A Synthesis of Literature Review Guidelines from Information Systems Journals

Abstract

There has recently been a plethora of guidelines published in Information Systems (IS) journals on how to conduct literature reviews for publication, often referred to as “systematic” literature reviews. The purpose of this paper is to make sense of these guidelines by synthesising them into a coherent whole. The synthesis results in the identification of five major stages for conducting literature reviews for publication, i.e. (1) Define the protocol, (2) Search the literature, (3) Select the papers, (4) Analyse, synthesise and interpret the data, (5) Write the review. The synthesis reveals that there are different types of literature review, but that the five broad stages are generally valid for all types. Differences in conducting literature review across type arise at a lower level of detail, when considering the specific activities to be performed at each stage. The greatest variation between types occurs at Stage 4, when analysing, synthesising and interpreting data.