2020/06/09 by Claes Wohlin, Emília Mendes, Wohlin, Claes +5 · 3 citations
Computer Science · #Advanced Software Engineering Methodologies #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Software Engineering (cs.SE) #Software Engineering Research #Software Engineering Techniques and Practices #Software System Performance and Reliability
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2006.05542
openalex publication_date 2020/06/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Context: Systematic Literature Reviews (SLRs) have been adopted within\nSoftware Engineering (SE) for more than a decade to provide meaningful\nsummaries of evidence on several topics. Many of these SLRs are now potentially\nnot fully up-to-date, and there are no standard proposals on how to update SLRs\nin SE. Objective: The objective of this paper is to propose guidelines on how\nto best search for evidence when updating SLRs in SE, and to evaluate these\nguidelines using an SLR that was not employed during the formulation of the\nguidelines. Method: To propose our guidelines, we compare and discuss outcomes\nfrom applying different search strategies to identify primary studies in a\npublished SLR, an SLR update, and two replications in the area of effort\nestimation. These guidelines are then evaluated using an SLR in the area of\nsoftware ecosystems, its update and a replication. Results: The use of a single\niteration forward snowballing with Google Scholar, and employing as a seed set\nthe original SLR and its primary studies is the most cost-effective way to\nsearch for new evidence when updating SLRs. Furthermore, the importance of\nhaving more than one researcher involved in the selection of papers when\napplying the inclusion and exclusion criteria is highlighted through the\nresults. Conclusions: Our proposed guidelines formulated based upon an effort\nestimation SLR, its update and two replications, were supported when using an\nSLR in the area of software ecosystems, its update and a replication.\nTherefore, we put forward that our guidelines ought to be adopted for updating\nSLRs in SE.\n