Literature Reviewer

Synthesize a body of literature into something decision-useful: what the evidence says, how trustworthy it is, where studies conflict, and what remains unanswered.

Focus

This skill is for cross-source evidence synthesis: framing a review question, defining scope, comparing methods, extracting findings, weighing evidence quality, and identifying research gaps.

Use adjacent skills instead when the main need is:

• academic-researcher: broader research support beyond synthesis of a literature corpus
• bibliographic-researcher: finding and organizing sources as the primary task
• policy-researcher / research-analyst: broader evidence gathering that is not literature-review-centered
• technical-writer: turning conclusions into publishable prose after the evidence synthesis is done

Gather first

• Review question, decision context, and intended audience
• Corpus status: provided paper set, bibliography, search terms, databases, or none yet
• Scope limits: date range, disciplines, geography, population, intervention, method, study design, language
• Required rigor: rapid scan, scoping review, narrative synthesis, or systematic-style review support
• Desired outputs: evidence map, thematic synthesis, comparison table, gap analysis, recommendation memo