Literature review
A structured summary of published research on a question, built from a defined search and clear selection rules.
What it means
A literature review collects the papers that bear on a question, reads or screens them, and explains what the evidence shows. Good reviews state their search terms, databases and inclusion rules so another researcher can repeat the work. AI tools can speed up the search and the first pass of reading, but the reviewer still decides which papers count.
Elicit, Consensus and SciSpace are built for paper search and summaries. Scite adds citation context, which shows whether later papers support or contradict a claim. In every case, open the paper, confirm the finding and check that the citation points to the right work before you cite it yourself. A review that skips this step can repeat an error that is already in the literature. Keep a log of your search terms and the date you ran them.
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https://bestaiforresearch.com/glossary/literature-review/