Annotated Bibliography Template by Question

Four choices shape the whole bibliography: the citation style, the kind of annotation, the length and the order. Take them from your assignment or the journal's instructions. If nothing is set, follow your field. UNC's Writing Center notes that the humanities generally use MLA, while psychology, nursing, sociology and social work use APA¹.

Cornell University Library puts a typical annotation at about 150 words². To pick the kind, UNC's handout suggests looking for clue words in the assignment. A request for analysis means you must evaluate each source, not just summarize it.

Before you collect anything, write down the two or three questions your paper must answer. "Microlearning and retention" is a topic. "Does microlearning beat one long training session?" is a question a source can help answer, or not.

Then cast a wide net and cut. Cornell's guide suggests recording every promising citation, looking at the items themselves, and keeping those that offer a variety of perspectives. Hold on to studies that disagree, since explaining a disagreement is often the most useful thing a paper does.

Running a systematic review? Screen first, against written inclusion criteria, and log why each excluded study was dropped. A PRISMA systematic review template handles that stage, and you annotate only the studies that pass.

An annotation is not an abstract. Cornell's guide calls abstracts purely descriptive, while annotations are descriptive and critical², commenting on things like the author's authority or point of view.

Abstracts can also mislead. A 2017 scoping review in BMC Medical Research Methodology summarized 17 studies that compared biomedical abstracts, most of them from conferences, with the full reports. The inconsistency rates they reported ran from 4% to 78%, with a median of 39%³. The major mismatches included study design, sample size, main results and conclusions.

So read the paper itself, and note four things while it is open:

• The method: trial, survey, case study, review or argument
• The sample or setting: who, how many and where
• The main finding, with its numbers
• The limitation that most affects how far you can rely on it

1. 1

   Summarize in two or three sentences

   Give the method, the sample or setting, and the specific finding. "Studied microlearning" names a topic, not a finding.

2. 2

   Evaluate in one or two sentences

   Name the kind of evidence and the one limitation that decides how much weight it can carry.

3. 3

   Connect it to your questions

   In one sentence, say which of your research questions it helps answer, and which it doesn't.

Use your own words. The Modern Language Association advises that annotations should not rehash minor details, quote the author or recount the steps in an argument⁴.

One closing sentence on relevance works when a project asks one question. Many theses and reviews ask two or three, and a source can be central to one and useless for the others. A single sentence or topic label hides that.

The paper you write next will be organized by question, not by source. The University of Toronto's Health Sciences Writing Centre says a literature review must be organized around and related directly to the thesis or research question⁵. So rate every source against every question.

Three ratings are enough. Central means you would cite the source when answering that question. Background means it informs the area without answering the question. Not relevant means it doesn't bear on the question at all. Give each rating a short reason, such as "Central: compares microlearning with one long session."

In this example, only Kowalski and Nakamura answer Q3. Their topic labels, safety training and onboarding, are not words you would search when writing about transfer. A question with few Central sources shows you where to look next.

Style each entry exactly as it would appear in your reference list, with the annotation directly beneath it. Purdue's Online Writing Lab notes that the annotation is indented 1 inch in MLA 9, and 0.5 inch in APA and Chicago⁶. The reference above it takes a hanging indent.

List entries alphabetically by author unless told otherwise. The MLA also allows ordering by title, publication date or subject⁴. It says to title the list Annotated Bibliography or Annotated List of Works Cited.

When it is time to write, the literature review synthesis tool organizes the review around the points where your studies disagree. Before you submit, the reference and citation check tests each citation against the passage meant to support it. River can also draft this template's annotations and ratings from your own sources.