Systematic Literature Review

A Systematic Literature Review is a special form of paper, which does not require original research, but is more a meta analysis of existing research. This kind of paper is often considered as valuable as a normal research paper with original research, because it gives an up-to-date overview (even including papers which have been published in the current year) and shows trends, research desiderata and shows where there are still aspects where nobody has conducted research upon so far, so that every researcher can find a starting point for his/her own research through a systematic literature review.

A systematic literature review answers a clear research questions and proofs the answer using the papers found. It does not take the results and methods of the papers examined for granted, but evaluates them critically.

A systematic literature review is different from a literature review. It differs, because it is strictly systematic and everybody will come to the same results by following the same steps as the author, who describes each step in detail in the paper. So a systematic literature review is a kind of research protocol.

At the beginning of the Review paper, there is the topic.

Then follows, the author's name (First Name, blank space, Last Name in Latin characters = Pinyin), affiliation (here: Hunan Normal University) and the country (here: China).

Then there is an abstract of not more than 500 words. (Better is 200 words.) This abstract is summing up the most important points, e.g. the research question, method and outcome.

After the abstract there should be an introduction explaining the topic, its relation to other topics, its place in the field etc.

Then there is a description of the research methodology / research design.

Then there is a protocol of the keywords used (the keywords depend on your topic, you may even use operatives or markers like reception, "Dream of the Red Chamber", West to receive better results - you can test different numbers of key words to find the best results, but once you have fixed the key words, you have to write them down into the protocol and stick with them), search engines used (for Chinese papers CNKI is recommended, for English one, http://xue.glgoo.org or similar ones), maybe you limit the years you search to the most recent ones, and if you receive too many results, you can restrict the search criteria more and more until you get a handy number of results.

So you document the number of articles found including language, year of publication etc. and maybe also according to other standards you may be able to filter easily (e.g. CSSCI journal etc.).

Then you download all the articles and sort out some of the articles. Each article you sort out you have to reason why, e.g. "The search produced 23 papers which titles matched the research topic totally. However, among the 23 papers, there were 2 papers which were shown double because they were published two times in different journals and 1 paper was obviously written with ChatGPT, because from the 12 references it indicated, I could only verify 3. Then I downloaded all remaining 20 papers. There was 1 paper, which matched all search criteria, but which was in fact not a research paper, but an essay by a famous poet with lofty thoughts about the topic. So 18 papers remained, I downloaded all of them, read them and found the following results: 2 papers only repeat the arguments found in earlier papers, so I dismissed them too. From the remaining 16 papers, 9 papers document negative receptions of the work in the West, 7 papers neutral or positive receptions. 13 papers divided the history of Western reception in 5 stages, 2 papers into 7 stages, the exact stages are: .... The paper by Liu is the newest and already summarizes the main trends in research results, which are: ... The paper by Yang and Wen is innovative, because it puts the reception in front of the historical background of ethnocentrism and China-bashing in the West around 18... and of the Chinoiserie around 17... After reading the 18 papers, there are three major research findings: ... And it becomes obvious that the following fields should be explored with further research: ....

You can also dedicate one paragraph each to each of the papers to explain the main results and you can group the papers one time into two groups according to one aspect/question and another time into 3 groups according to a different aspect.

You should also mention mistakes or results which have been taken over by later scholars, you should question, if you find that most of the papers follow the same general approach and mention alternative research approaches.

There are a lot of things you can say about the research in the field after you will have read 18 papers on the same topic. You can be a research guide and give well-reasoned comments. You are now an expert on the topic. You can also say: Although this systematic literature review shows that most of the Chinese paper authors claim a heavy influence of the Yijing in the West, if we look at today's reading habits of the young people, at teaching curricula in schools, at language abilities, at the overall knowledge of Chinese culture and history among Western readers, we have to admit that the impact of the Yijing is extremely limited. In comparison to ... The Yijing sold only 230.000 times in the West, while Elon Musks book "..." sold 1.3 mio. times. Also, the wide reception English translation of the Yijing does not mean that US Americans truly understand and apply Daoist thoughts, since the translation makes the Yijing an esoteric and almost religious book, with strong localization towards Christian thoughts. Therefore, several limits apply, if we want to measure impact by sales figures.

This is just a sample. You can come to totally different results. But I need to see that you have read all the papers, that you have digested them, that you are able to compare, to judge, to select, to dismiss, to find trends and common things, and that you can guide young researchers if they also want to conduct a study on this topic. Especially you should recommend what kind of research still needs to be done. Where is a small empty space in the area of research?

Please also refer to professional guides how to conduct a systematic literature review here:

Systematic Literature Review

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