Literature Review Writing
A review that synthesises and argues toward your gap, rather than summarising paper after paper.
A first-draft literature review usually looks the same whatever the subject: forty or sixty paragraphs, each starting “Author (year) studied…”, each describing one paper, one after another. Every paragraph is accurate. Put together, they don’t yet build an argument. Supervisors send these drafts back with notes like “too descriptive”, “where is your voice?” or “so what?”, and the scholar often can’t see what’s wrong, because every source is cited correctly.
What those notes are asking for is synthesis instead of summary. A summary tells the reader what each paper said. A synthesis puts papers side by side and says what the field as a whole has established, where studies disagree and why, which methods dominate, and what nobody has yet looked at. That last part is your research gap, and the review exists to lead the reader to it so that your objectives feel like the obvious next step.
We help scholars get there with their own reading and their own argument. That means planning a search you can describe and repeat, organising sources in a reference manager, grouping the literature by theme, and restructuring your drafts so each section makes a claim and uses the literature as evidence for it. You do the reading and you hold the argument; we help you see its shape and tighten it.
Scope
What’s included
Take any stage on its own. Scholars early in the PhD often want the search and mapping stages; those with a full draft usually need only the restructuring review.
Search strategy
Keywords, synonyms and Boolean strings for your topic, a choice of databases suited to your field (Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, IEEE Xplore, JSTOR, Google Scholar and others), and a written note of where and how you searched, so the method section writes itself.
Reference manager set-up
A clean Zotero or Mendeley library: duplicates removed, collections by theme, PDFs attached, notes and tags in one place, and the citation plug-in connected to Word or LaTeX in the style your university requires.
Literature map and thematic outline
A matrix of your key sources against themes, methods, contexts and findings, then an outline that turns those themes into sections, each with a one-line claim it has to support.
Draft structure and synthesis review
A detailed review of your draft chapter by a subject-matched reviewer: where it summarises rather than synthesises, what order the sections should run in, and comments showing how paragraphs could compare and contrast sources instead of listing them.
Gap and objectives alignment
A check that the gap you state is really shown by the literature you reviewed, and that your research questions and objectives follow from it without a leap.
Citation and reference check
Every in-text citation matched to a reference, every reference checked to exist and to support what it is cited for, and the list formatted consistently to APA, IEEE, Harvard or your department’s style.
Quality
How quality is verified
These are the checks every piece of work goes through before it reaches you.
Every reference traced to its source
We check that each cited work exists, that the author, year, title and DOI are right, and that it actually says what your sentence claims. Invented or misattributed references are an instant credibility problem with examiners.
Synthesis test on every section
For each section we ask one question: does it end with a conclusion about the literature, or just with the last paper? Sections that don’t pass come back with specific comments on how to restructure them.
Coverage checked for recency and key authors
The reviewer checks for obvious missing work (the recent studies and well-cited papers an examiner in your field would expect to see) and flags them for you to read.
Subject-matched reviewer
Your chapter is read by someone who works in your broad discipline and knows its debates, not a general copy-editor.
Similarity report with each draft
Literature chapters attract high similarity because they discuss other people’s work. Each draft returns with a report so you can see where paraphrase sits too close to the original and fix it early.
Time
Realistic timelines
A literature review is built on reading, and reading takes the time it takes. Our turnaround on each stage is short; the total depends mostly on how much reading you still have to do.
| Stage | Typical time | What it depends on |
|---|---|---|
| Search strategy | 3–5 working days | The breadth of the topic and the number of databases are relevant |
| Reference manager set-up | 2–4 working days | Size and state of your existing library |
| Literature map and thematic outline | 1–2 weeks | Number of core sources (typically 60 to 150 for a PhD) |
| Draft structure and synthesis review | 1–2 weeks per draft | Chapter length and how far the draft already synthesises |
| Gap and objectives alignment | 3–5 working days | Whether objectives are fixed or still open |
| Citation and reference check | 3–7 working days | Number of references and the style required |
How to tell
Summary versus synthesis, in practice
The quickest way to see the difference is side by side.
Here is a descriptive paragraph of the kind supervisors return:
Sharma (2019) studied mobile banking adoption among rural customers and found that trust affected intention. Rao and Iyer (2020) examined urban users and found perceived usefulness was the main factor. Khan (2021) surveyed small traders and found that cost was important.
