5Ws of green and sustainable software

Green and Sustainable Software has emerged as a new and highly active area in the software community. After several years of research and work, we believe that it is now necessary to obtain a general snapshot of how the research in this area is evolving. To do so, we have applied the 5Ws (why, when, who, where, and what), a formula for getting the complete story on a subject. We have therefore carried out a study, using 542 publications related to Green and Sustainable Software research; these were recovered using SCOPUS. The results obtained allow us to conclude that it is important to identify key elements of the research to allow researchers be fully aware of the state of the research on Green and Sustainable Software (why); the study uses papers published between 2000 and the beginning of November 2018 (when); the most prolific authors are mainly from Europe, although the USA is the most active country, Green and Sustainable Software being a very interactive area with a good number of multinational publications (who); the top five keywords related to sustainable aspects are Green Software, Green IT, Software Sustainability, Energy Consumption, and Energy Efficiency (what); finally, as regards the places authors prefer to publish in, there is almost a complete balance between conferences and journals, with a trend towards an increase in the number of publications (where).