not full of hubris. I was terrified.

Life online is mostly devoid of the fear that can permeate life lived offline. Thus trolls, and QAnon. On ISC.RO I’ve played famed figures in the Scrabble world without having to meet their gaze. Online I’ve often felt confident, even arrogant, about my ability to play high-scoring words in very little time. Among the members of the New York Scrabble Club, everyone can do what I do, and most, I imagined, could do much better than me. Realizing that I’d be shaking hands with them, saying “good luck” and “good game,” made me feel as vulnerable as I felt the first time I walked into a church basement for an AA meeting. But, I realized, there was something else that made me nervous.

I felt like I was going to do something wrong, something addicty , something I hadn’t done in a very long time.

The eleventh tradition of Alcoholics Anonymous states, “Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio and films.”

Since this is the literal press, I apologize to friends for breaking with tradition.

The tradition is meant to safeguard the program, not the individual. An alcoholic is free to tell people they have a drinking problem. What they’re not supposed to do is tell those people that AA relieved them of their problem, because if they relapse, someone enslaved to alcohol but curious about the program may let that be the reason they don’t attempt it themselves.

I had meant for this to be an account of my experience meeting and playing against Scrabble players I’ve admired for decades. Using the “observe” function on ISC.RO, I have watched some of these players play in real time. Along with a dozen other people seeking to improve their skills, I have looked on as the world’s highest-ranked players lay down bingo (a word using all seven letters) after bingo, marveling at their ability to anagram the obscurest of words from vowel-heavy racks. I’ve spent untold hours analyzing downloaded boards played by world champions, and it’s worked: I’m a much better Scrabble player because of it, to the extent that I can no longer play against people who aren’t as obsessed with the game as I am.

But despite having played Scrabble for exactly half my life, despite having a fairly admirable win-to-loss ratio and having had friends and family tell me I’m good, I felt certain that my first experience at the New York Scrabble Club would be an ignominious one, soundtracked with mocking laughter from the regulars, whom I was both excited and scared to meet. As is almost always the case when I imagine the future, what happened was the opposite of what I’d expected. And because the environment felt something like sacred, because I dread the idea of anyone from last Thursday reading this and feeling exposed or viewing me as a tourist and an interloper, I’m employing a modified version of Alcoholics Anonymous’s eleventh tradition. The only name named is my own.

People attempting to recover from unhealthy obsessions unanimously report a tendency to overthink to the point of debility. Riding the subway uptown to the Scrabble club, I considered the ways I’d replaced one addiction with another.

I compared (played off the C , a bingo with OMPARED ) and contrasted (played off CON , a bingo with TRASTED ).

When addicted (played off the I , a bingo with ADDCTED ) to a substance, thoughts of the substance become the background and foreground of your mindscape. As was the case with alcohol, my first and last thoughts of the day are usually Scrabble related ( RELATED anagrams: ALTERED , REDEALT , ALERTED , TREADLE ). These thoughts do not feel self-generated. Instead ( DETAINS , STAINED , SAINTED … ) I feel like I’m being harassed by my mind, forced to think about something I’d rather not be thinking about.

Addiction interrupts productivity. An alcoholic in the office takes long lunch breaks. Editing this essay today, on six different occasions I’ve stopped to open ISC.RO. Each time, I’ve played more games than I’d intended. As a result, my editor is still waiting.

By the time I exited the subway, I’d disabused myself of the notion that I am a “normal” Scrabble player. What this says about my status as someone in recovery from addiction, I don’t know.

That Thursday night, J—— S——, chairman of the New York Scrabble Club (also the 1997 World, 2002 National, and 2018 North American champion) gave me a copy of the helpful New Player Information handout he’d created. My heart was still racing from having met someone whose games I’d voyeuristically observed countless times when I read: “Don’t play scared. Don’t worry how good your opponent is …”

People like me must show up from time to time, sweating. I scanned the room. At fifty, I was close to being the youngest person in attendance, a drastic change from my usual social life, which mostly, sometimes drearily, involves art openings. There was an assortment of cookies on a table, two canisters of coffee, and maybe twenty-five people in attendance. I would play four games that night, each with a twenty-two-minute clock, and I was supposed to be matched against people of my skill level. But how would they know my skill level? I considered leaving before things began.

