There is no particular strategy for students and researchers to choose a research topic but there are three well-known reasons that researchers seek after. They are; experience, theory testing, and replication of previous research. Past experiences of professionals can be a strong inspiration for researchers. Researchers are mostly interested in negative experiences for the purpose of improving practices and making them better for next generations. Theories can be used to develop research studies. Even a single study can be the focus of a research to examine its implications. The replication studies refer to repeating a past research recognizing its methodological weaknesses to do a better one. A researcher repeats a study carefully so that the previous limitations will not be repeated

The researcher who struggles to limit the issue of research should first identify a “problem statement” that sets out the purpose of the research. The “problem statement” should be simple, clear, and questionable, as well as being restrictive. What the researcher will search for, in other words, which idea will be defended, will find its expression in the problem. The problem statement tells the truth that the researcher will defend in her/his research, test the truth, or reveal the cause-effect relations. If a researcher finds the opportunity to go into the subject and evaluate a large number of sources, the problem statement may change.

The research question guides the structure of the whole literature review process providing a concentration on what kind of writing is required to address the research topic and questions. A good research question should be “doable” within a specific time period. When the research question is decided, it can be written in either interrogative or declarative form

For example, an interrogative form can be stated as “What factors have changed international relations after the World War II”, while a declarative form of that question can be worded as “An analysis of the reasons behind changes in international relations after the World War II”. Aveyard suggests that a good research question should be clear and specific. It should be focused but not too narrow. If the research question is too broad, it cannot be handled by the literature reviewer.

Research questions may arise from various sources. For example, one can get a research question from a discourse with colleagues or from their works and writing. Students may not be excellent source of emerging research questions but their interesting questions generally activate new paths to explore. 

Political scientists define “the circumstances, topics, policies, or other phenomena that they want to understand as dependent variables”. For instance, when a researcher likes to investigate the reasons for a failing policy, the dependent variable of the study is “the failure of the policy”. Another study may attempt to find an answer why a specific country has suffered from several multiple coups, the dependent variable of the study is “the occurrence of several coup attempts in that country”. There exist multiple factors that influence the dependent variable of a study which is called as independent variables. Independent variables may cause some changes on the dependent variable.

The selection of available documents (both published and unpublished) on the topic, which contains information, ideas, data an evidence written from a particular standpoint to fulfil certain aims or express certain views on the nature of the topic and how it is to be investigated, and the effective evaluation of these documents in relation to the research being proposed. 

The general purpose of literature review is to narrow down the focus of your research, to focus on it, and to help readers relate it to your research. One of the main aspects of literature review is the decision about which literature should be included and which literature should be excluded. When writing a research report or a journal article, there will naturally be a word limit. It is, therefore, necessary to decide which authors should be included and how much space should be allocated to each. 

A literature review can be performed in seven steps:

1. Identification of research questions. This step guides the review.

2. Selecting the databases and sources. There are numerous bibliographic or article databases, websites, and other resources that can be utilized.

3. Specifying the key terms. Key terms are the words that are used to search and get the related documents.

4. Applying practical screening criteria. Literature reviewer can set the criteria to include or exclude the documents from the review among the numerous articles.

5. Applying methodological screening criteria. Methodological criteria incorporate criteria for assessing scientific quality.

6. Doing the review. To ensure the reliability and validity of the literature review, a standardized form should be used for abstracting data from papers. Besides, reviewers should be trained for abstracting the data and pilot testing of the process should be reported.

7. Synthesizing the results. Literature review results may be synthesized expressively. An uncommon sort of synthesis-a meta-analysis involves the utilization of statistical results of two or more research.

1. Narrative Literature Review. Narrative reviews are typically found in theses, dissertations, grant and research proposals, and research articles. In such reviews, the author selects relevant past research and synthesizes it into a coherent discussion. Narrative reviews typically are somewhat broad in focus compared to other kinds of literature reviews, discussing methodologies, findings, and limitations in the existing body of work.

2. Systematic Literature Review. In systematic reviews, a strict methodology is followed in literature selection. While selecting the literature, including or excluding criteria are transparent. Systematic reviews are convenient when the reviewer aims to illuminate the existing literature and its potential implications.

3. Meta-Analysis. Meta-analysis is performed by statistical techniques combining data from multiple studies that have analyzed the same research questions. Re-analyzing different sets of data related to the same research question provides a much better understanding than that of a single study.

4. Focused Literature Review. Primarily, all literature reviews are focused. This term is used because a more suitable term is lacking. Thus, focused literature review defines the reviews that focused on a single aspect of the past research such as methodology.

You can use these operators with an advanced search option. An example of how the Search Operators function are as follows:

• AND. The results will contain all terms joined by AND. For example, modernity AND democracy would return results that contain both the words modernity AND democracy.

• OR. The results will contain either term(s) joined by OR. For example, modernity OR democracy would return results that contain the terms modernity OR democracy. This would increase the results returned when compared to using the AND operator.

• NOT. The results will not contain the term(s). For example, modernity NOT democracy would return all results that contain the word modernity and do NOT contain the word democracy.

Each literature research includes a considerable commitment of time and energy. In a digital age, electronic sources increase rapidly. That’s why the literature search increasingly becomes computer based an digitilized. However, the students and researchers should not neglect the college libraries for two reasons. First, reference libraries are often the most knowledgeable experts who are often familiar with the terms used in databases of professional literature. Besides, they can guide students in the use of ever-changing electronic resources

There are three types of sources of information: primary, secondary, and tertiary sources.

