Context

Search-Based Software Engineering (SBSE) is the research field where Software Engineering (SE) problems are modelled as search problems to be solved by search-based techniques. The Symposium on Search Based Software Engineering (SSBSE) is the premier event on SBSE, which had its 11^th edition in 2019.

Objective

In order to better understand the characteristics and evolution of papers published at SSBSE, this work reports results from a mapping study targeting the proceedings of all SSBSE editions. Despite the existing mapping studies on SBSE, our contribution in this work is to provide information to researchers and practitioners willing to enter the SBSE field, being a source of information to strengthen the symposium, guide new studies, and motivate new collaboration among research groups.

Method

A systematic mapping study was conducted with a set of four research questions, in which 134 studies published in all editions of SSBSE, dated from 2009 to 2019, were evaluated. In a fifth question, 32 papers published in the challenge track were summarised.

Results

Throughout the years, 290 authors from 25 countries have contributed to the main track of the symposium, with the collaboration of at least two institutions in 46.3% of the papers. SSBSE papers have got substantial external visibility, as most citations are from different venues. The SE tasks addressed by SSBSE are mostly related to software testing, software debugging, software design, and maintenance. Evolutionary algorithms are present in 75% of the papers, being the most common search technique. The evaluation of the SBSE approaches usually includes industrial systems.

Conclusions

SSBSE has helped increase the popularity of SBSE in the SE research community and has played an important role on making SBSE mature. There are still problems and challenges to be addressed in the SBSE field, which can be tackled by SSBSE authors in further studies.

中文翻译：

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基于搜索的软件工程研讨会：过去，现在和未来

语境

基于搜索的软件工程（SBSE）是将软件工程（SE）问题建模为要通过基于搜索的技术解决的搜索问题的研究领域。基于搜索的软件工程研讨会（SSBSE）是SBSE的主要活动，该会议于2019年举行了^第11版。

目的

为了更好地理解在SSBSE上发表的论文的特征和演变，本工作报告是针对所有SSBSE版本的论文进行测绘研究的结果。尽管已有关于SBSE的制图研究，但我们在这项工作中的贡献是为愿意进入SBSE领域的研究人员和从业人员提供信息，这是加强研讨会，指导新研究并激发研究小组之间新合作的信息来源。

方法

进行了系统的制图研究，涉及一组四个研究问题，其中评估了2009年至2019年在SSBSE所有版本中发布的134个研究。在第五个问题中，总结了挑战赛中发表的32篇论文。

结果

多年来，来自25个国家/地区的290位作者为研讨会的主要方向做出了贡献，其中至少有两个机构在46.3％的论文中进行了合作。SSBSE论文获得了广泛的外部知名度，因为大多数引文来自不同的领域。SSBSE解决的SE任务主要与软件测试，软件调试，软件设计和维护有关。进化算法出现在75％的论文中，这是最常见的搜索技术。SBSE方法的评估通常包括工业系统。

结论

SSBSE帮助提高了SBSE在SE研究社区中的知名度，并在使SBSE成熟方面发挥了重要作用。SBSE领域仍然存在需要解决的问题和挑战，SSBSE的作者可以在进一步研究中解决。