3 Mistakes in Writing a Literature Review (Including AI-Generated Writing)

Are you writing a dissertation, thesis, journal article, or research proposal and struggling with your literature review? After reading thousands of manuscripts as an academic researcher, journal editor, and professor, I continue to see the same problems appear in graduate student writing. Many literature reviews contain citations and summaries of prior studies, yet still fail to convince dissertation committees, peer reviewers, and journal editors. In this video, I discuss three common problems that weaken literature reviews: ✓ Making claims without sufficient empirical evidence ✓ Lack of logical progression and argument development ✓ The growing challenges of AI-generated academic writing You will learn why a literature review is not simply a summary of existing research but a theoretically grounded argument that establishes the importance of your study, identifies gaps in existing scholarship, and justifies your research contribution. 00:00 Introduction 01:00 What a Lit Review Is 01:46 Problem One No Evidence 05:02 Problem Two No Logic 09:53 AI Lit Reviews New Risks