Context

When conducting a Systematic Literature Review (SLR), researchers usually face the challenge of designing a search strategy that appropriately balances result quality and review effort. Using digital library (or database) searches or snowballing alone may not be enough to achieve high-quality results. On the other hand, using both digital library searches and snowballing together may increase the overall review effort.

Objective

The goal of this research is to propose and evaluate hybrid search strategies that selectively combine database searches with snowballing.

Method

We propose four hybrid search strategies combining database searches in digital libraries with iterative, parallel, or sequential backward and forward snowballing. We simulated the strategies over three existing SLRs in SE that adopted both database searches and snowballing. We compared the outcome of digital library searches, snowballing, and hybrid strategies using precision, recall, and F-measure to investigate the performance of each strategy.

Results

Our results show that, for the analyzed SLRs, combining database searches from the Scopus digital library with parallel or sequential snowballing achieved the most appropriate balance of precision and recall.

Conclusion

We put forward that, depending on the goals of the SLR and the available resources, using a hybrid search strategy involving a representative digital library and parallel or sequential snowballing tends to represent an appropriate alternative to be used when searching for evidence in SLRs.

中文翻译：

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关于软件工程中系统文献综述的混合搜索策略的性能

语境

在进行系统文献综述（SLR）时，研究人员通常面临设计适当平衡结果质量和评论工作量的搜索策略的挑战。仅仅使用数字图书馆（或数据库）搜索或滚雪球可能不足以获得高质量的结果。另一方面，同时使用数字图书馆搜索和滚雪球游戏可能会增加总体审阅工作。

目的

这项研究的目的是提出和评估混合搜索策略，该策略选择性地将数据库搜索与滚雪球相结合。

方法

我们提出了四种混合搜索策略，将数字图书馆中的数据库搜索与迭代式，并行式或顺序式向前和向后滚雪球相结合。我们在SE中通过数据库搜索和滚雪球模拟了三个现有SLR的策略。我们比较了使用精确度，召回率和F量度的数字图书馆搜索，滚雪球和混合策略的结果，以调查每种策略的性能。

结果

我们的结果表明，对于所分析的SLR，将Scopus数字图书馆中的数据库搜索与并行或顺序滚雪球相结合，可以实现精度和查全率的最适当平衡。

结论

我们提出，根据SLR的目标和可用资源，使用包含代表性数字图书馆和并行或顺序滚雪球的混合搜索策略倾向于代表在SLR中搜索证据时要使用的适当替代方法。