Barbara A. Kitchenham. Evidence-Based Software Engineering and Systematic Literature Reviews. In Jürgen Münch, Matias Vierimaa, editors, Product-Focused Software Process Improvement, 7th International Conference, PROFES 2006, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, June 12-14, 2006, Proceedings. Volume 4034 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 3, Springer, 2006. [doi]
This keynote addresses the evidence-based paradigm currently being adopted in many practical sciences (e.g., medicine, education, social policy) and discusses whether it is applicable to software engineering. In the presentation, the view is taken that although Evidence-based Software Engineering may be unproven, one aspect of the evidencebased paradigm is hard to ignore, that is: Systematic literature reviews. Systematic literature reviews aim to summarize research studies related to a specific research question in a way that is fair, rigorous, and auditable. The keynote presentation will outline the potential benefit of systematic literature reviews and describe in detail the process of performing such a systematic literature review.