Towards Sustainability of Systematic Literature Reviews

Santos, Vinicius dos; Iwazaki, Anderson; Felizardo, Katia Romero; Souza, Érica Ferreira de; Nakagawa, Elisa Yumi

doi:10.1145/3475716.3484192

Cited by 5 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Considering the problems aforementioned, the work of Santos et al (2021) introduced the concept of sustainability in SLR as a new vision about how to deal with SLR, in particular, regarding the main barriers of SLR and current difficulties/threats to validity. This work encompassed the social barriers (mainly associated with human aspects of SLR, such as communication, and culture), economic barriers (associated with the high consumption of time and effort while planning, conducting, or updating SLR), and technical barriers (related with tools and technologies used to support SLR conduction).…”

Section: Background and Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this scenario, the concept of sustainability was recently introduced to the SLR context as a disruptive view on the SLR problems and associated mitigation (SANTOS et al, 2021). This view brings to light an integrated way to observe SLR problems, consequently, raising awareness about the importance of changing researchers' mindsets about the impacts of their decisions while planning, conducting, reporting, or updating an SLR.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This view brings to light an integrated way to observe SLR problems, consequently, raising awareness about the importance of changing researchers' mindsets about the impacts of their decisions while planning, conducting, reporting, or updating an SLR. In short, sustainability in SLR is defined as "the process and a set of actions to make it possible to preserve SLR that endure over time (i.e., longevity) with less possible time and effort consumed and an effective impact to the industry" (SANTOS et al, 2021). In particular, such sustainability addresses three main dimensions (SANTOS et al, 2021): social, economic, and technical.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In short, sustainability in SLR is defined as "the process and a set of actions to make it possible to preserve SLR that endure over time (i.e., longevity) with less possible time and effort consumed and an effective impact to the industry" (SANTOS et al, 2021). In particular, such sustainability addresses three main dimensions (SANTOS et al, 2021): social, economic, and technical. These dimensions state that the current SLR problems need to be treated using multiple perspectives and integrated solutions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the SLR domain, sustainability considers three main dimensions (SANTOS et al, 2021): social, economic, and technical. Social dimension addresses the human aspects associated with SLR, such as communication and collaboration, and ensures the effective participation of stakeholders in the SLR process.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Sustainability of Systematic Literature Reviews

Santos

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Context: Systematic Literature Review (SLR) has been increasingly adopted in Software Engineering (SE) because it is considered the most reliable way to gather evidence from the literature. At the same time, SLR currently consumes much time and effort to be conducted, and its results have not impacted the software industry as expected. Despite several solutions proposed to solve the problems of SLR, the research remains very fragmented failing to provide a bigger picture of the problems and associated solutions. Objective: This study introduces the concept of sustainability in SLRs to the SE community as a holistic view of the current research scenario putting together a solid knowledge base that includes definitions, guidelines, and the main leveraging points of sustainability in current SLR conducted in SE. Method: After conducting a tertiary study investigating the main characteristics of sustainability of software systems, we applied the meta-ethnographic method to transpose sustainability characteristics into SLR context by identifying, adapting, synthesizing, and validating those which could aid researchers in conducting more useful studies with less effort. Finally, we extracted a sample of high-quality studies conducted in the SE area, next, we applied a sustainability view to identify the flaws that lead to unsustainable SLR. Results: Our study provides an overview of the role of sustainability in the SLR context and provides important assets for SE community to identify what are sustainable SLR, such as 15 characteristics of sustainable SLR and 15 sensitive points of SLR process that are considered critical factors to achieve sustainability. In addition, we propose 16 guidelines to support researchers to improve sustainability in their SLR and identified 13 leveraging points found in relevant studies in SE area that together represent actions that should be adopted immediately to enhance the sustainability of SLR. Conclusion: Our work represents a starting point for a mindset shift in the SE community about the importance of creating more sustainable reviews. Furthermore, we believe that sustainability is the missing key concept that could connect many advances achieved over the years of research and remove barriers that hinder SLR from providing useful information in a timely manner for academia and industry. Henceforth, we believe that researchers should observe sustainability as a first-class citizen while conducting/updating SLR to make them compatible with the sustainability view.

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Section: Background and Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Sustainability of Systematic Literature Reviews

Santos

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Sustainable systematic literature reviews

dos Santos,

Iwazaki,

Felizardo

et al. 2024

Information and Software Technology

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Divide and Conquer the EmpiRE: A Community-Maintainable Knowledge Graph of Empirical Research in Requirements Engineering

Karras,

Wernlein,

Klünder

et al. 2023

2023 ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM)

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Background.] Empirical research in requirements engineering (RE) is a constantly evolving topic, with a growing number of publications. Several papers address this topic using literature reviews to provide a snapshot of its "current" state and evolution. However, these papers have never built on or updated earlier ones, resulting in overlap and redundancy. The underlying problem is the unavailability of data from earlier works. Researchers need technical infrastructures to conduct sustainable literature reviews. [Aims.] We examine the use of the Open Research Knowledge Graph (ORKG) as such an infrastructure to build and publish an initial Knowledge Graph of Empirical research in RE (KG-EmpiRE) whose data is openly available. Our long-term goal is to continuously maintain KG-EmpiRE with the research community to synthesize a comprehensive, up-todate, and long-term available overview of the state and evolution of empirical research in RE. [Method.] We conduct a literature review using the ORKG to build and publish KG-EmpiRE which we evaluate against competency questions derived from a published vision of empirical research in software (requirements) engineering for 2020 -2025. [Results.] From 570 papers of the IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference (2000 -2022), we extract and analyze data on the reported empirical research and answer 16 out of 77 competency questions. These answers show a positive development towards the vision, but also the need for future improvements. [Conclusions.] The ORKG is a ready-to-use and advanced infrastructure to organize data from literature reviews as knowledge graphs. The resulting knowledge graphs make the data openly available and maintainable by research communities, enabling sustainable literature reviews.

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Towards Sustainability of Systematic Literature Reviews

Cited by 5 publications

References 31 publications

Sustainability of Systematic Literature Reviews

Sustainability of Systematic Literature Reviews

Sustainable systematic literature reviews

Divide and Conquer the EmpiRE: A Community-Maintainable Knowledge Graph of Empirical Research in Requirements Engineering

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