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A systematic literature review of the SBSE research community in Spain

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Abstract

Since its appearance in 2001, search-based software engineering has allowed software engineers to use optimisation techniques to automate distinctive human problems related to software management and development. The scientific community in Spain has not been alien to these advances. Their contributions cover both the optimisation of software engineering tasks and the proposal of new search algorithms. This review compiles the research efforts of this community in the area. With this aim, we propose a protocol to describe the review process, including the search sources, inclusion and exclusion criteria of candidate papers, the data extraction procedure and the categorisation of primary studies. After retrieving more than 3700 papers, 232 primary studies have been selected, whose analysis gives a precise picture of the current research state of the community, trends and future challenges. With 145 authors from 19 distinct institutions, results show that a diversity of tasks, including software planning, requirements, design and testing, and a large variety of techniques has been used, from exact search to evolutionary computation and swarm intelligence. Further, since 2015, specific scientific events have helped to bring together the community, improving collaborations, financial funding and internationalisation.

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Notes

  1. Spanish Software Engineering Society: http://biblioteca.sistedes.es/.

  2. https://www.acm.org/publications/class-2012 (Accessed June 28, 2019).

  3. Cites in Scopus by 25th March 2019.

  4. https://www.istr.unican.es/sistedes2015/jisbd/SBSE.html (Accessed June 28, 2019).

  5. https://www.uco.es/SEBASENet (Accessed June 28, 2019).

  6. AEPIA is the Spanish Society of Artificial Intelligence, http://www.aepia.org/.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Projects TIN2017-83445-P and TIN2017-88213-R), the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (Projects RTC-2017-6714-5, RTI2018-093608-B-C33 and RED2018-102472-T), CELTIC C2017/2-2 together with companies EMERGYA and SECMOTIC (Contract numbers #8.06/5.47.4997 and #8.06/5.47.4996), the University of Málaga (project Exhauro and post-doctoral grant for co-author J. Ferrer), and with funds of the European Union (European Regional Development Fund - ERDF).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dpto. Informática y Análisis Numérico, University of Córdoba, Córdoba, Spain

    Aurora Ramírez & José Raúl Romero

  2. Dpto. Ingeniería Informática, University of Cádiz, Cádiz, Spain

    Pedro Delgado-Pérez & Inmaculada Medina-Bulo

  3. Dpto. Lenguajes y Sistemas Informáticos, University of Málaga, Málaga, Spain

    Javier Ferrer & Francisco Chicano

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  1. Aurora Ramírez
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Correspondence to José Raúl Romero.

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Ramírez, A., Delgado-Pérez, P., Ferrer, J. et al. A systematic literature review of the SBSE research community in Spain. Prog Artif Intell 9, 113–128 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13748-020-00205-3

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