The second kind of literature review addresses new or emerging topics that would benefit from a holistic conceptualization and synthesis of the literature. A literature review of a mature topic addresses the need for a critique of, and the potential reconceptualization of, the expanding and more diversified knowledge base of the topic as it continues to develop. A literature review discusses published information in a particular subject area, and sometimes information in a particular subject area within a certain time period.

The aim of this article is to present a step-by-step approach to writing a literature review research paper to facilitate student and novice reviewers' understanding. It demands a range of skills, such as learning how to define topics for exploration, acquiring skills of literature searching and retrieval, developing the ability to analyze and synthesize data as well as becoming adept at writing and reporting, often within a limited time scale. 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. Writing a literature review in the pre or post-qualification, will be required to undertake a literature review, either as part of a course of study, as a key step in the research process.

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