Frontiers of Business Intelligence and Analytics

The search string application comprises five search stages, which filter the results (see Table 1). In the first stage, we applied the search string and received 742 hits at Ebscohost and 114 at AISeL. We exported all articles and stored them locally as RIS file. Afterwards, we import all articles into Citavi for further processing. Citavi automatically conducts a duplicate cleansing (stage 2). After stage 2, 561 (447 Ebscohost, 114 AISeL) articles remain. After a manual duplicate cleansing (stage 3), further 41 hits could be sorted out. In stage 4, we read the titles, key terms, and abstracts of the remaining 520 (406 Ebscohost, 114 AISeL) articles to sort out irrelevant ones.

Table 1 Literature search stages and hits

For filtering the remaining articles, we apply three criteria. The criterion formal requirements includes size and format of an article. If an article has less than seven pages including introduction and illustrations, we sorted them out. In addition, we exclude non-final and discussion papers, such as working papers or research in progress, and special issue introductions from the result set. From a methodological perspective, literature reviews are excluded from the result set. Nevertheless, we read and analyze the literature reviews described in Sect. 2.1 to argue for the relevance of a structured literature review in the field BI & A 3.0. With regard to the content aspects, we also exclude articles that deal with theoretical principles without referring the application of an IS artifact. A further selection criterion is the lack of reference to decision support or the absence of data from mobile devices or sensor-based data.

After conducting search stage 4, 109 articles remain for complete article reading. The criteria for the final selection of hits are analogous to those described above for stage 3. Solely articles that address at least one characteristic of the BI & A 3.0 attributes are included in the final result set. Applying this criterion, 75 articles finally remain for a deep analysis.