A systematic mapping study of developer social network research

Abstract

Developer social networks (DSNs) are a tool for the analysis of community structures and collaborations between developers in software projects and software ecosystems. Within this paper, we present the results of a systematic mapping study on the use of DSNs in software engineering research. We identified 194 primary studies on DSNs. We mapped the primary studies to research directions, collected information about the data sources and the size of the studies, and conducted a bibliometric assessment. Moreover, we determined open issues in the state of the art that can help to guide future research.