30 Years of Automated GUI Testing: A Bibliometric Analysis

Context: Over the last 30 years, GUIs have changed considerably, becoming everyday part of our lives through smart phones and other devices. More complex GUIs and multitude of platforms have increased the challenges when testing software through the GUI. Objective: To visualise how the field of automated GUI testing has evolved by studying the growth of the field; types of publications; influential events, papers and authors; collaboration among authors; and trends on GUI testing. Method: To conduct a bibliometric analysis of automated GUI testing by performing a systematic search of primary studies in Scopus from 1990 to 2020. Results: 744 publications were selected as primary studies. The majority of them were conference papers, the most cited paper was published on 2013, and the most published author has 53 papers. Conclusions: Automated GUI testing has continuously grown. Keywords show that testing applied to mobile interfaces will be the trend in next years, along with the integration of Artificial Intelligence and automated exploration techniques.