5 Literature-review Methods
5.1 What is a scholarly literature-review?
In a nutshell, doing a scholarly literature-review is like doing a sophisticated search of the internet. The word scholarly literature-review has two meanings, and both are important. On on the one hand, it can mean a review of scholarly literature. On the other hand, it can also mean a scholarly process for reviewing some literature.
A piece of literature is generally regarded as scholarly (i.e., scholarly literature) if it is produced by and for scholars and it cites references that experts typically consider as valid evidence. A process for reviewing some literature is generally regarded as scholarly if the process is thoughtful, rigorous, and well-organized.
In these lecture notes, I will describe where you can find scholarly works, and how you can ensure your search process is rigorous and well-organized.
5.2 Why is it important to do a scholarly literature-review?
In Section 2.3, I briefly mentioned a few types of scholarly works that are typically produced by IWO psychologists. One of those is a literature-review study, which often culminates in a literature-review paper (for examples of literature-review papers, see: Legood et al., 2023; and Newman et al., 2017). However, on a smaller scale, almost all scholarly projects involve at least some amount of literature-review. Broadly speaking, a literature-review is any process and/or written synthesis in which prior literature (that is relevant to a chosen topic) is identified, evaluated, and synthesized. At a minimum, most published scholarly works provide their audience some amount of relevant literature-review that helps the audience understand the current study. Thus, even if you aren’t aiming to publish a literature-review paper, the process of conducting a literature-review is still important for your own education and for the education of your audience.
One of the main purposes for doing a literature-review is to avoid “reinventing the wheel”. Decades before you were born, many scholars spent their entire careers thinking about many of the same questions you’re now wondering about. They wondered about the best ways to promote worker wellbeing, reduce stress, enhance performance, foster team cohesion, change company culture, etc., etc. Now, imagine how much you’ve learned in the past 5 or 10 years of your life, and then imagine how much you’ll learn after a full career of researching IWO psychology topics! Those scholars, who came and went before you were born, published their thoughts and insights that they cultivated across their entire careers. Some of it may be outdated in some ways, but much of the IWO psychology research from prior decades is still highly relevant today. Although human culture may change rapidly, human nature changes very slowly at the pace of genetic changes in our collective DNA. Thus, by conducting a literature-review, we can reap in a matter of hours the knowledge of thousands of scholars who dedicated their entire careers to studying the same questions we’re interested in today. That is an extremely efficient way to learn a lot in a little bit of time.
Conducting a thorough literature-review has been and continues to be a feature of the praxiology of IWO psychologists. Of course, there must be a balance. For better or worse, scholarly works produced by IWO psychologists have been criticized for overly lengthy literature-review sections that go into too much detail about the past. By knowing your target audience—what they likely know and don’t know—you can have a better idea of how much detail to include in the literature-review sections of your scholarly works.
Often, beginner researchers will lament, “I can’t research this topic because it’s already been done.” However, such thinking is sorely misguided! Even though other researchers examined phenomena related to your topic of inquiry, there is often so much more to be learned about that topic! Throughout the remainder of this course, I’m sure your eyes will be opened to all of the different types of questions that can be asked about any topic.
5.3 Types of scholarly works you can search for
In Section 2.3, I briefly mentioned a few types of research studies that are typically conducted by IWO psychologists. Specifically, I mentioned: empirical research, theoretical research, lab research, field research, literature-review research, and meta-analysis research. Each of those types of studies typically culminates in one or more discrete products (also known as an output), which could be a written article, a video, podcast, etc. In this chapter, I want to focus on written scholarly works, which are products that consist primarily of written language, because that is by far the most prevalent format available in scholarly databases (in subsequent chapters we will discuss other formats that heavily involve audio, video, and in-person events).
The very generic word that scholars use to refer to written works is paper (e.g., “I was reading a paper about…”, “I’m working on a paper about…”). Using more formal language, all scholarly papers start as manuscripts, which are unpublished written works (e.g., something sitting in your computer that you haven’t published yet). When a manuscript becomes published, we call it a publication, which is any published work (in this case, a published written work).
Among scholars, two of the most popular types of publications are books and articles.
I’m sure you’re already familiar with books, but scholars distinguish between two important subcategories: authored books versus edited books. An authored book is written entirely or almost entirely by a single author or a small team of authors, such that the entire team gets credit for writing the entire book. In an edited book, one or more persons known as the editors of that book will create a plan for what they want the book to be about, and then they will invite several other authors—who are considered experts in the various topics related to the book—to write a chapter (or a few chapters) in the book. Typically, the editors are experienced scholars who are knowledgeable about the topics in the book, and they provide editorial feedback to the chapter authors’ manuscripts for the book before a final version is reached. Each chapter may be written by one or more authors.
