A review of prior literature is a prerequisite for any research activity. PhD students are specifically expected to have a literature review chapter in their dissertations. However, most literature reviews are conducted in ad-hoc manners and badly written. Bem states in the Psychological Bulletin that “literature reviews are at risk of producing mind-numbing lists of citations and findings that resemble a phone book”. To address this state of practice, there is an increasing trend among researchers in many disciplines to conduct systematic reviews of the literature.
A systematic review is a defined and methodical way to summarise evidence concerning a particular technology (i.e., method, technique, tool) to understand the current direction and status of research or to provide background in order to identify research challenges. A systematic review enables the assessment and interpretation of all available research pertaining to a research question, subject matter, or event of interest.
An increasing number of researchers are conducting systematic reviews in software engineering and computer science. Hence, there is a vital need of providing researchers with sufficient scientific and technical knowledge of and skills in systematic reviews. The objective of the course is to enable the participants to learn about the methodological details and practical considerations of designing, conducting, and reporting a systematic review in computer science/software engineering.
After the course, the participants should:
1. Have the knowledge about various concepts and terminology underpinning systematic reviews.
2. Gain detailed knowledge about different aspects of developing and validating protocols and pilot searches for conducting systematic reviews.
3. Learn different aspects of manual and automatic searches.
4. be able to evaluate and select appropriate search strategies.
5. be able to design and apply criteria for selecting relevant literature.
6. know as to how to identify, assess, and synthesize the available literature and evidence to answer the required research questions.
7. have the skills in synthesizing quantitative and qualitative data.
8. learn how to report system literature review in a journal quality publication.
Duration
Three (3) full days face-to-face lectures and exercises sessions, Wednesday through Friday (June 30, July 1 and 2, 2010). Two more days for online learning and exercises for PhD students, who wish to earn 2.5 ECTS and a course completion certificate.
Main Lecturers
Dr. Muhammad Ali Babar, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
Dr. Jason Zhang, National ICT Australia (NICTA), Australia.
Guest Lecturers
Dr. Martin Höst, Lund University, Sweden.
Sources of Course Material
Chapters from the following books will be used:
[1]. T. Greenhalgh, How to Read a Paper, BMJ Publishing Group, London, 2001
[2]. F. Shull, J. Singer and D. Sjøberg (Eds.), Guide to Advanced Empirical Software Engineering, Springer-Verlag, London, UK, 2008.
[3]. M. Petticrew and H. Roberts, Systematic Reviews in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide, Blackwell Publishing, UK, 2006.
[4]. G. W. Noblit and R. D. Hare, Meta-Ethnography: Synthesizing Qualitative Studies, SAGE Publications, Inc., London, UK, 1988.
Course material will be heavily based on the research papers published in peer reviewed high quality journals and conferences. Some of the sample papers including but not restricted to the following papers:
[1]. B. A. Kitchenham, and S. Charters, Guidelines for Performing Systematic Literature Reviews in Software Engineering, Tech Report EBSE-2007-1, Keele University, UK, 2007.
[2]. T. Dybå, B. Kitchenham and M. Jørgensen, Evidence-based Software Engineering for Practitioners, IEEE Software, 2005, 22(1): pp. 58-65.
[3]. P. Brereton, et al., Lessons from applying the systematic literature review process within the software engineering domain, Journal of Systems and Software, 2007. 80: pp. 571-583.
[4]. D. Sjøberg, T. Dybå and M. Jørgensen, The Future of Empirical Methods in Software Engineering Research, 29th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE'07), Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, 20-26 May, Future of Software Engineering (FoSE’07), in L. Briand and A. Wolf (Eds.), IEEE Computer Society Press, 2007, pp. 358-378.
[5]. B.A. Kitchenham, et al., Preliminary guidelines for empirical research in software engineering, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, , 2002. 28(8): pp. 721-734.
[7]. T. Dybå, T. Dingsøyr, Strength of evidence in systematic reviews in software engineering, in: Proceedings of the 2nd ACM-IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM'08), ACM, 2008, pp.178-187
[8]. O. Dieste, A. G. Padua, Developing search strategies for detecting relevant experiments for systematic reviews, in: Proceedings of the 1st International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM '07), IEEE Computer Society, 2007, pp.215-224
[9]. T. Dybå, T. Dingsøyr, Empirical studies of agile software development: a systematic review, Information and Software Technology, 50 (2008), 833-859.
[10]. T. Dybå, T. Dingsøyr, G. K. Hanssen, Applying systematic reviews to diverse study types: an experience report, in: Proceedings of the 1st International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM'07), IEEE Computer Society, 2007, pp.225-234
[11]. V. B. Kampenes, T. Dybå, J. E. Hannay, D. I. K. Sjøberg, A Systematic Review of Effect Size in Software Engineering Experiments, Information and Software Technology, 49 (2007), 1073--1086.