As I waited for the matchups for the first game to be announced, I looked at the competition. I couldn’t guess what these people did for a living. They couldn’t guess what I did, and most beautifully, they wouldn’t care. The same phenomenon exists in twelve-step meetings. You hear the same people share about their lives week after week and don’t know if they’re cardiac surgeons, state senators, or baristas. A common obsession is a powerful unifier, one that renders all other biographical information meaningless.

I took another look at the handout I’d been given. It advised me that the best letters to have on my rack were those in the word CANISTER . I’d learned something new without having yet taken off my jacket. The C , I’d always thought, apparently mistakenly, was a letter to avoid. With the other letters in CANISTER , I knew that I could play the following bingos:

RETAINS STAINER ANESTRI STEARIN ANTSIER NASTIER RETINAS RETSINA RATINES

A first for me was that this time everyone else in the room also knew about these words. These bingos were common, even pedestrian. Now aware that J—— S—— praised the C , I instantly saw three new bingos I wouldn’t ordinarily have noticed:

CREATINS SCANTIER

I was a newcomer. A rookie. Unaware of the value of the letter C . My heart sunk.

Then I heard my name and instantly felt nauseous.

I swallowed hard and looked at my opponent, who smiled at me. There were maybe a dozen tables in the club, each with a plastic-coated, helpfully rotating Scrabble board, a bag of letters, and a chess clock. Growing up, we kept our Scrabble letters in a purple, faux-velvet Crown Royal bag. I saw three Crown Royal bags that night and felt that they knew me. They were me. Stalling for time, I got a coffee from the snack table and filled a paper bowl with Smarties and pretzels. Outside it was 2024, but inside it could easily still have been 1987, even 1975.

I approached my table.

A—— was markedly friendly and made banter, which I later learned is strongly discouraged. There should be, the New Player handout said, zero conversation unrelated to word challenges and scorekeeping during games. I suspected I’d been matched against A—— because I was new, because I was scared, and because I didn’t know the etiquette. A—— made me feel welcome. After he played ZEBU —and while he explained to me the proper technique for exchanging letters—I played ZINGIEST (played off the Z , a bingo with INGIEST ). With twelve and a half minutes left on my clock, I was shocked to find I’d won my first game, 353–337. A—— congratulated me, showed me where the pencil sharpener was, and went to refill his coffee.

I went to the bathroom, splashed cold water on my face, then heard the matchups for the second game announced. Though I lost my second game (366–409)—to J——, a guy in his sixties with a welcoming, warm expression—experiencing defeat and having it be free of laughter or taunting from observers got me to relax. J—— had commented that I played fast and asked which tournaments I’d been in. I told him none, that this was my first time playing anyone I wasn’t in love with or related to. I looked for a sign that he was impressed but didn’t find one.

My next opponent, L——, told me, “This city isn’t what it used to be.” I agreed, despite not having lived in New York when it was what it no longer is. I won 368–312 and in my final game beat N——, 358–309.

I suddenly felt exhausted. I’d been far more anxious than I had realized and was suffering the aftermath of a flood of stress hormones. I looked around. People were engrossed in their fourth and final games, and those who’d finished theirs were watching. Two elderly men were animatedly consulting a dog-eared copy of a NASPA dictionary. A woman was rounding up pencils to be returned to the cabinet. As I walked toward the elevator, the oldest person there, a woman, asked if I’d be coming back.

“I heard you’re good,” she said, with the nicest smile.

I told her I would be back and that I’d had a great time. I felt embarrassed by how sincere I sounded, how much it meant to me to feel accepted.

While I was waiting for the subway to return home, three people I’d seen at the club approached me and introduced themselves. Riding the F train downtown, we looked at flash cards on one of their phones. Jumbles of vowels and consonants that could be anagrammed into words I’d never seen before. Ordinarily this kind of behavior—forgoing conversation to focus on an obsession—has felt unhealthy to me. Somehow, doing it with other people took the stain away, made it feel fun instead of abject. Back home, I compared and contrasted again. Sure, maybe it’s obsessive, and, yes, it looks and feels like addiction, but it’s just words and numbers and points, and no one steals from their mom or cheats on their partner; no one stabs anyone or blows their kid’s tuition. Substitution isn’t always a bad thing. Who says we need to live in perfect equipoise twenty-four hours a day, aggressively present , free of any and all distraction s .

