Collaborative Exchange of Systematic Literature Review Results: The Case of Empirical Software Engineering

Complementary to managing bibliographic information as done by digital libraries, the management of concrete research objects (e.g., experimental workflows, design patterns) is a pre-requisite to foster collaboration and re-use of research results. In this paper we describe the case of the Empirical Software Engineering domain, where researchers use systematic literature reviews (SLRs) to conduct and report on literature studies. Given their structured nature, the outputs of such SLR processes are a special and complex type of research object. Since performing SLRs is a time consuming process, it is highly desirable to enable sharing and reuse of the complex knowledge structures produced through SLRs. This would enable, for example, conducting new studies that build on the findings of previous studies. To support collaborative features necessary for multiple research groups to share and re-use each other’s work, we hereby propose a solution approach that is inspired by software engineering best-practices and is implemented using Semantic Web technologies.