Call for Research Papers

The International Conference on Business Process Management (BPM) is the premium forum for researchers and practitioners in the field of BPM. The conference embraces the interdisciplinary nature of BPM to its fullest extent. To this end, the conference explicitly seeks to bring together the finest research contributions and viewpoints from the fields of computer science, information systems engineering, and information systems management. The objective is to enhance or refine the existing portfolio of theories, methods, and tools for managing and improving business processes.

To accommodate this diversity, the BPM conference is structured into three tracks: Foundations, Engineering, and Management. Each track covers different phenomena of interest and research methods. Accordingly, each track has specific evaluation criteria, a separate track chair, and a dedicated program committee.

Track I: Foundations
Track Chair: Andrea Marrella, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy

Track I invites papers that have a foundational nature, that is a formal, mathematical, conceptual or philosophical nature. It focuses on (i) papers investigating the underlying principles of BPM, computational theories, formal methods and algorithms for modelling, automating and analysing business processes; (ii) papers identifying novel problems, novel languages, architectures and other concepts underlying process-aware information systems, as well as conceptual papers on frameworks, taxonomies, patterns and that use conceptual modelling techniques to investigate problems in the design and analysis of BPM systems.

As papers in this track are not expected to propose an immediate application in concrete business environments, empirical evaluation is not required. Instead, determining factors will be their technical quality in terms of computer science standards (e.g., sound formalization, rigorous research method, clear description of the problem tackled and positioning concerning state of the art, convincing argumentation and benefits of the contribution) and the degree to which the developed foundations permit new ways of modelling or analyzing BPM systems.

You should send your paper to Track I if one or more of the following applies:

* It provides foundational insights about the underlying principles and concepts of BPM.
* It advances state of the art in BPM through the investigation of formal methods and algorithms.
* It identifies novel problems in BPM and contributes to their definition through languages, architectures, conceptual models, frameworks, patterns and taxonomies for BPM.
* It demonstrates technical quality and shows how the developed foundations permit new ways of modelling or analyzing BPM systems.

Track II: Engineering
Track Chair: Manuel Resinas, University of Seville, Spain

Track II invites papers that deal with engineering aspects of BPM research. The focus is on the investigation of artefacts and systems that aim to solve concrete problems in business environments.
Track II covers tools and techniques for process modelling, the enactment of process models as well as process monitoring and analytics (including process mining techniques). It covers the usage of such artefacts and systems in particular domains, such as digital health, smart mobility, logistics, or smart government. It also covers aspects related to the interaction between processes and software infrastructure and services.

All papers in this track must include rigorous and reproducible empirical evaluations that demonstrate the merits of the artefact introduced. A self-critical discussion of limitations and threats to validity is expected. If the artefact is based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques, the contribution cannot be a mere application of existing techniques. Instead, an adequate justification of the adaptations to the AI techniques required in the BPM context should be provided. Formalization of problems and solutions should be used if they add clarity or are beneficial in other ways.

You should send your paper to Track II if one or more of the following applies:
* It proposes a significant contribution in BPM in the form of a novel artefact or system.
* Its results are empirically evaluated in a rigorous and reproducible manner (reproducibility includes making available the data, code and other relevant aspects of the evaluation).
* It reports on an artefact or system you designed, with a maturity of at least a prototype, i.e., it can be evaluated in an application context.

Track III: Management
Track Chair: Mieke Jans, University of Hasselt, Belgium

Track III invites papers that focus on the socio-technical, cognitive, psychological, managerial and societal aspects of BPM. This includes all techniques, tools, and methods that are employed in and across organisations to better govern business processes. Research papers that are submitted to this track aim to advance our understanding of how process management (and mining) concepts, along with the underlying information systems can deliver business value.

In particular, we seek contributions that (1) propose novel organizational and technology-enabled modes of BPM, (2) advance our understanding of how organizations can develop process-oriented capabilities, or (3) examine the (cross-)organizational or managerial impact of novel BPM affordances as well as their context. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to, strategic alignment, governance, methods, information technology, people, and culture; as long as there is a significant link to business process management. Further, all levels of analysis (individual, team, organization, or ecosystem) are welcome.

Papers may use various research methodologies, including case study research, action research, experiments, focus group research, survey research, or design science research. Papers will be evaluated according to current management and information systems standards. These include an appropriate motivation and framing of the research study and methodology, rigorous application of the selected research method, convincing argumentation of design choices, positioning against state-of-the-art, and, wherever possible, demonstration of the findings’ applicability and evaluation of the results’ efficacy.

You should send your paper to Track III if one or more of the following applies:

* It tackles an organizational or societal challenge from a process-oriented perspective.
* It considers all socio-technical aspects: technology, task, and people.
* It extends the BPM body of knowledge to better contribute to process innovation, process-related digitalization, process analysis, and organizational routines.
* It builds on and draws from real-world organizational endeavors in BPM.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

The BPM community is committed to the promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in all aspects of our professional activities. We celebrate the diversity in our community and welcome everyone regardless of age, gender identity, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic background, country of origin, religion, sexual orientation, physical ability, education, and work experience. We encourage all participants to consider DEI in their writing, reviews, presentations, and all interactions related to the BPM conference.

Open Science Principles

The BPM conference encourages authors of research papers to follow the principles of transparency, reproducibility, and replicability. In particular, the conference supports the adoption of open data and open source principles and encourages authors to disclose (anonymized and curated) data in order to increase reproducibility and replicability.

