Abstract
Inspection is a static verification and validation process in which a software system is reviewed to find defects. Though it concentrates on source code, inspection can be applied to any readable representations of the software. Using systematic review, we identify studies for inspection reading techniques in (2004 - 2015). A total of 978 articles were discovered from well-known e-databases; and 45 of these were the primary studies. We found that the current research on inspection still has more focus on coding artifacts than requirements and design artifacts. The study also found the most widely-used technique is tool-assisted, followed by checklist-base reading (CBR) and improved manual inspection (improved MI). An improved MI is a manual inspection (MI) supported with some additional formal approaches. Furthermore, the perspective-based reading (PBR), usage-based reading (UBR), and tool-assisted techniques are found to be the most effective techniques to inspect the requirements, design, and coding artifacts respectively. A little research has been done on inspection of design artifacts. Also, a little research on software inspection has been conducted on industry context compared with academia. The paper also suggests topics for further research.