1. Primary sources. The person presenting the data is actually present in primary sources (Anderson, 2005, 12). Original written works such as poems, diaries, court records, interviews, surveys and original research/fieldwork and research published in scholarly journals (http://libguides.merrimack.edu/research_help/Sources).

2. Secondary sources. When the data is reported from another author or source who is not present at the work cited, it is called secondary data (Anderson, 2005, 12). In other words, secondary sources are those which narrate and examine the primary sources/original research (http://libguides.merrimack.edu/research_help/Sources).

3. Tertiary sources. These kinds of sources organize and locate secondary and primary source. They can be summarized as follows

• Indexes – provide citations that fully identify a work with information such as author, titles of a book, article, and/or journal, publisher and publication date, volume and issue number and page numbers.

• Abstracts – summarize the primary or secondary sources

• Databases – are online indexes that usually include abstracts for each primary or secondary resource, and may also include a digital copy of the resource.

1. Level of detail: A scholarly journal should provide you with more detail than the general information contained in a newspaper or magazine article.

2. Level of discourse: Journal articles are written in technical language. Nonscholarly resources are written for a general audience.

3. Structure: Most journal articles contain an abstract with the paper’s thesis, an introduction, a literature review, and a discussion of the methods used to draw conclusions. Sources of information will be cited. In general, you will not find an abstract or a literature review (direct references to other scholarly studies) in a nonscholarly publication.

4. Explanation of methodology: Journal articles explain the methods used to analyze evidence and/or data and indicate which resources were used to draw conclusions.

5. Footnotes and endnotes: Most journal articles that are suitable for literature review in the field of International Relations reviews contain footnotes or endnotes.

6. Bibliography: Scholarly journal articles contain a bibliography or reference list. Magazines and newspapers rarely do. Trade publications seldom contain them.

7. Date of publication: Scholarly journals are usually published monthly, quarterly, or biannually and usually have a volume or issue number coinciding with the time of year released. Newspapers and magazines are usually published daily, weekly, or monthly.

Library Catalogs. The library catalog enables researchers to search and locate print and online materials (books, journals, and other resources) held in the library. A journal may be available with an online link from the library catalog but some content may not be allowed to access. Instead, the library catalog may direct you to an available link that provides the content you search for (Jesson, Matheson and Lacey, 2011, 36). Library catalog or Online Public Access Catalogues (OPACs) give the bibliographical details and locations of all the publications held within a specific library.

National Catalog. Many countries have their own national catalogs which list all the publications available in the country An example for Turkey is TO-KAT (Ulusal Toplu Katalog - National Union Catalog). It is a database that includes all the recorded details of all the books that are available in the libraries in Turkey. The website of TO-KAT is available at http://www.toplukatalog.gov.tr. Another national catalog for Public Libraries in Turkey is KOHA which is an open source library system that is used worldwide. KOHA is used in Turkey as an automation system that unifies all the libraries that are linked to the General Directorate of Libraries and Publications of Ministry of Culture and Tourism. It is available at (http://koha.ekutuphane.gov.tr).

Publishers’ and Booksellers’ Catalogs. Publishers such as Sage, Springer, Routledge, and booksellers such as Amazon (https://www.amazon.co.uk) have their own catalogs that list all the books published. These websites can be searched like the library catalogs by using keywords like author name or subject.

A good literature review should have the following characteristics (Feak and Swale, 2009, 5-10):

1. The problems and controversial issues related to the topic should be discussed.

2. The potential content that have not been covered in the literature review should be explained with its reasons clearly.

3. The literature review should concentrate on latest documents since they are likely the most pertinent.

4. The literature review should be long enough to persuade the reader that the literature was read extensively.

5. The gaps in the current literature should be revealed in the literature review.

6. The literature review should be more than a list of past studies. Rather, it should give the reader a sense of what has been more significant and less significant. In other words, the works cited in the literature review should be critically evaluated.

7. Overall, the literature review should be presented chronologically.

8. The literature review can ignore the studies from different disciplines than your immediate discipline.

9. The literature review should explain the readers how your work might contribute to the existing scholarly literature and future research.

You should avoid giving details about the studies you have reviewed and it should be enough to explain their methods and findings. The following steps can be adopted (Lodico et al., 2006, 56):

1. Step one: Prepare summary sheets or article abstracts. Analyze the summary or the abstracts of the studies you collected by marking the key features and motivations behind the studies. At that point, as you read over your rundown, endeavor to verbalize an outline word, theme, or expression that best applies to the article. Write these words, themes,w and expressions on the sheets that you prepared to organize your review.

2. Step two: Review the summary sheets or article abstracts. Compare and contrast the keywords and themes you have found. Put each article under the related key words and then categorize their main focus. Some articles may be placed in more than one category.

3. Step three: Decide how you can organize your literature review. While deciding you can use these questions: • How can you display a big picture of what is known about your research topic? • Which studies are most and least related to your research topic? • Which studies support or conflict with your research topic? • How can you create a meaningful framework for your research topic?

4. Step four: Begin writing your literature review using the analysis you made in the first three steps.

Possible errors and problems in writing a literature review includes: 

1. Uncertain Purposes

2. Vague Introduction and Poor Organization

3. Not Enough Information

4. Failing to Connect to Take-Home Message

5. Be critical 

6. Exceptions and Counter Examples

7. Tell the Reader Where to Go

8. Matters of Style

One of the critical issues in writing a literature review is following the guidelines and instructions for style. First responsibility of the researcher is citing the author/s and the date of statements in parentheses in the text properly. The format of citing should be correct in terms of referencing style to enable readers to make distinctions about different writers’ thoughts and findings. However, the literature reviewer should not let the names to have a principal position in the paper. One rule of thumb is “Do not start a paragraph with a name!”.