Tips on organising the survey of a large body of literature For a paper I am currently writing, I am doing an extensive literature review on a subject which is much more vast than I had anticipated. Are there any specific tricks and tips for organizing ones reading when the body of literature is so large? I tend to get carried away with interesting references and lose the overview a little. If I read everything linearly from A-Z, I would not have the time to finish my review. My goal is thus instead to have a non-exhaustive, but ideally representative impression of the structure of the literature (that is, different strands of research, who 'responded' to whom, etc.).

I would very much appreciate any hints from an experienced academic.
If my opinion, a good survey is not a snapshot of what is out there in the literature, but rather is a presentation of the current state of knowledge on a subject (which will necessarily involve some snapshots of what is out there).  This model of knowledge is the novel contribution of the survey.  Your goal, then, is to develop enough expertise in the "lay of the land" to be able to see a pattern that may have never been explicitly enunciated in the literature before.

As such, I recommend the following iterative approach, which has been useful for me in preparing surveys:


Begin with a hypothesis of the structure of knowledge on your topic.
With keyword searching, find lots of articles related to the topic.
Do not read the articles: read just enough to make sure they are actually relevant, and download and organize them into categories based on your hypothesis.
When you've got a big enough pile, skim them to see how your hypothesis is holding up, and adjust it to fit the reality of what you've found.
Repeat from 2, with your adjusted hypothesis, gathering more references, until you find your hypothesis is beginning to stabilize.  Once you've got a stable hypothesis, you are ready to write, and your final organization will reflect the discovery enunciated in your final hypothesis.


A good survey is probably going to be in the 50 - 200 reference range.  If you are finding that you are gathering many more than that, consider whether your subject is too broad and you need to narrow its focus.  It may also be that you have an appropriate focus, but that you are thinking about too many details, and you need to go into less depth in your investigation.