ProfOlaf: Semi-Automated Tool for Systematic Literature Reviews

Abstract

Systematic reviews and mapping studies are critical to synthesize research, identify gaps, and guide future work, but are often labor-intensive and time-consuming. Existing tools provide partial support for specific steps, leaving much of the process manual and error-prone. We present ProfOlaf, a semi-automated tool designed to streamline systematic reviews while maintaining methodological rigor. ProfOlaf supports iterative snowballing for article collection with human-in-the-loop filtering and uses large language models to help select articles, extract key topics, and answer queries about the content of articles. By combining automation with guided manual effort, ProfOlaf enhances the efficiency, quality, and reproducibility of systematic reviews across research fields. ProfOlaf can be used both as a CLI tool and in web application format. A video demon- strating ProfOlaf is available at: https://youtu.be/R-gY4dJlN3s

Alexandra Mendes

Assistant Professor

My research focuses on encouraging a wider adoption of software verification by creating tools and methods that hide the complexities of verifying software. Much of my most recent work overlaps with the area of software engineering. For more details, see selected publications and some of my projects. Follow me on Twitter or add me on LinkedIn. See also the Software Reliability Lab website.