Organise your research literature

Identify themes and ideas

Organising themes and ideas from the literature helps you:

make connections
discern patterns
highlight emerging themes and how they have evolved
extend your knowledge
identify gaps in the literature
identify key researchers
understand how your research relates to that of others
contextualise a topic within a research area
prepare and structure your writing.

Literature grids

Literature grids, tables or review matrices, contain structured information extracted from your literature resources and can encourage critical thinking and analysis.

Example literature grid
Author	Year	Focus	Location	Methodology	Data collection	Themes/Categories	Main findings	Limitations	Relevancy to my research
Chambers and Mallone	2012	Breastfeeding experience of migrant women living in Australia	Australia	Phenomenology	Semi-structured interviews	Cultural norms Family support	Family support leads to higher rates of breastfeeding.	Relatively small sample size	High
Doyle and Crane	2018	Partners’ views on breastfeeding	Sweden	Mixed methods	Online survey Focus groups	Family support			Medium
Green and Geller	2010	Breastfeeding in public	Multiple	Literature review	Not applicable				Medium

When creating your literature grid:

make it relevant to your research question and objectives
remember there is no standard design
choose columns relevant to your literature, such as:
- type of article (for example, review or case study)
- methodology or study design
- claims, conclusions, and key findings
- geographic or demographic details of the study
- strengths and weaknesses
- practice implications
- themes and categories.

Use a spreadsheet program (for example, Excel) to help you work more efficiently.

Spreadsheets help you to sort, filter and validate input using features such as drop-down lists.

Example Microsoft Excel literature grid (XLSX, 34.5 KB)

Learn to use Microsoft Excel

Try these techniques when designing your literature grid.

LATCH

LATCH, developed by Richard Wurman, provides a structured way to think about and organise your information. You may incorporate some or all of the elements of LATCH in your literature grid.

Organise your information by location, this could include where:

the study originated, or researcher is based
it sits within the discipline - central or on 'the fringe'
it fits at a macro or micro level (e.g. cell or body).

Further, studies may be located on different sides of a debate.

Reference lists and bibliographies are often organised alphabetically by author, allowing the reader to easily find a specific reference of interest.

Organise your information alphabetically to make it easier to find known items.

Arrange alphabetically by:

author
title
journal name.

Organise your information chronologically to highlight and understand the changes to a research field over time.

Additionally, it may show trends in the popularity of certain methodologies, theories or foundational concepts.

Figure showing change over time in research on climate change impacts on freshwater wetlands

Grieger, R, Capon, SJ, Hadwen, WL et al. (2020) 'Between a bog and a hard place: a global review of climate change effects on coastal freshwater wetlands', Climatic Change, doi:10.1007/s10584-020-02815-1

Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Organise your information by grouping into categories based on your research question and objectives.

choose as many categories as needed
information can belong to more than one category
add or remove categories as you work through your information

Use a spider map or concept map to help organise your information into categories.

Organise your information by assigning a value, or rank.

Assess or critically judge your information, this could be based on:

how closely related it is to your research topic
the relative strength of the study design or evidence type
the overall usefulness or relevance to your research.

Explore how hierarchy is used to classify information in evidence-based medicine.

Get inspiration on how to apply LATCH to organise your information, read 5 ways to tame the literature dragon.

Concept maps

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