The rapidly growing number of scientific publications poses numerous challenges for researchers engaged in literature analyses. Structured methodologies like systematic literature reviews are becoming increasingly expensive, considering their attempt to cover all relevant publications. Despite the increasing efforts needed, the importance of literature reviews also leads to an increasing growth in their number. While there are support techniques (e.g., guidelines, tools, checklists) for conducting literature analyses, a concise and clear overview of such techniques for assessing the quality of the analysis itself is missing. Such an overview can help researchers identify techniques for their work, understand ambiguities between them, support peer reviews, and guide future research by highlighting open gaps. In this paper, we address this lack of an overview by identifying existing techniques for assessing the quality of systematic literature reviews, comparing their properties, and discussing their pros and cons. For this purpose, we elicited 14 techniques through a systematic literature search covering 15 years (2007–2021). Overall, our contributions can help researchers identify feasible techniques for assessing the quality of literature analyses and can guide the development of new techniques, thereby facilitating the conduct and improving the quality of literature analyses.

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A Comparative Analysis of Support Techniques for Assessing the Quality of Systematic Literature Reviews

  • Rand Alchokr,
  • Athul Sunilkumar,
  • Gunter Saake,
  • Thomas Leich,
  • Jacob Krüger

摘要

The rapidly growing number of scientific publications poses numerous challenges for researchers engaged in literature analyses. Structured methodologies like systematic literature reviews are becoming increasingly expensive, considering their attempt to cover all relevant publications. Despite the increasing efforts needed, the importance of literature reviews also leads to an increasing growth in their number. While there are support techniques (e.g., guidelines, tools, checklists) for conducting literature analyses, a concise and clear overview of such techniques for assessing the quality of the analysis itself is missing. Such an overview can help researchers identify techniques for their work, understand ambiguities between them, support peer reviews, and guide future research by highlighting open gaps. In this paper, we address this lack of an overview by identifying existing techniques for assessing the quality of systematic literature reviews, comparing their properties, and discussing their pros and cons. For this purpose, we elicited 14 techniques through a systematic literature search covering 15 years (2007–2021). Overall, our contributions can help researchers identify feasible techniques for assessing the quality of literature analyses and can guide the development of new techniques, thereby facilitating the conduct and improving the quality of literature analyses.