Observatories: A systematic mapping of the literature

In the last decades, there was an expansion in the meaning and application of observatories. These observatories started to have an important role in the knowledge society, for that reason many observatories applied in the most diverse areas of knowledge appeared. With diversity a variety of definition for the observatories appeared. The absence of a widely accepted definition for these organisms makes it difficult to identify observatories and, consequently, limits the analysis of the phenomenon. Given this scenario, this work aims to understand how the observatories have been defined and characterized by the existing literature. For this, a systematic mapping of the literature was developed, using snowballing as a method of data collection. Data were collected from 98 studies; these data were coded and grouped into twelve constructs. These constructs can contribute to the construction of a common definition for observatories.