 In his psychology classes, Jeff 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 with psychology-related topics? Jeff soon learned that, in the academic world, the term literature is often used to describe the collected body of scholarly works related to a topic. In most cases, the literature consists of scholarly books or articles published in academic peer-reviewed journals. So, when Jeff was told he needed to review the literature, this meant that he needed to find previously published scholarly sources relevant to his topic. Jeff learned that there were several reasons to conduct a literature review. Looking at previously published 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 also able to identify any areas of agreement or disagreement among scholars related to his topic, and it helped him to identify directions for future research by allowing him to see the problems or questions related to his topic that needed additional research. Jeff found that he was often required to include a section in his research papers where he summarized the previous literature on his topic and showed how it was connected to his own research. Jeff 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, 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 research on a topic. Research papers usually include a literature review section, and in some cases an author may publish an article that is only a literature review.