Literature review & study skills resources for intercalating medical students

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” - Sir Isaac Newton

It’s useful to learn by “standing on the shoulders of giants”, or, using what has already been found to inform your own thinking and to shape your research. You need to be aware of what others have done and written about the area, and you’ll need to draw on their work for your own project.

Even if your dissertation project is lab-based, it is likely you will still need to do a literature review, to provide a rationale for your research by describing what has been done before and identifying gaps in the research. It may be you don’t need to do primary research yourself; maybe there is already data available in the research literature, or your question may have already been answered in the literature.

"In the natural sciences, the 'literature review' is the term used to describe an agreed body of knowledge, which the researcher will set out before building on that base in their project [...] In social science a literature review always includes the sense of the issues being contested, not only in terms of what we know, but how we know it."
(Byrne, D. (2017). Why do I need to do a literature review?. Project Planner, SAGE Research Methods).

There are different types of literature reviews. It may be that your entire project is a large-scale review of the literature on a topic, or a smaller part of a wider project. Further down this page you will find examples of different types of literature reviews.

This page includes resources on carrying out and writing a literature review. 

For guidance on finding research and academic literature, see the page on Where can I find literature on my topic?.