arXiv AI By Aleksi Huotala, Miikka Kuutila, Mika M\"antyl\"a

Has LLM Screening Performance Stalled in Software Engineering Systematic Reviews?

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The study investigates whether large language models (LLMs) have improved in screening systematic reviews (SRs) within software engineering. Using the SESR‑Eval benchmark and a new smaller dataset, the authors evaluated eight recent LLMs and found only marginal performance gains over older models (average MCC rose from 0.347 to 0.365). The research also examined prompt variations, inter‑model agreement, and the impact of refining inclusion/exclusion criteria, concluding that LLMs still fall short of replacing human reviewers and that future work should explore agent‑based methods, prompt engineering, and further criteria refinement.

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