Building Confidence in Literature Review Skills and Planning the Next Phase
Writing a literature review seemed intimidating at first. It’s not just “summarising articles” like I did in undergrad. I realised that a good review requires identifying patterns, gaps, and tensions, and that takes a different kind of focus.
To help myself get started, I created a spreadsheet with columns for author, year, flower type studied, country, LCA methods used, and whether CE was mentioned. Surprisingly, many studies focus on cut flowers, but potted plants are rarely the main subject. That made me realise my project could highlight a gap in current research.
As I read more, I also began to see small opportunities for impact. Some florists might already be using CE principles—like composting or reusing containers—even if they don’t label it that way. That made me more motivated to make the final output useful and readable, maybe even as a practical guide alongside the academic review.
My next step is to start drafting the introduction and rationale sections, while continuing to read and refine my dataset. I still have a lot to do, but now I feel more confident in my methods—and more excited about what I might find.
I’m glad you’ve had this realisation about literature reviews Xizhi. I often think literature review is the wrong instruction because what we want you to do is “identify concepts and synthesise ideas” to create and build the foundations for a new project – this is so much more (and in my mind, so much more interesting) than reviewing what has already been written in the literature. It sounds like you are doing that building process (and in doing so finding gaps!). What are the key concepts for your project do you think?