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Abstract
Recently there has been a great deal of advice published for information systems researchers aiming to conduct standalone literature reviews, and this advice has been, at times, confusing, contradictory and contested. In this opinion paper, we harmonize and resolve some crucial elements of this debate. In our view, literature review articles need to adhere to the same high standards of quality and trustworthiness as other empirical studies. We argue that a systematic approach, accompanied by transparent reporting, is essential for positivist as well as interpretivist reviews, regardless of their specific type, scope and methods. In terms of structure, we first recap the main genres of review articles used by information systems scholars, and present a high-level framework of the steps required to develop a literature review article. For each step, we then explain how the twin concepts of systematicity and transparency should be understood and embedded in the process of developing review papers across a wide range of genres, including positivist aggregative reviews as well as interpretive syntheses using iterative, inductive and abductive approaches.
Electronic supplementary material
The online version of this article (doi:10.1057/s41303-016-0020-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Supplementary Information accompanies this paper on the European Journal of Information Systems website (www.palgrave.com/journals)
Electronic supplementary material
The online version of this article (doi:10.1057/s41303-016-0020-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Supplementary Information accompanies this paper on the European Journal of Information Systems website (www.palgrave.com/journals)
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the Editor, Frantz Rowe, who was particularly helpful in guiding the paper through the review process. We are also thankful to Nura Jagabi, Jinglu Jiang, Donald MacLean, Junyi Yang, Stéphane Chalmeau, Gerit Wagner and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions on earlier versions of the manuscript.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Guy Paré
Guy Paré is a Professor of Information Technology Management and holds the Research Chair in Digital Health at HEC Montréal. His current research interests involve the clinical, organizational and economic impacts of telehealth applications, electronic medical record systems and health information exchange initiatives. Over the years, he has developed an expertise in several literature review approaches and methods.
Mary Tate
Mary Tate currently has a research appointment at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia. She has made many contributions to the discourse about literature review, including co-editing a special issue of Communications of the AIS, presenting workshops at leading conferences, and coaching at doctorial consortia.
David Johnstone
David Johnstone is a Senior Lecturer in Information Systems at Victoria University of Wellington. His research has focused on IT project governance, human information behaviour and literature review. He has published in journals such as Information Systems Frontiers and Behaviour and Information Technology, and leading information systems conferences.
Spyros Kitsiou
Spyros Kitsiou is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical and Health Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His areas of research include methods and guidelines for systematics reviews and meta-analyses as well as the effects of mobile health interventions for patients with chronic diseases.