 A literature review is a scan of previous research that integrates multiple sources throughout a paragraph or section, unlike an imitated bibliography, which focuses on one article at a time. What is included as literature can depend on your different subject area, but typically it is a selection of scholarly writings on a particular topic. It can include things like scholarly journal articles, academic articles, books, dissertations, conference proceedings, and more. In a literature review, you're going to highlight the major works and identify what they are. You're also going to showcase the ongoing literature in your topic. Scholarly journals are a great place to find literature. They typically contain original research contributing to the academic discipline. They have multiple authors that help give the work depth. They have been peer reviewed, so other authors accept it as something that adds value to the field. Scholarly articles will have specific sections to help you identify what you're reading, whether that's methods, results, discussion, conclusion, or references. Writing a Literature Review There are several reasons why you might want to do a literature review. Literature reviews can help orient you to a much larger research topic area, but typically when you write a literature review, you're looking to report on the status of research as it currently is. You're going to comment on the value of that research, as not all information is created equal. You're going to discuss what some of those findings are, and those key topic areas. You may also identify shortcomings of the research that would recommend future studies to fix it. To do your own literature review, you'll want to start the research process by identifying your research focus and narrow that down to a specific topic. You will then begin collecting articles. Then you're going to start analyzing the articles by just simply skim reading them. You don't have to read them in depth quite yet. Identify the best, most relevant resources from the resources that you initially found. Read those sources and find patterns across all those articles. Look at the common findings and themes. Lastly, write your review and make connections with what you discovered in your research. You now know the basics of literature reviews. I hope this information helps you with your own academic writing.