Paving the Way for Mature Secondary Research: The Seven Types of Literature Review

Confusion over different kinds of secondary research, and their divergent purposes, is undermining the effectiveness and usefulness of secondary studies in software engineering. This short paper therefore explains the differences between ad hoc reviews, case surveys, critical reviews, meta-analyses (aka systematic literature reviews), meta-synthesis (aka thematic analysis), rapid reviews and scoping reviews (aka systematic mapping studies). We envision that these guidelines will help researchers better select and describe their literature reviews, while helping reviewers select more appropriate evaluation criteria.