Common Mistakes To Avoid When Writing Literature Review at All Cost

Writing a literature review is a tedious process that requires full focus and concentration. To accomplish the task you need to have methodical approach since it involves many steps to meet all the necessary requirements. However, before you begin, you need to work on your writing style and improve on it. This can be made possible through hard work and of course, guidance from the ones who have mastered the skill of writing formal literature reviews.
The reviews that are written for literature are often submitted for various reasons. It could be for a project, an assignment, academic papers, and thesis even. No matter what the purpose may be, the necessity to ensure that the content is error-free still prevails.
With a little guidance and focus, many of the mistakes can be avoided easily and that would make the literature review meet the writing standards such as APA, MLA or Chicago Style guides. Here to save you from the trouble and headache, this article is solely focused on the common mistakes that you must avoid when writing a review.

Literature Review Writing and Style Mistakes

The most common mistakes that students make when expressing literature review ideas are related to writing and the general style.
Giving personal opinions and using emotional phrases
Many of the times people confuse the purpose of formal literature reviews and they start using emotional phrases and personal opinions to give more authority to what they are writing. Remember, a literature review is based on the already existing work on the selected topic and research area that falls under you. There is no room for emotional phrases. So, avoid subjectivity and irrelevant content in the body. Also, personal opinions cannot be used as the purpose is to write an unbiased review of the already existing literature work on your area of research. So all you need to do is to use an objective approach instead of a subjective approach and stay as factual as you can when stating opinions.
Plagiarism issues and unjustified claims
Plagiarism is something everyone is usually aware of when writing a paper. There are proper rules and regulations for plagiarism in every aspect of writing whether it be an academic paper or an assignment. There are so many forms of plagiarism in writing but the most common ones that you need to avoid are “Unjustified Claims” and “Improper and incomplete references”.
Unjustified claims are one of the major yet common mistakes that are usually observed. You must give proper reference to every piece of information you put in the literature review and for every claim, there should be a complete reference or otherwise, it would be considered as an unjustified claim and plagiarism. Using Author’s full name and URLs in text
Sometimes students put the Authors complete name and long URLs of the web pages as a reference in the text without taking care of the referencing style they are required to follow in their paper. Do not use long URLs and Author’s full name in the text and use the proper referencing style as per the requirements of your paper and assignment. Put the complete reference with Author’s name in the “References” section at the end of the paper and also put the URLs there instead of using that in texts.

Mistakes in Literature Review Structure

There is a proper structure for formal literature reviews as well which needs to be followed. Let’s have a look at some of the common mistakes that one tends to make in the structure.
No background/Pre-literature section
This is one of the very common mistakes majority of students make while writing such papers. When you write a formal literature review, there needs to be a section for background information and pre-literature review that gives the readers a clue about what is the focus of your work and what are the key concepts and definitions that are relevant to the area of research you are writing a review on. Also, there is no need to provide too many definitions and concepts for a single concept. Keep it simple and cite the most relevant terms, definitions, and concepts in the background or pre-literature review section. Bad structure and irrelevant content
A formal literature review always includes proper headings, sub-headings, referencing style and relevant content to make for a proper structure. Many of the times students do not focus on the structure and start writing and putting information without any order which is the main reason why they are asked to rewrite or re-structure their literature review in an organized manner. In order to avoid illogical structure and irrelevant information, make proper headings and subheadings so you can focus on what is important and maintain the proper structure of the review. Irrelevant content is also one of the very common mistakes encountered in literature reviews. Students tend to put plenty of information in their paper while studying from other sources without keeping a check on what is relevant to their research question. Make sure that the content and sources you insert in your write-up are totally relevant to the area of research you are focusing on and the research question at hand.

Credibility and Validity Mistakes

Literature study from credible sources and validation of the information you put in your literature review is also important. There are some common mistakes with credibility and validity issues in research papers that need to be avoided too.
Narrowly focused literature review
To answer the questions of your research area, a formal literature review should be sufficiently narrowed down to the focused topic. Many students make that mistake of writing the literature review ideas in general categories which is usually too general to be directly related to the area of research which is most relevant to your research question(s). It would be better if you narrow down your topic to focus on the literature which is most relevant to the research questions of your study.
Using non-scholarly sources and citing only “supportive” sources
This is another common mistake many students make in their literature review study which involves the use of non-scholarly and professional opinion articles instead of focusing on the more authoritative and credible scholarly sources. There is no scope for shortcuts in the long run so it would be better if you read the authoritative and proper scholarly sources that will surely make your write-ups and paper more appropriate and compelling to read. These are just some of the many mistakes that one can make when coming up with literature review ideas. Do not hesitate to take professional help where it is required. You can always visit papernow.org if you are require professional help and need assistance with your work to get better grades and understanding of your topic.