A literature review is an overview or discussion of existing scholarship that has been published on a topic. It is not an annotated bibliography. It explains what previous scholarship exists on the topic, it places the current research into the context of what is already known, and it may identify knowledge gaps or conflicts.
"Literature Reviews: An Overview for Graduate Students" by North Carolina State University Libraries.
Scholarly articles often have different sections with headings. The literature review usually appears in the introduction. See more about the segments used in many scholarly articles that publish research results in: "What's a research article?" When considering whether an article is useful for your research, it may be efficient to first look at certain segments.
Start by using the article title and abstract to decide whether to keep reading. Then skip to the findings and discussion. If it's still relevant, read the entire article critically. There's a tutorial on this from another University:
