When Literature Review Gaps Are Identified in the Viva
One of the most common corrections requests after a Malaysian postgraduate viva is to address gaps in the literature review — sources the examiners expected to see that were absent, recent publications that postdate your review and are now relevant, or bodies of literature adjacent to your topic that your review did not engage with. Knowing how to handle literature gaps after the viva as part of your corrections process means understanding both how to identify what is genuinely missing and how to address it efficiently without restructuring your entire literature review chapter.
The first step when you receive corrections related to literature gaps is to read each comment carefully and categorise what is being asked for. Is the examiner asking you to engage with a specific named source? Is the request to address a particular theoretical debate your literature review omitted? Or is the comment more general — suggesting that a body of work from a particular tradition or context was underrepresented? Each type of correction requires a different response.
Addressing a Specific Missing Source
When an examiner identifies a specific study or source that should have been included in your literature review, the correction is relatively straightforward. Locate the source, read it, and determine where in your existing literature review it would most logically fit. In most cases, adding one or two paragraphs that engage with the missing source — explaining its relevance to your research, its methodology, its key findings, and how it relates to the sources already reviewed — is sufficient to address the correction.
When writing the additional paragraphs, integrate them analytically rather than appending them awkwardly. The new material should connect to the surrounding discussion as naturally as if it had been included in the original draft. If the new source changes or nuances any of the claims made in the existing literature review, update those claims accordingly and note the change in your response letter to the examiners.
Addressing a Missing Body of Literature
A more challenging correction is the request to engage with an entire body of literature that your review neglected. This might require adding a new subsection to the literature review chapter, substantially revising an existing section, or reframing how certain topics are positioned within the chapter. Before making large structural changes, discuss the scope of the revision with your supervisor to confirm that the examiner’s expectation has been correctly understood and that the planned revision will satisfy the correction.
When adding new literature coverage, integrate it into the chapter’s existing argumentative structure rather than simply appending a new section at the end. The existing chapter has a logical flow that led to your research gap statement — any new literature added should either contribute to that flow or, where necessary, prompt a revision of the gap statement to reflect the fuller engagement with the field that the corrected chapter represents.
Updating Your Discussion to Reflect New Literature
When you add sources to the literature review as part of post-viva corrections, check whether your discussion chapter also needs updating. If the newly added literature engages with findings related to your own, the discussion should connect your findings to these sources as well as the sources already present. Failing to update the discussion when the literature review has been expanded creates an internal inconsistency — the literature review now acknowledges a body of work that the discussion ignores.
Document every change made in response to literature gap corrections in your response letter, with specific page references. “I have added Section 2.4 (pp. 45–52) engaging with the Malaysian workplace learning literature, which was identified as absent in the viva. The discussion chapter has been updated at pp. 178–180 to connect my findings to this literature.” This specificity makes the examiner’s verification efficient and demonstrates that you have engaged with the correction substantively rather than superficially.
