Should each substantive chapter of a thesis have its own literature review in addition to the main literature review chapter?

"Should each chapter have a literature review even if it is repetitive from the main literature review chapter?"

No. Avoid putting the reader to sleep unnecessarily.


There is no one universal answer to this, because it depends on what is acceptable to your advisor and doctoral committee members. That answer is not a cop-out; it is the most important answer to all questions regarding appropriate formats for your doctoral dissertation.

As some of the comments suggest, you should do the homework to find out what has been accepted in the past in your department; sometimes your advisor doesn't know which is better, so presenting prior work (in your own department) would help your advisor decide what to expect. It is also important to ask your committee members, or at least to inform them in advance of what your advisor prefers, or else you might find that they have different preferences.

If you want a universal answer, I can only offer my own reasoned perspective:

  • For a unitary thesis (that is, a book-format dissertation), I would prefer a single literature review chapter. It would be annoying to read if other chapters would repeat that same content; I think that would be completely unnecessary.

  • For an article-format thesis (e.g. three journal-style articles), I understand the goal to be that each of the article chapters would be able to serve as a standalone journal article. In that case, each one would certainly require its own literature review and repetition would be inevitable and even necessary. However, copy-and-paste repetition is not acceptable, mainly because you would need to avoid copyright infringement and multiple submission. That is, when you submit each journal article, you would be claiming that each one is completely original, and so there can be no word-for-word repetition. You would need to completely rewrite the literature review for each article using your own original words.

Again, even though that is my perspective, the only perspective that really matters is that of your advisor and your committee members.