Quick reference
A literature review outline is the section skeleton you commit to before drafting: headings, order, per-section word targets, and one claim per section. The right skeleton depends on the format — a thematic journal review, a dissertation chapter, a PRISMA systematic review, a conference Related Work section, and a grant background each follow a different template. All five are below, ready to copy.
What you'll find on this page
Five copy-paste-able outline templates (one per format), a comparison table for choosing between chronological, thematic, and methodological organization, a workflow for filling in your outline's theme sections from a citation map, and an FAQ. If you want worked prose examples rather than skeletons, see our literature review examples page; for the drafting process itself, see how to write a literature review.
- 1Thematic Standalone Review Article
- 2Dissertation / Thesis Chapter (Chapter 2)
- 3PRISMA Systematic Review
- 4Conference Paper Related Work Section
- 5Grant Proposal Background / Significance
- +Chronological vs thematic vs methodological
Why outline before drafting
Almost every structural failure examiners flag in literature reviews — the annotated-bibliography drift, the bloated introduction, the gap statement that appears from nowhere — is an outlining failure, not a writing failure. An outline forces three commitments while they're still cheap to change: the organizing principle (chronological, thematic, or methodological), the word budget per section, and the location of the gap statement. It also gives you a sorting frame for your reading: a paper that fits no section means your skeleton is missing a section, and a section with no papers means you can't write it yet.
The templates below are format-level skeletons. Copy the one matching your assignment, rename the theme sections for your topic, and assign your papers to sections before writing prose. Word counts are targets drawn from published conventions in each format, not rules — but if a section in your draft lands at triple its target, the outline is telling you it wants to be two sections.
The five outline templates
Template 1 · 6,000–10,000 words · 80–150 references
Thematic Standalone Review Article
A self-contained journal review article (Annual Review style) surveying an entire subfield.
- Abstract150–250 words
State the field, the period covered, the organizing themes, and the one-sentence synthesis claim. Write it last; outline it first so you know what the review must deliver.
- 1. Introduction — the question and why now600–900 words
Define the scope precisely (topic, years, what's excluded) and justify the timing — what changed in the field that makes a synthesis overdue.
- 2. How this review was assembled400–600 words
Even narrative reviews now report search strategy: databases, seed authors, citation chasing, inclusion logic. Two paragraphs is enough; transparency disarms reviewers.
- 3–5. Theme sections (three to five)1,200–1,800 words each
One H2 per theme, named after a research thread, not a date range. Each opens with a claim-bearing topic sentence and closes with what that thread leaves unresolved.
- 6. Synthesis and conceptual framework800–1,200 words
The section that makes it a review rather than a list: how the themes relate, where they agree, where they contradict, and the framework or taxonomy you propose.
- 7. Gaps and research agenda600–900 words
Name 3–5 specific gaps (population, method, region, mechanism) and rank them. Vague "more research is needed" closers are a reject signal.
- 8. Conclusion300–500 words
Restate the synthesis claim and its implication for practitioners or the next wave of studies. No new citations here.
Outline note: Theme sections carry roughly 60% of the total word count — if your outline gives them less, the review will read as an extended introduction.
Template 2 · 8,000–15,000 words (PhD) · 4,000–8,000 (master's) · 100–250 references
Dissertation / Thesis Chapter (Chapter 2)
The literature review chapter of a PhD dissertation or master's thesis, ending in your research question.
- 2.1 Chapter introduction and road map500–800 words
Tell the examiner how the chapter is organized and what it will conclude. Committees read this paragraph to decide how carefully to read the rest.
- 2.2 Theoretical foundations1,500–2,500 words
Define key constructs and the theory (or competing theories) your study sits inside. Cite the original theoretical statements, not just recent applications of them.
- 2.3–2.5 Empirical literature by sub-question1,500–2,500 words per sub-section
One sub-section per component of your research question. Group studies by finding, not by author; end each with a mini-gap that your study will pick up.
- 2.6 Methodological literature1,000–1,500 words
How has this question been studied — designs, instruments, populations? This sub-section justifies your Chapter 3 choices before you make them.
- 2.7 Gap analysis and research question800–1,200 words
Roll the mini-gaps into one explicit gap statement, then state your research question or hypotheses as its direct consequence. This is the hinge of the whole thesis.
- 2.8 Chapter summary400–600 words
One paragraph per preceding sub-section, then a hand-off sentence to the methodology chapter.
Outline note: Number the sub-sections in your outline from day one — committees reference them by number in feedback, and renumbering late is painful.
Template 3 · 5,000–12,000 words · 20–80 included studies
PRISMA Systematic Review
A pre-registered, reproducible review answering a focused clinical or policy question under the PRISMA 2020 guideline.
- Structured abstract250–300 words
PRISMA-A prescribes the sub-headings: background, methods, results, discussion, registration. Journals check compliance mechanically.
