Research Proposal Question: How do international trade policies affect food security in vulnerable nations?
Length
About 5-6 pages, single-spaced (~2,400-3,000 words).
Scope
A literature review synthesizes the published academic material relevant to a topic. You are not be expected to present original empirical research or a groundbreaking thesis, but simply to organize the resources you find, categorize the information so that it is digestible for the reader, identify trends in the literature, assess the state of research on the topic, and suggest ways forward. It’s those last few parts where you add your unique insight, and that make a literature review more than an annotated bibliography.
The review should be fairly exhaustive. At some point, you’ve read all the relevant texts you can find via the library and you’ve read the sources that those sources reference and you know you’ve hit the point of diminished returns. That’s a good place to stop. Remember that you don’t have to analyze every text; those that are relevant but not worth analyzing – due to them being less important or interesting, space constraints, or just because they don’t fit your framework – can be referenced in footnotes.
No empirical research (data gathering) is required.
You do not need to figure out your answer to the question you pose. The goal of the literature review is to report on the answers that other scholars have provided to that question.
Sources
As much as possible, the sources you use should be academic-quality: peer-reviewed journal articles, and books and book chapters published by academic presses. These can be accessed via the Copley Library.
Avoid relying on Google Scholar or other publically-available search engines to find the literature.
The number of sources you need to write a good lit review will vary depending on the question you are posing and the sources you are using. A good rule of thumb might be to use at least 10 high quality sources.
If you are having a hard time finding 10 high quality sources, then first re-evaluate your research process. Professor Staninger is available to help you with this.
If your process is good and you still can’t find enough high quality sources, consider broadening or rephrasing your question. Conversely, if you have found so many sources that it is not possible to review them, consider narrowing your question. (For example, change What is the potential of vertical farming? to What is the potential of vertical farming to reduce food insecurity?, or What is the potential of vertical farming in East Asia?)
Textual grounding
Whenever you reference a specific idea that an author makes, even if it’s not a quote, provide a citation. Your paper should be full of citations. Citations do a few valuable things:
They distinguish your argument from an argument made by someone else that you are presenting. That makes things clearer for the reader. And it prevents you from unintentionally plagiarizing someone else’s work.
They enable the reader to “go to the source” for more information.
They add a foundation layer to your work. This makes the point you are making sturdy.
You may use whichever citation format you wish, as long as it is commonly used in the social sciences and you are consistent in your use of it. I have no preference for parenthetical citations, footnotes, or endnotes – it’s up to you. There is no need to repeat the full citation every time you reference a source. In fact, doing so adds a lot of clutter. Consider using author-year-page number (e.g. Jones, 2023: 15) and Ibid to keep things clean and clear. Consult a style guide online for guidance and more options.
Provide a bibliography at the end that includes every source you cited in the paper. Sources that are not cited in the paper were not used and thus should not appear in the bibliography.
I recommend using good, short quotations from the texts every now and then. Avoid long quotes as they tend to crowd out the analysis.
