how to make a literature review map

Press ESC to close

Creating a Comprehensive Literature Review Map: A Step-by-Step Example

• backlinkworks
• Writing Articles & Reviews
• October 16, 2023

A literature review is an essential component of any academic research paper or thesis. IT involves examining existing literature, scholarly articles, books, and other sources related to your research topic. A literature review map acts as a visual representation of the concepts, studies, and theories that have been covered in the literature. In this article, we will guide you through the process of creating a comprehensive literature review map, step-by-step, to help you structure and organize your literature review effectively.

Step 1: Define Your Research Topic

The first step in creating a literature review map is to clearly define your research topic. Be specific and narrow down your focus to ensure that you have a manageable scope for your literature review. Take into consideration the research objectives or guiding questions that will shape your review.

Step 2: Identify Relevant Keywords

Once you have defined your research topic, identify the keywords and search terms that are most relevant to your study. Brainstorm a list of potential keywords that are commonly used in the literature related to your topic. These keywords will help you locate relevant sources during your literature search.

Step 3: Conduct a Thorough Literature Search

Using databases and search engines specific to your field of study, begin conducting a thorough literature search using the identified keywords. Take note of the key articles, books, and studies that are relevant to your research topic. In this step, IT is important to evaluate the credibility and quality of the sources to ensure that you are referring to reputable and reliable information.

Step 4: Read and Analyze the Literature

After collecting a substantial number of sources, carefully read and analyze each one. Highlight key concepts, methodologies, and findings that are relevant to your research. As you progress, make notes or annotations to help you remember important details and connections between different sources.

Step 5: Organize the Literature

Now that you have read and analyzed the literature, IT ‘s time to organize the information into a coherent structure. One effective way to do this is by using a literature review map. Start by creating categories or themes based on the concepts or theories that emerge from the literature. Group together similar ideas or findings to create a visual representation of the interconnectedness of the sources.

Step 6: Create the Literature Review Map

With your categorized information, you can now create the literature review map. This can be done using software such as Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, or dedicated mind mapping tools. Start with your main research topic in the center and branch out with subcategories based on the themes or concepts identified earlier. Connect relevant sources to each subcategory, illustrating how they contribute to the overall understanding of your research topic.

Step 7: Revise and Refine

Review your literature review map for coherence and completeness. Ensure that all the key sources are accurately placed within the appropriate category or subcategory. Check for any gaps in your coverage and make sure that the map represents a comprehensive overview of the literature on your research topic.

Q: How many sources should I include in my literature review map?

A: The number of sources you include will depend on the requirements of your research and the depth of analysis you aim to achieve. However, IT is generally recommended to thoroughly examine a range of sources, including both seminal texts and recent publications, to ensure a well-rounded and comprehensive literature review.

Q: How do I determine the credibility of the sources for my literature review?

A: Evaluating the credibility of your sources is crucial to ensure that you are basing your review on reputable information. Consider the author’s qualifications, the credibility and reputation of the publishing outlet, the presence of citations within the article, and the overall coherence and consistency of the research findings.

Q: Can I use a literature review map for disciplines outside of the humanities and social sciences?

A: Absolutely! While literature reviews are commonly associated with humanities and social sciences, they are applicable to any academic field. Whether you are conducting research in the sciences, engineering, or any other discipline, a literature review map will help you organize and present the relevant scholarly literature specific to your research topic.

By following these step-by-step guidelines, you can create a comprehensive literature review map that will serve as a valuable tool throughout your research. Remember to regularly update and refine your map as you progress in your studies. A well-organized literature review will not only demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of the field, but also provide a solid foundation for your own research and contribute to the wider scholarly conversation.

Understanding the Advantages of SATA Hard Drives

3) top 10 wordpress website packages for beginners.

Recent Posts

• Driving Organic Growth: How a Digital SEO Agency Can Drive Traffic to Your Website
• Mastering Local SEO for Web Agencies: Reaching Your Target Market
• The Ultimate Guide to Unlocking Powerful Backlinks for Your Website
• SEO vs. Paid Advertising: Finding the Right Balance for Your Web Marketing Strategy
• Discover the Secret Weapon for Local SEO Success: Local Link Building Services

Popular Posts

Shocking Secret Revealed: How Article PHP ID Can Transform Your Website!

Uncovering the Top Secret Tricks for Mastering SPIP PHP – You Won’t Believe What You’re Missing Out On!

Discover the Shocking Truth About Your Website’s Ranking – You Won’t Believe What This Checker Reveals!

Unlocking the Secrets to Boosting Your Alexa Rank, Google Pagerank, and Domain Age – See How You Can Dominate the Web!

10 Tips for Creating a Stunning WordPress Theme

Explore topics.

• Backlinks (2,425)
• Blog (2,744)
• Computers (5,318)
• Digital Marketing (7,741)
• Internet (6,340)
• Website (4,705)
• Wordpress (4,705)
• Writing Articles & Reviews (4,208)

How to Master at Literature Mapping: 5 Most Recommended Tools to Use

This article is also available in: Turkish , Spanish, Russian , and Portuguese

After putting in a lot of thought, time, and effort, you’ve finally selected a research topic . As the first step towards conducting a successful and impactful research is completed, what follows it is the gruesome process of literature review . Despite the brainstorming, the struggle of understanding how much literature is enough for your research paper or thesis is very much real. Unlike the old days of flipping through pages for hours in a library, literature has come easy to us due to its availability on the internet through Open Access journals and other publishing platforms. This ubiquity has made it even more difficult to cover only significant data! Nevertheless, an ultimate solution to this problem of conglomerating relevant data is literature mapping .

Table of Contents

What is Literature Mapping?

Literature mapping is one of the key strategies when searching literature for your research. Since writing a literature review requires following a systematic method to identify, evaluate, and interpret the work of other researchers, academics, and practitioners from the same research field, creating a literature map proves beneficial. Mapping ideas, arguments, and concepts in a literature is an imperative part of literature review. Additionally, it is stated as an established method for externalizing knowledge and thinking processes. A map of literature is a “graphical plan”, “diagrammatic representation”, or a “geographical metaphor” of the research topic.

Researchers are often overwhelmed by the large amount of information they encounter and have difficulty identifying and organizing information in the context of their research. It is recommended that experts in their fields develop knowledge structures that are richer not only in terms of knowledge, but also in terms of the links between this knowledge. This knowledge linking process is termed as literature mapping .

How Literature Mapping Helps Researchers?

Literature mapping helps researchers in following ways:

• It provides concrete evidence of a student’s understanding and interpretation of the research field to share with both peers and professors.
• Switching to another modality helps researchers form patterns to see what might otherwise be hidden in the research area.
• Furthermore, it helps in identifying gaps in pertinent research.
• Finally, t lets researchers identify potential original areas of study and parameters of their work.

How to Make a Literature Map?

Literature mapping is not only an organizational tool, but also a reflexive tool. Furthermore, it distinguishes between declarative knowledge shown by identifying key concepts, ideas and methods, and procedural knowledge shown through classifying these key concepts and establishing links or relationships between them. The literature review conceptualizes research structures as a “knowledge production domain” that defines a productive and ongoing constructive element. Thus, the approaches emphasize the identity of different scientific institutions from different fields, which can be mapped theoretically, methodologically, or fundamentally.

The two literature mapping approaches are:

• Mapping with key ideas or descriptors: This is developed from keywords in research topics.
• Author mapping: This is also termed as citation matching that identifies key experts in the field and may include the use of citations to interlink them.

Generally, literature maps can be subdivided by categorization processes based on theories, definitions, or chronology, and cross-reference between the two types of mapping. Furthermore, researchers use mind maps as a deductive process, general concept-specific mapping (results in a right triangle), or an inductive process mapping to specific concepts (results in an inverted triangle).

What are Different Literature Mapping Methods?

The different types of literature mapping and representations are as follows:

1. Feature Mapping:

Argument structures developed from summary registration pages.

2. Topic Tree Mapping:

Summary maps showing the development of the topic in sub-themes up to any number of levels.

3. Content Mapping:

Linear structure of organization of content through hierarchical classification.

4. Taxonomic Mapping:

Classification through standardized taxonomies.

5. Concept Mapping:

Linking concepts and processes allows procedural knowledge from declarative information. With a basic principle of cause and effect and problem solving, concept maps can show the relationship between theory and practice.

6. Rhetorical Mapping:

The use of rhetoric communication to discuss, influence, or persuade is particularly important in social policy and political science and can be considered a linking strategy. A number of rhetorical tools have been identified that can be used to present a case, including ethos, metaphor, trope, and irony.

7. Citation Mapping:

Citation mapping or matching is a research process established to specifically establish links between authors by citing their articles. Traditional manual citation indexes have been replaced by automated databases that allow visual mapping methods (e.g. ISI Web of Science). In conclusion, citation matching in a subject area can be effective in determining the frequency of authors and specific articles.

5 Most Useful Literature Mapping Tools

Technology has made the literature mapping process easier now. However, with numerous options available online, it does get difficult for researchers to select one tool that is efficient. These tools are built behind explicit metadata and citations when coupled with some new machine learning techniques. Here are the most recommended literature mapping tools to choose from:

1. Connected Papers

a. Connected Papers is a simple, yet powerful, one-stop visualization tool that uses a single starter article.

b. It is easy to use tool that quickly identifies similar papers with just one “Seed paper” (a relevant paper).

c. Furthermore, it helps to detect seminal papers as well as review papers.

d. It creates a similarity graph not a citation graph and connecting lines (based on the similarity metric).

e. Does not necessarily show direct citation relationships.

f. The identified papers can then be exported into most reference managers like Zotero, EndNote, Mendeley, etc.

2. Inciteful

a. Inciteful is a customizable tool that can be used with multiple starter articles in an iterative process.

b. Results from multiple seed papers can be imported in a batch with a BibTex file.

c. Inciteful produces the following lists of papers by default:

• Similar papers (uses Adamic/Adar index)
• “Most Important Papers in the Graph” (based on PageRank)
• Recent Papers by the Top 100 Authors
• The Most Important Recent Papers

d. It allows filtration of results by keywords.

e. Importantly, seed papers can also be directly added by title or DOI.

a. Litmaps follows an iterative process and creates visualizations for found papers.

b. It allows importing of papers using BibTex format which can be exported from most reference managers like Zotero, EndNote, Mendeley. In addition, it allows paper imports from an ORCID profile.

c. Keywords search method is used to find Litmaps indexed papers.

d. Additionally, it allows setting up email updates of “emergent literature”.

e. Its unique feature that allows overlay of different maps helps to look for overlaps of papers.

f. Lastly, its explore function allows finding related papers to add to the map.

4. Citation-based Sites

a. CoCites is a citation-based method for researching scientific literature.

b. Citation Gecko is a tool for visualizing links between articles.

c. VOSviewer is a software tool for creating and visualizing bibliometric networks. These networks are for example journals, may include researchers or individual publications, which can be generated based on citation, bibliographic matching , co-citation, or co-authorship relationships. VOSviewer also offers text mining functionality that can be used to create and visualize networks of important terms extracted from a scientific literature.

5. Citation Context Tools

a. Scite allow users to see how a publication has been cited by providing the context of the citation and a classification describing whether it provides supporting or contrasting evidence for the cited claim.

b. Semantic Scholar is a freely available, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature.

Have you ever mapped your literature? Did you use any of these tools before? Lastly, what are the strategies and methods you use for literature mapping ? Let us know how this article helped you in creating a hassle-free and comprehensive literature map.

It’s very good and detailed.

It’s very good and clearly . It teaches me how to write literature mapping.

Rate this article Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published.

Enago Academy's Most Popular Articles

• Reporting Research

AI Assistance in Academia for Searching Credible Scholarly Sources

The journey of academia is a grand quest for knowledge, more specifically an adventure to…

• Language & Grammar

Best Plagiarism Checker Tool for Researchers — Top 4 to choose from!

While common writing issues like language enhancement, punctuation errors, grammatical errors, etc. can be dealt…

• Industry News
• Publishing News

2022 in a Nutshell — Reminiscing the year when opportunities were seized and feats were achieved!

It’s beginning to look a lot like success! Some of the greatest opportunities to research…

• Manuscripts & Grants

Writing a Research Literature Review? — Here are tips to guide you through!

Literature review is both a process and a product. It involves searching within a defined…

6 Tools to Create Flawless Presentations and Assignments

No matter how you look at it, presentations are vital to students’ success. It is…

2022 in a Nutshell — Reminiscing the year when opportunities were seized and feats…

Sign-up to read more

Subscribe for free to get unrestricted access to all our resources on research writing and academic publishing including:

• 2000+ blog articles
• 50+ Webinars
• 10+ Expert podcasts
• 50+ Infographics
• 10+ Checklists
• Research Guides

We hate spam too. We promise to protect your privacy and never spam you.

I am looking for Editing/ Proofreading services for my manuscript Tentative date of next journal submission:

What should universities' stance be on AI tools in research and academic writing?

• Research Guides

Literature Review: A Self-Guided Tutorial

Using concept maps.

• Literature Reviews: A Recap
• Peer Review
• Reading the Literature
• Developing Research Questions
• Considering Strong Opinions
• 2. Review discipline styles
• Super Searching
• Finding the Full Text
• Citation Searching This link opens in a new window
• When to stop searching
• Citation Management
• Annotating Articles Tip
• 5. Critically analyze and evaluate
• How to Review the Literature
• Using a Synthesis Matrix
• 7. Write literature review

Concept maps or mind maps visually represent relationships of different concepts. In research, they can help you make connections between ideas. You can use them as you are formulating your research question, as you are reading a complex text, and when you are creating a literature review. See the video and examples below.

How to Create a Concept Map

Credit: Penn State Libraries ( CC-BY ) Run Time: 3:13

• Bubbl.us Free version allows 3 mind maps, image export, and sharing.
• MindMeister Free version allows 3 mind maps, sharing, collaborating, and importing. No image-based exporting.

Mind Map of a Text Example

Credit: Austin Kleon. A map I drew of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing in 2008. Tumblr post. April 14, 2016. http://tumblr.austinkleon.com/post/142802684061#notes

Literature Review Mind Map Example

This example shows the different aspects of the author's literature review with citations to scholars who have written about those aspects.

Credit: Clancy Ratliff, Dissertation: Literature Review. Culturecat: Rhetoric and Feminism [blog]. 2 October 2005. http://culturecat.net/node/955 .

• << Previous: Reading the Literature
• Next: 1. Identify the question >>
• Last Updated: Feb 22, 2024 10:53 AM
• URL: https://libguides.williams.edu/literature-review

Something went wrong when searching for seed articles. Please try again soon.

No articles were found for that search term.

Author, year The title of the article goes here

LITERATURE REVIEW SOFTWARE FOR BETTER RESEARCH

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

Ali Mohammed-Djafari

Director of Research at LSS-CNRS, France

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

Swansea University, Wales

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

Franklin Jeffers

South Oregon University, USA

“One of the 3 most promising tools that (1) do not solely rely on keywords, (2) does nice visualizations, (3) is easy to use”

Singapore Management University

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

KU Leuven, Belgium

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

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

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

Professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong

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

Aran Warren

Canterbury University, NZ

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

Christoph Ludwig

Technische Universität Dresden, Germany

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

Daniel Fuller

Clarkson University, USA

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

Varun Venkatesh

Austin Health, Australia

Have a language expert improve your writing

Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, generate accurate citations for free.

• Knowledge Base

Methodology

• How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

Published on January 2, 2023 by Shona McCombes . Revised on September 11, 2023.

What is a literature review? A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research that you can later apply to your paper, thesis, or dissertation topic .

There are five key steps to writing a literature review:

• Search for relevant literature
• Evaluate sources
• Identify themes, debates, and gaps
• Outline the structure
• Write your literature review

A good literature review doesn’t just summarize sources—it analyzes, synthesizes , and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

Instantly correct all language mistakes in your text

Upload your document to correct all your mistakes in minutes

Table of contents

What is the purpose of a literature review, examples of literature reviews, step 1 – search for relevant literature, step 2 – evaluate and select sources, step 3 – identify themes, debates, and gaps, step 4 – outline your literature review’s structure, step 5 – write your literature review, free lecture slides, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions, introduction.

• Quick Run-through
• Step 1 & 2

When you write a thesis , dissertation , or research paper , you will likely have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:

• Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and its scholarly context
• Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
• Position your work in relation to other researchers and theorists
• Show how your research addresses a gap or contributes to a debate
• Evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of the scholarly debates around your topic.

Writing literature reviews is a particularly important skill if you want to apply for graduate school or pursue a career in research. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below.

Here's why students love Scribbr's proofreading services

Discover proofreading & editing

Writing literature reviews can be quite challenging! A good starting point could be to look at some examples, depending on what kind of literature review you’d like to write.

• Example literature review #1: “Why Do People Migrate? A Review of the Theoretical Literature” ( Theoretical literature review about the development of economic migration theory from the 1950s to today.)
• Example literature review #2: “Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines” ( Methodological literature review about interdisciplinary knowledge acquisition and production.)
• Example literature review #3: “The Use of Technology in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Thematic literature review about the effects of technology on language acquisition.)
• Example literature review #4: “Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Chronological literature review about how the concept of listening skills has changed over time.)

You can also check out our templates with literature review examples and sample outlines at the links below.

Download Word doc Download Google doc

Before you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic .

If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research paper, you will search for literature related to your research problem and questions .

Make a list of keywords

Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research question. Include each of the key concepts or variables you’re interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list as you discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.

• Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
• Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
• Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth

Search for relevant sources

Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some useful databases to search for journals and articles include:

• Your university’s library catalogue
• Google Scholar
• Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
• Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
• EconLit (economics)
• Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)

You can also use boolean operators to help narrow down your search.

Make sure to read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.

You likely won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on your topic, so it will be necessary to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your research question.

For each publication, ask yourself:

• What question or problem is the author addressing?
• What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
• What are the key theories, models, and methods?
• Does the research use established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
• What are the results and conclusions of the study?
• How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?

Make sure the sources you use are credible , and make sure you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.

You can use our template to summarize and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using. Click on either button below to download.

Take notes and cite your sources

As you read, you should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.

It is important to keep track of your sources with citations to avoid plagiarism . It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography , where you compile full citation information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the process.

The only proofreading tool specialized in correcting academic writing - try for free!

The academic proofreading tool has been trained on 1000s of academic texts and by native English editors. Making it the most accurate and reliable proofreading tool for students.

Try for free

To begin organizing your literature review’s argument and structure, be sure you understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:

• Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches become more or less popular over time?
• Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
• Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
• Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
• Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be addressed?

This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.

• Most research has focused on young women.
• There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
• But there is still a lack of robust research on highly visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat—this is a gap that you could address in your own research.

There are various approaches to organizing the body of a literature review. Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).

Chronological

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order.

Try to analyze patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.

If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.

For example, if you are reviewing literature about inequalities in migrant health outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economic access.

Methodological

If you draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a variety of research methods , you might want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from different approaches. For example:

• Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
• Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources

Theoretical

A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework . You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.

You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.

Like any other academic text , your literature review should have an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion . What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.

The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.

Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.

As you write, you can follow these tips:

• Summarize and synthesize: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
• Analyze and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers — add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
• Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
• Write in well-structured paragraphs: use transition words and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts

In the conclusion, you should summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance.

When you’ve finished writing and revising your literature review, don’t forget to proofread thoroughly before submitting. Not a language expert? Check out Scribbr’s professional proofreading services !

This article has been adapted into lecture slides that you can use to teach your students about writing a literature review.

Scribbr slides are free to use, customize, and distribute for educational purposes.

Open Google Slides Download PowerPoint

If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Sampling methods
• Simple random sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Cluster sampling
• Likert scales
• Reproducibility

 Statistics

• Null hypothesis
• Statistical power
• Probability distribution
• Effect size
• Poisson distribution

Research bias

• Optimism bias
• Cognitive bias
• Implicit bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Anchoring bias
• Explicit bias

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .

It is often written as part of a thesis, dissertation , or research paper , in order to situate your work in relation to existing knowledge.

There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:

• To familiarize yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
• To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
• To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
• To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
• To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.

The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your thesis or dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

A literature review is a survey of credible sources on a topic, often used in dissertations , theses, and research papers . Literature reviews give an overview of knowledge on a subject, helping you identify relevant theories and methods, as well as gaps in existing research. Literature reviews are set up similarly to other  academic texts , with an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion .

An  annotated bibliography is a list of  source references that has a short description (called an annotation ) for each of the sources. It is often assigned as part of the research process for a  paper .  

