There is a great need to assure and improve the reliability and quality of software. Software inspections were introduced over 30 years ago as an answer for this need and they have inspired a lot of research covering many different kinds of aspects. There is a need for an up-to-date survey revealing the current state and the overall evolution of the most prominent research on the area. This paper presents a comprehensive survey focusing on the most relevant 16 international high-impact scientific publication series. There are 153 articles included in the survey covering both technical and management aspects. The main results include a description of the research trends during 1980-2008 and a description of the main results of the included studies. The description is organized based on a taxonomy of the inspection research as having emerged based on the survey. At general level the surveyed research provides clear evidence that inspections generally benefit software development and quality assurance. There are several proposed theoretical variations for the inspection process but also many empirical studies. Although the conducted research is relatively scattered, proper sciencebased understanding about some of the most studied issues has been achieved. Our main conclusion is that conducting empirical research needs to be continued in order to validate the effects of the different kinds of proposed theoretical constructs in practice. Empirical studies are needed especially in order to better understand the proper implementation and the actual impacts of applying inspections in different kinds of industrial and organizational settings.