 In his KIN498 class, Mark often heard terms such as review the literature or literature review. At first, he was a little confused by these terms. If he needed to do a literature review, did he need to find novels related to exercise science? Mark soon learned that in the academic world, the term literature is often used to describe the collective body of scholarly works related to a topic. The literature usually consists of articles published in academic peer-reviewed journals, such as the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. So when Mark was told he needed to review the literature, this meant that he needed to find previously published scholarly resources relevant to his topic. Mark learned that there were several reasons to conduct a literature review. Looking at previously published scholarly sources helped him to increase his own knowledge on the topic. It helped to keep him up-to-date on current trends and major findings related to his interests. He was able to identify any areas of agreement or disagreement among scholars related to his topic, and it helped him to identify directions for his own research by allowing him to see the problems or questions related to his topic that needed additional research. Mark found that he was usually required to include a segment in his own research papers where he summarized the previous literature on his topic and showed how it was connected to his own research. Mark also learned that, in some cases, the term literature review is used to refer to a specific type of scholarly article. In a literature review article, which is also sometimes called a systematic review, the author does not conduct their own research study. Instead, the author summarizes and analyzes previous research on the topic. For example, the author might review 20 research articles on a topic in order to determine what conclusions can be drawn by combining the findings of all of them together. To sum up, in the academic world, literature is a term often used to refer to all of the previous scholarly works on a topic. For anyone conducting a research study, reviewing the literature is an important part of the research process.