Evidence-based systematic literature reviews in the cloud

Abstract

Systematic literature reviews and mapping studies are useful research methods used to lay the foundations of further research. These methods are widely used in the Health Sciences and, more recently, also in Computer Science. Despite existing tool support for systematic reviews, more automation is required to conduct the complete process. This paper describes CloudSERA, a web-based app to support the evidence-based systematic review of scientific literature. The tool supports researchers to carry out studies by additional facilities as collaboration, usability, parallel searches and search integration with other systems, The flexible data scheme of the tool enables the integration of bibliographic databases of common use in Computer Science and can be easily extended to support additional sources. It can be used as a service in a cloud environment or as on-premises software.