In the context of published written works, you may have some sense of what we mean by articles (e.g., “I was reading an article about…”). Among scholars, the word article often means a peer-reviewed journal article, which is an article that was reviewed by other scholars—who are considered experts in the topics of the article—before it is published in a scholarly journal. A scholarly journal is essentially a magazine for scholarly articles.
In Chapter 12, I provide more detail about the peer-review process.
Before the internet, journals were published in print, like magazines. Just like magazines, they were organized into volumes, and each year marked the start of a new volume for that journal. Each volume was typically subdivided into separate issues (e.g., “volume 3, issue 1”, “volume 3, issue 2”). So, if a journal produced four issues per year, you’d receive four printed booklets in the mail each year. Today, journals often still use that terminology to organize their content. The volume typically corresponds to the number of years the journal has existed up to that point, and the issue is the numbered subdivision of that volume. Modern journals are increasingly getting rid of volume and issue numbers, because those journals prefer a continuous publication schedule.
In this modern era in which scholarly works are almost always produced digitally, you can think of any publication as a type of digital object. To help keep track of digital objects, technicians invented the Digital Object Identifier, or DOI (pronounced: /ˌdiː.oʊˈaɪ/, like dee-oh-eye), which is a globally unique alphanumeric identifier for a specified object (the object could be an article, dataset, picture, audio file, book, book chapter, preprint, or anything else). They are convenient because they are persistent, meaning the DOI for an object won’t change, even if the website URL for the object is updated. That way, searching for and finding a digital object via its DOI is super simple.
5.4 Specifying your inclusion and/or exclusion criteria
Now that we’ve discussed the types of scholarly works you could search and how to format your queries, I want to now focus on the important step of creating inclusion and/or exclusion criteria. A criterion is “a principle or standard by which something may be judged or decided” (Oxford Dictionary of English, 2025). Your inclusion criteria are your criteria that define the types of works you want to include in your literature-review. Your exclusion criteria are your criteria that define the types of works you want to exclude from your literature-review.
The purposes of inclusion/exclusion criteria are primarily to help you organize your literature-review process. Often, a peer-reviewer will ask you how/why you decided to review only the scholarly works you ended up including in your literature-review write-up, or why you didn’t include other specific scholarly works that the peer-reviewer believes would be good to include. In that situation, having a clearly specified and logical list of inclusion/exclusion criteria will help validate your argument in response to that peer-reviewer. Indeed, if your inclusion/exclusion criteria are nonexistent or vague or illogical, the peer-reviewer might be correct in stating that your literature-review is severely incomplete due to major omissions of various types of scholarly works that you really should’ve included in the first place.
Importantly, your inclusion/exclusion criteria should be compatible with your goals for your research (e.g., your research-questions and hypotheses). For example, if you want to figure out the average job-satisfaction of workers in the United States since the COVID-19 pandemic, then your inclusion/exclusion criteria might look like this:
- I only want information that was published in high-quality outlets, such as high-quality journals, or official U.S. government databases (because I don’t want any results that came from a sloppy measurement of job-satisfaction, nor incorrect methods for calculating the statistics).
- I don’t want any conference posters, due to the high variability in the quality of peer-reviews for conferences.
- I want the information to be based on data that was collected after 2018 (if the date of data-collection is unknown, I’ll exclude those sources).
- I want information about working adults in the USA.
The above list is just an example. You could create a much more specific set of criteria. You might even write a list of specific outlets and justify the list on the basis of their quality and your limited time. The appropriate level of detail will depend on your preference and the preference of whichever outlets you’re aiming to publish in.
5.5 Specifying your list of keywords
Especially in scholarly literature-reviews, the quality of your keywords can make a huge difference in the types of information you end up finding. This is especially true when scholars use different words to refer to one concept. For example, there is a concept in statistics known as Simpson’s paradox, but it is also known as Simpson’s reversal, the Yule–Simpson effect, and the amalgamation paradox. Imagine if you only searched for scholarly works that included the keyword Simpson's paradox, and you ended up not finding several newer publications that use the more recent keywords such as Yule–Simpson effect or amalgamation paradox.
Thus, it is extremely important to keep a list of all of the keywords that are relevant to your query.