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

McCombes, S. (2023, September 11). How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates. Scribbr. Retrieved April 9, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/dissertation/literature-review/

Is this article helpful?

Shona McCombes

Other students also liked, what is a theoretical framework | guide to organizing, what is a research methodology | steps & tips, how to write a research proposal | examples & templates, unlimited academic ai-proofreading.

✔ Document error-free in 5minutes ✔ Unlimited document corrections ✔ Specialized in correcting academic texts

Literature Reviews

• What is a Literature Review?
• Concept Mapping
• Writing a Proposal
• For Faculty

Need help? Ask a librarian

Concept map example: Chocolate Purchasing Factors

What is concept mapping.

Concept Maps are a way to graphically represent ideas and how they relate to each other.

Concept maps may be simple designs illustrating a central theme and a few associated topics or complex structures that delineate hierarchical or multiple relationships.

J.D. Novak developed concept maps in the 1970's to help facilitate the research process for his students. Novak found that visually representing thoughts helped students freely associate ideas without being blocked or intimidated by recording them in a traditional written format.

Concept mapping involves defining a topic; adding related topics; and linking related ideas

Use Bubbl.us or search for more free mind-mapping tools on the web.

More Examples of Concept Maps

• Govt Factors in Consumer Choice
• Mental Health
• Social Psychology
• << Previous: Examples
• Next: Writing a Proposal >>
• Last Updated: Mar 25, 2024 8:48 AM
• URL: https://researchguides.njit.edu/literaturereview

Literature Reviews

• Getting Started
• Choosing a Type of Review
• Developing a Research Question
• Searching the Literature
• Searching Tips
• ChatGPT [beta]
• Documenting your Search
• Using Citation Managers
• Concept Mapping
• Concept Map Definition

MindMeister

• Writing the Review
• Further Resources

Additional Tools

Google slides.

GSlides can create concept maps using their Diagram feature. Insert > Diagram > Hierarchy will give you some editable templates to use.

Tutorial on diagrams in GSlides .

MICROSOFT WORD

MS Word can create concept maps using Insert > SmartArt Graphic. Select Process, Cycle, Hierarchy, or Relationship to see templates.

NVivo  is software for qualitative analysis that has a concept map feature. Zotero libraries can be uploaded using ris files. NVivo Concept Map information.

A concept map or mind map is a visual representation of knowledge that illustrates relationships between concepts or ideas. It is a tool for organizing and representing information in a hierarchical and interconnected manner. At its core, a concept map consists of nodes, which represent individual concepts or ideas, and links, which depict the relationships between these concepts .

Below is a non-exhaustive list of tools that can facilitate the creation of concept maps.

www.canva.com

Canva is a user-friendly graphic design platform that enables individuals to create visual content quickly and easily. It offers a diverse array of customizable templates, design elements, and tools, making it accessible to users with varying levels of design experience. 

Pros: comes with many pre-made concept map templates to get you started

Cons : not all features are available in the free version

Explore Canva concept map templates here .

Note: Although Canva advertises an "education" option, this is for K-12 only and does not apply to university users.

www.lucidchart.com

Lucid has two tools that can create mind maps (what they're called inside Lucid): Lucidchart is the place to build, document, and diagram, and Lucidspark is the place to ideate, connect, and plan.

Lucidchart is a collaborative online diagramming and visualization tool that allows users to create a wide range of diagrams, including flowcharts, org charts, wireframes, and mind maps. Its mind-mapping feature provides a structured framework for brainstorming ideas, organizing thoughts, and visualizing relationships between concepts. 

Lucidspark , works as a virtual whiteboard. Here, you can add sticky notes, develop ideas through freehand drawing, and collaborate with your teammates. Has only one template for mind mapping.

Explore Lucid mind map creation here .

How to create mind maps using LucidSpark:

Note: U-M students have access to Lucid through ITS. [ info here ] Choose the "Login w Google" option, use your @umich.edu account, and access should happen automatically.

www.figma.com

Figma is a cloud-based design tool that enables collaborative interface design and prototyping. It's widely used by UI/UX designers to create, prototype, and iterate on digital designs. Figma is the main design tool, and FigJam is their virtual whiteboard:

Figma  is a comprehensive design tool that enables designers to create and prototype high-fidelity designs

FigJam focuses on collaboration and brainstorming, providing a virtual whiteboard-like experience, best for concept maps

Explore FigJam concept maps here .

Note: There is a " Figma for Education " version for students that will provide access. Choose the "Login w Google" option, use your @umich.edu account, and access should happen automatically.

www.mindmeister.com

MindMeister  is an online mind mapping tool that allows users to visually organize their thoughts, ideas, and information in a structured and hierarchical format. It provides a digital canvas where users can create and manipulate nodes representing concepts or topics, and connect them with lines to show relationships and associations.

Features : collaborative, permits multiple co-authors, and multiple export formats. The free version allows up to 3 mind maps.

Explore  MindMeister templates here .

• << Previous: Using Citation Managers
• Next: Writing the Review >>
• Last Updated: Feb 29, 2024 10:31 AM
• URL: https://guides.lib.umich.edu/litreview

• UConn Library
• Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide
• How to Pick a Topic

Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide — How to Pick a Topic

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

Picking a Topic and Keywords to Research your Topic

Whether you are writing a literature review as a standalone work or as part of a paper, choosing a topic is an important part of the process. If you haven't select a topic yet for your literature view or you feel that your topic is too broad, this page is for you!

The key to successfully choosing a topic is to find one that is not too broad (impossible to adequately cover) but also not too narrow (not enough has been written about it). Use the tools below to help you brainstorm a topic and keywords that then you can use to search our many databases. Feel free to explore these different options or  contact a Subject Specialist if you need more help!

Concept Mapping

• [REMOVE] Mind Mapping (also known as Concept Mapping) A helpful handout to show step by step how to create a concept map to map out a topic.

Picking a topic and search terms

Below are some useful links and handouts that help you develop your topic. Check the handouts in this page. They are useful to help you develop keywords/search terms or to learn the best way to search databases to find articles and books for your research.

• UVA Thinking Tool: Choosing a Topic and Search Terms Provides a template for focusing a research assignment through the brainstorming of ideas, keywords, and other terminology related to a topic.
• UW How to Improve Database Search Results Suggested strategies for retrieving relevant search results
• UCLA: Narrowing a Topic Useful tips on how to narrow a topic when you are getting too many results in your search. From the librarians at UCLA.
• UCLA: Broadering a Topic Useful tips on how to broaden your topic when you are getting few results in your search. From the librarians at UCLA.
• << Previous: Introduction
• Next: Strategies to Find Sources >>
• Last Updated: Sep 21, 2022 2:16 PM
• URL: https://guides.lib.uconn.edu/literaturereview

• Skip to search box
• Skip to main content

Princeton University Library

Literature mapping.

• Manual Mapping
• Connected Papers
• Open Knowledge Maps
• Research Rabbit

What is Literature Mapping?

Literature mapping is a way of discovering scholarly articles by exploring connections between publications.

Similar articles are often linked by citations, authors, funders, keywords, and other metadata. These connections can be explored manually in a database such as Scopus or by the use of free browser-based tools such as Connected Papers , L itMaps , and Open Knowledge Maps . 

The following is an introduction to these four methods. 

Video Tutorial (24min)

Literature mapping in 30 minutes (slides).

• Literature Mapping in 30 Minutes Fall 2023 (slides)
• Next: Manual Mapping >>
• Last Updated: Dec 15, 2023 3:29 PM
• URL: https://libguides.princeton.edu/litmapping

How To Structure Your Literature Review

3 options to help structure your chapter.

By: Amy Rommelspacher (PhD) | Reviewer: Dr Eunice Rautenbach | November 2020 (Updated May 2023)

Writing the literature review chapter can seem pretty daunting when you’re piecing together your dissertation or thesis. As  we’ve discussed before , a good literature review needs to achieve a few very important objectives – it should:

• Demonstrate your knowledge of the research topic
• Identify the gaps in the literature and show how your research links to these
• Provide the foundation for your conceptual framework (if you have one)
• Inform your own  methodology and research design

To achieve this, your literature review needs a well-thought-out structure . Get the structure of your literature review chapter wrong and you’ll struggle to achieve these objectives. Don’t worry though – in this post, we’ll look at how to structure your literature review for maximum impact (and marks!).

But wait – is this the right time?

Deciding on the structure of your literature review should come towards the end of the literature review process – after you have collected and digested the literature, but before you start writing the chapter. 

In other words, you need to first develop a rich understanding of the literature before you even attempt to map out a structure. There’s no use trying to develop a structure before you’ve fully wrapped your head around the existing research.

Equally importantly, you need to have a structure in place before you start writing , or your literature review will most likely end up a rambling, disjointed mess. 

Importantly, don’t feel that once you’ve defined a structure you can’t iterate on it. It’s perfectly natural to adjust as you engage in the writing process. As we’ve discussed before , writing is a way of developing your thinking, so it’s quite common for your thinking to change – and therefore, for your chapter structure to change – as you write. 

Need a helping hand?

Like any other chapter in your thesis or dissertation, your literature review needs to have a clear, logical structure. At a minimum, it should have three essential components – an  introduction , a  body   and a  conclusion . 

Let’s take a closer look at each of these.

1: The Introduction Section

Just like any good introduction, the introduction section of your literature review should introduce the purpose and layout (organisation) of the chapter. In other words, your introduction needs to give the reader a taste of what’s to come, and how you’re going to lay that out. Essentially, you should provide the reader with a high-level roadmap of your chapter to give them a taste of the journey that lies ahead.

Here’s an example of the layout visualised in a literature review introduction:

Your introduction should also outline your topic (including any tricky terminology or jargon) and provide an explanation of the scope of your literature review – in other words, what you  will   and  won’t   be covering (the delimitations ). This helps ringfence your review and achieve a clear focus . The clearer and narrower your focus, the deeper you can dive into the topic (which is typically where the magic lies). 

Depending on the nature of your project, you could also present your stance or point of view at this stage. In other words, after grappling with the literature you’ll have an opinion about what the trends and concerns are in the field as well as what’s lacking. The introduction section can then present these ideas so that it is clear to examiners that you’re aware of how your research connects with existing knowledge .

2: The Body Section

The body of your literature review is the centre of your work. This is where you’ll present, analyse, evaluate and synthesise the existing research. In other words, this is where you’re going to earn (or lose) the most marks. Therefore, it’s important to carefully think about how you will organise your discussion to present it in a clear way. 

The body of your literature review should do just as the description of this chapter suggests. It should “review” the literature – in other words, identify, analyse, and synthesise it. So, when thinking about structuring your literature review, you need to think about which structural approach will provide the best “review” for your specific type of research and objectives (we’ll get to this shortly).

There are (broadly speaking)  three options  for organising your literature review.

Option 1: Chronological (according to date)

Organising the literature chronologically is one of the simplest ways to structure your literature review. You start with what was published first and work your way through the literature until you reach the work published most recently. Pretty straightforward.

The benefit of this option is that it makes it easy to discuss the developments and debates in the field as they emerged over time. Organising your literature chronologically also allows you to highlight how specific articles or pieces of work might have changed the course of the field – in other words, which research has had the most impact . Therefore, this approach is very useful when your research is aimed at understanding how the topic has unfolded over time and is often used by scholars in the field of history. That said, this approach can be utilised by anyone that wants to explore change over time .

For example , if a student of politics is investigating how the understanding of democracy has evolved over time, they could use the chronological approach to provide a narrative that demonstrates how this understanding has changed through the ages.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself to help you structure your literature review chronologically.

• What is the earliest literature published relating to this topic?
• How has the field changed over time? Why?
• What are the most recent discoveries/theories?

In some ways, chronology plays a part whichever way you decide to structure your literature review, because you will always, to a certain extent, be analysing how the literature has developed. However, with the chronological approach, the emphasis is very firmly on how the discussion has evolved over time , as opposed to how all the literature links together (which we’ll discuss next ).

Option 2: Thematic (grouped by theme)

The thematic approach to structuring a literature review means organising your literature by theme or category – for example, by independent variables (i.e. factors that have an impact on a specific outcome).

As you’ve been collecting and synthesising literature , you’ll likely have started seeing some themes or patterns emerging. You can then use these themes or patterns as a structure for your body discussion. The thematic approach is the most common approach and is useful for structuring literature reviews in most fields.

For example, if you were researching which factors contributed towards people trusting an organisation, you might find themes such as consumers’ perceptions of an organisation’s competence, benevolence and integrity. Structuring your literature review thematically would mean structuring your literature review’s body section to discuss each of these themes, one section at a time.

Here are some questions to ask yourself when structuring your literature review by themes:

• Are there any patterns that have come to light in the literature?
• What are the central themes and categories used by the researchers?
• Do I have enough evidence of these themes?

PS – you can see an example of a thematically structured literature review in our literature review sample walkthrough video here.

Option 3: Methodological

The methodological option is a way of structuring your literature review by the research methodologies used . In other words, organising your discussion based on the angle from which each piece of research was approached – for example, qualitative , quantitative or mixed  methodologies.

Structuring your literature review by methodology can be useful if you are drawing research from a variety of disciplines and are critiquing different methodologies. The point of this approach is to question  how  existing research has been conducted, as opposed to  what  the conclusions and/or findings the research were.

For example, a sociologist might centre their research around critiquing specific fieldwork practices. Their literature review will then be a summary of the fieldwork methodologies used by different studies.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself when structuring your literature review according to methodology:

• Which methodologies have been utilised in this field?
• Which methodology is the most popular (and why)?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the various methodologies?
• How can the existing methodologies inform my own methodology?

3: The Conclusion Section

Once you’ve completed the body section of your literature review using one of the structural approaches we discussed above, you’ll need to “wrap up” your literature review and pull all the pieces together to set the direction for the rest of your dissertation or thesis.

The conclusion is where you’ll present the key findings of your literature review. In this section, you should emphasise the research that is especially important to your research questions and highlight the gaps that exist in the literature. Based on this, you need to make it clear what you will add to the literature – in other words, justify your own research by showing how it will help fill one or more of the gaps you just identified.

Last but not least, if it’s your intention to develop a conceptual framework for your dissertation or thesis, the conclusion section is a good place to present this.

Example: Thematically Structured Review

In the video below, we unpack a literature review chapter so that you can see an example of a thematically structure review in practice.

Let’s Recap

In this article, we’ve  discussed how to structure your literature review for maximum impact. Here’s a quick recap of what  you need to keep in mind when deciding on your literature review structure:

• Just like other chapters, your literature review needs a clear introduction , body and conclusion .
• The introduction section should provide an overview of what you will discuss in your literature review.
• The body section of your literature review can be organised by chronology , theme or methodology . The right structural approach depends on what you’re trying to achieve with your research.
• The conclusion section should draw together the key findings of your literature review and link them to your research questions.

If you’re ready to get started, be sure to download our free literature review template to fast-track your chapter outline.

Psst… there’s more!

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

You Might Also Like:

27 Comments

Great work. This is exactly what I was looking for and helps a lot together with your previous post on literature review. One last thing is missing: a link to a great literature chapter of an journal article (maybe with comments of the different sections in this review chapter). Do you know any great literature review chapters?

I agree with you Marin… A great piece

I agree with Marin. This would be quite helpful if you annotate a nicely structured literature from previously published research articles.

Awesome article for my research.

I thank you immensely for this wonderful guide

It is indeed thought and supportive work for the futurist researcher and students

Very educative and good time to get guide. Thank you

Great work, very insightful. Thank you.

Thanks for this wonderful presentation. My question is that do I put all the variables into a single conceptual framework or each hypothesis will have it own conceptual framework?

Thank you very much, very helpful

This is very educative and precise . Thank you very much for dropping this kind of write up .

Pheeww, so damn helpful, thank you for this informative piece.

I’m doing a research project topic ; stool analysis for parasitic worm (enteric) worm, how do I structure it, thanks.

comprehensive explanation. Help us by pasting the URL of some good “literature review” for better understanding.

great piece. thanks for the awesome explanation. it is really worth sharing. I have a little question, if anyone can help me out, which of the options in the body of literature can be best fit if you are writing an architectural thesis that deals with design?

I am doing a research on nanofluids how can l structure it?

Beautifully clear.nThank you!

Lucid! Thankyou!

Brilliant work, well understood, many thanks

I like how this was so clear with simple language 😊😊 thank you so much 😊 for these information 😊

Insightful. I was struggling to come up with a sensible literature review but this has been really helpful. Thank you!

You have given thought-provoking information about the review of the literature.

Thank you. It has made my own research better and to impart your work to students I teach

I learnt a lot from this teaching. It’s a great piece.

I am doing research on EFL teacher motivation for his/her job. How Can I structure it? Is there any detailed template, additional to this?

You are so cool! I do not think I’ve read through something like this before. So nice to find somebody with some genuine thoughts on this issue. Seriously.. thank you for starting this up. This site is one thing that is required on the internet, someone with a little originality!

I’m asked to do conceptual, theoretical and empirical literature, and i just don’t know how to structure it

Submit a Comment Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

• Print Friendly

Search form

You are here, structuring your ideas: creating a literature map.

It is important to have a plan of the areas to be discussed, using this to indicated how these will link together. In the overall structure of the literature review, there should be a logical flow of ideas and within each paragraph there should be a clear theme, around which related ideas are explored and developed. A literature map can be useful for this purpose as it enables you to create a visual representation of the themes and how they could relate to one another.

A literature map (Cresswell, 2011) is a two dimensional diagrammatic representation of information where links are made between concepts by drawing arrows (which could be annotated to define the nature of these links). Constructing a literature map helps you to:

• develop your understanding of the key issues and research findings in the literature
• to organise ideas in your mind
• to see more clearly how different research studies relate to one another and to group those with similar findings.

Your map can then be used as a plan for your literature review.

As well has helping you to organise the literature for your review, a literature map can be used to help you analyse the information in a particular journal article, supporting the exploration of strengths and weaknesses of the methodology and the resultant findings and enabling you to explore how key themes and concepts in the article link together.

It is important to represent the different views and any conflicting research findings that exist in the literature (Newby, 2014). There is a danger of selective referencing, only including literature that supports your own beliefs and findings, disregarding alternative views. This should be avoided as it is based on the assumption that your views are the correct ones, and it is possible that you could miss key ideas and findings that could take your research in new and exciting directions.

• research methods
• literature reviews

Creative Commons

• Directories
• Concept mapping
• Lit review-type sources
• Grey literature
• Public affairs news
• Discipline-specific tools
• Writing & research help
• Start Your Research
• Research Guides
• University of Washington Libraries
• Library Guides
• UW Libraries
• Literature review toolkit for policy studies

Literature review toolkit for policy studies: Concept mapping

Why create a concept map.

A concept map is a visualization of key idea in your research and the relationships between them. To create a concept map, pick out the main concepts of your topic and brainstorm everything you know about them, drawing shapes around your concepts and clustering the shapes in a way that's meaningful to you. How can this help?

• Helps you pull back to see the broader concepts at play.
• Can help identify the subject-based tool where literature can be found. 
• Helps clarify both what you already know and where you have gaps in your knowledge.

• << Previous: Home
• Next: Lit review-type sources >>
• Last Updated: Jan 26, 2024 11:12 AM
• URL: https://guides.lib.uw.edu/research/litreviewtoolkit

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• Perspect Med Educ
• v.7(1); 2018 Feb

Writing an effective literature review

Lorelei lingard.

Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, Health Sciences Addition, Western University, London, Ontario Canada

In the Writer’s Craft section we offer simple tips to improve your writing in one of three areas: Energy, Clarity and Persuasiveness. Each entry focuses on a key writing feature or strategy, illustrates how it commonly goes wrong, teaches the grammatical underpinnings necessary to understand it and offers suggestions to wield it effectively. We encourage readers to share comments on or suggestions for this section on Twitter, using the hashtag: #how’syourwriting?

This Writer’s Craft instalment is the first in a two-part series that offers strategies for effectively presenting the literature review section of a research manuscript. This piece alerts writers to the importance of not only summarizing what is known but also identifying precisely what is not, in order to explicitly signal the relevance of their research. In this instalment, I will introduce readers to the mapping the gap metaphor, the knowledge claims heuristic, and the need to characterize the gap.

