Literature Review

---
name: literature-review
description: Survey prior work systematically through search strategy, citation chasing, quality assessment, and synthesis. Use when entering a new domain or grounding a decision in what is already known.
---

# Literature review

A literature review answers "what is already known" before you spend
effort rediscovering it. Done well it maps a field's consensus,
disagreements, and gaps; done badly it is a pile of citations proving
nothing. The discipline is systematic search, honest quality
assessment, and synthesis into a coherent picture.

## Method

1. **Define the question and scope first.** A specific
   question ("what methods reduce X under constraint Y")
   bounds the search; an unbounded "everything about the
   topic" drowns you. Set inclusion criteria (relevance,
   recency, quality bar) before searching, so you filter
   consistently rather than by whatever you find first (see
   research-synthesis).
2. **Search broadly, then systematically.** Start with
   surveys and review papers (they map the field and cite
   the key work), then primary sources; use multiple
   channels (databases, citation search, domain venues: see
   citation-management, paper-lookup) because any single
   search misses things. Record your search terms and
   sources so the review is reproducible, not a lucky
   accident.
3. **Chase citations both directions.** Backward (what a
   key paper cites: the foundations) and forward (what cites
   it: the developments and critiques): citation chasing
   from a few seminal papers surfaces the important work
   faster than keyword search alone, and reveals the
   conversation a field is having with itself.
4. **Assess quality, do not just collect.** Not all sources
   are equal: venue and peer-review status, methodology
   rigor, sample size and reproducibility (see
   source-evaluation, fact-checking), citation count as a
   weak signal, and recency vs foundational-ness. Weight the
   strong evidence; note but discount the weak. A review
   that treats a blog post and a replicated study as equal
   is not a review.
5. **Synthesize into themes, not a list.** Organize by idea
   (what is agreed, what is contested, what is unknown), not
   paper-by-paper: a matrix of sources against dimensions
   (approach, findings, limitations: see research-synthesis)
   reveals the structure. The synthesis is the value; an
   annotated bibliography that never connects the sources
   has done the collecting but not the review.
6. **Find the gap and the disagreements.** The review's
   payoff is locating what is not yet known (your
   opportunity: see hypothesis-generation) and where the
   field disagrees (the live questions). Note the
   limitations the literature itself acknowledges; the
   honest gaps are where the useful work is.

## Boundaries

- A literature review establishes what is known and claimed; it does not
  verify the claims (that is replication and critical appraisal: see
  fact-checking). Consensus in the literature can be wrong, and a review
  should flag weakly-supported consensus.
- Scope discipline is essential: the goal is enough
  coverage to ground the decision or research, not
  exhaustive coverage of an unbounded field. Know when you
  have enough (theme saturation: new sources stop adding
  new ideas).
- For fast-moving fields, preprints and recent work matter
  more than citation count (which lags); for mature
  fields, foundational highly-cited work anchors. Adjust
  the recency-vs-authority weighting to the field.