The difference between a literature review and an annotated bibliography is organisation. "Sharma (2019) found… Thapa (2020) found… Karki (2021) found…" is a list, and it is the single most common weakness in student literature chapters.
A review groups sources by theme, synthesises across them, and arrives at a gap your research question then addresses. This tool gives you that structure, with the gap positioned as the hinge between the review and your methodology.
Read enough to see the shape of the field, then group findings by what they say rather than who said it. Each theme becomes a section, and every paragraph within it should draw on more than one source. A paragraph citing one study is a summary; a paragraph putting three studies in conversation is synthesis.
A quick test: if you could reorder your paragraphs without harming the argument, you have written a list. In a themed review each section builds on the previous one and the order is doing work.
Searching only international databases will often return little on a Nepal-specific question, and students conclude too quickly that no literature exists. Check NepJOL, university library repositories, and the research divisions of institutions such as Nepal Rastra Bank, the Central Bureau of Statistics and relevant ministries. Unpublished Master's theses in your own department library are legitimate sources and frequently the closest work to yours.
Where genuinely little exists on Nepal, review the international literature on the mechanism and be explicit that you are transferring findings from other contexts. That gap — an established relationship never tested in Nepal — is itself a perfectly respectable justification for a study, provided you argue it rather than assert it.
Conflicting findings are an opportunity. Where two studies conclude the opposite, ask what differed: population, setting, period, measurement, sample size. Explaining a conflict is exactly the critical engagement that distinguishes a strong review, and sometimes the disagreement is your gap.
Critical does not mean dismissive. "This study is weak" is not analysis. "This finding rests on 40 respondents in one institution, so it may not extend to larger or more varied settings" is — it names the limitation and what follows from it.
State plainly what is not yet known: an unstudied population, an untested relationship, an unexamined context, or contradictory findings nobody has reconciled. It must follow from the review you have just written; a gap appearing from nowhere reads as a justification invented afterwards.
Then show your research question addresses precisely that gap. This is the hinge of the thesis — it connects the literature to your methodology and answers the examiner's question of why the study needed doing. Write it explicitly rather than leaving it to be inferred.
State your scope: which databases, which years, which languages, what you included and excluded. This makes the review auditable and pre-empts "why did you not cite X?" — if X falls outside a stated boundary, you have an answer.
Prefer peer-reviewed work and recent work, except where a source is foundational. Not everything you read belongs in the chapter: a review is an argument, and material that does not serve it should be cut however long you spent reading it.
Around 25% of total word count in a typical Master's thesis, though departments differ. Follow your own guidelines.
Enough to establish the themes and the gap convincingly — often 40 to 60 for a Master's thesis. Coverage matters more than the count.
Check NepJOL, university repositories and institutional research divisions first. If little exists, review the international literature and treat the untested Nepali context as your gap — argued, not asserted.
Yes. Theses in your department library are legitimate sources and often the closest work to yours. Cite them properly and note that they are unpublished.
Thematic in almost every case. Chronological only makes sense when the development of thinking over time is itself your subject.