On the Reliability of Mapping Studies in Software Engineering
Author
Summary, in English
Background: Systematic literature reviews and systematic mapping studies are becoming increasingly common in software engineering, and hence it becomes even more important to better understand the reliability of such studies.
Objective: This paper presents a study of two systematic mapping studies to evaluate the reliability of mapping studies and point out some challenges related to this type of study in software engineering.
Method: The research is based on an in-depth case study of two published mapping studies on software product line testing.
Results: We found that despite the fact that the two studies are addressing the same topic, there are quite a number of differences when it comes to papers included and in terms of classification of the papers included in the two mapping studies.
Conclusions: From this we conclude that although mapping studies are important, their reliability cannot simply be taken for granted. Based on the findings we also provide four conjectures that further research has to address to make secondary studies (systematic mapping studies and systematic literature reviews) even more valuable to both researchers and practitioners.
Objective: This paper presents a study of two systematic mapping studies to evaluate the reliability of mapping studies and point out some challenges related to this type of study in software engineering.
Method: The research is based on an in-depth case study of two published mapping studies on software product line testing.
Results: We found that despite the fact that the two studies are addressing the same topic, there are quite a number of differences when it comes to papers included and in terms of classification of the papers included in the two mapping studies.
Conclusions: From this we conclude that although mapping studies are important, their reliability cannot simply be taken for granted. Based on the findings we also provide four conjectures that further research has to address to make secondary studies (systematic mapping studies and systematic literature reviews) even more valuable to both researchers and practitioners.
Department/s
Publishing year
2013
Language
English
Pages
2594-2610
Publication/Series
Journal of Systems and Software
Volume
86
Issue
10
Full text
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Document type
Journal article
Publisher
Elsevier
Topic
- Computer Science
Keywords
- Systematic mapping study
- systematic map
- software product lines
- systematic reviews
- systematic literature review
- review of reviews
- meta-study
- software testing
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 0164-1212