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Record W4412086245 · doi:10.1016/j.infsof.2025.107830

Research artifacts in secondary studies: A systematic mapping in software engineering

2025· article· en· W4412086245 on OpenAlexafffund
Aleksi Huotala, Miikka Kuutila, Mika Mäntylä

Bibliographic record

VenueInformation and Software Technology · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldDecision Sciences
TopicScientific Computing and Data Management
Canadian institutionsDalhousie University
FundersStrategic Research CouncilKillam TrustsDalhousie UniversityAcademy of Finland
KeywordsComputer scienceSoftware engineeringSystems engineeringEngineering

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Context: Systematic reviews (SRs) summarize state-of-the-art evidence in science, including software engineering (SE). Objective: Our objective is to evaluate how SRs report research artifacts and to provide a comprehensive list of these artifacts. Method: We examined 537 secondary studies published between 2013 and 2023 to analyze the availability and reporting of research artifacts. Results: Our findings indicate that only 31.5% of the reviewed studies include research artifacts. Encouragingly, the situation is gradually improving, as our regression analysis shows a significant increase in the availability of research artifacts over time. However, in 2023, just 62.0% of secondary studies provide a research artifact while an even lower percentage, 30.4% use a permanent repository with a digital object identifier (DOI) for storage. Conclusion: To enhance transparency and reproducibility in SE research, we advocate for the mandatory publication of research artifacts in secondary studies.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.375
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.716
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesMetaresearch, Bibliometrics
Consensus categoriesMetaresearch
DomainCandidate signal: Methods · Consensus signal: Methods
Study designCandidate signal: Systematic review · Consensus signal: Systematic review
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.919
Threshold uncertainty score0.771

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.3750.716
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0020.002
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0050.007
Bibliometrics0.0810.063
Science and technology studies0.0040.007
Scholarly communication0.0110.012
Open science0.0040.013
Research integrity0.0040.003
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0030.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.115
GPT teacher head0.410
Teacher spread0.295 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; the direct Gemma label and the distilled Codex classifier agree on what is shown here.

Study designSystematic review
DomainMethods
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations1
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

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