The APISSER Methodology for Systematic Literature Reviews in Engineering

[Background] Every research topic is first to be addressed by understanding its current state of the art. A systematic literature review is a trustworthy method for establishing the published state of the art of any given topic. In engineering sciences, we have failed to consistently, methodologically, and thoroughly execute systematic literature reviews at the beginning of every research path, and to standardize the method to do so. Currently available methodologies fail to link a method to a customized and much-needed tool support. If the high-effort demanding task of executing a systematic literature review is not well tool-supported, it will soon become manually unmanageable to handle the large amount of data involved. [Objective] Therefore, we want to take a step forward towards standardizing the methodology for executing systematic literature reviews in engineering by proposing a tool-supported and task-oriented engineering flow methodology to execute systematic literature reviews in engineering. [Method] Based on the well-known and proven Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) methodology from medical sciences, we adapted and enhanced the method to follow a task-oriented engineering flow and to be supported by customized tools. [Results] In this paper, we first present the APISSER methodology for systematic literature reviews in engineering, and then show its practical application in a case study. [Conclusion] We have shown how the method successfully results in the collection of valid literature to report a trustworthy published state of the art in engineering sciences.