EVIDENCE BRIEFINGS FAQ
GENERAL QUESTIONS ABOUT EVIDENCE BRIEFINGS
What are Evidence Briefings?
They are one-paper documents that summarize the main findings of an empirical research. If you want to know more about the briefings, you can read the ESEM'16 paper about it: http://bit.ly/2sYbDKH
What is the goal of Evidence Briefings?
We believe that Evidence Briefings can play a role on decreasing the gap between software engineering research and software engineering practice. Instead of reading a full software engineering paper, practitioners can easily and quickly consume this one page document. As a side effect, Evidence Briefings can also promote your research.
Who proposed this idea of Evidence Briefings?
The original idea came from Evidence Based Medicine.
Researchers from Empirical Software Engineering Group (ESEG) of Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE) in Recife, Brazil, adapted this idea to the software engineering community. For more information you can read the ESEM'16 paper about it: http://bit.ly/2sYbDKH
How can I create an Evidence Briefing for my empirical research paper?
We made available a template so that you just need to put all required information in this template.
You can use the Microsoft Word template, available in http://bit.ly/2sU7p6M or the OpenDocument template available on http://bit.ly/2rREssP
Under what license is the Evidence Briefing template?
Under Creative Commons CC-BY.
Where can I find examples of Evidence Briefings?
On the ESEG web site: https://sites.google.com/site/eseportal/evidence-briefings
QUESTIONS ABOUT HOW TO FILL THE EVIDENCE BRIEFINGS TEMPLATE
What logos should I put on the header of the Evidence Briefing?
If you are creating an Evidence Briefing to summarize a paper already published and that you are one of the authors, or to present results that was not yet published but are from your authorship, put the logos of the research group, research center, university, and/or company that was involved in the research being reported. If the paper was already published, you can also put the logo of the conference/journal of which the original paper was published in.
If you are creating an Evidence Briefing to summarize a third-part paper (a paper you are not one of the author), put the logos of the research group, research center, university, and/or company you are affiliated to, not the ones of the authors of the original paper.
The title of the Evidence Briefing must be the same of my original paper?
No. On the contrary, we encourage authors to make the title as short as possible, and transitioning to the Evidence Briefings. One line title is OK. Titles with more than two line should be avoided.
How should I fill the Evidence Briefings’ abstract?
We recommend you to adopt the following template: This briefing reports scientific evidence on <GOAL OF YOUR RESEARCH>.
The abstract should not span more than 6 lines. Below are two examples of Evidence Briefings abstracts:
This briefing reports scientific evidence on the challenges involved in using Scrum for global software development (GSD) projects, and the strategies available to deal with them.
This briefing reports scientific evidence on various barriers that have a negative impact on software outsourcing clients in the selection process of offshore software development outsourcing vendors.
Should I put any information about the research method in the Evidence Briefing?
NO. The idea of the Evidence Briefing is to quickly communicate the main findings of an empirical research, chiefly to practitioners. If they have interest they can search for the original paper since there is a reference to it on the briefing.
Additionally, you should NOT put any other information in the findings section, like: introduction, related work, conclusions, discussion, or any other common section of the traditional paper format.
How should I fill the “Findings” section?
This is the main section of the Evidence Briefings. You should list the main findings of your research.
Use one finding per paragraph. You also can use bullets to highlight important points as well as charts, figures, and tables but they should be one column wide.
Where on my paper are the findings, so I can localize them easily?
Usually the findings of a an empirical research are in the papers' RESULTS, DISCUSSION or sections alike.
Do I need to re-write the same findings of my paper (this is tedious)?
Our experience creating Evidence Briefings has shown that majority of the findings are filled by copying and pasting from the original paper. Only minimal changes need to be done.
How do I fill the item “Who is this briefing for” on the box on the right side of the Evidence Briefing?
We recommend you to adopt the following template: Software engineering practitioners who want to make decisions about <GOAL OF YOUR RESEARCH> based on scientific evidence.
This item should not span more than 6 lines. Below are two examples:
Software engineering practitioners who want to make decisions about the effectiveness of pair programming based on scientific evidence.
Software engineering practitioners who want to make decisions about the use of Scrum on global software development projects based on scientific evidence.
How do I fill the item “Where the findings come from?” on the box on the right side of the Evidence Briefing?
We recommend you to adopt the following template: All findings of this briefing were extracted from the <STUDY METHOD> conducted by <FIRST AUTHOR SURNAME> et al.
This item should not span more than 6 lines. Below are examples of this item:
All findings of this briefing were extracted from the systematic review conducted by Hossain et al.
All findings of this briefing were extracted from the survey conducted by Cartaxo et al.
How do I fill the item “What is included in this briefing?” on the box on the right side of the Evidence Briefing?
This item is facultative. This item should not span more than 6 lines.
Below is one example of this item from a systematic review:
The main findings of the original systematic review, and brief contextual information about the context of the findings.
How do I fill the item “What is not included in this briefing?” on the box on the right side of the Evidence Briefing?
This item is facultative. This item should not span more than 6 lines.
Below is one example of this item from a systematic review:
Additional information not supported by the findings of the original systematic review as well as descriptions about the research method or details about the primary studies analyzed in the original systematic review.
How do I fill the box on the bottom of the Evidence Briefing about the “ORIGINAL RESEARCH REFERENCE”?
You should put a concise reference to the research paper you are creating the Evidence Briefing based on.
We recommend the following format: First Author Name et al. Research Paper Title. Conference or Journal Title, Year of Publication.
Below is one example:
· Jo E. Hannay et al. The effectiveness of pair programming: A meta-analysis. Information and Software Technology, 2009.
What if I have more questions about Evidence Briefings?
Do not hesitate to contact us. We from ESEG are pleased to help you, just send an e-mail to:
· brunocartaxo [at] gmail [dot] com
· gpinto [at] ufpa [dot] br