The Use of Grey Literature Review as Evidence for Practitioners

Abstract

Context: In the last years, diverse research areas increased their interest in Grey Literature (GL). In Software Engineering (SE), SE practitioners became heavy consumers of GL, by way of contrast to traditional research papers. Problem: This is unfortunate, in particular, although the increase of Systematic Literature Reviews (SLR) published, researchers, claim to the lack of them of connection to the practice. Goal: Propose and evaluate a set of guidelines to help SE researchers to conduct a Grey Literature Review (GLR) that are more in line with practitioners' needs. Method: First, we are conducting a tertiary study to understand how secondary studies use GL. Second, we plan to employ qualitative research with researchers of SLRs and SE practitioners. Third, we plan to review and analyze the use of GL source according to the context in SE. Fourth, we plan to conduct a GLR. Finally, we plan to perform and evaluate our guideline. Preliminary Results: The tertiary study retrieved a total of 14,043 papers. We removed the duplicate studies and also which were not peer-reviewed articles. Currently, we are solving the conflicts of disagreement of the selection process. Conclusions: We present preliminary findings, show our proposed approach and the next steps.