Support and resources for Higher Degree by Research students

Access help and resources to guide you through the steps of a literature or systematic review. Find information on your research topic:

You may be able to use AI tools to assist you with your literature or systematic review. Consult AI tools for literature searching and refer to the requirements outlined in the Preliminary pages thesis template

A literature or “narrative” review examines the current literature on a topic, providing backing context and critical analysis of existing work. The exact format and scope can vary depending on your discipline. The review is intended to situate where your work and theory or methods are positioned, in relation to existing studies.

Our literature review guide looks at conducting your search, storing and organising the literature and evaluating what you find

Student Services has a guide to help you write effective literature reviews

Systematic reviews are very different from narrative reviews. A systematic review:

• has a clear question or hypothesis to be answered
• searches are rigorous, to locate all potentially relevant literature
• includes explicit inclusion-exclusion criteria
• assesses study quality for inclusion and provides a synthesis of results.

Our systematic review guide gives an overview of systematic searching and resources to support producing systematic, scoping, rapid, or umbrella reviews or for projects requiring a systematic searching approach.

Get systematic searching support from your Librarian Team to help you develop your systematic search.