Initially, I did not really think that I would put this article on the blog. I actually thought about using it in my writing advice page. However, I’ve read it and then I realized that it’s actually more suitable for this blog.
This article shows how we can classify software engineering research. It has a nice framework described in Figure 1. It organizes the framework around the concepts of who the main beneficiary is – e.g. human, system or researcher (yes, it is a different category!), type of research contribution and which research strategies are used.
It’s an article that complements the work of our colleagues from Lund University on the design of design science research studies and the construction of graphical abstracts.
Although the work seems to be obvious when you are a seasoned researcher, I need to be reminded sometimes about what kind of study that I want/need to conduct. Therefore I recommend this as a reading to both PhD candidates, master students and also advanced researchers. Using the classification scheme will definitely help us to understand each other better and to reduce the burden of paper reviews!
