Systematic Mapping Studies in Software Engineering

By Kai Petersen, Robert Feldt, Shahid Mujtaba, Michael Mattsson. International Conference on Evaluation & Assessment in Software Engineering, 2008

3,148 citations recorded by the source corpus.

BACKGROUND: A software engineering systematic map is a defined method to build a classification scheme and structure a software engineering field of interest. The analysis of results focuses on frequencies of publications for categories within the scheme. Thereby, the coverage of the research field can be determined. Different facets of the scheme can also be combined to answer more specific research questions. OBJECTIVE: We describe how to conduct a systematic mapping study in software engineering and provide guidelines. We also compare systematic maps and systematic reviews to clarify how to chose between them. This comparison leads to a set of guidelines for systematic maps. METHOD: We have defined a systematic mapping process and applied it to complete a systematic mapping study. Furthermore, we compare systematic maps with systematic reviews by systematically analyzing existing systematic reviews. RESULTS: We describe a process for software engineering systematic mapping studies and compare it to systematic reviews. Based on this, guidelines for conducting systematic maps are defined. CONCLUSIONS: Systematic maps and reviews are different in terms of goals, breadth, validity issues and implications. Thus, they should be used complementarily and require different methods (e.g., for analysis).

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Information Systems

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e28bdc373de80d7ec0e64631a89e64fbdcdae230

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Citations in the corpus

A method for evaluating rigor and industrial relevance of technology evaluations (2011, background): “Bubble charts can be very effective in giving visual indications of how much research is carried out and categorizing research type (Petersen et al. 2008; Šmite et al. 2010).”
Software Engineering for AI-Based Systems: A Survey (2021, background): “This SMS has five main steps [111, 156] described in the following subsections.”
A systematic review of systematic review process research in software engineering (2013, background): “[26] identified the difference between mapping studies and conventional systematic reviews.”
Empirical evidence in global software engineering: a systematic review (2010, methodology): “The categories and the results of the analysis are illustrated in a bubble plot diagram (as suggested by Petersen et al. 2008) with two dimensions to better represent the population of our review (see Fig.”
A systematic review of Green AI (2023, methodology): “To ease the primary study selection process, adaptive reading depth (Petersen et al., 2008) is used to efficiently assess potentially relevant studies.”
Metaheuristic research: a comprehensive survey (2018, methodology): “There are two ways to conduct search for systematic literature review: automatic (Petersen et al. 2008) and manual (Keele 2007).”
Guidelines for conducting systematic mapping studies in software engineering: An update (2015, methodology): “Jalali and Wohlin [4] performed mapping of the literature available on Global software Engineering considering the guidelines by [2,1].”
Role of IoT Technology in Agriculture: A Systematic Literature Review (2020, methodology): “To find the relevant papers through keywording by using the abstract, we used a process defined by Petersen et al. [ 22 ].”
Using mapping studies as the basis for further research - A participant-observer case study (2011, methodology): “Three recent papers have discussed the use of mapping studies in software engineering [9,13,31].”
Blockchain-based Smart Contracts: A Systematic Mapping Study (2017, methodology): “Steps of the systematic mapping study [2].”
Microservices: A Systematic Mapping Study (2016, methodology): “The search terms used were developed using (Petersen et al., 2008) and guided by research questions.”
Plant Diseases recognition on images using Convolutional Neural Networks: A Systematic Review (2020, methodology): “According to [29] and [17], the process of collecting the study set begins, by defining the Search String.”
Usability evaluation methods for the web: A systematic mapping study (2011, methodology): “This synthesis method is useful to provide a map and giving a quick overview of a research field (Petersen et al. [30]).”
Guidelines for snowballing in systematic literature studies and a replication in software engineering (2014, background): “Systematic mapping studies have been highlighted as a complement to systematic literature reviews [8].”
A scoping review of scoping reviews: advancing the approach and enhancing the consistency (2014, methodology): “Among reviews from the software engineering sector that reported using a framework, frameworks by Kitchenham and Charters (2007) (40.0%; 14/35) and Petersen et al. (2008) (51.4%; 18/35) were most commonly employed.”