How Long Should the Literature Search Be?

Abstract

One size does not fit all for literature reviews within nursing publications. The lengths of literature reviews in articles differ greatly between different types of nursing journals. This experienced author and journal reviewer describes three factors that authors and editorial board members can use to determine the target length for a literature review. Nurses are often scared away from publishing by the thought of writing a literature review. Typically, these nurses suffer from memories of writing exhaustive and exhausting reviews of the literature for school papers. They often reconsider publishing their work when they discover that many journals do not require a long literature review and that journal editors who expect literature reviews want only references cited that are directly related to the topic under discussion (Johnson, 1991). Editorial board members and journal reviewers often disagree on the extent of literature review and often make opposite recommendations to the author. One reviewer might say “expand this section” while another says “summarize and shorten this section” when referring to the literature review. Both nursing authors and reviewers need to identify the appropriate length of the literature review for the journal for which they are writing or reviewing. The literature review intended for a graduate thesis is only one type of literature review. It is usually longer and more extensive than those used in nursing publications. The most common types of literature reviews range from a few sentences to multiple paragraphs in published nursing articles. The length of the literature review is based on three factors: the idea, audience, and type of journal (See Figure 1). The first step in writing a manuscript is finding a single idea that engages you and will be of interest to a particular group of readers. If you don't narrow your idea to a single slant, you are likely to wander around in the article and in the literature review, making both longer and weaker than intended. When you narrow the slant of the article, you also narrow the focus of the literature review. The idea itself has a lot to do with the length of the literature review. For example, an article that is a review article on the use of music therapy for cardiac patients is likely to be fairly long, because the main idea is to review, compare, and contrast the current studies and literature. Another article on techniques for using music therapy for pediatric cardiac patients might be fairly short, because there is less literature on this narrow topic and the focus of the article is on advice for the reader. If your idea is a fairly broad one, do a literature search to organize your thoughts, but do not write the literature review yet. Instead, develop your research questions or clinical point to a new slant not yet covered in the literature, focus on the key references for the specific slant, then summarize the points as you write the literature review. If you have a complex idea covering many concepts with a large research base, your literature review needs to be longer than if you have a well targeted slant on a new idea. It is because of this that articles in the same journal and for the same audience still differ slightly from each other in the length of their literature sections. Tailor the length of your review to the slant of your article. Once you have an idea for an article, you need to identify the audience for whom you are writing. The composition of the audience determines the type of journal best suited to that audience. And, the audience's viewpoint and interest in past studies and theory suggests the length of the literature review. Busy clinical nurses who like shorter, to-the-point articles would like to know the basics of how the idea fits in with nursing theory, while researchers and academicians want to know details on the literature basis for the study or information. The need to support ideas with citations from the literature differs depending upon the type of journal for which you are writing. The way to find which journal best fits your idea and audience is to go through the journals by hand to search for articles that are similar in topic and style to the one you want to write. Isolating the most fitting journal for your piece determines if a review of the literature is necessary and how extensive and intensive that review usually is for that journal. Most journals use one of three literature search types. Study the author guidelines for the journal where you want to submit your manuscript, because editors often describe the length of literature search to use. Notice that editors of general practice journals usually do not want a separate literature review section or citations. Rather than have a separate review section, a few sentences are often used within the paper to refer to past work. While editors of specialty or clinical journals may or may not want a formal literature review, they usually want to see relevant ideas from selected authors cited. They expect a reference list of moderate length including between five and ten citations. For non-research articles in these journals, the literature summary is often one to five paragraphs in length. However, research articles in these specialty journals may have longer literature reviews. Editors of research or scholarly journals typically require a formal literature review and an extensive reference list that includes approximately ten to 30 citations. The literature review is often five to 15 paragraphs long, but is not as long as that in most school thesis projects. In the first example of a general practice journal, ideas are presented without being attributed to any one author. While, in the second example of a specialty journal, only one set of authors is specifically cited. Yet, in the third example for a scholarly journal, a string of authors are cited who share similar ideas related to peer mentoring. The best guide for determining when to use a literature review and how long to make it is to peruse articles of a similar nature in the chosen journal. Articles with a similar style in the target journal have the same idea, audience, and journal, so they are most likely to reflect the target length for your own literature search. By analyzing these three factors, authors can develop a goal for the length of their literature searches and the number of citations to use, and editorial board members can give consistent advice on manuscript reviews. At the same time, don't take the review lightly. Shorter is not necessarily easier. A well-organized, selective, and succinct literature review is not easy to write. Don't be scared off from publishing by the idea of writing a literature review for your manuscript. You no longer have to include every article you read (in fact you should not) and you don't need to convince the teacher you read everything on the subject. In the publication process, writing the literature review helps you identify the uniqueness of your idea and how it fits into the literature and updates the reader on the literature on which you have based your idea or research. The literature review should not overshadow the author's advice, research, or information; instead, it should strengthen it. Kathleen T. Heinrich PhD, RN is an associate professor at the University of Hartford in West Hartford, CT. In addition to presenting “Writing for Publication” workshops to nursing groups around the country, Dr. Heinrich is a reviewer for Nurse Educator and the Journal of Family Nursing. You may contact her at 860-768-4213).