- 1. Introduction — rationale and objectives600–900 words
State the PICO (population, intervention, comparator, outcome) question explicitly and cite any prior reviews you are updating or superseding.
- 2. Methods1,500–2,500 words
Sub-headings are non-negotiable: eligibility criteria, information sources, search strategy (full strings in an appendix), selection process, data extraction, risk-of-bias assessment, synthesis methods. Another team must be able to redo your search.
- 3. Results — flow diagram and findings1,500–3,000 words
Open with the PRISMA flow diagram (identified → screened → eligible → included counts), then a characteristics table, then synthesis organized by outcome.
- 4. Discussion1,000–1,500 words
Summary of evidence, limitations of the included studies AND of your review process (language, database, and geographic coverage), and implications.
- 5. Registration and funding150–250 words
PROSPERO registration number, protocol deviations, funding, and conflicts. Outline this section first — registration happens before searching.
Outline note: Unlike every other template here, the outline is fixed by the guideline — your freedom lives in the question, the search, and the synthesis, not the headings.
Template 5 · 800–1,500 words · 20–40 hand-picked references
Grant Proposal Background / Significance
The literature portion of an NIH Significance section or NSF Project Description — arguing fundability, not surveying.
- The unsolved problem150–250 words
Open with the cost of the problem (clinical, economic, scientific) in one paragraph a non-specialist panel member can repeat to the room.
- What is currently known300–500 words
Name 3–5 groups by PI and their specific contributions. Naming competitors accurately signals command of the field; one of them may be your reviewer.
- The critical gap150–250 words
One precisely-bounded gap that all the named groups have left open — and that, left open, blocks the field. This is the sentence the panel summary will quote.
- Why your approach closes it200–400 words
The bridge from gap to aims: your method, model, or dataset and why it can do what the cited work cannot. Cite your own preliminary publications here.
- Payoff if successful100–200 words
What changes for the field or the patient population if the aims succeed. Reviewers score significance partly on this paragraph.
Outline note: Reviewers spend under 10 minutes per proposal — outline so that reading only the first sentence of each paragraph still delivers the full argument.
Two of these templates have close cousins worth knowing the boundary between. If you're unsure whether your project needs the narrative skeleton (templates 1–2) or the pre-registered PRISMA one (template 3), the distinction is reproducibility, not length — our literature review vs systematic review comparison walks the decision in detail.
Chronological vs thematic vs methodological — choosing the organizing principle
Before any headings get named, the outline commits to one organizing principle. Thematic is the default for good reason — it forces synthesis — but the other two are the right call in specific situations. The table names the trade-offs.
| Dimension | Chronological | Thematic | Methodological |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sections are named by | Period or era ("Early work, 1990–2005", "The deep-learning turn"). | Research thread or concept ("Off-target detection", "Monopsony explanations"). | Study design or technique ("Survey-based studies", "Natural experiments", "RCTs"). |
| Best when | The field's history IS the argument — paradigm shifts, a debate that evolved in clear stages. | Multiple parallel research threads exist and your contribution is connecting or contrasting them. The default for most reviews. | Findings conflict and the conflict tracks method — your synthesis is about which designs produce which answers. |
| Main risk | Degenerates into an annotated timeline; recent work gets cramped into one bloated final section. | Themes chosen lazily (one per famous lab) instead of analytically; overlapping papers get cited twice with no added insight. | Reads as a methods catalogue; the substantive question disappears behind design taxonomy. |
| Gap statement flavor | "The current phase has not yet addressed …" | "No work connects thread A with thread B …" | "No study has tested this with design X in context Y …" |
| Typical home | History of science, historiography, mature debates (e.g. minimum wage). | Most journal reviews, dissertation chapters, Related Work sections. | Evidence-synthesis fields: medicine, education, applied psychology, economics. |
Hybrids are common and legitimate: thematic top-level sections with a short chronological arc inside each theme is probably the most-published structure in journal reviews. What gets rejected is unintentional structure — themes that are secretly one famous lab each, or a chronology that is really an annotated timeline.
Fill in your outline from a citation map
The hardest part of any thematic outline is naming the theme sections — and naming them from your reading order alone tends to reproduce whatever path you stumbled through the literature. A geographic citation map gives you the field's actual structure instead: map the scholars whose work anchors your topic, and the citing-institution clusters that appear are the schools of thought your themes should track. The five-step version:
- 1
Map 3–5 seed authors
Generate a citation map for each researcher whose name recurs in every key paper you've read. The combined geographic footprint is your field's raw material.
- 2
Read clusters as candidate themes
Dense city-level clusters that cite each other heavily are schools of thought. Each distinct cluster is a candidate theme section — name it after what the cluster studies, and you have outline headings grounded in the actual structure of the field rather than in your reading order.
