A literature review is a critical discussion of all significant, publicly available literature that contributes to the understanding of a subject. In order to produce a literature review you must carry out a search of all the appropriate bibliographic sources in order to ensure that no significant documents have been missed. From the retrieved literature you must record each items existence uniquely, appraise each item in terms of its contribution to the body of knowledge on the subject of the search, and synthesize all of the literature located into an account of the research on which your project is built. This will convey a sense of the research data available, the validity of the methods you used to gather that data, the currency of your finding, the ideas and theories which have been formulated by previous researchers, any gaps in current knowledge and the predicted contribution of your own impending work.
The literature review process involves four distinct stages and requires four separate skills.