How do you conduct a comprehensive literature review without crying? 😭

[Femina]

The UFV thesis planner has a huge section on the literature review, and it's intimidating . It says the review is "selective and does not include every article or source your find on your topic." You have to be a "curator at a museum" and select the most meaningful works, even though you've read and evaluated many more .

The practical tips are helpful, though. It suggests:

• Finding your subject librarian for a meeting.
• Using subject-specific databases.
• 'Pearl growing' (or 'cited reference' searches) to find researchers who have cited key articles.
• Keeping a research log to track where you've searched and your terms, so you don't repeat yourself .

This process seems like a science in itself. My biggest question is: how do you know when you've done "enough" reading? At what point do you stop hunting for new sources and start writing? The "curator" analogy is nice, but I'm terrified of missing that one crucial paper that makes my whole argument obsolete. Any tips for knowing when your literature review is "complete"?

 

[MikeWood]

I use the "saturation" rule. When I start seeing the same authors and studies cited in everything I read, I'm in the core conversation. When I'm not finding new arguments or new sources, I'm done. Usually that happens around 20-30 sources for a lit review. But it depends on your field. In fast-moving fields, you have to set a date cutoff (last 10 years) and accept that you can't include everything.