Mapping the gap

The purpose of the literature review section of a manuscript is not to report what is known about your topic. The purpose is to identify what remains unknown— what academic writing scholar Janet Giltrow has called the ‘knowledge deficit’ — thus establishing the need for your research study [ 1 ]. In an earlier Writer’s Craft instalment, the Problem-Gap-Hook heuristic was introduced as a way of opening your paper with a clear statement of the problem that your work grapples with, the gap in our current knowledge about that problem, and the reason the gap matters [ 2 ]. This article explains how to use the literature review section of your paper to build and characterize the Gap claim in your Problem-Gap-Hook. The metaphor of ‘mapping the gap’ is a way of thinking about how to select and arrange your review of the existing literature so that readers can recognize why your research needed to be done, and why its results constitute a meaningful advance on what was already known about the topic.

Many writers have learned that the literature review should describe what is known. The trouble with this approach is that it can produce a laundry list of facts-in-the-world that does not persuade the reader that the current study is a necessary next step. Instead, think of your literature review as painting in a map of your research domain: as you review existing knowledge, you are painting in sections of the map, but your goal is not to end with the whole map fully painted. That would mean there is nothing more we need to know about the topic, and that leaves no room for your research. What you want to end up with is a map in which painted sections surround and emphasize a white space, a gap in what is known that matters. Conceptualizing your literature review this way helps to ensure that it achieves its dual goal: of presenting what is known and pointing out what is not—the latter of these goals is necessary for your literature review to establish the necessity and importance of the research you are about to describe in the methods section which will immediately follow the literature review.

To a novice researcher or graduate student, this may seem counterintuitive. Hopefully you have invested significant time in reading the existing literature, and you are understandably keen to demonstrate that you’ve read everything ever published about your topic! Be careful, though, not to use the literature review section to regurgitate all of your reading in manuscript form. For one thing, it creates a laundry list of facts that makes for horrible reading. But there are three other reasons for avoiding this approach. First, you don’t have the space. In published medical education research papers, the literature review is quite short, ranging from a few paragraphs to a few pages, so you can’t summarize everything you’ve read. Second, you’re preaching to the converted. If you approach your paper as a contribution to an ongoing scholarly conversation,[ 2 ] then your literature review should summarize just the aspects of that conversation that are required to situate your conversational turn as informed and relevant. Third, the key to relevance is to point to a gap in what is known. To do so, you summarize what is known for the express purpose of identifying what is not known . Seen this way, the literature review should exert a gravitational pull on the reader, leading them inexorably to the white space on the map of knowledge you’ve painted for them. That white space is the space that your research fills.

Knowledge claims

To help writers move beyond the laundry list, the notion of ‘knowledge claims’ can be useful. A knowledge claim is a way of presenting the growing understanding of the community of researchers who have been exploring your topic. These are not disembodied facts, but rather incremental insights that some in the field may agree with and some may not, depending on their different methodological and disciplinary approaches to the topic. Treating the literature review as a story of the knowledge claims being made by researchers in the field can help writers with one of the most sophisticated aspects of a literature review—locating the knowledge being reviewed. Where does it come from? What is debated? How do different methodologies influence the knowledge being accumulated? And so on.

Consider this example of the knowledge claims (KC), Gap and Hook for the literature review section of a research paper on distributed healthcare teamwork:

KC: We know that poor team communication can cause errors. KC: And we know that team training can be effective in improving team communication. KC: This knowledge has prompted a push to incorporate teamwork training principles into health professions education curricula. KC: However, most of what we know about team training research has come from research with co-located teams—i. e., teams whose members work together in time and space. Gap: Little is known about how teamwork training principles would apply in distributed teams, whose members work asynchronously and are spread across different locations. Hook: Given that much healthcare teamwork is distributed rather than co-located, our curricula will be severely lacking until we create refined teamwork training principles that reflect distributed as well as co-located work contexts.

The ‘We know that …’ structure illustrated in this example is a template for helping you draft and organize. In your final version, your knowledge claims will be expressed with more sophistication. For instance, ‘We know that poor team communication can cause errors’ will become something like ‘Over a decade of patient safety research has demonstrated that poor team communication is the dominant cause of medical errors.’ This simple template of knowledge claims, though, provides an outline for the paragraphs in your literature review, each of which will provide detailed evidence to illustrate a knowledge claim. Using this approach, the order of the paragraphs in the literature review is strategic and persuasive, leading the reader to the gap claim that positions the relevance of the current study. To expand your vocabulary for creating such knowledge claims, linking them logically and positioning yourself amid them, I highly recommend Graff and Birkenstein’s little handbook of ‘templates’ [ 3 ].

As you organize your knowledge claims, you will also want to consider whether you are trying to map the gap in a well-studied field, or a relatively understudied one. The rhetorical challenge is different in each case. In a well-studied field, like professionalism in medical education, you must make a strong, explicit case for the existence of a gap. Readers may come to your paper tired of hearing about this topic and tempted to think we can’t possibly need more knowledge about it. Listing the knowledge claims can help you organize them most effectively and determine which pieces of knowledge may be unnecessary to map the white space your research attempts to fill. This does not mean that you leave out relevant information: your literature review must still be accurate. But, since you will not be able to include everything, selecting carefully among the possible knowledge claims is essential to producing a coherent, well-argued literature review.

Characterizing the gap

Once you’ve identified the gap, your literature review must characterize it. What kind of gap have you found? There are many ways to characterize a gap, but some of the more common include:

• a pure knowledge deficit—‘no one has looked at the relationship between longitudinal integrated clerkships and medical student abuse’
• a shortcoming in the scholarship, often due to philosophical or methodological tendencies and oversights—‘scholars have interpreted x from a cognitivist perspective, but ignored the humanist perspective’ or ‘to date, we have surveyed the frequency of medical errors committed by residents, but we have not explored their subjective experience of such errors’
• a controversy—‘scholars disagree on the definition of professionalism in medicine …’
• a pervasive and unproven assumption—‘the theme of technological heroism—technology will solve what ails teamwork—is ubiquitous in the literature, but what is that belief based on?’

To characterize the kind of gap, you need to know the literature thoroughly. That means more than understanding each paper individually; you also need to be placing each paper in relation to others. This may require changing your note-taking technique while you’re reading; take notes on what each paper contributes to knowledge, but also on how it relates to other papers you’ve read, and what it suggests about the kind of gap that is emerging.

In summary, think of your literature review as mapping the gap rather than simply summarizing the known. And pay attention to characterizing the kind of gap you’ve mapped. This strategy can help to make your literature review into a compelling argument rather than a list of facts. It can remind you of the danger of describing so fully what is known that the reader is left with the sense that there is no pressing need to know more. And it can help you to establish a coherence between the kind of gap you’ve identified and the study methodology you will use to fill it.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Mark Goldszmidt for his feedback on an early version of this manuscript.

PhD, is director of the Centre for Education Research & Innovation at Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, and professor for the Department of Medicine at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada.

Doing a literature review using digital tools (with Notion template)

I’ve recently revamped my literature review workflow since discovering Notion . Notion is an organization application that allows you to make various pages and databases. It’s kind of like your own personal wiki- you can link your pages and embed databases into another page, adding filters and sorting them using user-set properties. The databases are what I use the most. I’ve essentially transferred all of my excel sheets into Notion databases and find it much easier to filter and sort things now. In this post, I’ll go through how I do my literature review and share a Notion template that you can use.

I like to organize my literature review using various literature review tools along with two relational Notion databases: a ‘literature tracker’ and a ‘literature notes’ matrix. You can see a flow chart of my literature review process below (it’s inspired by this post by Jenn’s Studious Life and the three pass method for reading papers which I wrote about last week in this post ):

As you can see, this process involves a couple of decision points which helps me focus on the most important papers. This is an iterative process that keeps me up to date on relevant research in my field as I am getting new paper alerts in my inbox most days. I used this method quite successfully to write the literature review for my confirmation report and regularly add to it for the expanded version that will become part of my PhD thesis. In this post, I’ll break down how this works for me and how I implement my Notion databases to synthesise the literature I read into a coherent argument.

You can click on the links below to navigate to a particular section of this article:

The literature search

The literature tracker, the literature synthesis matrix, writing your literature review, iterating your literature review, my literature review notion template, some useful resources.

This is always the first step in building your literature review. There are plenty of resources online all about how to start with your search- I find a mixture of database search tools works for me.

The first thing to do when starting your literature review is to identify some keywords to use in your initial searches. It might be worth chatting to your supervisor to make a list of these and then add or remove terms to it as you go down different research routes. You can use keyword searches relevant to your research questions as well tools that find ‘similar’ papers and look at citation links. I also find that just looking through the bibliographies of literature in your field and seeing which papers are regularly cited gives you a good idea of the core papers in your area (you’ll start recognising the key ones after a while). Another method for finding literature is the snowballing method which is particularly useful for conducting a systematic review.

Here are some digital tools I use to help me find literature relevant to my research questions:

Library building and suggestions

Mendeley was my research management tool of choice prior to when I started using Notion to organize all of my literature and create my synthesis matrix. I still use Mendeley as a library just in case anything happens to my Notion. It’s easy to add new papers to your library using the browser extension with just one click. I like that Mendeley allows you to share your folders with colleagues and that I can export bib.tex files straight from my library into overleaf documents where I’m writing up papers and my thesis. You do need to make sure that all of the details are correct before you export the bib.tex files though as this is taken straight from the information plane. I also like to use the tag function in Mendeley to add more specific identifiers than my folders.

Mendeley is also useful for finding literature related to those in your library- I’ve found quite a few interesting papers through the email updates they send out each week with ‘suggested papers’. You can also browse these suggestions from within Mendeley and use its interface to do initial keyword searches. The key is to just scan the titles and then decide whether it’s worth your time reading the abstract and then the rest of it. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of papers being published every day so being picky in what you read is important (and something I need to work on more!).

Some similar tools that allow you to build a library and get literature recommendations include Zotero , Researcher , Academia , and ResearchGate . It’s up to you which one you use for your own purposes. One big factor for me when choosing Mendeley was that my supervisor and colleagues use it so it makes it much easier to share libraries with them, so maybe ask your colleagues what they use before settling on one.

Literature databases and keyword alerts

There are a variety of databases out there for finding literature. My go-to is Web of Science as it shows you citation data and has a nice interface. I used this to begin my initial literature search using my keywords.

The other thing you can do with these kinds of tools is set up email alerts to get a list of recent work that has just been published with any keywords you set. These alerts are usually where I find papers to read during journal club with my supervisor. You can customize these emails to what suits you- mine are set to the top 10 most relevant new papers for each keyword weekly and I track around 5 words/phrases. This allows me to stay on top of the most recent literature in my field- I have alerts set up on a variety of services to ensure that I don’t miss anything crucial (and alerts from the ArXiv mean I see preprints too). Again, you need to be picky about what you read from these to ensure that they are very relevant to your research. At this stage, it’s important to spend as little time as possible scanning titles as this can easily become a time suck.

Some of the other tools I have keyword (and author) email alerts set up on are: Scopus , Google Scholar , Dimensions , and ArXiv alerts . I set 10 minutes maximum aside per day to scan through any new email alerts and save anything relevant to me into my literature tracker (which I’ll come to more later).

Literature mapping tools

There are loads of these kinds of tools out there. Literature mapping can be helpful for finding what the seminal papers are in your field and seeing how literature connects. It’s like a huge web and I find these visual interfaces make it much easier to get my head around the relationships between papers. I use two of these tools during the literature search phase of the flowchart: Citation Gecko and Connected Papers .

Citation Gecko builds you a citation tree using ‘seed papers’. You can import these from various reference management software (like Mendeley), bib.tex files or manually search for papers. This is particularly useful if your supervisor has provided you with some core papers to start off with, or you can use the key papers you identified through scanning the bibliographies of literature you read. My project is split into fairly clear ‘subprojects’ so these tools help me see connections between the various things I’m working on (or a lack of them which is good in some ways as it shows I’ve found a clear research gap!).

You can switch between different views and add connecting papers as new seed papers to expand your network. I use this tool from time to time with various different papers associated with my subprojects. It’s helped me make sure I haven’t missed any key papers when doing my literature review and I’ve found it to be fairly accurate, although sometimes more recent papers don’t have any citation data on it so that’s something to bear in mind.

Connected Papers uses a ‘similarity’ algorithm to show paper relationships. This isn’t a citation tree like Citation Gecko but it does also give you prior and derivative works if you want to look at them. All you do is put one of your key papers into the search box and ‘build a graph’. It will then show you related papers, including those which don’t have direct citation links to the key paper. I think this is great for ensuring that you’re not staying inside an insular bubble of the people who all cite each other. It also allows me to see some of the research which is perhaps a bit more tangential to my project and get an overview of where my work sits within the field more broadly.

I like Connected Paper’s key for the generated tree and that it shows where related papers connect between themselves. Again, it’s helpful for ensuring that you haven’t missed a really important work when compiling your literature review and doesn’t just rely on citation links between papers.

This is where I record the details of any paper I come across that I think might be relevant to my PhD. In some ways, it’s very similar to Mendeley but it’s a version that sits within Notion so I have some more customised filtering categories set up, like my ‘status’ field where I track which pass I am on.

Here’s what my literature tracker looks like:

The beauty of Notion is that you can decide which properties you want to record in your database and customize it to your needs. You can sort and filter using these properties including making nested filters and using multiple filters at once. This makes it really easy to find what you’re looking for. For example, say I’m doing my literature review for my ‘FIB etching’ subproject and want to see all of the papers that I marked as relevant to my PhD but haven’t started reading yet. All I need to do is add a couple of filters:

And it filters everything so that I’m just looking at the papers I want to check out. It’s this flexibility that I think really gives Notion the edge when it comes to my literature review process.

The other thing I really like about using Notion rather than excel is that I can add different database views. I especially like using the kanban board view to see where I’m at with my reading workflow:

When I add something to the literature tracker database, I scan the abstract for keywords to add and categorize it in terms of relevant topics. It’s essentially the first pass of the paper, so that involves reading the title, abstract, introduction, section headings, conclusions, and checking the references for anything you recognise. After this is done, I decide whether it’s relevant enough to my PhD to proceed to do a second pass of the paper, at which point I will progress to populating my literature notes database.

Once I’ve decided that I want to do a second pass on a paper, I then add it to the ‘literature notes’ database. This is part of the beauty of Notion: relational databases. I have ‘rollup’ properties set in the literature notes database which shows all of the things I added during my first pass and allows me to filter the matrix using them. You can watch the video below to see exactly how to add a new paper to the ‘notes’ database from the ‘tracker’ database:

During the second pass, I populate the new fields in the ‘notes’ database. These are:

Summary | Objective of study | Key Results | Theory | Materials | Methods | Conclusions | Future work suggested | Critiques | Key connected papers.

I also have various themes/questions/ideas as properties which I add a few notes on for each relevant paper. I then complete my ‘questions for critical engagement’ which are on the entry’s ‘Notes’ page and are stored in the ‘Article Template’. If you want to read more about this process, check out my ‘how to read a scientific paper’ post .

By, doing this I create a synthesis matrix where I can see a breakdown of the key aspects of each paper and can scan down a column to get an overview of all of the papers I have read. For example, if I wanted to see all of the papers about Quantum Point Contacts to get an idea of what previous work has been done so that I can identify my research gap, I can filter using the tag property and can then see the notes I wrote for each entry, broken down by section. I also have tags for my research questions or themes, materials used, experimental techniques, fabrication techniques, and anything else that comes to mind really! The more tags I have for a paper, the easier it is to filter when I want to find a specific thing.

The other property I have included in the literature notes database is ‘Key connected papers’. This is a relation but is within the database itself. So it means that I can link to the page of other papers in the literature matrix. I’ve found this to be useful for connecting to what I call ‘core’ papers. I can also filter using this property, allowing me to see my notes on all of the papers I’ve read that are related to a certain ‘core’ paper. This helps with synthesising all of the information and forming my argument.

For those papers most relevant to my research (the ‘core’ papers) I’ll also do a third pass which involves reimplementing the paper in my own words. This is quite a time-consuming task so not many papers reach this stage, but those which I have done a third pass on are the ones I know really well. My hope is that this will stand me in good stead for my viva. This process also helps me refine my research questions further as I gain a deeper understanding of the field.

I find that writing up a review is extremely intimidating, but having the literature matrix makes this process that bit easier. I won’t go into too many details as there are already loads of resources out there going into the details of writing up a review, but here’s a brief overview of my own process:

Identify your research themes

Using your literature matrix, review each research theme or question and decide which ones you are going to focus on. These will form the different sections of your literature review and help you write your thesis statement(s). You can also think about how your questions link to ensure that you’re telling a coherent story with your review.

Choose and summarize literature related to each theme

For each section, gather up the most important related literature and summarize the key points of each source. A good literature review doesn’t need to cover all the literature out there, just the most significant sources. I try to stick to around 10 or fewer key sources per section.

Critical evaluation of sources

This is where you utilize the ‘questions for critical engagement’. Make sure you evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the studies you’re writing about. By doing this, you can establish where our knowledge is lacking which will come in helpful later when establishing a research gap.

Analyse each source in relation to other literature

Try to make sure that you are telling a coherent story by linking between your sources. You can go back to the literature matrix here and use it to group similar studies to compare and contrast them. You should also discuss the relevance of the source’s findings in relation to the broader field and core papers.

Situate your research in a research gap

This is where you justify your own research. Using what you have laid out in the rest of the review, show that there is a research gap that you plan to fill and explain how you are going to do that. This should mean that your thesis flows nicely into the next section where you’ll cover the materials and methods you used in your research project.

In some ways, a literature review never really ends. As you can see in the flowchart at the beginning of this post, I regularly update and revise my literature review as well as refining my research questions. At this point in my PhD, I think that most of my research questions are quite well defined, so I’m mostly just adding any newly published work into my review. I don’t spend much time reading literature at the moment but I’m sure I’ll return to it more regularly when I’m in the write-up phase of my PhD. There is a balance to be had between reading and writing for your literature review and actually getting on with your own research!

Here’s the link to my Notion Literature Review Template . You can duplicate it and adapt it however you want, but this should save you some time setting up the initial databases if you’d like to use my method for organizing your own literature review.

Here are some resources on how to do a literature review that I’ve found useful during my PhD:

• The Literature Review: Step-by-Step Guide for Students
• 3 Steps to Save You From Drowning in Your Literature Review
• How to write a literature review
• How to become a literature searching ninja
• Mind the gap
• 7 Secrets to Write a PhD Literature Review The Right Way

If you like my work, I’d love your support!

Share this:

• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)

11 thoughts on “Doing a literature review using digital tools (with Notion template)”

Thank you so much for your insight and structured process. This will help me a lot kicking off my Master Thesis.

The perfect method to organize the literature that I have read and will read in the future. I am so glad to have found your website, this will save me from thrashing around in the swamp of literature. I was already feeling the limits of my memory when I was doing my master thesis and this will be so helpful during my PhD.

Thank you so much for this detailed post! Lily 🙂

Thank you very much for this. I’m doing my undergrad atm and reading a lot of papers. This seems like an excellent way of tracking everything.

Thank you, you made my beginning less stressful. I like your system and i helped me a lot. I have one question (more might come later), What do you mean by " journal club with my supervisor."

This piece is really really helpful! I started from this one and went through the rest blog writings. I agree on many points with Daisy. I had an unhappy experience of PhD two years ago and now just started a new one in another country. I will take it as an adventure and enjoy it.

This is an AMAZING template. I've found this so helpful for my own workflow. Thank you so much!

I found this post really helpful. Thank you.

thank you very much!

Hi! Thank you very much for posting this guide and sharing your notion template! I do have a question—do you manually enter the references into Notion, or is there any way to speed up the process? Ta x

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Discover more from notes from the physics lab.

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Type your email…

Continue reading

Howard Aldrich

Kenan professor of sociology, dept of sociology @ unc chapel hill.

Powerful Tools for Mapping a Research Literature

Professor Courtney Page Tan , Assistant Professor of Human Resilience in the Department of Security and Emergency Services at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, has compiled a list of powerful literature mapping tools. You can use these tools to increase the scale and scope of the literature for your projects. Many provide stunning graphical displays of search results (Edward Tufte would approve).

Connected Papers lets you explore connected papers in a visual graph, beginning with a starter paper you select. You can start with a DOI, URL, or paper title. Purposes: (1) Get a visual overview of a new academic field; (2) Make sure you haven’t missed an important paper; (3) Create the bibliography to your thesis; and (4) Discover the most relevant prior and derivative works.

scite_ Smart Citations for Intelligent Research . Smart Citations allow users to see how a scientific paper has been cited by providing the context of the citation and a classification describing whether it provides supporting or disputing evidence for the cited claim. They claim a database of over 23 million full-text articles.