A.I. tools can be very helpful for coming up with a great list of keywords. For example, you could just ask an A.I. tool something like: “Please give me a comprehensive list of keywords I should include in my queries to find scholarly works about…[insert your main ideas here]” (in Section 5.9, I describe other ways for using A.I. tools to help with the literature-review process).
To find synonymous keywords, scholars also use thesauruses such as the APA Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms® (which requires a paid subscription) and dictionaries such as the APA Dictionary of Psychology (available for free online).
5.6 Where to find scholarly works
An experienced researcher can find high-quality scholarly works from a simple internet search, because such researchers are skilled at figuring out whether any research article uses rigorous methods. However, less-experienced researchers might not know how to differentiate between a high-quality scholarly peer-reviewed journal article versus an article that looks like a peer-reviewed journal article but is actually published in an outlet that has low-quality standards for the contents of its articles. To help you avoid getting misguided by poor-quality research articles, you can play it safe by sticking to publication outlets that have a long reputation of enforcing high standards for their content. I explain in the next few sections.
5.6.1 Searching via A.I.
Around the year 2022, A.I. tools exploded in popularity. Since then, those tools have been evolving at such a rapid pace that it would be a bit of a waste of time for me to go into lengthy detail about their various features—because there will likely be a much better A.I. tool by the time I finish writing this sentence!
Thus, rather than trying to describe those tools in this chapter (which only gets updated once per year), I think it would be much better to just talk about those tools. Feel free to email me if you want to chat.
A.I. tools can be extremely helpful for searching for scholarly works, especially if you are a beginner researcher. One particularly strong strategy is to use A.I. tools as a starting point, and then conduct your own search using the methods I describe in the remainder of this chapter.
In Section 5.9, I describe other ways for using A.I. tools to help with the literature-review process.
5.6.2 APA Databases
If I had to recommend one database that you can trust doesn’t have low-quality publication outlets, it would be the APA PsycArticles® database—for which most universities pay a subscription on behalf of their students. The APA PsycArticles® database contains the scholarly peer-reviewed journals that are published by the APA Journals™ publisher, as well as other high-quality journals that are affiliated with the APA.
You may have also heard of the APA PsycInfo® database, which would be my second recommended database for new IWO Psychology researchers—maybe even tied in first place with APA PsycArticles®. The APA PsycInfo® database contains many more journals than the APA PsycArticles® database (most of which aren’t affiliated with APA at all), but APA PsycInfo® doesn’t necessarily include the full text of the articles for you to read, unless you have a separate subscription to those third-party providers for those articles. In contrast, APA PsycArticles® provides you with the full text for all articles included in the database.
Now might be a good time to explain to you the difference between a database versus a host and/or platform. A database is a collection of data, and databases are typically updated to include the newest data into it. In contrast, a host and/or platform is merely a service that gives you access to a database. APA built a website interface—which it calls APA PsycNet®—as a platform where you can access all of APA’s various databases, including APA PsycArticles® and APA PsycInfo®. Similarly, you may have also heard of something known as EBSCOhost, which is another online platform for accessing many databases, including APA’s databases, depending on which databases you are subscribed to via EBSCOhost. Therefore, when describing where we will search for scholarly sources, we mustn’t say “I will search EBSCOhost”, because the databases you are subscribed to in EBSCOhost (perhaps via your university) may be very different than the ones I’m subscribed to, even though we’re both using the EBSCOhost platform. Thus, we must name the actual databases we are searching.
5.6.3 Web of Science™
Another good database for you to be aware of is the Web of Science Core Collection™, which is typically accessed via the Web of Science™ platform. The Web of Science Core Collection™ is a large database, and it does a much better job of filtering out low-quality outlets than Google Scholar does. Many researchers often refer to the Web of Science Core Collection™ as simply the Web of Science database—often abbreviated as WoS—but that is technically incorrect and confusing because the Web of Science™ platform can also be used to access other databases besides the Web of Science Core Collection™.
5.6.4 Library websites
Another resource worth keeping in mind is your university library website. If you are a student or employee of a university, your tuition dollars typically automatically help pay for dozens of database subscriptions which you can access via your library’s website. Depending on where you live, public libraries might also provide access at no charge to you. Most universities subscribe to APA PsycArticles® and APA PsycInfo®, and you would typically access them via a platform like EBSCOhost by using your university login credentials.
