literature-review

Core Philosophy

A literature review is not a chronological laundry list of paper summaries. Writing "Author A found X. Then Author B found Y. Then Author C found Z" is an annotated bibliography, not a literature review. A true literature review is a critical synthesis: it maps the intellectual topography of an academic field. It groups disparate studies into coherent thematic clusters, exposes underlying methodological contradictions, evaluates statistical and experimental validity, identifies scholarly consensus, and highlights the precise research gap that your work fills.

4-Step Literature Review Synthesis Framework

Step 1: Systematic Search Strategy & PRISMA Protocols

1. Search Query Formulation:
   • Construct boolean search strings using controlled vocabulary (MeSH terms, IEEE keywords):
     • ("large language models" OR "LLMs") AND ("hallucination" OR "factual inconsistency") AND ("retrieval-augmented generation" OR "RAG")
2. Inclusion & Exclusion Criteria (PRISMA Flow):
   • Inclusion: Peer-reviewed conference/journal papers published 2020-2026, empirical benchmark evaluations, sample size $N \ge 100$.
   • Exclusion: Non-peer-reviewed blog posts, opinion pieces, non-English publications.