Open Knowledge Maps . Calling themselves a “visual interface to the world’s scientific community,” their tool allows you to start with a few keywords to search for literature on a topic. Results display the main areas at a glance, and papers related to each area. In addition to giving you an overview of the area, it helps you identify important concepts. They highlight open access papers in their search results.

Local Citation Network . You input an article using its DOI or a scanned copy containing DOIs and the program shows you suggested articles for you to follow up.

They explain that “This web app aims to help scientists with their literature review using metadata from Microsoft Academic and Crossref . Academic papers cite one another, thus creating a citation network (= graph) . Each node (= vertex) represents an article and each edge (= link / arrow) represents a reference / citation. Citation graphs are a topic of bibliometrics, for which other great software exists as well .

This web app visualizes subsets of the global citation network that I call “local citation networks,” defined by the references of a given set of input articles. In addition, the most cited references missing in the set of input articles are suggested for further review.”

Citation Gecko Gecko is designed to help you find the most relevant papers to your research and give you a more complete sense of the research landscape. Users start from a small set of ‘seed papers’ that define an area you are interested. Gecko will search the citation network for connected papers allowing you to quickly identify important papers you may have missed.

PRISMA Flow Diagram Generator . This is the most complex of the tools. It generates a graphical representation of the flow of citations reviewed in the course of a Systematic Review. Click here for an example.

Share this:

• Wed. Apr 10th, 2024

The City Whisperer

How to bring dead city areas to life

How to Create a Literature Map

How to create a literature map. The Literature Map helps researchers review literature for gaps and points of impact. They are useful in both academic and industry related research projects to help gain traction and market interest.

Book a seat for our upcoming Literature Mapping Webinar Workshop

Learn More about Literature Mapping

Research projects usually start with a Literature Review which involves using tools such as search engines ( e.g. google scholar) and document management and reference systems (e.g. Endnote and Mandalay).

The literature review will attempt to create a space for the research project that has not been covered or is yet to be developed.

Literature Mapping uses graphical methods to plot your literature in a graphical format. There are many types of graphical method from mind mapping to infographic formats.

See our Research Gate Forum where leading experts have discussed the various graphical literature tools from Mind Maps through to Quiqqa and other methods.

Dr Jonathan Drane has developed a unique but simple literature mapping method which streamlines your literature review and helps you refine your topic and its place in the literature universe.

‘In our method we prefer to use a ‘cards on desktop’ graphical logic.  It uses cards (like the icons on your desktop) and allocates identifiers to the cards including different colours as well as other key information points. Think of each card as if it was a library card which is also linked back to the actual publication it refers to’. Dr Jonathan Drane

In the method there is also an X-Y axis to allow for key concept themes to be pinned to the axis. From there each card is positioned based on its alignment to the theme. In the chart below this method is applied to City Growth Dynamics themes from Dr Drane’s doctorate.

‘ As I spent weeks in the literature mapping phase of my doctorate I realised that it was made clearer by using graphical representation of the various themes and concepts.’ Dr Jonathan Drane

An example of his literature map system is shown above which is extracted from Dr Drane’s Doctorate .

Impact and Strategic Importance

Research occurs in a huge range of endeavours from academic research to competitive analysis, market and corporate strategy. A central activity in these is to make sure you know what the current literature, articles and books are in the relevant strategic arena.

The use of literature review is essential to maintaining a strategic advantage and identifying the gaps in the theory or in corporate offerings.

We recommed that you take some time out and attend our upcoming webinar on this topic . Whether you are an academic or a business person or government researcher, this is important.

We look forward to seeing you at this webinar.

Dr Jonathan Drane

Download this article and other related resources (free).

Fill in this form to receive free downloads:

Your message (optional)

Other readings and links:

Link to Jonathan’s Research Gate page page on Literature Mapping

Link to Jonathan’s Doctorate

JDSLAB Podcast Episode 9: A Self-publishing Journey- Interview Kate Slatter

Jdslab episode 7- listening to books- the rise of audiobooks, jdslab podcast episode 8 – learning my authentic journey through missy higgin’s story, podcast training internships for creative arts students/mentors.

• Methodology
• Open access
• Published: 15 March 2023

Mapping reviews, scoping reviews, and evidence and gap maps (EGMs): the same but different— the “Big Picture” review family

• Fiona Campbell   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4141-8863 1 ,
• Andrea C. Tricco 2 ,
• Zachary Munn 3 ,
• Danielle Pollock 3 ,
• Ashrita Saran 4 ,
• Anthea Sutton 5 ,
• Howard White 6 &
• Hanan Khalil 7  

Systematic Reviews volume  12 , Article number:  45 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

20k Accesses

30 Citations

185 Altmetric

Metrics details

A Correction to this article was published on 01 April 2023

This article has been updated

Scoping reviews, mapping reviews, and evidence and gap maps are evidence synthesis methodologies that address broad research questions, aiming to describe a bigger picture rather than address a specific question about intervention effectiveness. They are being increasingly used to support a range of purposes including guiding research priorities and decision making. There is however a confusing array of terminology used to describe these different approaches. In this commentary, we aim to describe where there are differences in terminology and where this equates to differences in meaning. We demonstrate the different theoretical routes that underpin these differences. We suggest ways in which the approaches of scoping and mapping reviews may differ in order to guide consistency in reporting and method. We propose that mapping and scoping reviews and evidence and gap maps have similarities that unite them as a group but also have unique differences. Understanding these similarities and differences is important for informing the development of methods used to undertake and report these types of evidence synthesis.

Peer Review reports

Introduction

Evidence synthesis(defined broadly as the rigorous collation, evaluation and analysis of literature, studies, and reports) is increasingly viewed as critical to inform decision making in policy and practice. Over the past three decades, as various methods of evidence synthesis have emerged and evolved, the systems and labels used to categorize different review types have proliferated. A recent catalog of evidence synthesis approaches and terms identified 48 distinct review types [ 1 ]. Moher et al. (2015) [ 2 ], describes them as a “family” of evidence synthesis products that have arisen in response to policymakers and other stakeholders needs for diverse forms of information. This growth reflects the increased value placed on evidence synthesis to inform decision making, and we now see evidence synthesis used to address a broader range of research questions beyond effectiveness, along with tailored approaches (in terms of methods and products) to evidence synthesis as appropriate for different research needs, purposes, situations, and audiences [ 3 ].

Examples of approaches that are increasingly seen in the published literature are scoping reviews, mapping reviews, and evidence and gap maps (EGMs). Scoping reviews, mapping reviews, and EGMs are relatively new approaches that rarely appeared before 2009 [ 4 , 5 ]. Scoping reviews, evidence maps, and evidence and gap maps have been grouped together as “Big Picture” approaches due to their shared purpose and approaches. These Big Picture reviews can be contrasted with systematic reviews (addressing interventions, diagnostic test accuracy, prognosis, etc.) as they have a broader scope as compared to the (normally) narrower scope of classic systematic reviews. There have been consistent yearly increases in the publication of scoping, mapping, and evidence and gap maps [ 6 ]. Despite this, there remains confusion as to their application, meaning, and whether differences exist between them. This commentary aims to clarify these approaches, identify any differences between them, and provide recommendations for reviewers.

Terminology matters

This growing and evolving family of evidence synthesis types presents some challenges [ 7 ].

Firstly, there is the challenge of choosing the correct approach, particularly when terms are used inconsistently in the literature. The selection of an appropriate review approach will ensure the correct methods are employed using the appropriate standards for both its conduct and reporting. Indexing and wider dissemination can be challenging for researchers when there is ambiguity in terms [ 8 , 9 ].

Scoping reviews and mapping reviews—how are they used in the literature

Scoping reviews, mapping reviews, and evidence maps are terms that are not used consistently in the literature, with different terms used to describe similar approaches and review objectives. The same term is also used to describe different approaches and review objectives. Within the published literature, the terms scoping reviews and mapping reviews appear to be used in three different ways. Firstly, the terms “mapping” and “scoping” reviews are used interchangeably, referring to the same type of review methodology [ 5 , 6 , 10 ]. This approach is also one that is used in the PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) [ 11 ], providing guidance to inform reporting standards [ 12 ]. This may therefore have been influential in increasing the use of the term scoping review over the use of the term mapping review. Examination of published reviews does not reveal differences in method between these approaches (Campbell et al., 2022 publication in press).

Secondly, we see the terms used as complementary to the other. Some definitions tend to use the terms in a way which suggest that mapping is a specific approach to scoping—or vice versa. For example, “scoping reviews can usefully map the evidence in a number of ways” [ 13 ] and “scoping reviews are a way of mapping the key concepts” [ 14 ]. Lukersmith et al. (2016) [ 15 ] and Fernadez-Sotos et al. (2019) [ 16 ] suggest that the term map is a descriptive term used to describe one of the purposes of the scoping review. A mapping review may also scope the literature. It has also been suggested that when the term mapping is included in the description of the method that the review will incorporate a geographical mapping exercise or charting of the data in a tabular or any other visual format that can plot or portray the data.

Finally, we see scoping and mapping used to describe different types of evidence synthesis, and a distinction is made between mapping and scoping reviews [ 1 , 17 ]. These authors suggest that scoping reviews are “preliminary assessment of potential size and scope of available research literature which aims to identify nature and extent of research evidence (usually including ongoing research)”. It also is a term that has emerged within the systematic review field to describe the preliminary work undertaken with information specialists in planning the review, by getting a sense of the size of the literature, to identify key terms and theories and potentially clinical experts [ 18 ]. Within these definitions, mapping reviews are distinguished from a scoping review because the subsequent outcome may involve either further review work or primary research and this outcome is not known beforehand. For the purpose of this paper, we will refer to these as a scoping exercise instead of a formal scoping review methodology. Scoping exercises within this definition would not usually be regarded as a final output in their own right, primarily because of limitations in their rigor mean that they hold the potential for bias.

Gough et al. (2012) [ 19 ] suggest that the term scoping review often describes a more rapid, and so usually non-systematic, approach to describing the nature of the literature on a topic area, sometimes as part of planning for a systematic review compared with a standard systematic review. It is also important to note that there are published rapid scoping reviews where streamlined methods are used, but transparency and rigor are maintained to produce quicker results for decision-making purposes. Examples of these types of rapid scoping reviews include rapid responses to policy questions during the COVID-19 pandemic [ 20 , 21 ].

An alternative view of the difference comes from Bragge et al. (2011) [ 22 ] who suggests that a scoping review is distinguished from mapping by the inclusion of research results in the description of relevant evidence, whereas maps simply describe what is there without collating and summarizing the results of the studies.

So, even where the types of products are seen as different, there is not a consistent approach in this difference. Nevertheless, understanding why they are considered different is important in considering what is lost, in terms of an apt descriptor, if the terms are amalgamated and used interchangeably.

Historical origins

One reason that the terms scoping and mapping have emerged to describe two similar methodological approaches addressing broad types of research questions lies in the academic traditions from which they derive and the epistemological foundations upon which these are built. Scoping reviews and scoping review methodological guidance [ 12 ] tends to cite the framework defined by Arksey and O’Malley (2005) [ 23 ] and later enhancements by Levac et al. (2010) [ 24 ]. These approaches have their roots in sociological sciences. In contrast, the term evidence mapping was first used by Katz et al. (2003) [ 25 ] and has roots in the natural sciences. This was the term adopted by the EPPI Center in an early publication of a mapping review and is the term used by the Center for Environmental Evidence for the environmental sciences. The approach to evidence mapping accompanied by a visual evidence and gap map has been developed by several agencies (see Saran and White, 2018) [ 26 ], most notably by the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) [ 27 ] in the field of international development and subsequently adopted and adapted to a wider a range of sectors through the Campbell Collaboration. These include, for example, transport [ 28 ], youth violence, disability (Saran et al. [ 29 ]), employment (Campbell et al. [ 30 ]), and health and elder abuse [ 31 ] (Table 1 ).

Suggested approaches for distinguishing between mapping reviews and mapping reviews with EGMs and scoping reviews

The emergence of two terms (scoping and mapping) to describe approaches that have much in common in terms of their objectives and methods suggests that the terms used will be shaped more by the academic background of the researcher than by inherent differences in the approaches.

Currently, as we have shown, there are many instances where “mapping and scoping” are used interchangeably. We argue, in this paper, that while there is considerable overlap between these approaches, there is value in creating a distinction between scoping reviews, mapping reviews, and evidence gap maps. They also could be considered complementary, and a review may have elements of both “mapping” and “scoping.” Each approach, within this family of “broad approach and exploratory reviews” however has a shared objective which is to overview a wider research/topic area, rather than to address a tightly focused question. The methods thereafter diverge in part to address the nature of the research question, the research objectives, the topic area, the depth required for the data extraction, and the expertise of the review team.

We propose that a useful distinction is to see mapping, scoping, and EGMs sitting within the same family of types addressing broad questions but sitting on a spectrum in some of their underpinning epistemologies, concepts, and hence objectives (Fig. 1 ).

This is illustrated in the figure below:

The Big Picture review family (commonalities and differences in approaches)

Scoping review

These review types have been variously defined and described in the literature as described above. To address the confusion in this field, a recent formal definition of scoping reviews has been proposed, describing scoping reviews as follows:

It is a type of evidence synthesis that aims to systematically identify and map the breadth of evidence available on a particular topic, field, concept, or issue, often irrespective of source (i.e., primary research, reviews, non-empirical evidence) within or across particular contexts. Scoping reviews can clarify key concepts/definitions in the literature and identify key characteristics or factors related to a concept, including those related to methodological research [ 32 ].

They can be more exploratory than mapping reviews and EGMs, not requiring an a priori set of codes in order to describe data and may draw upon a range of sources of information (i.e., primary research, reviews, non-empirical evidence) within or across particular contexts. The approach can be more iterative, inductive, or deductive [ 32 ]. The nature of the “cataloging” and coding may be in response to what is found within the literature or using pre-defined categorization codes. Scoping reviews can also be used to identify concepts and clarify terms in the literature. In contrast to a mapping review where the process of coding is predefined. Within a scoping review, the data extracted may be textual and descriptive, allowing for example an analysis of concepts and categories using simple content analysis. It may include both predefined coding and also exploration of themes (for example, Kelly-Blake et al. 2018 [ 33 ]). In contrast, along a continuum, mapping reviews will address broader questions, use predefined coding, and adopt less in-depth data extraction.

Mapping review

Mapping reviews are also a transparent, rigorous, and systematic approach to identifying, describing, and cataloging evidence and evidence gaps in a broader topic area. They are to collate, describe, and catalog the available evidence relating to the question of interest [ 18 ]. They aim to answer the question “what do we know about a topic,” or “what and where research exists on a particular area.” A mapping review typically extracts only descriptive information about the studies and applies predefined codes (high level data). In this sense, they may be informed by an “aggregative” logic. A mapping review may or may not be accompanied by an EGM but provides visual summaries in the form of tables and graphs within the text [ 36 ]. These types of reviews may well have broader focus than a scoping review, with more limited data extracted from the included papers.

Evidence and gap maps

Evidence and gap maps are described as “a systematic presentation of all relevant evidence of a specified kind for a particular sector, sub-sector, or geography”. Evidence and gap maps (EGMs) are a systematic evidence synthesis product which displays the available evidence relevant to a specific research question. EGMs consist of primary dimensions or framework (rows and columns) and secondary dimensions or filters, enabling exploration of the map using a particular focus (e.g., looking at particular populations or study designs). It creates a visual, web-based, and interactive output [ 34 ].

This type of evidence synthesis generally uses a deductive approach with a pre-specified framework to classify the data and identify gaps in the literature. However, if no suitable framework is available, then the research team can develop their own by drawing on the range of resources, such as strategy documents, policy document, and funder reports. This is one of the major differences between mapping with an EGM review and scoping reviews (for the latter, an inductive or deductive approach may be used to identify relevant data elements so the framework for classification of the data and identification of gaps does not need to be pre-specified). Evidence gap maps may accompany a mapping review as a visual representation of the included studies or can stand independently from an accompanying mapping review.

All three of these approaches are characterized by seeking to address a broader topic area rather than a specific intervention or exposure. They are an appropriate tool if the research question is one in which multiple dimensions need to be considered, for example, multiple interventions, outcomes, or types of evidence. They do not aim to synthesize data but rather describe, categorize, and catalog findings. They aim to do so by applying defined methods to ensure transparency and rigor in the process of identifying, screening, data extraction, and interpreting findings. By addressing a broad topic area these approaches support the following purposes [ 3 ]:

Knowledge generation to support broad research questions and objectives such as the following:

What types of evidence are available in a given field?

How are concepts or definitions used within the literature?

How and where research is conducted on a certain topic?

The type of broad research question will inform the choice of approach. Scoping reviews are more likely to address open questions and the concepts may be emergent such “how is a key term used within the literature,” in contrast a mapping review may address more closed questions such as “how often the key term is used within the literature and within which population groups.” An evidence gap map will similarly address a closed question, for example, “is the term used in the following types of population group: children, adolescents, older people, and people with chronic conditions.”

Scoping reviews can provide an approach that allows exploration and clarification of key concepts and definitions within the literature, as well as how research is undertaken. As this approach does not require predefined categories, it allows for more descriptive data extraction. Often the question will be narrower than in a mapping review, allowing a greater depth of exploration of the included studies.

These approaches enable a better understanding is gained of phenomena by seeing it within a wider context. Olson et al. 2021 [ 37 ] uses the allegory of the blind monks who examine the elephant, where close inspection of one part of the whole means that meaning is lost. A complete picture is needed to really understand what the elephant is. It is clear, when seeking to operationalize what is meant by a “broad” topic area that perspective matters. For a cell biologist, the cell nucleus might be a broad topic, which a single country might be too narrow a perspective for the geographer. Understanding this unique feature of “Big Picture” reviews is perhaps easier when seen in contrast to the approach used in a systematic review examining the effectiveness of a single intervention. A Big Picture review question will look at multiple interventions or exposures and multiple outcomes or effects, seeking not to synthesize but to describe (Table 2 ).

To provide a foundation for guiding future research priorities and decisions by identifying available evidence and gaps in research

Mapping reviews and EGMs incorporate a framework that is generated during development of the protocol—it is this framework which guides the development of the data extraction tool or coding tool. This framework becomes the “map” against which existing evidence is plotted.

Identifying research gaps is often a stated part of all types of research; indeed, implications for “research and practice” are an expected part of all health and social care-related research. Identifying research gaps is often a primary purpose of scoping, mapping, and mapping reviews with EGMs more than other types of review design. In particular, mapping reviews with or without evidence gap maps address this purpose with a transparency and rigor that is unique.

Evidence and gap maps aim to enable evidence to be located, both by showing what is there but also in demonstrating knowledge gaps. In order to identify knowledge gaps, an EGM begins by developing the framework against which the evidence is plotted. The development of the framework adheres to the following principles. Firstly, it may be constructed using an existing, widely accepted international typology for either interventions, exposures, or outcomes. Secondly, if no suitable framework is available then the research team may draw on a range of resources including consultation with stakeholders and relevant published theories to ensure the comprehensiveness of the framework. Without such a structure, the gaps are not identified in a systematic way, but rather inferred and chosen by the review authors (no doubt well informed) but nevertheless influenced by their own perspectives and bias. This may be particularly apparent where a review is undertaken to pave the way for further primary research by the same team. Review teams could be strongly invested in identifying their own planned research as the “research gap.”

Evidence gap maps are a systematic approach to identifying the evidence and in particular—its gaps. No other review methodology has developed a systematic approach to identifying gaps in the evidence with this level of rigor and transparency. A limitation of the approach is that it only charts what is known and does not allow a more exploratory approach that may be employed in a scoping review.

Mapping and mapping reviews with EGMs aim to describe the state of evidence for a question or topic. The review questions may therefore be open framed and broad. However, the question can be close framed and narrow. Key elements of the question can be formulated by a framework such as PO (population, outcome). For an EGM, the objectives are formalized in the framework which defines the scope of the map [ 34 ].

To inform policy decisions, where an overview of an area may be more helpful than specific questions about specific types of interventions

Mapping (with or without an EGM) and scoping reviews often have pertinence for policy makers as they are able to cover the breadth of science often needed for policy-based questions; however, it needs to be remembered that the mapping approaches do not synthesize the findings and not include quality or risk of bias appraisal. These factors may limit their value to support some types of policy decisions. However, a mapping review with an accompanying EGM can take users to the research papers and facilitate the ready location of relevant evidence. An EGM can take users to the research papers and facilitate the ready location of relevant evidence. One example has been the use of a country evaluation map used by the Office of the Prime Minister of Uganda to identify studies to inform policy work [ 38 ]. Similarly, scoping reviews can inform policy and further research through identifying the available literature pertaining to a particular topic, along with clarifying key concepts and definitions.

