ABSTRACT
There has been an explosion of interest in editorials and regular articles investigating literature reviews as a research method in the field, information systems (IS). This chapter illustrates various types of reviews that are considered to be most relevant to IS. They include narrative reviews, descriptive reviews, scoping reviews, critical reviews, conceptual review, theory development reviews, qualitative systematic review, and umbrella review. The chapter explains a decision tree (along with its dimensions) that aims to help prospective authors of reviews decide how to best position their contribution. The dimension of the decision tree corresponds to the overarching goal of the review with respect to theory. It is important to note that the decision tree proposed shows the similarities and differences across review types and as such, each path of the decision tree is characterized by a high level of internal coherence.
