The use of controlled vocabularies in requirements engineering activities: a protocol for a systematic literature review
This addresses a methodological gap for researchers conducting systematic literature reviews in software engineering, but it is incremental as it synthesizes existing guidelines.
The paper tackles the lack of formal protocols in systematic literature reviews in evidence-based software engineering by developing and validating a protocol based on guidelines and existing reviews, finding that most published reviews have weak or missing protocols and a lack of tool support.
Context: The Evidence-Based Software Engineering (EBSE) paradigm and the planning phase of a systematic literature review. Objective: A protocol to do a systematic literature review with detailed information about the processes suggested by several guidelines in the field of evidence-based software engineering. Method: An analisys of recent systematic literature reviews published in world leading journals, plus the use of two renowned guidelines and a textbook to sinthetise a formal plan (the protocol). Results: The validated protocol Conclusions: We found that most of the published systematic reviews lack on reporting the protocol, or it is weak. There is a lack of tool support to develop formal protocols. Although a protocol, like a plan, must have the flexibility to adapt to unforeseen situations, its objective is that the actual activities should resemble as far as possible of those already planned. Therefore, it is a difficult balance to achieve and, researchers must be careful not to introduce alterations that could become threats to the validity of the entire work.