As a stepping stone to building the evidence architecture

Evidence mapping and EGMs may be used as a first step towards the generation of evidence-based decision-making products, such as guidance, checklists, and online decision-making tools [ 39 ]. Maps will identify the (i) existing reviews which are suitable to use a basis for guidance, etc., (ii) where there are clusters of primary studies but no review so reviews may be commissioned in priority areas to inform guidance, etc., and (iii) important policy areas in which evidence is missing. To serve this purpose, the map should be regularly updated (maintained).

While the literature is inconsistent in its definitions of these types of reviews, and different reviews use different terminology to describe methods that appear very similar, many of these differences reflect the different research traditions and adoption of terms within organizations undertaking these types of syntheses. We argue that there is value in having these distinct terms to describe the different approaches within this family of broad review types. Scoping reviews allow a more inductive, in-depth approach with, including fewer included studies and a greater level of data extraction compared with mapping reviews. Mapping reviews and evidence gap maps address more closed questions, with pre-specified items defined and code-able when contrasted with scoping reviews. Evidence gap maps offer a visual, interactive output for users to locate evidence. The predefined framework offers a rigor to locating gaps in the existing literature and displaying these differences which is unique to these approaches.

This proposed new “Big Picture” review family within evidence synthesis contributes to the wide array of possible approaches to synthesizing literature. This multitude of choice presents challenges in selecting the correct evidence synthesis methodology. One tool that has been developed to assist in the appropriate selection of a method is the “right review” tool ( https://whatreviewisrightforyou.knowledgetranslation.net/ ). The tool enables researchers to answer a series of simple questions regarding the type of research questions they are undertaking for their review and selects an appropriate type of review based on their answers to the questions. The tool currently includes 41 different types of evidence synthesis methods [ 40 ].

A recent development has been changes made to the SR Toobox ( http://systematicreviewtools.com/index.php ) to include searching for tools to support different review types, as well as for different stages of the review. The Big Picture review family is increasingly well supported by methodological guidance and automation tools to support the process of undertaking high quality systematic reviews.

The existing guidance for the conduct and reporting of scoping reviews also applies to mapping reviews (JBI). Further development is needed in the methods of preparing a coding framework, particularly when the mapping review will also include the development of an interactive EGM. Current models of good practice exist; however, current guidance and reporting standards are limited.

This commentary details and describes some of the broad approaches within the evidence synthesis toolkit, specifically scoping reviews, mapping reviews, and EGMs. We have identified similarities and differences, based on our expert experience, between these reviews. We propose grouping them as a family of evidence synthesis to address broad research question and objectives. In so doing, we advocate that adherence to the principles of rigor and transparency that give users of evidence synthesis confidence in the reliability of the results of the review.

Change history

01 april 2023.

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1186/s13643-023-02224-2

Sutton A, Clowes M, Preston L, et al. Meeting the review family: exploring review types and associated information retrieval requirements. Health Info Libr J. 2019;36(3):202–22.

Article   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Moher D, Stewart L, Shekelle P. All in the family: systematic reviews, rapid reviews, scoping reviews, realist reviews, and more. Syst Rev. 2015;4(1):1–2.

Article   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Munn Z, Stern C, Aromataris E, et al. What kind of systematic review should I conduct? A proposed typology and guidance for systematic reviewers in the medical and health sciences. BMC Med Res Methodol. 2018;18(1):5. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12874-017-0468-4 .

Khalil H, Peters M, Godfrey CM, et al. An evidence-based approach to scoping reviews. Worldviews on Evidence-Based Nursing. 2016;13(2):118–23.

Tricco AC, Antony J, Soobiah C, et al. Knowledge synthesis methods for integrating qualitative and quantitative data: a scoping review reveals poor operationalization of the methodological steps. J Clin Epidemiol. 2016;73:29–35.

Colquhoun HL, Levac D, O’Brien KK, et al. Scoping reviews: time for clarity in definition, methods, and reporting. J Clin Epidemiol. 2014;67(12):1291–4.

Khalil H, Tamara L, Rada G, et al. Challenges of evidence synthesis during the 2020 COVID pandemic: a scoping review. J Clin Epidemiol. 2022;142:10–8.

Khalil H, Peters MD, Tricco AC, et al. Conducting high quality scoping reviews-challenges and solutions. J Clin Epidemiol. 2021;130:156–60.

Littell JH. Conceptual and practical classification of research reviews and other evidence synthesis products. Campbell Syst Rev. 2018;14(1):1–21.

Article   Google Scholar  

Peters MD, Godfrey C, McInerney P, et al. Chapter 11: scoping reviews (2020 version). JBI manual for evidence synthesis, JBI 2020;2020

Tricco AC, Lillie E, Zarin W, et al. PRISMA extension for scoping reviews (PRISMA-ScR): checklist and explanation. Ann Intern Med. 2018;169(7):467–73.

Peters MD, Marnie C, Tricco AC, et al. Updated methodological guidance for the conduct of scoping reviews. JBI evidence synthesis. 2020;18(10):2119–26.

Anderson S, Allen P, Peckham S, et al. Asking the right questions: scoping studies in the commissioning of research on the organisation and delivery of health services. Health research policy and systems. 2008;6(1):1–12.

Peters MD, Godfrey CM, Khalil H, et al. Guidance for conducting systematic scoping reviews. JBI Evidence Implementation. 2015;13(3):141–6.

Google Scholar  

Lukersmith MS, Millington M, Salvador-Carulla L. What is case management? A scoping and mapping review. International journal of integrated care 2016;16(4)

Fernandez-Sotos P, Torio I, Fernandez-Caballero A, et al. Social cognition remediation interventions: a systematic mapping review. PLoS ONE. 2019;14(6): e0218720.

Article   CAS   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Grant MJ, Booth A. A typology of reviews: an analysis of 14 review types and associated methodologies. Health Info Libr J. 2009;26(2):91–108.

James KL, Randall NP, Haddaway NR. A methodology for systematic mapping in environmental sciences. Environmental evidence. 2016;5(1):1–13.

Gough D, Thomas J, Oliver S. Clarifying differences between review designs and methods. Syst Rev. 2012;1(1):1–9.

Embrett M, Sim SM, Caldwell HA, et al. Barriers to and strategies to address COVID-19 testing hesitancy: a rapid scoping review. BMC Public Health. 2022;22(1):1–10.

Foster CR, Campbell F, Blank L, et al. A scoping review of the experience of implementing population testing for SARS-CoV-2. Public Health. 2021;198:22–9.

Article   CAS   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Bragge P, Clavisi O, Turner T, et al. The Global Evidence Mapping Initiative: scoping research in broad topic areas. BMC Med Res Methodol. 2011;11(1):92. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2288-11-92 .

Arksey H, O’Malley L. Scoping studies: towards a methodological framework. Int J Soc Res Methodol. 2005;8(1):19–32.

Levac D, Colquhoun H, O’Brien KK. Scoping studies: advancing the methodology. Implement Sci. 2010;5(1):1–9.

Katz DL, Williams A-l, Girard C, et al. The evidence base for complementary and alternative medicine: methods of evidence mapping with application to CAM. Alternative therapies in health and medicine 2003;9(4):22–37.

Saran A, White H. Evidence and gap maps: a comparison of different approaches. Campbell Syst Rev. 2018;14(1):1–38.

Snilstveit B, Vojtkova M, Bhavsar A, et al. Evidence gap maps-a tool for promoting evidence-informed policy and prioritizing future research. World bank policy research working paper 2013(6725)

Malhotra SK, White H, Dela Cruz NAO, et al. Studies of the effectiveness of transport sector interventions in low-and middle-income countries: an evidence and gap map. Campbell Syst Rev. 2021;17(4): e1203.

PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Saran A, White H, Kuper H. Evidence and gap map of studies assessing the effectiveness of interventions for people with disabilities in low‐and middle‐income countries. Campbell Systematic Reviews. 2020;16(1):e1070.

Campbell F, Chambers D, Llewellyen J. Wong R. Employment and Health: An Evidence and Gap Map. Campbell Syt Revs (in press). 2023.

Mikton C, Beaulieu M, Yon Y, et al. PROTOCOL: Global elder abuse: a megaa me of systematic reviews on prevalence, consequences, risk and protective factors and interventions. Campbell Syst Rev. 2022;18(2): e1227.

Munn Z, Pollock D, Khalil H, et al. What are scoping reviews? Providing a formal definition of scoping reviews as a type of evidence synthesis. JBI Evid Synth. 2022;20(4):950–2. https://doi.org/10.11124/jbies-21-00483[publishedOnlineFirst:2022/03/08] .

Kelly-Blake K, Garrison NA, Fletcher FE, et al. Rationales for expanding minority physician representation in the workforce: a scoping review. Med Educ. 2018;52(9):925–35.

White H, Albers B, Gaarder M, et al. Guidance for producing a Campbell evidence and gap map. Campbell Syst Rev. 2020;16(4): e1125.

Gough D, Oliver S, Thomas J. An introduction to systematic reviews: Sage 2017.

Miake-Lye IM, Hempel S, Shanman R, et al. What is an evidence map? A systematic review of published evidence maps and their definitions, methods, and products. Syst Rev. 2016;5(1):28. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13643-016-0204-x .

Olson AW, Stratton TP, Isetts BJ, et al. Seeing the elephant: a systematic scoping review and comparison of patient-centeredness conceptualizations from three seminal perspectives. J Multidiscip Healthc. 2021;14:973.

White H, Lubanga T, Rathinam F, et al. Development evaluations in Uganda 2000–2018. 2021

White H. The strategic use of evidence and gap maps to build the evidence architecture. In: Working CM, ed. London and Oxford: Centre of Excellence for Development Impact and Learning (CEDIL), 2021.

Amog K, Courvoisier M, Mak M, et al. The web-based “right review” tool asks reviewers simple questions to suggest methods from 41 knowledge synthesis methods. J Clin Epidemiol. 2022;147:42–51.

Davis R, Campbell R, Hildon Z, et al. Theories of behaviour and behaviour change across the social and behavioural sciences: a scoping review. Health Psychol Rev. 2015;9(3):323–44.

Pollock A, Campbell P, Struthers C, et al. Stakeholder involvement in systematic reviews: a scoping review. Syst Rev. 2018;7(1):1–26.

Baxter DG, Hilbrecht M, Wheaton CT. A mapping review of research on gambling harm in three regulatory environments. Harm Reduct J. 2019;16(1):1–19.

Download references

Acknowledgements

Andrea Tricco is funded by the Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Knowledge Synthesis.

Zachary Munn is funded by an NHMRC Investigator grant APP1195676.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Population Health Sciences Institute, Newcastle University, Newcastle, UK

Fiona Campbell

Knowledge Translation Program of the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, St. Michael’s Hospital, University of Toronto in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health & Institute of Health Policy, Management, and Evaluation, Toronto, Canada

Andrea C. Tricco

JBI, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia

Zachary Munn & Danielle Pollock

International Development Coordinating Group, Campbell Collaboration, Oslo, Norway

Ashrita Saran

ScHARR, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom

Anthea Sutton

Evaluation and Evidence Synthesis, Global Development Network, New Delhi, India

Howard White

School of Psychology and Public Health, Department of Public Health, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia

Hanan Khalil

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Contributions

FC and HW conceived the idea for the paper, and FC initiated the initial draft. HK, AT, HW, ZM, AS, and AS contributed to the comments and edits of subsequent drafts of the paper. HK and FC are co-chairs in the NAVIGATOR method group and took a lead in the preparation of this work. The final manuscript has been read, edited, and agreed by all the contributing authors.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Fiona Campbell .

Ethics declarations

Competing interests.

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher’s note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

The original online version of this article was revised: The authors identified an error in the author name of Zachary Munn and Danielle Pollock and affiliation of Fiona Campbell. The incorrect author names are: Zacchary Munn, Dannielle Pollock corrected to Zachary Munn, Danielle Pollock and affiliation 2 has been removed from author Fiona Campbell.

Useful resources: https://guides.temple.edu/c.php?g=78618&p=4156607 and https://wiki.joannabriggs.org/display/MANUAL/11.2+Development+of+a+scoping+review+protocol .

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Campbell, F., Tricco, A.C., Munn, Z. et al. Mapping reviews, scoping reviews, and evidence and gap maps (EGMs): the same but different— the “Big Picture” review family. Syst Rev 12 , 45 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13643-023-02178-5

Download citation

Received : 03 August 2022

Accepted : 24 January 2023

Published : 15 March 2023

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s13643-023-02178-5

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

Systematic Reviews

ISSN: 2046-4053

• Submission enquiries: Access here and click Contact Us
• General enquiries: [email protected]

Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Writing a Literature Review

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

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.

• Activity Diagram (UML)
• Amazon Web Services
• Android Mockups
• Block Diagram
• Business Process Management
• Chemical Chart
• Cisco Network Diagram
• Class Diagram (UML)
• Collaboration Diagram (UML)
• Compare & Contrast Diagram
• Component Diagram (UML)
• Concept Diagram
• Cycle Diagram
• Data Flow Diagram
• Data Flow Diagrams (YC)
• Database Diagram
• Deployment Diagram (UML)
• Entity Relationship Diagram
• Family Tree
• Fishbone / Ishikawa Diagram
• Gantt Chart
• Infographics
• iOS Mockups
• Network Diagram
• Object Diagram (UML)
• Object Process Model
• Organizational Chart
• Sequence Diagram (UML)
• Spider Diagram
• State Chart Diagram (UML)
• Story Board
• SWOT Diagram
• TQM - Total Quality Management
• Use Case Diagram (UML)
• Value Stream Mapping
• Venn Diagram
• Web Mockups
• Work Breakdown Structure

Literature Review Map Template

Editable literature review map template to visualize the connections and associations between things. Organize your ideas

You can easily edit this template using Creately's mind mapping software . You can export it in multiple formats like JPEG, PNG and SVG and easily add it to Word documents, Powerpoint (PPT) presentations, Excel or any other documents. You can export it as a PDF for high-quality printouts.

• Flowchart Templates
• Org Chart Templates
• Concept Map Templates
• Mind Mapping Templates
• WBS Templates
• Family Tree Templates
• Network Diagram Templates
• SWOT Analysis Templates
• Genogram Templates
• Activity Diagram
• Class Diagram
• Collaboration Diagram
• Component Diagram
• Data Flow Diagrams(YC)
• Deployment Diagram
• Object Diagram
• Sequence Diagram
• State Chart Diagram
• Use Case Diagram

Related Templates

University of Tasmania, Australia

Literature reviews.

• What is a literature review?
• How to develop a researchable question
• How to find the literature
• How to manage the reading and take notes that make sense
• Organising your Literature Review

Advice, other sites and examples

• Advice and examples for nursing students

Organising your literature review

https://www.helpforassessment.com/blog/how-to-outline-a-literature-review/

Using your notes from the matrix, it is now time to plan before writing.  

The usual structure of Introduction, Body and Conclusion apply here but after that, you need to make decisions about how the information will be organised: 

• Sequentially/Chronological?
• Topical - subtopics?
• Theoretical?
• Methodology?
• Importance?

This will sometimes depend on your discipline. For example, in Science disciplines it might be better to organise by the methods of research used if you are going to find gaps in those methods, while in Education or the Social Sciences, it might be better to organise by synthesising theory. 

Some literature reviews will require a description of the search strategy. For more information, you may want to look at the advice on this page:  Steps of Building Search Strategies

This video from Western Sydney University explains further and has examples for geographical and thematic organisation. 

Language and structure

Once you have written a draft, think carefully about the language you have used to signpost the structure of your review in order to build a convincing and logical synthesis.

Carefully choosing transition/linking words and reporting verbs will strengthen your writing. 

• Transition and Linking Language
• Reporting verbs
• Academic Phrasebank: referring to sources This academic phrasebank has many more examples of using language to build the structure of your argument.
• 1. Guidance notes for Lit Review
• 2. Literature Review purpose
• Cite/Write: Writing a literature Review, QUT
• RMIT Learning Lab: Literature Review overview

Advice and examples for nursing students (may be useful for other Health Sciences)

• Postgrad Literature Review Good example
• Postgrad Literature Review Poor Example
• Southern Cross University Literature Review Examples
• Literature review outline Boswell, C & Cannon, S (eds) 2014, Introduction to nursing research: incorporating evidence-based practice, Jones and Bartlett Learning, Sudbury, viewed 5 October 2017, Ovid, http://ovidsp.ovid.com.ezproxy.utas.edu.au/ovidweb.cgi?T=JS&CSC=Y&NEWS=N&PAGE=booktext&D=books1&AN=01965234/4th_Edition/2&EPUB=Y

• << Previous: How to manage the reading and take notes that make sense
• Last Updated: Apr 10, 2024 11:56 AM
• URL: https://utas.libguides.com/literaturereviews

CPS Online Library Research Guide (UNH Manchester Library): Create a Literature Review

• Home & Table of Contents
• Different Types of Information
• The Savvy Information Consumer
• Primary & Secondary Sources
• Periodical Literature
• Peer Review
• Research Glossary
• Business Research Databases
• Understanding the Assignment
• Preliminary Considerations
• 7 Steps to Completing a Research Assignment
• Define the Topic
• Find & Evaluate Your Sources
• Research Integrity & Citing Your Sources
• Searching for Information
• Evaluating Information
• How to Read an Academic Journal Article This link opens in a new window
• Evaluating Social Media Sources
• Writing Your Research Paper
• Create a Literature Review
• Summarize an Article
• How to Write an Abstract
• How to Write a Book Review
• How to Do an Annotated Bibliography
• Finding Professional Organizations
• Find Key Journals in Your Field of Study
• Find Peer-Reviewed Articles
• Write a Research Paper Proposal
• Research a Company This link opens in a new window
• Citing Your Sources
• Avoiding Plagiarism
• NHCUC Libraries
• Other Types of Research
• Academic Libraries in NH
• Government Documents
• Using Google for Academic Research
• Information Literacy
• Developing Effective Library Research Assignments
• Using Permalinks
• Primary Source Websites

What is a literature review?

A literature review discusses published information in a particular subject area, and sometimes information in a particular subject area within a certain time period.

A literature review can be just a simple summary of the sources, but it usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis. A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information. It might give a new interpretation of old material or combine new with old interpretations. Or it might trace the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates. And depending on the situation, the literature review may evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant.

But how is a literature review different from an academic research paper?

The main focus of an academic research paper is to develop a new argument, and a research paper is likely to contain a literature review as one of its parts. In a research paper, you use the literature as a foundation and as support for a new insight that you contribute. The focus of a literature review, however, is to summarize and synthesize the arguments and ideas of others without adding new contributions.

Why do we write literature reviews?

Literature reviews provide you with a handy guide to a particular topic. If you have limited time to conduct research, literature reviews can give you an overview or act as a stepping stone. For professionals, they are useful reports that keep them up to date with what is current in the field. For scholars, the depth and breadth of the literature review emphasizes the credibility of the writer in his or her field. Literature reviews also provide a solid background for a research paper’s investigation. Comprehensive knowledge of the literature of the field is essential to most research papers.

Strategies for writing the literature review

Find a focus.

A literature review, like a term paper, is usually organized around ideas, not the sources themselves as an annotated bibliography would be organized. This means that you will not just simply list your sources and go into detail about each one of them, one at a time. No. As you read widely but selectively in your topic area, consider instead what themes or issues connect your sources together. Do they present one or different solutions? Is there an aspect of the field that is missing? How well do they present the material and do they portray it according to an appropriate theory? Do they reveal a trend in the field? A raging debate? Pick one of these themes to focus the organization of your review.

Convey it to your reader

A literature review may not have a traditional thesis statement (one that makes an argument), but you do need to tell readers what to expect. Try writing a simple statement that lets the reader know what is your main organizing principle. Here are a couple of examples:

The current trend in treatment for congestive heart failure combines surgery and medicine.

More and more cultural studies scholars are accepting popular media as a subject worthy of academic consideration.

