Experiences using systematic review guidelines

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

215 Scopus citations

Abstract

Systematic review is a method to identify, assess and analyse published primary studies to investigate research questions. We critique recently published guidelines for performing systematic reviews on software engineering, and comment on systematic review generally with respect to our experience conducting one. Overall we recommend the guidelines. We recommend researchers clearly and narrowly define research questions to reduce overall effort, and to improve selection and data extraction. We suggest that "complementary" research questions can help clarify the main questions and define selection criteria. We show our project timeline, and discuss possibilities for automating and increasing the acceptance of systematic review.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1425-1437
Number of pages13
JournalJournal of Systems and Software
Volume80
Issue number9
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 2007
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Thanks very much to anonymous referees whose comments on previous drafts of this paper have helped to improve it. Mark Staples is employed by National ICT Australia, and Mahmood Niazi was employed by National ICT Australia while conducting the work reported in this paper. National ICT Australia is funded through the Australian Government’s Backing Australia’s Ability initiative, in part through the Australian Research Council.

Keywords

  • Empirical software engineering
  • Systematic review

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software
  • Information Systems
  • Hardware and Architecture

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