  Software engineering (SE) research should be relevant to industrial practice.
There have been regular discussions in the SE community on this issue since the
1980's, led by pioneers such as Robert Glass. As we recently passed the
milestone of "50 years of software engineering", some recent positive efforts
have been made in this direction, e.g., establishing "industrial" tracks in
several SE conferences. However, many researchers and practitioners believe
that we, as a community, are still struggling with research relevance and
utility. The goal of this paper is to synthesize the evidence and
experience-based opinions shared on this topic so far in the SE community, and
to encourage the community to further reflect and act on the research
relevance. For this purpose, we have conducted a Multi-vocal Literature Review
(MLR) of 54 systematically-selected sources (papers and non peer-reviewed
articles). Instead of relying on and considering the individual opinions on
research relevance, mentioned in each of the sources, the MLR aims to
synthesize and provide the "holistic" view on the topic. The highlights of our
MLR findings are as follows. The top three root causes of low relevance,
discussed in the community, are: (1) Researchers having simplistic views (or
wrong assumptions) about SE in practice; (2) Lack of connection with industry;
and (3) Wrong identification of research problems. The top three suggestions
for improving research relevance are: (1) Using appropriate research approaches
such as action-research; (2) Choosing relevant research problems; and (3)
Collaborating with industry. By synthesizing all the discussions on this
important topic so far, this paper aims to encourage further discussions and
actions in the community to increase our collective efforts to improve the
research relevance.
