Literature Reviews and the Review Process: An Editor-in-Chief’s Perspective

As an editor-in-chief, I perceive we are approaching a crisis point with literature reviews and the reviewing process. The quality of literature reviews in submitted research is dropping, while there are more submissions with an expectation of faster reviews. The impact is that appropriate sources are not being cited and limited reviewer resources are being stressed on reviewing literature reviews. This paper reviews the literature on literature reviews and discusses how to perform them. I categorize literature review issues into five categories and make recommendations on how to correct literature review issues.