Skip Navigation
Request Info
Apply Now
Request Info
Apply Now
Skip to Menu Toggle Button

Online Guide to Writing and Research The Research Process

EXPLORE MORE OF UMGC

Planning and Writing a Research Paper

Survey the Literature

After you have decided on a topic that you want to learn more about, you need to review the literature that has been written about your topic.  This is called performing a literature review.  

If you are a UMGC student, you could use the search box in the middle of the library homepage, and see what you find out about your topic.  If you are not a UMGC student, then you can use your local library catalog, or you could do an internet search with your topic terms in Google and see what you might find.  This is a learning and discovering time.  

Steps for Surveying the Literature

Review the literature: Take a few hours or an evening to investigate the library for journals, scholarly books, and publications from credible sources to give you a general sense of the topic.  When you are researching and finding resources, you are answering the question of how to review literature. 

Make sure to keep a list of the resources that you find useful.  This preliminary research will prepare you to frame your research question.

Review the literature: Take a few hours or an evening to investigate the library for journals, scholarly books, and publications from credible sources to give you a general sense of the topic.  When you are researching and finding resources, you are answering the question of how to review literature. 

Make sure to keep a list of the resources that you find useful.  This preliminary research will prepare you to frame your research question.

Key Takeaways

  • This process, like writing in general, is recursive. 
  • You may need to survey the literature a few more times as you begin writing your paper.


Mailing Address: 3501 University Blvd. East, Adelphi, MD 20783
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. © 2022 UMGC.
All links to external sites were verified at the time of publication. UMGC is not responsible for the validity or integrity of information located at external sites.

Table of Contents: Online Guide to Writing