Motivation to Perform Systematic Reviews and their Impact on Software Engineering Practice

Context: Systematic literature reviews (SLRs) are a particular type of secondary study used as the main research method in evidence based research and practice. The starting point of a SLR should be a problem from the practice and the results should, somehow, have an impact on improving practice. Objective: To investigate the motivation of software engineering researchers to conduct a SLR and how the results of their reviews are potentially impacting the software engineering practice. Method: We conducted a cross-sectional survey with authors of 120 SLRs published between 2004 and 2010 identified by three tertiary studies previously published. Results: Forty-four authors of SLR participate in the survey. The motivation behind the vast majority of the SLRs was to gather knowledge about a particular field of study. However, only six participants affirmed that their reviews actually had a direct impact in industrial practice. Conclusions: The use of SLR has increased over the years but they were mostly focused on academic problems and had very little impact on industrial practice. Therefore, the full potential benefits of evidence-based software engineering are not being achieved.