DISTRACTIONS , played off TRACT , a bingo with DISIONS .

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Researchers warned against using AI to peer review academic papers

Sign up for Semafor Technology: What’s next in the new era of tech. Read it now .

In this article:

Katyanna’s view

Room for Disagreement

Researchers should not be using tools like ChatGPT to automatically peer review papers, warned organizers of top AI conferences and academic publishers worried about maintaining intellectual integrity.

With recent advances in large language models, researchers have been increasingly using them to write peer reviews — a time-honored academic tradition that examines new research and assesses its merits, showing a person’s work has been vetted by other experts in the field.

That’s why asking ChatGPT to analyze manuscripts and critique the research, without having read the papers, would undermine the peer review process. To tackle the problem, AI and machine learning conferences are now thinking about updating their policies, as some guidelines don’t explicitly ban the use of AI to process manuscripts, and the language can be fuzzy.

The Conference and Workshop on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) is considering setting up a committee to determine whether it should update its policies around using LLMs for peer review, a spokesperson told Semafor.

At NeurIPS, researchers should not “share submissions with anyone without prior approval” for example, while the ethics code at the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), whose annual confab kicked off Tuesday, states that “LLMs are not eligible for authorship.” Representatives from NeurIPS and ICLR said “anyone” includes AI, and that authorship covers both papers and peer review comments.

A spokesperson for Springer Nature, an academic publishing company best known for its top research journal Nature, said that experts are required to evaluate research and leaving it to AI is risky. “Peer reviewers are accountable for the accuracy and views expressed in their reports and their expert evaluations help ensure the integrity, reproducibility and quality of the scientific record,” they said. “Their in-depth knowledge and expertise is irreplaceable and despite rapid progress, generative AI tools can lack up-to-date knowledge and may produce nonsensical, biased or false information.”

Other major scientific publishing companies such as Taylor & Francis and Sage told Semafor they prohibit reviewers from using AI, citing concerns like transparency and confidentiality.

Researchers, however, are increasingly turning to AI to review papers. A study led by Stanford University found that text that appears to have been “substantially modified or produced by a LLM” in the peer review process at NeurIPS, ICLR, and other popular machine learning conferences has risen.

“I think some people are complaining about this, and we have heard many anecdotes about people that think they’ve gotten reviews from ChatGPT,” Weixin Liang, a PhD student studying computer science at Stanford University, told Semafor.

One researcher, who posted a snippet of a comment in response to a paper he submitted to the ICLR, on X, was suspicious that it had been written by a LLM. Judging by the words in the text, he may be right. The Stanford study found that words such as “commendable”, “meticulous”, “lucidly” suddenly increased in peer reviews recently and are indicative of having been generated by ChatGPT.

“One thing that we found is that when it’s close to the deadline to submit the review, the probability of people using AI seems to increase a lot. So, probably, one of the underlying causes is the fast-paced nature of research and people feeling under pressure,” Liang said. Academics are expected to publish new research and often teach, too. Peer review is yet another job, and one they don’t typically get paid for.

It’s not surprising that more researchers are turning to AI in a rush to meet deadlines on top of their already demanding workloads. It’s more acceptable to use it to improve writing and thinking, but less so when it’s being used to replace having to do any real work. I’d be annoyed if I spent time and effort working on a research paper only to be rejected by a machine and have no one read it.

Been Kim, the general chair for this year’s ICLR conference and a research scientist at Google DeepMind, told me that no formal complaints have been filed by researchers annoyed about LLMs reviewing their work. But conferences should be vigilant and more explicit in their policies around using AI for academic writing. It’s difficult to crack down on inappropriate usage of LLMs since it’s tricky to determine whether something is AI or human-written. But if the technology continues to degrade the research process, public trust in academia will weaken, too.

Some researchers, however, might argue that AI should automate peer reviews since it performs quite well and can make academics more productive. Liang said that some comments generated by ChatGPT are not too dissimilar from experts, and can raise some of the same issues in research that human reviewers would have flagged, too. In fact, he told Semafor that he asked the chatbot to critique his team’s paper and found that it highlighted some of the same points that human reviewers did.

• AI peer review could exacerbate plagiarism if tools like ChatGPT generate similar critiques to papers, researchers believe .