Estimate time to read papers for a literature review.
A literature review is a funnel. Every candidate paper costs a few minutes of abstract screening, but only a fraction warrant a full read with notes at around an hour each. Synthesis — organising themes, reconciling disagreements and drafting — adds roughly thirty percent of the reading time. Splitting the three stages is what turns a vague sixty-paper target into a schedulable number of hours.
Screening and reading
Screening minutes = papers x minutes per abstract; reading minutes = papers x full-read share x minutes per full read
Total effort
Total hours = (screening + reading + 0.3 x reading minutes) / 60
It depends on scope: a focused undergraduate review might use twenty to forty, a doctoral chapter well over a hundred. What matters is coverage of the relevant literature, not a count.
Define inclusion criteria before screening and apply them mechanically to titles and abstracts. Reading full texts to decide relevance is the single biggest time sink.