- 3
Size sections by cluster weight
A cluster contributing 40% of the citing institutions deserves more outline word count than one contributing 5%. Allocating per-section targets from cluster weight keeps the review proportionate to the field — a balance examiners check intuitively.
- 4
Turn empty regions into the gap section
Regions or institution types absent from every seed author's map are either genuine research gaps or non-English literatures you haven't searched. Both belong in the gap-analysis section of your outline, stated as auditable claims.
- 5
Re-map before submission
After drafting, re-run the maps and check each outline section cites authors from the clusters that define it. A theme section citing only one geographic cluster is the signature of an accidental blind spot.
The payoff lands twice. At outline stage, clusters name your theme sections and weight your word budgets. At gap-analysis stage, the empty regions become auditable gap claims — "no published work on X from Latin American institutions" is checkable in a way "more research is needed" never is. The full method is in our citation map for literature review guide; to try it now, drop any Google Scholar profile into the search page — the map renders in a few seconds.
From outline to draft
Once the skeleton holds — every section has a heading, a word target, an assigned stack of papers, and a one-sentence claim — drafting becomes section-by-section work rather than a blank-page problem. Draft theme sections first (they're where the thinking happens), the synthesis and gap sections second (they depend on what the themes established), and the introduction and abstract last (they describe a document that now exists). For the sentence-level craft inside each section — topic sentences that claim rather than summarize, synthesis moves, positioning paragraphs — pick up at how to write a literature review, and keep a few finished worked examples open beside your draft as calibration.
Frequently asked questions
What is a literature review outline?+
A literature review outline is the section-by-section skeleton you build before drafting: the headings, the order, the per-section word targets, and one line on what each section must argue. It is not a list of papers — papers get assigned to sections after the skeleton exists. A good outline answers three questions before you write a sentence: how is the review organized (chronologically, thematically, or methodologically), how long is each section, and where does the gap statement land.
How detailed should my outline be before I start writing?+
Detailed enough that every section has a heading, a word target, and a one-sentence claim it must establish — roughly one outline line per 300–500 words of final text. Less than that and you'll discover structural problems mid-draft; more than that and you're writing the review in bullet form. For a 10,000-word dissertation chapter, expect an outline of 25–35 lines. Assign your key papers to sections at outline stage: a paper that fits nowhere signals a missing section, and a section with no papers signals a section you can't yet write.
Should I organize my literature review chronologically or thematically?+
Thematic is the default and the safest choice — it forces synthesis because each section must group papers by idea rather than by date. Choose chronological only when the field's history is itself the argument (clear paradigm shifts or a debate that evolved in stages), and methodological only when conflicting findings track study design. Many strong reviews hybridize: thematic top-level sections with a brief chronological arc inside each theme. What reviewers reject is the unintentional structure — a 'thematic' review whose themes are really just one famous lab each, or a chronological review that's an annotated timeline.
How many sections should a literature review have?+
Three to five body theme sections, plus the fixed machinery around them (introduction, synthesis, gap analysis, conclusion). Fewer than three themes and the review usually hasn't decomposed the field; more than five and sections shrink below the ~1,000 words needed to synthesize rather than summarize. Format changes the totals: a conference Related Work runs 3–5 compressed subsections of 100–250 words each, a PRISMA systematic review has its sections fixed by the guideline, and a grant background compresses everything into five short moves across 800–1,500 words.
Do I write the outline before or after reading the literature?+
Both — in two passes. Draft a provisional outline after reading 10–15 papers (enough to guess the themes), then revise it once your reading is substantially complete and before drafting prose. The first-pass outline directs your reading: it tells you which threads are thin and need more papers. The second-pass outline is the structural commitment you draft against. Writers who skip the first pass read aimlessly; writers who skip the second discover during drafting that two sections are actually one and a third doesn't exist in the literature.
What's the difference between a literature review outline and a template?+
A template is the format-level skeleton shared by every review of that type — every PRISMA review has the same methods sub-headings, every dissertation chapter ends in a gap analysis. An outline is your instantiation of the template for your topic: the template says 'three to five theme sections', your outline names them ('High-fidelity Cas9 variants', 'Computational off-target prediction'). Start from the template that matches your format — the five on this page cover the common cases — then fill in topic-specific headings, word targets, and the papers assigned to each section.
Where does the gap statement go in the outline?+
At the end of the body, immediately before whatever the review hands off to — the research question in a thesis chapter, the research agenda in a standalone review, the specific aims in a grant. Plan it as its own outline line, never as an afterthought inside the conclusion. In thematic outlines, seed it earlier too: end each theme section with a one-sentence mini-gap, then roll the mini-gaps into the full gap statement. That structure makes the final gap feel earned rather than asserted — which is precisely what examiners and reviewers check.