Reporting Systematic Reviews: Some Lessons from a Tertiary Study
| Title | Reporting systematic reviews: Some lessons from a tertiary study |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | David Budgen, Pearl Brereton, Sarah Drummond and Nikki Williams |
| Details | Information & Software Technology, 95, pp62-74, 2018 |
| Abstract | Context: Many of the systematic reviews published in software engineering are related to research or metho- dological issues and hence are unlikely to be of direct benefit to practitioners or teachers. Those that are relevant to practice and teaching need to be presented in a form that makes their findings usable with minimum inter- pretation. Objective: We have examined a sample of the many systematic reviews that have been published over a period of six years, in order to assess how well these are reported and identify useful lessons about how this might be done. Method: We undertook a tertiary study, performing a systematic review of systematic reviews. Our study found 178 systematic reviews published in a set of major software engineering journals over the period 2010–2015. Of these, 37 provided recommendations or conclusions of relevance to education and/or practice and we used the DARE criteria as well as other attributes related to the systematic review process to analyse how well they were reported. Results: We have derived a set of 12 ‘lessons’ that could help authors with reporting the outcomes of a systematic review in software engineering. We also provide an associated checklist for use by journal and conference referees. Conclusion: There are several areas where better reporting is needed, including quality assessment, synthesis, and the procedures followed by the reviewers. Researchers, practitioners, teachers and journal referees would all benefit from better reporting of systematic reviews, both for clarity and also for establishing the provenance of any findings. |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2017.10.017 |
| BibTex | @article{budgen-reporting-2018, author = {David Budgen and Pearl Brereton and Sarah Drummond and Nikki Williams}, date-added = {2018-03-08 13:30:50 +0000}, date-modified = {2018-03-08 13:31:05 +0000}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2017.10.017}, issn = {0950-5849}, journal = {Information and Software Technology}, keywords = {Systematic review, Reporting quality, Provenance of findings}, pages = {62 – 74}, title = {Reporting systematic reviews: Some lessons from a tertiary study}, url = {http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0950584916303548}, volume = {95}, year = {2018}, bdsk-url-1 = {http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0950584916303548}, bdsk-url-2 = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2017.10.017}} |
| Topics | systematic review, reporting quality, provenance of findings |