Scholarly Borders and Meaning Making: Uncovering the Research Practice and Decision Making Process of an Integrative Literature Review

This entry details the processes and decisions involved in the research practice connected to the literature review. With a specific audience of graduate students, early career scholars and those who are entering TPC from other related fields (e.g., composition, user experience), we focus on three specific areas related to the literature review: expanding researcher positionality; considering methodology; and selecting literature for inclusion. The meaning making and scholarly borders decisions are further streamlined in the move from conceptual, methodological, and theoretical considerations to those of the actual practice and process of research. Since the goal of this paper is on the process of finding literature and making rhetorical choices, we end with a discussion of demystifying the integrative literature review process with two important implications for doing a literature review.