The ability to conduct an explicit and robust literature review by students, scholars or scientists is critical in producing excellent journal articles, academic theses, academic dissertations or working papers. A literature review is an evaluation of existing research works on a specific academic topic, theme or subject to identify gaps and propose future research agenda. Many postgraduate students in higher education institutions lack the necessary skills and understanding to conduct in-depth literature reviews. This may lead to the presentation of incorrect, false or biased inferences in their theses or dissertations. This study offers scientific knowledge on how literature reviews in different fields of study could be conducted to mitigate against biased inferences such as unscientific analogies and baseless recommendations. The literature review is presented as a process that involves several activities including searching, identifying, reading, summarising, compiling, analysing, interpreting and referencing. We hope this article serves as reference material to improve the academic rigour in the literature review chapters of postgraduate students’ theses or dissertations. This article prompts established scholars to explore more innovative ways through which scientific literature reviews can be conducted to identify gaps (empirical, knowledge, theoretical, methodological, application and population gap) and propose a future research agenda.

This study explores urbanization and flood events in the northern coast of Central Java with river basin as its unit of analysis. Two types of analysis were applied (i.e., spatial data and non-spatial data analysis) at four river basin areas in Central Java—Indonesia. The spatial analysis is focused on the assessment of LULC change in 2009–2018 based on Landsat Imagery. The non-spatial data (i.e., rural-urban classification and flood events) were overlaid with results of spatial data analyses. Our findings show that urbanization, as indicated by the growth rate of built-up areas, is very significant. Notable exposure to flood has taken place in the urban and potentially urban areas. The emerging discussion indicates that river basins possess dual spatial identity in the urban system (policy- and land-use-related). Proper land use planning and control is an essential instrument to safeguard urban areas (such as the case study area) and the entire island of Java in Indonesia. More attention should be put upon the river basin areas in designing eco-based approach to tackle the urban flood crises. In this case, the role of governance in flood management is crucial.

Most literature on land tenure in sub-Saharan Africa has presented women as a homogenous group. This study uses evidence from Ghana, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe to show that women have differentiated problems, needs, and statuses in their quest for land access and tenure security. It illustrates how women-to-women differences influence women’s access to land. By investigating differentiations in women’s land tenure in the three countries, the study identifies multiple and somewhat interlinked ways in which differentiations exist in women’s land tenure. It achieved some key outcomes. The findings include a matrix of factors that differentiate women’s land access and tenure security, a visualisation of women’s differentiation in land tenure showing possible modes for actions, and an adaptable approach for operationalising women’s differentiation in land tenure policies (among others). Using these as evidence, it argues that women are a highly differentiated gender group, and the only thing homogenous in the three cases is that women are heterogeneous in their land tenure experiences. It concludes that an emphasis on how the differentiation among women allows for significant insight to emerge into how they experience tenure access differently is essential in improving the tenure security of women. Finally, it makes policy recommendations.

Land use consolidation aims to address food insecurity challenges in Rwanda. However, there is contradictory evidence on whether this tool has met food security objectives or not. This study addresses two questions: How has the land use consolidation improved (or not improved) food security at the local level? How can food security challenges be addressed using a renewed approach to land use consolidation that adopts a tenure responsive land use planning procedure? We investigate these questions in Nyange Sector (in the Musanze District) of Rwanda using mixed research methods. The study generates theoretical and policy relevant outcomes. Theoretically, it links the concept of tenure responsive land-use planning to food security improvements. Policy wise, it provides an operational framework for implementing land use consolidation to make it more responsive to food security (based on tenure responsive land-use planning measures) in Rwanda.

Considering the importance of connecting urbanization phenomena and vulnerability assessments, this paper aims to explore vulnerability assessment in three different city sizes in the northern coast of Central Java province of Indonesia. It compares the vulnerability levels of the three cities based on their sizes (that is, levels of urbanization). It uses the most current secondary data from the lowest administrative levels, called as kelurahan (urban village), for its assessment. There are two indexes used to indicate their vulnerability levels, namely exposure and sensitivity index (ESI) and adaptive capacity index (ACI). By combining the ESI and ACI, the study found that the kelurahans in Tegal (the medium sized city) have similar vulnerability levels. The kelurahans in Semarang (as the big city) have more combination of vulnerability levels—indicating that the city has various sensitivity, exposure, as well as adaptive capacity among its kelurahans. In Lasem (the small sized city), due to limitations imposed by adaptation—mostly because of lack of public services and high dependency on primary economic sectors—all of its kelurahans were found to be vulnerable. The study therefore concluded that the bigger a city is, the more the different areas of that city will have varying levels of vulnerability, leading to a high propensity of vulnerability among its inhabitants. On the other hand, the smaller a city is, the less capacity it will have in reducing its emerging vulnerability challenges