Exploring Automatic Search in Digital Libraries – A Caution Guide for Systematic Reviewers

Digital Libraries (DLs) like IEEE Xplore, ACM DL, SpringerLink, etc., are being used quite frequently for executing the Automatic Search Phase of Secondary Studies such as Systematic Literature Reviews and Mapping Studies. However, the execution behavior of the various search related features of these DLs is not as consistent as required by such secondary studies. This repository intends to make a continuous effort toward reporting the current state of execution behavior of various search features of DLs used in secondary studies related to software engineering domain. In particular, the repository targets behavioral inconsistencies with respect to the feature set required in the conduct the search process of secondary studies. The repository will be updated with every recent search feature related changes in the respective DLs and hence would provide the secondary study researchers with an up-to-date information about the robustness and reliability of such DLs. To start with , we target five DLs: IEEE Xplore, ACM DL, SpringerLink, Science Direct and Wiley, and report their search features with appropriate scores extracted through a formal feature analysis.

Explore paper-preprint and other relevant materials at

https://github.com/pv-singh/DLs-for-SLRs