Historical, Conceptual, and Methodological Aspects of the Publications of the Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering: A Systematic Mapping Study

The goal of this article is to provide a comprehensive and systematic analysis of the scientific work published in the Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering (SBES). We used a systematic literature review methodology to extract, catalog, analyze, and synthesize data from all articles published in each of the 24 editions of SBES, with respect to historical, conceptual, and methodological aspects. The results of our review showed that 509 articles have been published, which were authored and co-authored by 818 researchers from 151 organizations, demonstrating the relevance of the SBES to bring together a significant portion of the Brazilian Software Engineering research community. Consistent with other studies, our results show that research published at SBES is diversified on the topics of software engineering addressed, but narrow on research approach and methods used. Besides, there is a strong concentration on technical aspects and much less studies addressing human or social aspects. We discuss the implications of these results for research and practice of software engineering in Brazil.