Consider organization

You’ve got a focus, and you’ve stated it clearly and directly. Now what is the most effective way of presenting the information? What are the most important topics, subtopics, etc ., that your review needs to include? And in what order should you present them? Develop an organization for your review at both a global and local level:

First, cover the basic categories

Just like most academic papers, literature reviews are likely to contain at least three basic elements: an introduction or background information section; the body of the review containing the discussion of sources; and, finally, a conclusion and/or recommendations section to end the paper. The following provides a brief description of the content of each:

• Introduction: Gives a quick idea of the topic of the literature review, such as the central theme or organizational pattern.
• Body: Contains your discussion of sources and is organized either chronologically, thematically, or methodologically (see below for more information on each).
• Conclusions/Recommendations: Discuss what you have drawn from reviewing literature so far. Where might the discussion proceed?

Organizing the body

Once you have the basic categories in place, then you must consider how you will present the sources themselves within the body of your paper. Create an organizational method to focus this section even further.

To help you come up with an overall organizational framework for your review, consider the following scenario:

You’ve decided to focus your literature review on materials dealing with sperm whales. This is because you’ve just finished reading Moby Dick, and you wonder if that whale’s portrayal is really real. You start with some articles about the physiology of sperm whales in biology journals written in the 1980’s. But these articles refer to some British biological studies performed on whales in the early 18th century. So you check those out. Then you look up a book written in 1968 with information on how sperm whales have been portrayed in other forms of art, such as in Alaskan poetry, in French painting, or on whale bone, as the whale hunters in the late 19th century used to do. This makes you wonder about American whaling methods during the time portrayed in Moby Dick, so you find some academic articles published in the last five years on how accurately Herman Melville portrayed the whaling scene in his novel.

Now consider some typical ways of organizing the sources into a review:

• Chronological: If your review follows the chronological method, you could write about the materials above according to when they were published. For instance, first you would talk about the British biological studies of the 18th century, then about Moby Dick, published in 1851, then the book on sperm whales in other art (1968), and finally the biology articles (1980s) and the recent articles on American whaling of the 19th century. But there is relatively no continuity among subjects here. And notice that even though the sources on sperm whales in other art and on American whaling are written recently, they are about other subjects/objects that were created much earlier. Thus, the review loses its chronological focus.
• By publication: Order your sources by publication chronology, then, only if the order demonstrates a more important trend. For instance, you could order a review of literature on biological studies of sperm whales if the progression revealed a change in dissection practices of the researchers who wrote and/or conducted the studies.
• By trend: A better way to organize the above sources chronologically is to examine the sources under another trend, such as the history of whaling. Then your review would have subsections according to eras within this period. For instance, the review might examine whaling from pre-1600-1699, 1700-1799, and 1800-1899. Under this method, you would combine the recent studies on American whaling in the 19th century with Moby Dick itself in the 1800-1899 category, even though the authors wrote a century apart.
• Thematic: Thematic reviews of literature are organized around a topic or issue, rather than the progression of time. However, progression of time may still be an important factor in a thematic review. For instance, the sperm whale review could focus on the development of the harpoon for whale hunting. While the study focuses on one topic, harpoon technology, it will still be organized chronologically. The only difference here between a “chronological” and a “thematic” approach is what is emphasized the most: the development of the harpoon or the harpoon technology.But more authentic thematic reviews tend to break away from chronological order. For instance, a thematic review of material on sperm whales might examine how they are portrayed as “evil” in cultural documents. The subsections might include how they are personified, how their proportions are exaggerated, and their behaviors misunderstood. A review organized in this manner would shift between time periods within each section according to the point made.
• Methodological: A methodological approach differs from the two above in that the focusing factor usually does not have to do with the content of the material. Instead, it focuses on the “methods” of the researcher or writer. For the sperm whale project, one methodological approach would be to look at cultural differences between the portrayal of whales in American, British, and French art work. Or the review might focus on the economic impact of whaling on a community. A methodological scope will influence either the types of documents in the review or the way in which these documents are discussed. Once you’ve decided on the organizational method for the body of the review, the sections you need to include in the paper should be easy to figure out. They should arise out of your organizational strategy. In other words, a chronological review would have subsections for each vital time period. A thematic review would have subtopics based upon factors that relate to the theme or issue.

Sometimes, though, you might need to add additional sections that are necessary for your study, but do not fit in the organizational strategy of the body. What other sections you include in the body is up to you. Put in only what is necessary. Here are a few other sections you might want to consider:

• Current Situation: Information necessary to understand the topic or focus of the literature review.
• History: The chronological progression of the field, the literature, or an idea that is necessary to understand the literature review, if the body of the literature review is not already a chronology.
• Methods and/or Standards: The criteria you used to select the sources in your literature review or the way in which you present your information. For instance, you might explain that your review includes only peer-reviewed articles and journals.

Questions for Further Research: What questions about the field has the review sparked? How will you further your research as a result of the review?

Attribution

"Create a Literature Review" is derivative of Literature Reviews by The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License .

• << Previous: Other Types of Research Assignments
• Next: Summarize an Article >>
• Last Updated: Apr 9, 2024 2:30 PM
• URL: https://libraryguides.unh.edu/CPSonlineLibraryResearch

• Library Guides
• Literature Reviews
• Writing the Review

Literature Reviews: Writing the Review

Outline of review sections.

Your Literature Review should not be a summary and evaluation of each article, one after the other. Your sources should be integrated together to create a narrative on your topic.

Consider the following ways to organize your review:

• By themes, variables, or issues
• By varying perspectives regarding a topic of controversy
• Chronologically, to show how the topic and research have developed over time

Use an outline to organize your sources and ideas in a logical sequence. Identify main points and subpoints, and consider the flow of your review. Outlines can be revised as your ideas develop. They help guide your readers through your ideas and show the hierarchy of your thoughts. What do your readers need to understand first? Where might certain studies fit most naturally? These are the kinds of questions that an outline can clarify.

An example outline for a Literature Review might look like this:

Introduction

• Background information on the topic & definitions
• Purpose of the literature review
• Scope and limitations of the review (what is included /excluded)
• Historical background 
• Overview of the existing research on the topic
• Principle question being asked
• Organization of the literature into categories or themes
• Evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of each study
• Combining the findings from multiple sources to identify patterns and trends
• Insight into the relationship between your central topic and a larger area of study
• Development of a new research question or hypothesis
• Summary of the key points and findings in the literature
• Discussion of gaps in the existing knowledge
• Implications for future research

Strategies for Writing

Annotated bibliography.

An annotated bibliography collects short descriptions of each source in one place. After you have read each source carefully, set aside some time to write a brief summary. Your summary might be simply informative (e.g. identify the main argument/hypothesis, methods, major findings, and/or conclusions), or it might be evaluative (e.g. state why the source is interesting or useful for your review, or why it is not).

This method is more narrative than the Literature Matrix talked about on the Documenting Your Search page.

Taking the time to write short informative and/or evaluative summaries of your sources while you are researching can help you transition into the drafting stage later on. By making a record of your sources’ contents and your reactions to them, you make it less likely that you will need to go back and re-read many sources while drafting, and you might also start to gain a clearer idea of the overarching shape of your review.

READ EXTANT LIT REVIEWS CLOSELY

As you conduct your research, you will likely read many sources that model the same kind of literature review that you are researching and writing. While your original intent in reading those sources is likely to learn from the studies’ content (e.g. their results and discussion), it will benefit you to re-read these articles rhetorically.

Reading rhetorically means paying attention to how a text is written—how it has been structured, how it presents its claims and analyses, how it employs transitional words and phrases to move from one idea to the next. You might also pay attention to an author’s stylistic choices, like the use of first-person pronouns, active and passive voice, or technical terminology.

See  Finding Example Literature Reviews on the Developing a Research Question page for tips on finding reviews relevant to your topic.

MIND-MAPPING

Creating a mind-map is a form of brainstorming that lets you visualize how your ideas function and relate. Draw the diagram freehand or download software that lets you easily manipulate and group text, images, and shapes ( Coggle ,  FreeMind , MindMaple ).

Write down a central idea, then identify associated concepts, features, or questions around that idea. Make lines attaching various ideas, or arrows to signify directional relationships. Use different shapes, sizes, or colors to indicate commonalities, sequences, or relative importance.

This drafting technique allows you to generate ideas while thinking visually about how they function together. As you follow lines of thought, you can see which ideas can be connected, where certain pathways lead, and what the scope of your project might be. By drawing out a mind-map you may be able to see what elements of your review are underdeveloped and will benefit from more focused attention.

USE VISUALIZATION TOOLS

Attribution.

Thanks to Librarian Jamie Niehof at the University of Michigan for providing permission to reuse and remix this Literature Reviews guide.

Avoiding Bias

Reporting bias.

This occurs when you are summarizing the literature in an unbalanced, inconsistent or distorted way . 

Ways to avoid:

• look for literature that supports multiple perspectives, viewpoints or theories 
• ask multiple people to review your writing for bias
• Last Updated: Apr 9, 2024 3:50 PM
• URL: https://info.library.okstate.edu/literaturereviews

• Open access
• Published: 13 July 2023

Influence of psychosocial safety climate on occupational health and safety: a scoping review

• Mustapha Amoadu 1 ,
• Edward Wilson Ansah 1 &
• Jacob Owusu Sarfo 1  

BMC Public Health volume  23 , Article number:  1344 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

4015 Accesses

3 Citations

3 Altmetric

Metrics details

Creating a healthy, decent and safe workplace and designing quality jobs are ways to eliminate precarious work in organisations and industries. This review aimed at mapping evidence on how psychosocial safety climate (PSC) influence health, safety and performance of workers.

A literature search was conducted in four main databases (PubMed, Scopus, Central and Web of Science) and other online sources like Google Scholar. A reference list of eligible studies was also checked for additional papers. Only full-text peer-reviewed papers published in English were eligible for this review.

A search in the databases produced 13,711 records, and through a rigorous screening process, 93 papers were included in this review. PSC is found to directly affect job demands, job insecurity, effort-reward imbalance, work-family conflict, job resources, job control and quality leadership. Moreover, PSC directly affects social relations at work, including workplace abuse, violence, discrimination and harassment. Again, PSC has a direct effect on health, safety and performance outcomes because it moderates the impact of excessive job demands on workers’ health and safety. Finally, PSC boosts job resources’ effect on improving workers’ well-being, safety and performance.

Managers’ efforts directed towards designing quality jobs, prioritising the well-being of workers, and fostering a bottom-up communication through robust organisational policies, practices, and procedures may help create a high organisational PSC that, in turn, promotes a healthy and decent work environment.

Peer Review reports

Introduction

Every job has tremendous inherent health, safety and well-being challenges, thus, creating a safe and decent work for improved health and safety outcomes becomes eminent [ 1 , 2 ]. For instance, pprecarious jobs and work environment are detrimental to the health and safety of workers and place huge financial burden on workers and their organisations [ 2 ]. Occupational incidents do not affect only workers and their families, but have a huge burden on society through impaired productivity and increased use of healthcare and cost [ 3 , 4 ]. According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) working conditions are worsening globally, and majority of workers are found in precarious employment [ 1 ], which is responsible for about 7,600 deaths daily [ 1 ]. Therefore, occupational health and safety (OHS) remains the key factor to restoring dignity at work and improving worker health outcomes, to meet the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 8, which seeks to eliminate all forms of precarious work and ensure a decent and safe workplace for all [ 1 ]. However, robust research designs and reviews are needed to map quality evidence to inform interventions and policies aimed at creating such a safe and decent work for all workers.

Evidence from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and ILO shows that in 2016, about 1.9 million deaths occurred globally due to occupational accidents and injuries [ 5 ]. Again in 2017, about 2.78 million workers died from occupational-related accidents and injuries [ 6 , 7 ]. Thus, globally, about 7,600 workers died daily in 2017 due to precarious and unhealthy working conditions, but this affects poor developing nations disproportionately. For instance, the African region recorded the highest global occupational communicable diseases among over one-third of its working population and 20% of its workforce has experienced serious work-related accidents [ 1 ]. These unfortunate trends of statistics are frightening and might be as a result of insufficient safety regulations and enforcement as well as emerging industries and technological advancements which may require updated safety protocols and training [ 1 ]. Also, these figures give the indication that most workers, especially those in developing countries do not have access to a decent, safe and healthy workplace [ 5 , 8 ]. Perhaps, global economic pressures are forcing some industries and organisations to focus on cost-cutting and increase productivity instead of protecting the well-being and safety of their workers [ 1 ]. There is the need for adequate measures and pragmatic steps taken by national regional and global bodies to guarantee decent, safe, and healthy workplace for all workers [ 5 , 8 ]

Evidence shows that global occupational morbidity and mortality from psychosocial hazards keep increasing, something that need urgent attention [ 5 , 8 ]. Psychosocial working conditions or exposure to psychosocial hazards by workers, to a greater extent, is dependent on the interplay between job demands and job resources (job design) [ 9 , 10 ]. Most work stress models such as the job demand-resource, job demand-control and effort-reward imbalance argue that work environments with high job demands and fewer job resources expose workers to impaired health outcomes that lead to impaired performance and less productivity [ 11 ]. Psychosocial safety climate (PSC) has been the basis for job designs and improving social relations at work, perhaps it is capable of prioritising the well-being and safety of workers [ 12 ]. Besides, PSC is capable of buffering the effect of high job demands on workers’ health and safety [ 11 ].

In organisations with high PSC, the well-being and safety of workers are prioritised [ 11 , 12 ], commitments and efforts are made by senior management to involve and leverage workers’ participation in designing jobs and programmes that help create a safe and healthy work environment for improved well-being, safety and productivity [ 12 ]. Empirical evidence from work stress, organisational psychology and safety science showed PSC as a unifying framework for dealing with work stress [ 11 ]. While there is a growing body of research work exploring PSC, not enough is understood about its importance and application to psychosocial working conditions, health and safety, and performance of workers. Hence, this review maps evidence on the influence of PSC on psychosocial working conditions, health and safety, and performance, thus, to inform workplace policies and actions that create a safe, decent and healthy workplace for all workers to achieve SDG 8 and improve organisational performance.

The authors carried out this scoping review using the guidelines by Arksey and O’Malley [ 13 ], by identifying and stating the research questions, identifying relevant studies, study selection, data collection, data summary and synthesis of results, and consultation. Two research questions guided this review. (1) What is the influence of PSC on (a) psychosocial work factors, (b) health and safety outcomes of workers, and (c) performance and productivity outcomes? (2) what is the moderating role of PSC in the health erosion and motivation pathways?

Authors created a search technique that employed a combination of controlled vocabularies like Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and keywords for each of the four major electronic databases (PubMed, Scopus, Central and Web of Science) to address the research questions and map relevant literature. Table 1 illustrates the search strategy conducted in PubMed. The search strategy used in PubMed was then modified for search in other databases. The authors used four key words in their search strategy (1) psychosocial safety climate, (2) psychosocial work factors, (3) Health and safety and (4) performance.

Additional searches were conducted in Google, Google Scholar, JSTOR, Emerald, and Taylor and Francis to gather adequate and relevant peer-reviewed papers for this review. Reference lists of eligible full-text articles were also searched for additional papers. A chartered librarian was consulted during the search for literature and data screening process. The authors started the search for papers on December 5, 2022, and ended on March 29, 2023. The authors developed eligibility criteria for data screening. Studies published in the year 2010 and later were included because we were interested in studies that explored PSC using PSC-12 and that PSC-12 was published in 2010 [ 12 ] (See Table 2 for details on eligibility criteria).

The Mendeley software was used to remove duplicates. Abstracts and full-text records were screened and papers selected based on eligibility criteria. Data from eligible papers were extracted independently by MA and reviewed by EWA and JOS. Disagreements among authors during the data screening and extraction phases were resolved during weekly meetings to ensure accuracy in extracted data. Data extracted included authors, purpose of the study, design, population, sample size, measure for PSC, and study outcomes. These data were relevant to help map evidence to answer the research questions and make relevant recommendations for future studies. Extracted data is presented in Table S 1 . The authors read through the final extracted data, organised data into themes and results presented and discussed.

Search results

The results from the four main databases yielded 13,669 records and additional search produced 42 records. After removing duplicates (2,490 records) using the Mendeley software, 11,221 records were available for screening. After removing non-full text and records irrelevant to the review, 156 full-text records were available for further screening. Checking of reference lists of full-text records produced additional 24 records. Thus, 180 records were finally screened. Finally, 87 full-text records were excluded, the remaining 93 were included in the thematic synthesis (See Fig.  1 for search results and screening process).

PRISMA flow diagram of search results and screening process

Study characteristics

Most reviewed studies used a cross-sectional survey design (See details in Fig.  2 ), and were conducted among workers in Australia (30) and Malaysia (24) [See details in Fig.  3 ]. The general working population, healthcare workers and workers in academia remained the most explored groups using PSC (See Fig.  4 for more details). Most of the reviewed studies were published in the year 2022 (See Fig.  5 for more details).

Study designs of reviewed studies

Map showing countries and continents where reviewed studies were conducted

Occupational groups explored by reviewed studies

Number of studies based on the year of publication

Findings from this review were reported based on the two research questions, and into four sections; (1) influence PSC on psychosocial work factors, (2) influence of PSC on health and safety, (3) influence of PSC on performance outcomes and (4) the moderating effect of PSC.

Influence of PSC on psychosocial work factors

Three sub-themes were developed from the findings of the reviewed studies. The themes are job demands, job resources, and hostile work factors.

Job demands

Evidence is strongly established in the literature that PSC is negatively and significantly associated with job demands [ 12 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 ]. PSC has a significant and negative association with cognitive demands [ 20 ], psychological demands [ 15 , 21 , 22 , 23 ], emotional demands [ 22 , 24 , 25 , 26 ], quantitative demands [ 27 ], work intensification [ 28 ], work pressure [ 25 , 29 ], conflicting pressure [ 30 ], workload [ 25 ], long-working hours [ 31 ], hindrance demands [ 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 ], challenge demands [ 32 ] and compulsive working [ 37 ]. However, a reviewed study found no significant association between PSC and challenge hindrance [ 36 ]. Job insecurity [ 38 ], work-family conflict [ 14 , 38 , 39 , 40 ], effort-reward imbalance [ 41 ] and family-work conflict [ 39 ] are reduced in high PSC context.

• Job resources

Job resources are high in a positive PSC context at various occupational settings [ 17 , 18 , 19 , 21 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 ]. Key job resources such as job control [ 26 , 46 , 47 ], decision authority [ 21 ], decision influence [ 48 ], skill discretion [ 21 , 25 ], co-worker support [ 38 ], supervisor support [ 22 , 46 ], managerial support [ 49 ], organisational support [ 50 ] and organisational rewards [ 22 , 51 ] were found to have a positive and significant association with PSC. Furthermore, workers in a high PSC work environment were more likely to perceive a high possibility for development [ 20 ], organisational justice [ 22 , 52 ], health-centric [ 53 ], quality leadership [ 27 , 54 ], psychological capital [ 55 ] and emotional resources [ 45 ] at work.

Workplace abuse

PSC had a negative and significant association with workplace bullying [ 29 , 51 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 ], and that, workplace violence [ 29 , 62 ], physical or verbal abuse [ 63 ], and harassment [ 29 , 51 ] were reduced or eliminated in the presence of a high-level PSC.

Influence of PSC on worker health and safety

Findings indicated that burnout [ 19 , 27 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 59 , 64 ], job strain [ 65 , 66 ] and emotional exhaustion [ 21 , 22 , 24 , 25 , 48 , 61 , 67 ] might be a result of low organisational PSC. Also, fatigue [ 68 , 69 ], injuries [ 67 ], accidents [ 70 ] and circulatory diseases [ 71 ] had a significant and negative association with PSC. Moreover, mental health issues such as psychological distress [ 23 , 26 , 42 , 49 , 54 , 64 , 67 ], stress [ 27 , 72 ], depression [ 31 , 41 , 65 , 73 ] and PTSD [ 56 ] might be a result of low workplace PSC. Meanwhile, reviewed studies found that workers that perceived high levels of PSC at work were more likely to experience improved general health, safety and well-being [ 12 , 16 , 17 , 55 , 57 , 62 , 74 ], psychological well-being [ 15 , 58 ], personal resilience [ 75 ], psychological safety [ 54 , 76 ], and self-worth [ 77 ].

Influence of PSC on job performance outcomes

Improved job performance was linked to higher perceived organisational PSC [ 32 ]. Similarly, job satisfaction [ 17 , 27 , 77 , 78 ], work engagement [ 17 , 21 , 22 , 25 , 27 , 37 , 42 , 57 , 69 , 79 , 80 ] and job commitment [ 27 , 44 , 52 ] are three key performance outcomes (psychosocial outcomes) that were consistently reported to be associated with high level of PSC. However, two studies reported no significant association between PSC and job engagement [ 44 , 81 ], but improved productivity was expected in a highly perceived PSC work environment [ 20 , 75 ]. As a result, issues that affected productivity, such as turnover intentions [ 41 , 61 , 78 ], absenteeism [ 71 , 82 , 83 ], presenteeism [ 23 , 28 , 82 , 84 ], and need thwarting [ 40 ] were reduced or eliminated in highly perceived PSC work environment. These might lead to more funding opportunities [ 47 ], sustained profits [ 83 ] and reduced compensation claims [ 83 ].

