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.

Publication
In ACM International Conference on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE 2026), Tool Demonstrations Track
Ranking
CORE A* conference