Ethics in the Software Development Process: a Tertiary Literature Review

Abstract

The study of ethics in computer science has gained significant attention in the past decade, particularly with the emergence of new artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Issues such as Privacy, Fairness, and Transparency are receiving greater attention from researchers and the debate surrounding them is gaining momentum. Despite this attention, practical applications of ethical issues within the software development process are lacking. Our purpose is to present a literature overview, identify gaps and suggest areas for future research. For this, we present a tertiary mapping of the literature summarizing the main advances in dealing with ethics in the software development process. We collected and analyzed 8 secondary studies to gain an understanding of this research domain. Among our conclusions, we found that more research efforts are needed to address ethics beyond the software requirements activities.