Elimination of unsafe working behaviours [ 85 ] and improvement in workplace safety behaviours [ 38 , 86 ], safety participation [ 87 ] and compliance [ 87 ] were also common in workplaces where management prioritises the well-being of workers. Workers were more likely to be workaholics [ 44 ], have high morale [ 83 ], and develop organisational citizenship behaviours [ 50 ] in a high PSC context. Moreover, adaptive and proactive work behaviours [ 88 ], creative problem solving [ 55 , 89 ], taking of personal initiatives [ 80 ], personal development [ 80 ], positive service behaviour [ 88 ], workaround [ 68 ], and service recovery performance [ 90 ] were more likely to be observed in high PSC work environment. Perhaps, managerial quality is one of the key benefits in a high organisational PSC context [ 64 , 91 ]. For instance, the quality of patient care and patient safety was protected when healthcare professionals perceived high PSC in their facilities [ 30 , 70 ].

The moderating role of PSC

One key strength of PSC was its buffering effect on precarious work conditions on health, safety and performance outcomes [ 11 ].

The effect of workplace abuse on workers’ health and safety

The effect of workplace abuse and violence on workers’ health and safety is controlled by the presence of PSC. For instance, reviewed studies reported that PSC moderated the effect of workplace bullying on psychological contract violation [ 92 ], work engagement [ 57 , 79 ], PTSD [ 56 ]and psychological distress [ 52 ]. Also, PSC played a moderating role in the effect of workplace harassment on psychological distress [ 52 ], and the impact of workplace stigma on bullying and burnout [ 59 ]. Contrary to the argument of Dollard et al. [ 11 ], the moderating role of PSC on the association between workplace bullying and psychological contract violation had an inverse result [ 92 ].

The effect of job demands on workers’ health and safety

Evidence also indicated that PSC could buffer the effect of job demands on workers’ health and safety. For example, the effect of job demands on burnout [ 81 ], fatigue [ 69 ], work engagement [ 69 ] and depression [ 93 ] were found to be moderated by PSC. Also, the association between emotional demands and emotional exhaustion [ 12 ] and psychological distress [ 94 ] were reduced in the presence of high-level organisational PSC. Furthermore, the relationship between work-family conflict and insecurity, as well as the association between job insecurity and safety behaviours are buffered by the presence of workplace PSC [ 38 ]. The high level of workplace PSC among nurses reduced the effect of work intensity on presenteeism [ 29 ].

The effect of job resources on workers’ health and safety

It was expected that in a high PSC work environment, job resources’ effect on workers’ health and safety would be enhanced [ 11 ]. For instance, the effect of job resources on safety behaviours [ 38 ], and workaholism [ 43 ] were boosted in the presence of high PSC. Evidence also showed that the effect of social support (support from co-workers and supervisors) on work engagement [ 81 ]and the effect of job control on mindfulness among workers improved in the presence of high PSC [ 95 ]. Moreover, a reviewed study found that a supportive work environment’s effects on personal hope were lowered in low PSC [ 76 ]. Besides, health-centred leadership had the greatest impact on psychological health when oil and gas workers perceived high PSC [ 53 ]. Finally, the interaction between job demands and job resources in predicting distress among police workers was moderated by PSC [ 26 ].

The effect of mental health on workers’ behaviours

In an unsafe work environment, workers’ mental health is severely impaired [ 88 ]. In such a situation, the high presence of PSC is expected to control the effect of mentally distressed on workers’ performance [ 12 ]. A reviewed study confirmed this hypothesis and reported that the effect of depression on workers’ positive organisational behaviour was attenuated by the presence of PSC [ 17 ].

A thorough literature search conducted in PubMed, Scopus, Central and Web of Science and other databases such as Google and Google scholar produced 13,669 records. Through a robust screening process, 91 studies that explored psychosocial safety climate using PSC-12, PSC-8 and PSC-4 as a measure were included in this review. Reviewed studies showed that PSC, as an upstream job resource construct, was essential in designing jobs by matching job demands and resources. Thus, PSC has consistently been found in the literature to be negatively associated with job demand variables such as psychological demands, emotional demands, quantitative demands, work intensification, work pressure, conflicting pressures, job insecurity, work-family conflict, family-work conflict, and effort-reward imbalance. Moreover, PSC is positively associated with job resources (job control, social support, quality leadership, organisational rewards, decision authority and influence, emotional resources, organisational justice, and personal development). Hence, PSC has great influence on psychosocial work factors (job demands and job resources). Also, it was established that PSC was negatively associated with workplace abuse, such as stigma, discrimination, bullying, and harassment. Furthermore, PSC directly improves workers’ health, safety, and performance, proving a strong buffering effect for health and safety of workers. This shows that PSC has influence of health and safety and performance outcome of workers and reduce the effect of precarious work on the health and safety of workers. Discussion of findings have been done according to the research questions.

PSC as a precursor to psychosocial work factors (job demands and resources)

Managers need to be guided by ethics and value for workers when making decisions regarding job design and nature to foster healthy and decent workplaces [ 96 ]. However, job design and the promotion of a healthy and decent workplace might depend on the priority managers give to productivity or profits as against the well-being and safety of the workers [ 11 ]. In many cases where the manager’s priority was overly focused on productivity and profits, job demands were high, affecting workers’ health and safety, especially in a resource-limited work environment [ 12 ]. However, when managers shift attention from productivity to well-being and safety of their workers, excessive job demands are likely to be reduced, to protect the health of the workers. Perhaps, the negative association between job demands and PSC is explained by the shift of managers’ attention from productivity to valuing the psychological well-being and safety of the workers and vice versa.

The review further found that in a low PSC context, excessive job demands are expected, due to the lack of feedback from workers or the lack of opportunity for workers to voice their frustrations concerning high level of job demands [ 59 ]. In such organisations, job demands were likely to be high because of the likelihood that managers prioritised an up-to-bottom communication rather than a bottom-up approach, to ensure that workers’ voices are heard and factored into the job designs [ 43 , 95 ]. There is high likelihood of reduced job demands when organisational PSC is high, because workers will be involved, consulted, participated in designing their jobs, workplace health and safety policies and any intervention that creates a healthy and decent workplace for such workforce. Finally, PSC was observed as an upstream job resource and its presence at the workplace is a signal for reduction in excessive job demands and helping workers to fulfil their requirements, that achieve organisational goals and a sense of belongingness [ 11 ].

The quality of a worker’s productivity or performance is influenced by the design of their job, which also establishes how workers would carry out their responsibilities and meet organisational and personal goals. It is worth appreciating that quality work involved resourcing workers adequately to cope with excessive job demands [ 12 , 44 ]. The positive association between job resources and PSC indicates that in a high PSC work environment, workers have the confidence to access the needed resources to accomplish their job demands and responsibilities [ 43 ]. Thus, in such a context, workers are encouraged, trained and offered the opportunities not only to access job resources but to utilise these resources for organisational and personal growth [ 11 ]. Besides, in a high PSC context, adequate job resources are made available to workers to ensure that the psychological well-being of workers are prioritised over productivity. On the other hand, in a low PSC context, job resources were limited and, to a larger extent, non-existing, which exposes workers to job strain and poor health outcomes [ 12 ], that will further compromise productivity.

Workplace abuse and violence are unhealthy factors that exposed workers to precarious situations. We found that workplace abuse, bullying, harassment, stigma and discrimination were social-relational factors that created an unhealthy, corrupt and indecent workplace, violated human rights, and compromised the dignity of workers [ 56 , 61 ]. Various mechanisms might explain the negative association between PSC and workplace abuse. First, in a high PSC context, workplace social relations are supposed to improve and give workers the signal that there are available resources for dealing with any form of abuse [ 12 ]. Also, workers who are abused victims were given opportunities to find solutions in such positive worksites [ 12 , 71 ]. This way of solving workplace conflicts or abuse might not be present in a low PSC work context which may fuel turnover intentions and turnovers of affected workers [ 41 , 78 ]. Finally, it would be difficult for many workers to report abuse in organisations where PSC is low, and that majority of these workers may not have the opportunity to seek redress since such institutions practice the top–bottom approach communication that usually limits open communication and trust in management [ 41 ]. But, in a high PSC context, managers give cues to workers about social-relational aspects of work, such as how workers should interact with one another and the behaviours that would be rewarded or punished [ 12 ].

PSC as a precursor to workers’ health and safety

Evidence suggests that PSC positively correlated with improved worker health, safety and performance outcomes [ 13 , 97 ]. High-quality work with manageable job demands, and adequate job resources were more likely in a high PSC work environment, where managers value and safeguard workers’ psychological health for improved well-being, safety and performance outcomes [ 18 , 59 , 66 ]. Thus, a high PSC context foster satisfaction of psychological needs, job satisfaction, job commitment, and mental health maintenance, which translate into improved productivity [ 58 , 88 , 89 ]. Basically, in such a PSC context, workers perceive that their well-being is a priority to managers, hence, become intrinsically motivated, which may lead to improved mental health and well-being [ 98 , 99 ], and positive performance outcomes. Unfortunately, low PSC environments are more likely to produce low-quality work that threatens and obstructs worker job satisfaction, resulting in psychological distress, exhaustion, fatigue, impaired well-being and organisational performance [ 62 , 68 ].

The evidence is that PSC moderates the effect of psychosocial work factors on health, safety, and performance outcomes [ 26 ]. One explanation is that PSC acts as a safety signal [ 52 ], when danger cues such as work pressure, excessive job demands, and workplace abuse are present. This safety signal works by indicating options such as access to and safe use of available resources to counteract the psychosocial hazards to prevent the onset of impaired health, safety and performance outcomes [ 26 , 54 ]. Aside from being a safety signal, PSC could initiate resource caravans or gain spirals, promoting workers’ well-being and productivity [ 96 ]. A study found that PSC moderated the association between workplace bullying and psychological contract violation [ 93 ]. It is worth noting that receiving support at the workplace was not always be connected with favourable health and performance outcomes, primarily when the support is obtained in an unsafe or negative work environment [ 93 ], making the organisational climate increasingly important.

Implications for practice

Creating and promoting a healthy, safe and decent workplace might start with integrating PSC as an essential upstream psychosocial resource at every workplace. Moreover, efforts directed towards prioritising and valuing the well-being and safety of workers by managers may be the beginning of eliminating precarious working condition. Thus, the experience of workers at the workplace, to a greater extent, influence workers perception of PSC. Still, this premise does not change the fact that managers possess the power and resources to design quality jobs through pro-worker and robust organisational policies and practices [ 12 ]. Dollard et al. [ 12 ] argued that PSC was a modifiable variable; hence, managers should know that change could be implemented by improving involvement and communication mechanisms around psychosocial hazards and mental health issues. This could also be achieved by management demonstrating commitment and support for stress prevention and psychological treatment. Furthermore, managers commitment becomes paramount to any workplace policies targeting workers’ well-being [ 24 , 92 ].

Workers who experienced bullying were more prone to rage and irritation, which have undesired consequences to the worker and the organisation. Thus, managers need to pay attention to these signals and act quickly to relieve workers of distressing feelings. Managers need to give workers channels to vent their rage since doing so would make them feel better [ 100 ]. Organisations could, for instance, offer victims psychological counselling services and listen to their complaints. Understanding the implicit expectations from fair treatment of workers may also help managers to manage and deliver on the expectations of employees, which in turn, helps prevent violations and other adverse outcomes. Perhaps, fostering a bottom-up approach to communication allows workers to report excessive job demands and low job resources and enables workers to talk about workplace abuse and hostility [ 35 , 100 , 101 , 102 , 103 , 104 , 105 ]. Also, managers need to create a safe and decent psychosocial work environment that may lower the risk of workplace bullying and can successfully prevent the events leading to an escalation of vices and eventually increase productivity and organisational image [ 106 , 107 , 108 , 109 , 110 ].

Recommendations for future research

Reviewed studies exploring PSC were mainly conducted in Australia, Malaysia and Canada, and not much research attention was given in Africa and South America. Also, existing PSC literature concentrates on occupational groups such healthcare workers, education workers, police and workers in the banking sector. Hence, studies from developing nations and other worker groups such as agricultural workers, road transport workers, rescue workers and military officers are needed. Moreover, the direct effect of PSC on some psychosocial work factors such as lone working, shift workers and those working extended hours may need more exploration. Furthermore, more studies are required to tease out the conditions under which the strength of PSC matters in the work context [ 12 ]. In addition, qualitative designs are needed to understand PSC through shared and individual experiences, working conditions and the psychological health of workers. More quality studies that adjust for confounding variables may be essential in understanding the independent effect of PSC on psychosocial work factors and stress symptoms. Finally, understanding PSC through the experiences of minority workers such as refugees, child workers, pregnant workers, and workers in the informal sectors might help improve the working conditions of vulnerable workers.

Limitations in this review

About 63% of the included studies are cross-sectional surveys whose findings might be affected by response bias since they mostly rely on self-report measures. This situation may affect the generalisation of findings in this review. Also, the literature search was restricted to only peer-reviewed articles and papers published in English. This situation may affect the number of included studies and the depth of information presented in this review. Including only papers that explored PSC using PSC-12, PSC-8 and PSC-4 as measures may reduce the number of included studies which also affect the depth of information provided in this review. However, the authors pulled 93 studies from 45 countries globally, which may help understand PSC’s importance in creating a safe and healthy work environment for workers.

Organisational PSC is an essential upstream job resource that directly affects psychosocial work factors, including job demands, job insecurity, effort-reward imbalance, work-family conflict, job resources, job control and quality leadership. In addition, PSC directly affects social relations at work, including workplace abuse, violence, discrimination and harassment. Moreover, PSC directly affects health, safety, and performance outcomes. Besides, PSC moderates the effect of working conditions on workers’ health, safety and performance across different occupational groups and settings. Therefore, designing quality jobs, prioritising the well-being of workers and fostering bottom-up communication through robust organisation policies, practices, and procedures may help create a high workplce PSC for healthy and decent work for all workers, for productivity and organisational integrity.

Availability of data and materials

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this article and its supplementary information files (Table S 1 ).

ILO. Safety and health at the heart of future of work: building on 100 years of experience. Geneva; 2019. https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/@ed_protect/@protrav/@safework/documents/publication/wcms_678357.pdf . Accessed 11 Jul 2023.

Rantanen J, Muchiri F, Lehtinen S. Decent work, ILO’s response to the globalization of working life: Basic concepts and global implementation with special reference to occupational health. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020;17(10):3351. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17103351 .

Article   CAS   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Reese CD. Occupational safety and health: fundamental principles and philosophies. New York: CRC Press; 2017. https://doi.org/10.1201/B21975/OCCUPATIONAL-SAFETY-HEALTH-CHARLES-REESE . Accessed 21 Jan 2023.

Reese CD. Occupational health and safety management: a practical approach. New York: CRC Press; 2018. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781351228848 .

WHO, ILO. WHO/ILO joint estimates of the work-related burden of disease and injury, 2000–2016: global monitoring report. Geneva; 2021. https://ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/news/WCMS_819705/lang--en/index.htm . Accessed 11 Jul 2023.

Hämäläinen P, Takala J, Kiat TB. Global estimates of occupational accidents and work-related illnesses 2017. World. 2017;3–4.

Takala J, Hämäläinen P, Nenonen N, Takahashi K, Chimed-ochir O, Rantanen J. Comparative analysis of the burden of injury and illness at work in selected countries and regions. Cent Eur J Occup Environ Med. 2017;23:6–31.

Google Scholar  

WHO, ILO. WHO/ILO: Almost 2 million people die from work-related causes each year. WHO/ILO: Almost 2 Million People Die from Work-Related Causes Each Year 2021. https://www.who.int/news/item/16-09-2021-who-ilo-almost-2-million-people-die-from-work-related-causes-each-year (accessed November 16, 2021).

Driscoll T, Rushton L, Hutchings SJ, Straif K, Steenland K, Abate D, et al. Global and regional burden of disease and injury in 2016 arising from occupational exposures: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016. Occup Environ Med. 2020;77:133–41. https://doi.org/10.1136/oemed-2019-106008 .

Article   Google Scholar  

Sorensen G, Dennerlein JT, Peters SE, Sabbath EL, Kelly EL, Wagner GR. The future of research on work, safety, health and wellbeing: a guiding conceptual framework. Soc Sci Med. 2021;269:113593.

Article   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Peters SE, Grogan H, Henderson GM, Gómez MAL, Maldonado MM, Sanhueza IS, et al. Working conditions influencing drivers’ safety and well-being in the transportation industry: “on board” program. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021;18(19):10173. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph181910173 .

Article   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Dollard M, Dormann C, Idris M. Psychosocial safety climate: a new work stress theory and implications for method. Springer International Publishing; 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20319-1 .

Ansah EW, Mintah JK, Ogah JK. Psychosocial safety climate predicts health and safety status of Ghanaian fuel attendants. Univers J Public Health. 2018;6:63–72.

Arksey H, O’Malley L. Scoping studies: towards a methodological framework. Int J Soc Res Methodol Theory Pract. 2005;8:19–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/1364557032000119616 .

Parkin AK, Zadow AJ, Potter RE, Afsharian A, Dollard MF, Pignata S, et al. The role of psychosocial safety climate on flexible work from home digital job demands and work-life conflict. Ind Health. 2022. https://doi.org/10.2486/indhealth.2022-0078 .

Idris MA, Dollard MF, Coward J, Dormann C. Psychosocial safety climate: Conceptual distinctiveness and effect on job demands and worker psychological health. Saf Sci. 2012;50:19–28. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2011.06.005 .

Ansah EW, Kwarteng J, Mensah O. Mediating effect of psychosocial safety climate and job resources in the job demands-health relation: implications for contemporary business management. Am Int Coll J Bus Manag. 2020;3:74–83.

Hall GB, Dollard MF, Coward J. Psychosocial safety climate: development of the PSC-12. Int J Stress Manag. 2010;17:353–83. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021320 .

Idris MA, Dollard MF. Psychosocial safety climate, work conditions, and emotions in the workplace: a malaysian population-based work stress study. Int J Stress Manag. 2011;18:324–47. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0024849 .

Idris MA, Dollard MF, Winefield AH. Integrating psychosocial safety climate in the JD-R model: a study amongst Malaysian workers. SA J Ind Psychol. 2011;37:1–11. https://doi.org/10.4102/sajip.v37i2.851 .

Krasniqi V, Hoxha A. The effect of psychosocial safety climate on work engagement through possibilities for development and cognitive demands. IFAC-PapersOnLine. 2022;55:88–93. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ifacol.2022.12.016 .

Afsharian A, Zadow A, Dollard MF. Psychosocial factors at work in the Asia Pacific. Psychosocial Factors at Work in the Asia Pacific: From Theory to Practice, Springer International Publishing Switzerland; 2016, p. 187–201. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44400-0_10 .

Afsharian A, Dollard M, Ziaian T. Psychosocial safety climate psychosocial safety climate. 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20319-1 .

Biron C, Karanika-Murray M, Ivers H, Salvoni S, Fernet C. Teleworking while sick: a three-wave study of psychosocial safety climate, psychological demands, and presenteeism. Front Psychol. 2021;12:1–14. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.734245 .

Idris MA, Dollard MF, Yulita. Psychosocial safety climate, emotional demands, burnout, and depression: A longitudinal multilevel study in the Malaysian private sector. J Occup Health Psychol 2014;19:291–302. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0036599 .

Dollard MF, Bakker AB. Psychosocial safety climate as a precursor to conducive work environments, psychological health problems, and employee engagement. J Occup Organ Psychol. 2010;83:579–99. https://doi.org/10.1348/096317909X470690 .

Dollard MF, Tuckey MR, Dormann C. Psychosocial safety climate moderates the job demand-resource interaction in predicting workgroup distress. Accid Anal Prev. 2012;45:694–704. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2011.09.042 .

Berthelsen H, Muhonen T, Bergström G, Westerlund H, Dollard MF. Benchmarks for evidence-based risk assessment with the swedish version of the 4-item psychosocial safety climate scale. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020;17:1–18. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17228675 .