And the same sources used in synthesis:
Studies of mobile banking adoption agree that intention depends on more than usefulness, but disagree about what matters most: trust in rural samples (Sharma, 2019), cost among small traders (Khan, 2021) and usefulness in urban users (Rao & Iyer, 2020). Because each study sampled a single group, it is unclear whether these differences reflect the populations or the instruments used; no study has compared the groups with one measure.
The second version makes a claim, groups the evidence, and ends with a gap. That is the move the whole chapter has to make, section by section.
A structure that usually works
- Scope and search: what you reviewed, where you looked and what you left out, in a paragraph or two.
- Theoretical grounding: the theories or models your study relies on, and how others have used them.
- Thematic sections: three to six themes, each ending with what is settled and what is not.
- Methods in the field: how previous studies were done, and the limitations those methods share.
- Synthesis and gap: the threads pulled together into a clear gap that your objectives address.
If you’re struggling to phrase the gap itself, our guide to writing a research gap statement has a sentence pattern and worked examples. If your department or journal wants a fully documented, reproducible review with screening and appraisal, that is a different piece of work: see our systematic literature review service.
Pricing
How pricing works
There is no rate card, because a scholar with 120 sorted sources and a rough draft needs something very different from one who has just started searching. We look at your topic, your source list and any draft, and give you a fixed quote for the stages you choose, agreed in writing before anything starts.
If a stage turns out to be unnecessary once we see your material, we’ll tell you and take it out of the scope.
What the quote depends on
- Which stages you need
- Number of sources and the length of the draft chapter
- Breadth of the topic and number of databases involved
- How specialised the subject is for reviewer matching
- Your deadline, if it compresses our turnaround
Every quote includes
- A written scope listing exactly what will be delivered
- A fixed price agreed before any payment
- Payment in stages, tied to delivery
- Revision rounds stated in the scope
Process
How it works
Free consultation
A call or message with a specialist in your subject. We review your material and say plainly whether we are the right fit.
Written scope and quote
You get a written scope, a timeline and a fixed price. Work and payment begin once you agree to it.
Staged delivery
Work arrives in stages you review, each with a similarity report where text is involved. You pay stage by stage.
Revisions and hand-over
Revision rounds are included. At the end you get the final files, and an explanation of anything you’ll need to defend.
Keep reading
Guides and related services
How to write a literature review
How to move from summarising papers to building an argument that ends at your research gap.
Writing a research gap statement
The kinds of gap, a sentence pattern that works, and weak-versus-strong examples.
APA 7 formatting guide for theses
In-text citations, reference examples, headings, tables and figures — the APA 7 rules scholars get wrong.
Systematic Literature Review
A reproducible, PRISMA 2020-compliant review — protocol, screening, appraisal and synthesis.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Can you write my literature review chapter for me?
The chapter stays your reading and your argument, because the examiner will question you on it. We help you plan the search, organise the sources, structure the chapter and revise your drafts until they synthesise properly. That is usually faster than it sounds, and the result is a chapter you can defend.
How many references should a PhD literature review have?
There is no fixed number, and more is not automatically better. Many theses cite somewhere between 100 and 300 works in total, depending heavily on field. What examiners look for is that the key work is there, recent work is covered, and each source is used for a reason.
Is a literature review the same as a systematic review?
They are different kinds of review. A traditional (narrative) review, which most thesis chapters are, is selective and argued. A systematic review follows a pre-set protocol, documents every search and screening decision, and appraises study quality, usually to PRISMA standards. It is a research method in its own right and takes months. Read about systematic reviews.
Zotero or Mendeley — which should I use?
Either works well for a thesis. Zotero is free, open source and handles web capture well; Mendeley is free with a storage limit and suits PDF-heavy workflows. What matters more is using one consistently from the start. We can set up either, or move your library from one to the other.
My similarity score is high on the literature chapter. Is that normal?
It is common, because you are describing other people’s work. It usually means paraphrases stay too close to the source wording. The answer is to synthesise, which naturally puts ideas in your own words, and to quote properly where the exact wording matters, not to run text through a rewording tool.
What if my examiner asks why I didn’t include a particular study?
A documented search strategy is your best answer: you can say where you searched, with what terms and dates, and what your inclusion criteria were. That is one reason we start there. If a genuinely important study was missed, it is far better to find it before submission, which is what our coverage check is for.
Is my material kept confidential?
Yes. Your drafts, notes and library are seen only by the reviewer working on them, used only for your project, and deleted on request once we finish. We will sign a non-disclosure agreement if you want one.
Talk it through with a specialist for free
Send us where you are and what you need. We’ll reply within one working day with clear advice, a written scope and a fixed quote. No obligation.
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