Technology transfer decision support in requirements engineering research: a systematic review of REj

One of the main goals of an applied research field such as requirements engineering is the transfer of research results to industrial use. To promote industrial adoption of technologies developed in academia, researchers need to provide tangible evidence of the advantages of using them. This can be done through industry validation, enabling researchers to test and validate technologies in a real setting with real users and applications. The evidence obtained, together with detailed information on how the validation was conducted, offers rich decision support material for industrial practitioners seeking to adopt new technologies. This paper presents a comprehensive systematic literature review of all papers published in the Requirements Engineering journal containing any type of technology evaluation. The aim is to gauge the support for technology transfer, i.e., to what degree industrial practitioners can use the reporting of technology evaluations in the journal as decision support for adopting the technologies in industrial practice. Findings show that very few evaluations offer full technology transfer support, i.e., have a realistic scale, application or subjects. The major improvement potential concerning support for technology transfer is found to be the subjects used in the evaluations. Attaining company support, including support for using practitioners as subjects, is vital for technology transfer and for researchers seeking to validate technologies.