Systematic Literature Reviews (SLR)

feat~slr~1

JabRef supports researchers conducting Systematic Literature Reviews by letting them define a study and crawl multiple academic catalogs from a single specification. The study definition lives in study.yml; crawl results are persisted to a Git-tracked repository for reproducibility.

This document captures requirements for SLR functionality. Architectural decisions are recorded in linked ADRs.

Requirements sources

Per-catalog query overrides

req~slr.per-catalog-query-override~1

Covers: feat~slr~1

When defining a study, a researcher shall be able to provide a different query for each catalog, written in that catalog’s native syntax.

The system shall use the per-catalog query for catalogs where one is provided, and fall back to the global study query for the rest.

Issue: #12642

Fetcher raw-query execution

req~slr.fetcher-raw-execution~1

Covers: feat~slr~1

The system shall be able to execute a query against any catalog without translating it through JabRef’s abstract query syntax.

This applies to all catalogs the system supports, regardless of whether the researcher has provided a per-catalog query for that catalog in their study.

Implementation in progress. Catalogs are migrated incrementally.

Lock file for reproducibility

req~slr.lock-file~1

Covers: feat~slr~1

After each crawl, the system shall record the exact query sent to each catalog so the crawl can be reproduced. The record shall be machine-readable and produce identical content when the same study is crawled again with no changes.

Planned. Not yet implemented.