5.6.5 Google Scholar
Google Scholar has done a lot of good, especially by simplifying access to many scholarly works that would otherwise be difficult to find. However, less-experienced researchers can be easily duped on Google Scholar, because it also contains a lot of low-quality research. With time, you will learn how to identify a good paper (e.g., by evaluating the contents of the paper, the history of its authors, the history of the editors of the journal that published the paper, etc.), and then you can search Google Scholar with confidence.
5.6.6 Journals that IWO psychologists frequently publish in
In addition to databases which contain written works across hundreds of journals, you can also browse the websites of specific journals. As you become more experienced, you will develop a sense of which journals typically produce high-quality content. There are hundreds of journals that IWO psychologists typically publish in.
Below, I’ve included a small list of journals that may be particularly good for people who are new to IWO psychology, because I think that will give you a concrete launching point. However, by presenting you a small list of examples here, I’m risking biasing you into thinking these are somehow better than any journals I didn’t include in the list. There are dozens of high-quality journals I omitted from this list, simply because I didn’t want the list to be overwhelming for you.
Personally, I recommend keeping a spreadsheet of your favorite journals (including their website URLs, and other information you find useful), and then making a routine for reading through the abstracts of those journals so that you can stay at least somewhat up-to-date on the latest research in your areas of interest.
- Journal of Applied Psychology (JAP)
- Personnel Psychology (P. Psych)
- Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior
- Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology (JOOP)
- Journal of Business and Psychology (JBP)
- Journal of Occupational Health Psychology (JOHP)
- Academy of Management Annals
- Academy of Management Review (AMR)
- Human Resource Management Review
- Academy of Management Journal (AMJ)
- American Psychologist
- Psychological Bulletin
5.7 How should we phrase our search?
The text that you write into any search box (e.g., on an A.I. tool, a website, or computer database) is known as your query. Typically, the search boxes for many scholarly databases and search engines are built to handle Boolean queries, which are queries that use Boolean logic. Boolean queries contain special symbols that enable you to be very specific with your queries. Table 5.1 contains the most important symbols you should know.
Boolean logic is named after George Boole (1815–1864), who introduced its foundational concepts.
| Syntax element | Example Boolean query | What it does in a query |
|---|---|---|
AND |
work AND "psychological safety" |
We are requiring both expressions that are on either side of the AND operator. In this example, we’re saying we don’t want any results that only contain work nor only psychological safety; we only want results that contain both expressions. |
OR |
occupation OR work |
We are requiring at least one of the expressions on either side of the OR operator. In this example, we’re saying we want any results that contain either occupation, or work, or both occupation and work at the same time. |
NOT (sometimes also the minus sign: –) |
work NOT physics NOT joule |
Whatever the NOT operator is operating on will be excluded from the results. In this case, we’re searching for anything that contains work, but we don’t want anything that’s about physics nor joules, which involve a completely different definition of work. |
* (it’s an asterisk, but in queries it’s typically known as the wildcard symbol) |
work* |
We will get results containing any word beginning with work, such as worker, working, works, workable, etc. Some search engines allow wildcards inside a double quote, but some don’t. You can check the specifics of the search engine you’re using. |
" " (i.e., double quotes) |
occupational NOT "occupational therapy" |
Treat the contents inside the double quotes as a single intact phrase (also known as a string). In this example, we could end up with results that contain therapy, but not any results that contain occupational therapy as a sequence of two words. We could get results containing text such as occupation-related therapy, and therapy for occupations, but not anything that specifically contains occupational therapy. |
( ) (i.e., parentheses) |
(work OR organization*) AND (climate OR culture) |
Parentheses will group expressions in the same way you would for regular algebra (from grade school). In this example, we want results that are about work climate or work culture, which are also known as organizational climate or organizational culture. |
The other crucial thing to know is the types of database fields you can search within a search engine or database. Perhaps the best way to explain the concept of database fields is via an example. If you think of a spreadsheet, a field could be a column that you’ve labeled for a specific type of data. For example, if I want to create a simple database to list everyone in my company, such that each row of the spreadsheet will be a new person, then I might create these fields (or columns) in my spreadsheet: First name, Last name, Title, Department, Email. To make this example more concrete, see Table 5.2.
| First name | Last name | Title | Department | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jane | Smith | Project Manager | Human Resources | janesmith@example.com |
| Alex | Xela | Engineer | Computer Science | alexxela@example.com |
| Ricky | Bobby | Marketer | Marketing | rickkybobby@example.com |
Unfortunately, scholarly databases don’t all use the same names for the same types of fields. For example, for a field that contains the title of a journal, one database might call that field Journal whereas another database might call it Outlet. However, most databases typically make it very easy for you to see a complete list of all the fields you can search, as well as how to format your queries to search those fields.
