An SLR-Tool: Search Process in Practice A tool to conduct and manage Systematic Literature Review (SLR) Andreas Hinderks † Department of Computer Languages and Systems University of Seville, Spain andreas.hinderks@iwt2.org María José Escalona Department of Computer Language and Systems University of Seville, Spain mjescalona@us.es Francisco José Domínguez Mayo Department of Computer Languages and Systems University of Seville, Spain fjdominguez@us.es Jörg Thomaschewski University of Applied Sciences Emden/Leer, Germany joerg.thomaschewski@hs-emden- leer.de ABSTRACT Systematic Literature Reviews (SLRs) have established themselves as a method in the field of software engineering. The aim of an SLR is to systematically analyze existing literature in order to answer a research question. In this paper, we present a tool to support an SLR process. The main focus of the SLR tool (https://www.slr-tool.com/) is to create and manage an SLR project, to import search results from search engines, and to manage search results by including or excluding each paper. A demo video of our SLR tool is available at https://youtu.be/Jan8JbwiE4k. KEYWORDS SLR, systematic literature review, tool 1 Introduction A systematic literature review (SLR) [9] is a scientific method for evaluating and interpreting all available research results that are relevant to a certain research question or a certain subject area. As a result, all available research results are collected, summarized, and evaluated. The basis of an SLR is the scientific literature already published [9]. According to the guidelines of Kitchenham and Charters [9], the systematic review process can be divided into three main phases: planning, conducting, and reporting. Figure 1 shows the individual phases in more detail. The first phase (Figure 1 - Planning the review) determines why an SLR should be carried out. Once this question has been clarified, the research questions can be determined accordingly. The format and content of the review protocol are then determined. In the second phase (Figure 1 - Conducting the review), the search terms are defined. These search terms are then executed in the previously defined search engines and the results are collected. The results are then analysed according to the previously defined quality criteria. In the last phase (Figure 1 - Reporting the review), the results are summarized in a report. In addition, it is determined where and how the report is to be published. Figure 1 SLR by Kitchenham [9] A tool for carrying out an SLR could provide useful support for the SLR process, as each phase must be carried out accurately, transparently, and comprehensibly [9]. Phases 2 and 3 are particularly suitable for this purpose. A tool should reduce the effort involved in carrying out an SLR as it represents one of the biggest barriers [2]. In particular, a tool should support different data sources with different quality. In practice, it has been shown that the quality of search results varies significantly from search engine to search engine (see Section 3.2). כ An SLR Tool: Search Process in Practice † Hinderks, Andreas; University of Seville; andreas.hinderks@iwt2.org Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author. ICSE '20 Companion, May 23–29, 2020, Seoul, Republic of Korea © 2020 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-7122-3/20/05. https://doi.org/10.1145/3377812.3382137 81 2020 IEEE/ACM 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering: Companion Proceedings (ICSE-Companion)