Review Article

There is an ever-growing amount of original articles in most scientific journals and, for that matter, in any topic of scientific research. It is difficult for any individual to read through all of those published articles to make sense of the current state-of-the-art research and synthesize new ideas for further research. Review articles can help distill and summarize information from numerous original articles under common themes. Typically, review articles are critical evaluations of published research articles on a particular scientific topic or field. By critically evaluating the already published articles, the review articles can be a great source to understand the research topic quickly and comprehensively and synthesize new research ideas.

Various types of review articles exist, which are either narrative, topical, or systematic reviews, or meta-analyses. The type of review article can depend on the research topic, journal requirements, or research question that one is aimed to address. In general, the following are the main contributions of a review article:

• Provide an overview of the research topic
• Address the ambiguities (definitional, theoretical, computational, or methodological) in published literature on a particular topic or research question
• Synthesize new research ideas or viewing the research in a different angle that can have potential implications for further research
• Provide directions for future research by highlighting the gaps in the existing research

The following resources are provided for further understanding of the content and structure a good review article.

Articles

• Grant, M.J. and Booth, A. (2009), A typology of reviews: an analysis of 14 review types and associated methodologies. Health Information & Libraries Journal, 26, pp. 91-108.
• Green, B.N., Johnson, C.D., and Adams, A. (2006). Writing narrative literature reviews for peer-reviewed journals: secrets of the trade. Journal of Chiropractic Medicine, 5, 3, pp. 101-117.
• Gülpınar, Ö. and Güçlü, A. (2013). How to write a review article. Turkish Journal of Urology, 39 (Supplement 1), pp. 44-48. 
• Palmatier, R., Houston, M., and Hulland, J. (2018). Review articles: purpose, process, and structure. Journal of the Academy Marketing Science, 46, pp. 1-5.
• Pavlovich, M. (2019). How to get started writing a review article. Cross Talk. 
• Wilkinson, J. (2020). The literature review: Your definitive guide (2020). Clarivate Web of Science.
  

• Andy Tay, 2020. How to write a superb literature review. Nature Career Feature. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-03422-x

Videos

• Bond, J. (2018). What is a review article? 

Websites

• Griffith University (n.d.). Different types of literature review.
• Taylor & Francis, Author Services (n.d.). Writing a review article
• University of Maryland (2020). Steps of a systematic review.
• University of Waterloo (2020). Types of review articles (Literature, Scoping, and Systematic).