Undergraduate Research Project - Part 3 of 5: Literature Review, Knowledge Gap, Scope and Limitations
Literature Review Studying the previous research work is a vital step in a research. The researcher must understand about the present status of the research area in order to move forward and discover new knowledge. In the previous articles, the initial steps such as background study, problem statement, aim and objectives were discussed. These steps lay the foundation for the research so that the way forward is reasonably clear. After the first stage, the research should advance to the second stage, which is the literature review (also known as the literature survey). This is the fifth step of the flowchart presented in the first article . The purpose of conducting a review of literature is to search and evaluate the present knowledge. Here, the idea is not to develop any new arguments or theories, but to summarize what others have done without changing the original idea/findings. A properly conducted literature review will show the progress of the considered research area, means h...