Thus, equipped with the knowledge of Boolean query syntax and the database-specific formats for how to search in fields, you can combine those two to make highly-specific queries that specify what you want to search in various fields. For example, you could specify you want to search for psychological* AND safe* in the Title field, and also Review in the Journal field. That way, you’d get results from any journal with the word Review in the journal’s title (such journals typically publish literature reviews authored by experienced scholars), and your results would contain things like psychological safety or psychologically safe in the Title of the article.
5.8 Forward citation search and Backward citation search
Aside from entering queries into a searchbox, two more excellent techniques to discover scholarly-works relevant to your query are the forward citation search and backward citation search.
When you are conducting a backward citation search, you are essentially asking “What came before this publication?”. In other words, you’re moving backward across time. Specifically, you are looking at the references that are listed in the References or Bibliography section of a publication. For example, if I found a great journal article published in October 2025, I can look in the References section of that article and look up each of the sources listed in there. Logically, all of the sources in the References section were published before October 2025. Thus, we are searching backward across time.
When you are conducting a forward citation search, you are essentially asking “What came after this publication?”. In other words, you’re moving forward across time. Specifically, you are looking for any subsequent publications that are citing a specified prior publication. For example, if I found a great journal article published in January 1991, I can search databases to find any subsequent publications that reference the January 1991 article. Logically, any publication that references the 1991 article must have been published after January 1991. Thus, we are searching forward across time.
To do a forward citation search, you’ll need to use a search tool that supports that feature, such as:
- an A.I. tool;
- Google Scholar (free);
- the Scite® platform (requires a paid subscription);
- the APA PsycNet® platform (which requires a paid subscription);
- the Local Citation Network (free).
It is particularly easy in Google Scholar, because all you have to do is click on the Cited by button near any search result. Keep in mind, the publications that will be listed in one platform may be slightly different than those of another platform, because of their different underlying databases.
5.9 Other ways to use A.I. tools for literature-reviews
Here is a general list of some of the aspects of the scholarly literature-review process that A.I. tools can help you with:
- Clarifying and/or specifying your research-question.
- Creating an appropriate set of inclusion/exclusion criteria for the types of scholarly works you want to find.
- Creating a comprehensive list of keywords (including synonyms and near-synonyms) for your queries.
- Discovering publications that fit your inclusion/exclusion criteria and your keywords.
- Summarizing any publications that you’re struggling to understand or don’t have the time to read completely for now.
- Explaining/summarizing a broader topic, with cited references for you.
5.10 Use reference-management software to organize your collection of scholarly-works
As you are conducting your literature-review, you will start to build a collection of good publications that are relevant to your research-question. Many people will immediately download the PDF of each of those publications and put them in a folder on their computer. That is certainly fine, but there is a much more organized and user-friendly method for managing your collection. I’m talking about reference-management software.
Reference-management software (also known as citation-management software, or citation managers) helps you collect, store, organize, and cite any objects that you may want to reference (e.g., scholarly works such as articles, books, chapters, conference posters, etc.). Typically, reference-management software also enables you to effortless and automatically create a perfectly formatted (e.g., APA style) Reference list from all of the sources you’ve included in your manuscript.
Reference-management softwares rely on meta-data for the digital objects in your collection. Meta-data are any data that describe the digital object. Examples of meta-data include:
- The names of the authors or other creators.
- The date the object was published or created (e.g., publication date, or conference date).
- The title of the object (e.g., book title, article title).
- The object’s DOI.
- The name of the outlet in which the object is published (e.g., journal title, or website name).
Zotero® is one of the most popular reference-management softwares, probably because of its robust features and it is free! Zotero®, like many reference-management softwares, can automatically import the meta-data for any digital object, based on the object’s DOI or URL. In fact, Zotero® has a web-browser extension that will let you import digital objects into your collection by just clicking a button when you’re on the website of that digital object.
At the beginning of this course I included a tutorial on how to set up and use Zotero®. I also enjoy talking about Zotero® in general, so please feel free to email me if you have any questions.
5.11 Conclusion
This was a long chapter, so don’t worry if you feel a bit overwhelmed. I recommend revisiting this chapter multiple times across this semester and beyond, because the literature-review process is a skill that takes time to develop. The more you do it, the better you’ll get at it.