This document outlines the key aspects of systematic reviews and discusses their application in software engineering. It defines systematic reviews as a methodology used to gather and evaluate available evidence on a focused topic. The document notes advantages like reducing biases and identifying gaps, and disadvantages like requiring more effort than traditional reviews. Finally, it presents a five-step template the author developed for conducting systematic reviews in software engineering to help address issues like fragmentation and lack of standards in the field.

1. Systematic Review in
Software Engineering
BY
OBIWUSI KOLAWOLE YUSUF
B.SC. COMPUTER SCIENCE AND M.SC. COMPUTER SCIENCE IN VIEW,
UNIVERSITY OF ILORIN,NIGERIA

2. Outline
• Definition of Systematic Review.
• Why Systematic Review?
• Systematic and Unsystematic Review.
• History of Systematic Review.
• Advantages of systematic Review.
• Disadvantages of Systematic Review.
• Systematic Review in software Engineering.
• The Developed Template for Systematic Review in Software
Engineering.

3. Definition of Systematic Review
refers to a specific methodology of research, developed in
order to gather and evaluate the available evidence
pertaining to a focused topic.
A systematic review (also systematic literature review or
structured literature review, SLR) is a literature review
focused on a research question that tries to identify,
appraise, select and synthesize all high quality research
evidence relevant to that question.

4. Why Systematic Review?
• To summarize the existing evidence concerning a
treatment or technology.
• To identify any gaps in current research in order to
suggest areas for further investigation.
• To provide a framework/background in order to
appropriately position new research activities.

5. Systematic and Unsystematic Review
• Systematic review have the scientific rigor in performing its
different steps unlike unsystematic review.
• Absence of research biases in different stages of the review
process in systematic review while it is not in unsystematic
review.
• Example of systematic review includes overview, research
review, research synthesis, research integration, systematic
overview, systematic research synthesis, integrative research
review, and integrative review while the only example of an
unsystematic review is literature review.

6. History of Systematic Review
• In the beginning of the 20th century- (Karl Pearson 1904) Report
on certain enteric fever inoculation statistics.
• In the 1930s-methods for combining estimates were developed
in other fields of research.
• In the early 1970s-the methodology field was recognized.
• In the late 1970s-the application field was recognized.
• In the early1980s-the field of research synthesis spreads from
social sciences to medicine.
• In the late 1980s-systematic research synthesis and meta-
analysis reach an especially distinctive methodological status
in the health sciences domain.

7. Advantages of Systematic Review
 High quality systematic reviews seek to:
• Provides information about the effects of some
phenomenon across a wide range of settings and empirical
methods.
• In the case of quantitative studies, is that it is possible to
combine data using meta-analytic techniques. This
increases the likelihood of detecting real effects that
individual smaller studies are unable to detect.
• Identify all relevant published and unpublished evidence
• Select studies or reports for inclusion
• Assess the quality of each study or report

8. Disadvantages of Systematic Review
• Systematic review requires considerably more effort
than traditional reviews i.e. unsystematic review.
• There is no agreed standards especially in the case of
software engineering.
• Literature review (unsystematic review) complements
systematic review in most cases.

9. Systematic Review in Software Engineering
Why is systematic review in software engineering not as
efficient as the systematic review in medicine?
• It is fragmented and limited.
• It is not properly integrated.
• There is no agreed standards for systematic reviews.

10. The Developed Template for Systematic Review
in Software Engineering
I. Review Planning -Define the research objective and the way the
review will be executed.
II. Planning Evaluation - Evaluate the planned review.
III. Review Evaluation – Execute the search in the defined sources at
the planning phase and evaluate the studies obtained according
to the established criteria at the planning phase.
IV. Execution Evaluation – Evaluate whether the web search engine
defined at the planning phase is capable of executing the search
string previously defined at the planning phase.
V. Result Analysis – Summarize and analyze the result using the
statistical methods defined at the planning phase.