A Decade of Intelligent Software Testing Research: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

It gets harder and harder to guarantee the quality of software systems due to their increasing complexity and fast development. Because it helps spot errors and gaps during the first phases of software development, software testing is one of the most crucial stages of software engineering. Software testing used to be done manually, which is a time-consuming, imprecise procedure that comes with errors and gaps and costs money, time, and effort. Currently, testing professionals routinely automate testing to obtain trustworthy results while saving time, cost, and labor. We’ve also moved the starting point of the software cycle to the developer, and made write tests before even writing code, or what’s known as TDD (Test Driven Development). The use of new artificial intelligence techniques will enable the generation of smart test cases to improve test quality and provide better coverage and accurate results. In this study, we used the Web of Science database to acquire bibliometric data about intelligent software testing papers which were conducted between 2012 and 2022, and we used Biblioshiny from the R bibliomerix package, alongside with VOSViewer in order to analyze the data and extract insights and answer research questions about the authors, articles, journals, organizations, and countries publishing in the field of intelligent software testing. The focus of this study is on scientific progress and collaborative trends in scholarly research, providing a blueprint for showcasing worldwide developments in the realm of intelligent software testing. By gaining a comprehensive understanding of the present state of research on the application of artificial intelligence in software testing, this study can offer valuable insights to software engineers, architects, and researchers in the field.