Mansour S, Faisal Azeem M, Dollard M, Potter R. How psychosocial safety climate helped alleviate work intensification effects on presenteeism during the COVID-19 crisis? a moderated mediation model. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022;19(20):13673. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph192013673 .

Bailey TS, Dollard MF, McLinton SS, Richards PAM. Psychosocial safety climate, psychosocial and physical factors in the aetiology of musculoskeletal disorder symptoms and workplace injury compensation claims. Work Stress. 2015;29:190–211. https://doi.org/10.1080/02678373.2015.1031855 .

McLinton SS, Dollard MF, Tuckey MMR. New perspectives on psychosocial safety climate in healthcare: A mixed methods approach. Saf Sci. 2018;109:236–45. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2018.06.005 .

Zadow AJ, Dollard MF, Dormann C, Landsbergis P. Predicting new major depression symptoms from long working hours, psychosocial safety climate and work engagement: a population-based cohort study. BMJ Open. 2021;11(6):e044133.

Teoh KB, Gan KH, Kee DMH. Psychosocial safety climate and job performance among penang island hoteliers: The mediating roles of challenge demands and hindrance demands. Asia Pac Soc Sci Rev. 2021;21:100–11.

Teoh KB, Gan KH, Seow XT. The psychosocial safety climate and burnout among Penang hoteliers. Proceedings of the Phuket International Conference; 2021. p. 96–108.

Teoh KB, Kee DMH, Akhtar N. How does psychosocial safety climate affect burnout among malaysian educators during the covid-19 pandemic? Asia Pac Soc Sci Rev. 2021;21:86–99.

Teoh KB, Kee DMH. Psychosocial safety climate and burnout among academicians: the mediating role of work engagement. Int J Soc Syst Sci. 2020;12(1):1–4.

Yulita, Idris MA, Dollard MF. A multi-level study of psychosocial safety climate, challenge and hindrance demands, employee exhaustion, engagement and physical health. psychosocial factors at work in the Asia Pacific 2014:127–43. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8975-2_6 .

Platania S, Morando M, Caruso A, Scuderi VE. The effect of psychosocial safety climate on engagement and psychological distress: a multilevel study on the healthcare sector. Safety. 2022;8(3):62. https://doi.org/10.3390/safety8030062 .

Bronkhorst B. Behaving safely under pressure: The effects of job demands, resources, and safety climate on employee physical and psychosocial safety behavior. J Safety Res. 2015;55:63–72. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.JSR.2015.09.002 .

Mansour S, Tremblay DG. How can we decrease burnout and safety workaround behaviors in health care organizations? the role of psychosocial safety climate. Pers Rev. 2019;48:528–50. https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-07-2017-0224 .

Huyghebaert T, Gillet N, Fernet C, Lahiani FJ, Fouquereau E. Leveraging psychosocial safety climate to prevent ill-being: the mediating role of psychological need thwarting. J Vocat Behav. 2018;107:111–25. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2018.03.010 .

Owen MS, Bailey TS, Dollard MF. Psychosocial Safety Climate as a Multilevel Extension of ERI Theory: Evidence from Australia. In: Siegrist J, Wahrendorf M, editors. Work Stress and Health in a Globalized Economy. Aligning Perspectives on Health, Safety and Well-Being: Springer International Publishing Switzerland; 2016. p. 189–217.

Chapter   Google Scholar  

Lee MCC, Idris MA. Psychosocial safety climate versus team climate: the distinctiveness between the two organizational climate constructs. Pers Rev. 2017;46:988–1003. https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-01-2016-0003 .

Yulita Y, Idris MA, Dollard MF. Effect of psychosocial safety climate on psychological distress via job resources, work engagement and workaholism: a multilevel longitudinal study. Int J Occup Saf Ergon. 2022;28:691–708. https://doi.org/10.1080/10803548.2020.1822054 .

Gan KH, Kee DMH. Psychosocial safety climate, work engagement and organizational commitment in Malaysian research universities: the mediating role of job resources. Foresight. 2022;24:694–707. https://doi.org/10.1108/FS-01-2021-0019 .

Chin Chin Lee M, Lunn J. Testing the relevance, proximal, and distal effects of psychosocial safety climate and social support on job resources: a context-based approach. Cogent Psychol. 2019;6(1):1685929. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311908.2019.1685929 .

Dollard MF, Opie T, Lenthall S, Wakerman J, Knight S, Dunn S, et al. Psychosocial safety climate as an antecedent of work characteristics and psychological strain: a multilevel model. Work Stress. 2012;26:385–404. https://doi.org/10.1080/02678373.2012.734154 .

Xie L, Lin G, Hon C, Xia B, Skitmore M. Comparing the psychosocial safety climate between megaprojects and non-megaprojects: evidence from China. App Sci (Switzerland). 2020;10:1–17. https://doi.org/10.3390/app10248809 .

Article   CAS   Google Scholar  

Dollard MF, Karasek RA. Building psychosocial safety climate: evaluation of a socially coordinated par risk management stress prevention study. Contemp Occup Health Psychol Glob Perspect Res Pract. 2010;1:208–33. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470661550.ch11 .

Yulita, Dollard MF, Idris MA. Climate congruence: How espoused psychosocial safety climate and enacted managerial support affect emotional exhaustion and work engagement. Saf Sci 2017;96:132–42. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2017.03.023 .

Tariq A, Bukahri SMI, Adil A. Perceived organizational support as the moderator between psychosocial safety climate and organizational citizenship behaviour among nurses. Found Univ J Psychol. 2021;5:86–93.

Law R, Dollard MF, Tuckey MR, Dormann C. Psychosocial safety climate as a lead indicator of workplace bullying and harassment, job resources, psychological health and employee engagement. Accid Anal Prev. 2011;43:1782–93. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2011.04.010 .

Viseu J, Guerreiro S, de Jesus SN, Pinto P. Effect of psychosocial safety climate and organizational justice on affective commitment: a study in the Algarve hotel sector during the COVID-19 pandemic. J Hum Resour Hosp Tour. 2022;22:320–45. https://doi.org/10.1080/15332845.2023.2154035 .

Mirza MZ, Memon MA, Dollard M. A time-lagged study on health-centric leadership styles and psychological health: the mediating role of psychosocial safety climate. Current Psychology 2021:2021–3. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-02140-5 .

Sjöblom K, Mäkiniemi JP, Mäkikangas A. “I Was Given Three Marks and Told to Buy a Porsche”—Supervisors’ experiences of leading psychosocial safety climate and team psychological safety in a remote academic setting. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022;19(19):12016. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191912016 .

Brunetto Y, Saheli N, Dick T, Nelson S. Psychosocial safety climate, psychological capital, healthcare SLBs’ wellbeing and innovative behaviour during the COVID 19 Pandemic. Public Perform Manag Rev. 2022;45:751–72. https://doi.org/10.1080/15309576.2021.1918189 .

Bond SA, Tuckey MR, Dollard MF. Psychosocial safety climate, workplace bullying, and symptoms of posttraumatic stress. Organ Dev J. 2010;28:37–56.

Nguyen DTN, Teo STT, Grover SL, Nguyen NP. Psychological safety climate and workplace bullying in Vietnam’s public sector. Public Manag Rev. 2017;19:1415–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2016.1272712 .

Dollard MF, Dormann C, Tuckey MR, Escartín J. Psychosocial safety climate (PSC) and enacted PSC for workplace bullying and psychological health problem reduction. Eur J Work Organ Psy. 2017;26:844–57. https://doi.org/10.1080/1359432X.2017.1380626 .

Klinefelter Z, Sinclair RR, Britt TW, Sawhney G, Black KJ, Munc A. Psychosocial safety climate and stigma: Reporting stress-related concerns at work. Stress Health. 2021;37:488–503. https://doi.org/10.1002/smi.3010 .

Kwan SSM, Tuckey MR, Dollard MF. The role of the psychosocial safety climate in coping with workplace bullying: a grounded theory and sequential tree analysis. Eur J Work Organ Psy. 2016;25:133–48. https://doi.org/10.1080/1359432X.2014.982102 .

Escartín J, Dollard M, Zapf D, Kozlowski SWJ. Multilevel emotional exhaustion: psychosocial safety climate and workplace bullying as higher level contextual and individual explanatory factors. Eur J Work Organ Psy. 2021;30:742–52. https://doi.org/10.1080/1359432X.2021.1939412 .

Pien LC, Cheng Y, Cheng WJ. Psychosocial safety climate, workplace violence and self-rated health: a multi-level study among hospital nurses. J Nurs Manag. 2019;27:584–91. https://doi.org/10.1111/jonm.12715 .

Afsharian A, Dollard M, Miller E, Puvimanasinghe T, Esterman A, De Anstiss H, et al. Refugees at work: the preventative role of psychosocial safety climate against workplace harassment, discrimination and psychological distress. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021;18(20):10696. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182010696 .

Parent-Lamarche A, Biron C. When bosses are burned out: psychosocial safety climate and its effect on managerial quality. Int J Stress Manag. 2022;29:219–28. https://doi.org/10.1037/str0000252 .

Bailey TS, Dollard MF, Richards PAM. A national standard for psychosocial safety climate (PSC): PSC 41 as the benchmark for low risk of job strain and depressive symptoms. J Occup Health Psychol. 2015;20:15–26. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0038166 .

Gazica MW, Powers SR, Kessler SR. Imperfectly perfect: examining psychosocial safety climate’s influence on the physical and psychological impact of perfectionism in the practice of law. Behav Sci Law. 2021;39:741–57. https://doi.org/10.1002/bsl.2546 .

Zadow AJ, Dollard MF, Mclinton SS, Lawrence P, Tuckey MR. Psychosocial safety climate, emotional exhaustion, and work injuries in healthcare workplaces. Stress Health. 2017;33:558–69. https://doi.org/10.1002/smi.2740 .

Mansour S, Tremblay DG. Psychosocial safety climate as resource passageways to alleviate work-family conflict: a study in the health sector in Quebec. Pers Rev. 2018;47:474–93. https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-10-2016-0281 .

Garrick A, Mak AS, Cathcart S, Winwood PC, Bakker AB, Lushington K. Psychosocial safety climate moderating the effects of daily job demands and recovery on fatigue and work engagement. J Occup Organ Psychol. 2014;87:694–714. https://doi.org/10.1111/joop.12069 .

McLinton SS, Afsharian A, Dollard MF, Tuckey MR. The dynamic interplay of physical and psychosocial safety climates in frontline healthcare. Stress Health. 2019;35:650–64. https://doi.org/10.1002/smi.2898 .

Becher H, Dollard MF, Smith P, Li J. Predicting circulatory diseases from psychosocial safety climate: a prospective cohort study from Australia. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2018;15:415. https://doi.org/10.3390/IJERPH15030415 .

Havermans BM, Boot CRL, Houtman ILD, Brouwers EPM, Anema JR, Van Der Beek AJ. The role of autonomy and social support in the relation between psychosocial safety climate and stress in health care workers. BMC Public Health. 2017;17:1–7. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-017-4484-4 .

Dormann C, Owen M, Dollard M, Guthier C. Translating cross-lagged effects into incidence rates and risk ratios: The case of psychosocial safety climate and depression. Work Stress. 2018;32:248–61. https://doi.org/10.1080/02678373.2017.1395926 .

Dollard MF, Neser DY. Worker health is good for the economy: Union density and psychosocial safety climate as determinants of country differences inworker health and productivity in 31 European countries. Soc Sci Med. 2013;92:114–23. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2013.04.028 .

Siami S, Gorji M, Martin A. Psychosocial safety climate and supportive leadership as vital enhancers of personal hope and resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic. Stress Health. 2022. https://doi.org/10.1002/smi.3192 .

Rasdi I, Ismail NF, Shyen Kong AS, Saliluddin SM. Introduction to customized occupational safety and health website and its effectiveness in improving psychosocial safety climate (psc) among police officers. Malaysian J Med Health Sci. 2018;14:67–73.

Xie L, Luo Z, Xia B. Influence of psychosocial safety climate on construction workers’ intent to stay, taking job satisfaction as the intermediary. Eng Constr Archit Manag 2022. https://doi.org/10.1108/ECAM-12-2021-1082 .

Geisler M, Berthelsen H, Muhonen T. Retaining social workers: the role of quality of work and psychosocial safety climate for work engagement, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. Hum Serv Organ Manag Leadersh Gov. 2019;43:1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/23303131.2019.1569574 .

Tagoe T, Amponsah-Tawiah K. Psychosocial hazards and work engagement in the Ghanaian banking sector: the moderating role of psychosocial safety climate. Int J Bank Mark. 2020;38:310–31. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJBM-04-2019-0136 .

Lee MC, Idris MA. Psychosocial safety climate within the model of proactive motivation. Psychosocial safety climate: a new work stress theory. 2019:149–68.

Bronkhorst B, Vermeeren B. Safety climate, worker health and organizational health performance Testing a physical, psychosocial and combined pathway. Int J Workplace Health Manag. 2016;9:270–89. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJWHM-12-2015-0081 .

Winwood PC, Bowden R, Stevens F. Psychosocial safety climate: role and significance in aged care. Occup Med Health Aff. 2013;01(6):135–40. https://doi.org/10.4172/2329-6879.1000135 .

Alshamsi AI, Santos A, Thomson L. Psychosocial safety climate moderates the effect of demands of hospital accreditation on healthcare professionals: a longitudinal study. Front Health Serv. 2022;2:1–12. https://doi.org/10.3389/frhs.2022.824619 .

Liu B, Lu Q, Zhao Y, Zhan J. Can the psychosocial safety climate reduce ill-health presenteeism? evidence from chinese healthcare staff under a dual information processing path lens. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020;17(8):2969. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17082969 .

Yu M, Li J. Psychosocial safety climate and unsafe behavior among miners in China: the mediating role of work stress and job burnout. Psychol Health Med. 2020;25:793–801. https://doi.org/10.1080/13548506.2019.1662068 .

Akanni AA, Ajila CO, Omisile IO, Ndubueze KN. Mediating effect of work self-efficacy on the relationship between psychosocial safety climate and workplace safety behaviors among bank employees after Covid-19 lockdown. Cent Eur J Manag. 2021;29:2–13. https://doi.org/10.7206/cemj.2658-0845.38 .

Mirza MZ, Isha ASN, Memon MA, Azeem S, Zahid M. Psychosocial safety climate, safety compliance and safety participation: the mediating role of psychological distress. J Manag Organ. 2022;28:363–78. https://doi.org/10.1017/jmo.2019.35 .

Siami S, Gorji M, Martin A. Psychosocial safety climate and psychological capital for positive customer behavioral intentions in service organizations. Am J Bus. 2023;38(1):1–21. https://doi.org/10.1108/ajb-01-2022-0018 .

Oppert ML, Dollard MF, Murugavel VR, Reiter-Palmon R, Reardon A, Cropley DH, et al. A mixed-methods study of creative problem solving and psychosocial safety climate: preparing engineers for the future of work. Front Psychol. 2022;12:1–18. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.759226 .

Mansour S, Nogues S, Tremblay DG. Psychosocial safety climate as a mediator between high-performance work practices and service recovery performance: an international study in the airline industry. Int J Hum Resour Manag. 2022;33:4215–50. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2021.1949373 .

Biron C, Parent-Lamarche A, Ivers H, Baril-Gingras G. Do as you say: the effects of psychosocial safety climate on managerial quality in an organizational health intervention. Int J Workplace Health Manag. 2018;11:228–44. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJWHM-01-2018-0009 .

Rai A, Agarwal UA. Indian perspectives on workplace bullying: a decade of insights. Indian perspectives on workplace bullying. Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd; 2018. p. 79–109. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1017-1_4 .

Hall GB, Dollard MF, Winefield AH, Dormann C, Bakker AB. Psychosocial safety climate buffers effects of job demands on depression and positive organizational behaviors. Anxiety Stress Coping. 2013;26:355–77. https://doi.org/10.1080/10615806.2012.700477 .

Lawrie EJ, Tuckey MR, Dollard MF. Job design for mindful work: the boosting effect of psychosocial safety climate. J Occup Health Psychol. 2018;23:483–95. https://doi.org/10.1037/ocp0000102 .

Loh MY, Idris MA, Dollard MF, Isahak M. Psychosocial safety climate as a moderator of the moderators: Contextualizing JDR models and emotional demands effects. J Occup Organ Psychol. 2018;91:620–44. https://doi.org/10.1111/joop.12211 .

Yaris C, Ditchburn G, Curtis GJ, Brook L. Combining physical and psychosocial safety: a comprehensive workplace safety model. Saf Sci. 2020;132:104949.

Bakker A. A job demands–resources approach to public service motivation. Public Adm Rev. 2015;75:723–32. https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12388 .

Schaufeli WB. Applying the Job Demands-Resources model: a ‘how to’ guide to measuring and tackling work engagement and burnout. Organ Dyn. 2017;46:120–32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orgdyn.2017.04.008 .

Saptura AD, Rahmatia A, Wahyuningsih SH, Surwanti A. Strengthening work engagement through digital engagement, gamification and psychosocial safety climate in digital transformation. J Innov Bus Econ. 2021;5:35–48.

Teoh KB, Kee DMH. Psychosocial safety climate and burnout among Malaysian research university academicians: the mediating roles of job demands and work engagement. Int J Trade Glob Mark. 2022;15:471–96. https://doi.org/10.1504/ijtgm.2022.125910 .

Siami S, Martin A, Gorji M, Grimmer M. How discretionary behaviors promote customer engagement: the role of psychosocial safety climate and psychological capital. J Manag Organ. 2022;28:379–97. https://doi.org/10.1017/jmo.2020.29 .

Zinsser KM, Zinsser A. Two case studies of preschool psychosocial safety climates. Res Hum Dev. 2016;13:49–64. https://doi.org/10.1080/15427609.2016.1141278 .

Teoh KB. Psychosocial safety climate and burnout among Malaysian academicians: the mediating role of job demands. Academia Letters. 2021;4:92–9.

Seddighi H, Dollard MF, Salmani I. Psychosocial safety climate of employees during COVID-19 in iran: a policy analysis. Disaster Med Public Health Prep 2020;16. https://doi.org/10.1017/dmp.2020.370 .

Vaktskjold Hamre K, Valvatne Einarsen S, Notelaers G. Psychosocial safety climate as a moderator in role stressor- bullying relationships: a multilevel approach. Saf Sci. 2023;164:106165.

Inoue A, Eguchi H, Kachi Y, Tsutsumi A. Perceived psychosocial safety climate, psychological distress, and work engagement in Japanese employees: a cross-sectional mediation analysis of job demands and job resources. J Occup Health. 2023;65:e12405.

Weaver B, Kirk-Brown A, Goodwin D, Oxley J. Psychosocial safety behavior: a scoping review of behavior-based approaches to workplace psychosocial safety. J Safety Res. 2023;84:33–40. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.JSR.2022.10.006 .

Potter RE, Dollard MF, Owen MS, O’Keeffe V, Bailey T, Leka S. Assessing a national work health and safety policy intervention using the psychosocial safety climate framework. Saf Sci. 2017;100:91–102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2017.05.011 .

Yulita, Idris MA, Abdullah SS. Psychosocial safety climate improves psychological detachment and relaxation during off-job recovery time to reduce emotional exhaustion: A multilevel shortitudinal study. Scand J Psychol 2022;63:19–31. https://doi.org/10.1111/sjop.12789 .

Download references

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Dr. Kwame Kodua-Ntim of Sam Jonah Library, University of Cape Coast, Ghana, for his enormous support during data search and screening process.

This work received no funding support.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Health, Physical Education and Recreation, University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana

Mustapha Amoadu, Edward Wilson Ansah & Jacob Owusu Sarfo

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Contributions

Conceptualisation, design, data collection and analysis, and initial write-up, M.A, E.W.A, and J.O.S. E.W.A examined and oversaw the review process. The final draft of the manuscript was read and authorised for publication by all authors.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mustapha Amoadu .

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate.

Not applicable.

Consent for publication

Competing interests.

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher’s note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary Information

Additional file 1:.

  Table S1. Dataextracted from reviewed studies.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Amoadu, M., Ansah, E.W. & Sarfo, J.O. Influence of psychosocial safety climate on occupational health and safety: a scoping review. BMC Public Health 23 , 1344 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-023-16246-x

Download citation

Received : 21 April 2023

Accepted : 05 July 2023

Published : 13 July 2023

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-023-16246-x

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Occupational health and safety
• Scoping review

BMC Public Health

ISSN: 1471-2458

• Submission enquiries: [email protected]
• General enquiries: [email protected]