The evaluation form for research papers will include an item explicitly asking reviewers if the research artefacts (e.g., prototypes, interview protocols, questionnaires) or the datasets (used in, or produced by, the empirical evaluation) reported in the paper are available in a suitable form. To this end, authors are asked to include in their manuscript links to private or public repositories where reviewers can find the research artefacts associated with the paper. This information may be included, for example, in a “Data availability” or “Reproducibility” subsection. This requirement does not apply to papers that neither involve an empirical study nor a prototype implementation.

Authors who prefer not to make their research artefacts and datasets accessible to the program committee are asked to comment in their submitted manuscript on why this is not possible, practical, or desirable. This statement may be deleted in the final version of the paper if it gets accepted. Possible reasons may involve privacy restrictions or non-disclosure agreements. While sharing research artefacts is not mandatory for submission or acceptance, the program committee members may use this information to inform their decision.

Authors are encouraged to make the used research artefacts and datasets accessible via public repositories (e.g., Zenodo, Figshare, GitHub, or institutional archives) under an open data license such as the CC0 dedication or the CC-BY 4.0 license. Making research artefacts and datasets available via cloud services such as Dropbox or Google Docs is undesirable given the volatility of the links produced by these services.

Those accepted papers that include research artefacts or datasets available on a publicly accessible archival repository with a DOI will be awarded with an “Artifacts Available” badge that will be included in the camera-ready version of the paper. The badge will follow the ACM’s artefacts guidelines. This means that the research artefacts or datasets publicly available need to be relevant to the study and add value beyond the text in the article, but they do not need to be complete in the sense of including all components relevant to the paper in question. With this badge the conference aims to support authors to provide more substantial supplements to their papers so future research can more effectively build on and compare with previous work.

Finally, authors are encouraged to self-archive their pre- and post-prints in open, preserved repositories, such as their institutional preprint repository, arXiv or other non-profit services, in line with Springer’s copyright agreement (see “License to Publish form for LNCS, CCIS or LNBIP”, §3, available at https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-guidelines).

Submission

Each paper must be submitted to exactly one track. Please use the track descriptions above to decide where to send your paper. Authors may contact track chairs for clarification. Papers must be formatted according to Springer’s LNCS formatting guidelines. Submissions must be in English and cannot exceed 16 pages including references and appendices. The title page must contain a short abstract clarifying the relation of the paper with the topics above. The paper must clearly state the problem being addressed, the goal of the work, the results achieved, and the relation to other work.

Papers must be submitted electronically in PDF format via the BPM 2024 EasyChair submission site.

Submissions must be original contributions that have neither been published previously nor submitted to other conferences or journals while being submitted to BPM 2024.

Accepted papers will be included in the conference proceedings published by Springer in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series. For each accepted paper, at least one author must register for the conference and present the paper. Authors of selected papers will be invited to submit an extended version to a special issue of the newly founded Springer journal ‘Process Science’.

Double-Blind Review


BPM 2024 reviews are double blind. Thus, neither reviewers nor authors should be able to identify each other. The first page, on which the paper body begins, should include the title, abstract and keywords, but not names or affiliations of the authors. Acknowledgments of funding or assistance should be omitted. Ensure that no information is included that would identify the authors or their affiliations (even in the PDF meta-data). Submissions should include references to all published literature relevant to the paper. When the authors’ previous work is relevant, we suggest using the third person. For example, say “Previously, in [4] the authors showed that…,” rather than “In our previous work [4] we showed that…”. If this is not feasible, the references should be blinded.

Supplementary material and code should also be anonymized (including, for instance, hardcoded paths or URLs that may give away login identifiers or institutions). To this end, there are tools like https://anonymous.4open.science/ that allows authors to anonymize GitHub repositories. Repositories like Zenodo and Figshare also offer options to share research artifacts anonymously.

Papers including information that allows the identification of authors may be rejected at the discretion of the PC chairs. A reviewer may be able to deduce the authors’ identities by using external resources, such as technical reports published on the web. The availability of information on the web that may allow reviewers to infer the authors’ identities does not constitute a breach of the double-blind submission policy. Reviewers are explicitly asked not to seek this information.

All identifying information can be added back to the final camera-ready version of accepted papers.

Awards

The BPM conference will recognize the best papers submitted to the conference with an award in two different categories:

* Best paper award
* Best student paper award

Papers eligible for the best student paper award are those whose contribution is carried out mainly by one or more (Ph.D.) student(s), although non-students (advisors, collaborators, etc.) may appear as authors as well. Student papers must be clearly marked as such in the EasyChair system when submitting the paper. Student papers must be presented at the conference by a student author to be eligible for the best student paper award.

Other than for the award, student papers are treated as any other paper in the review process.

BPM Forum

Innovative papers which have a high potential of stimulating discussion at the conference but do not fully meet the quality criteria for the main conference will be invited for presentation at the BPM Forum. Those papers will be published in full length in a separate post-proceedings volume in the Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing (LNBIP) series and be presented during the main conference. There will be no short papers.

Shepherding program

When all authors of a paper are first-time submitters to BPM, they may request to be part of the pre-submission shepherding program. Shepherds are selected BPM PC members who can advise on the presentation and positioning of a paper. Interested candidates are encouraged to contact the PC Chairs by 25 January 2024, at the latest. Please send your request to bpm2024_fdts@easychair.org for the Foundations track, to bpm2024_engn@easychair.org for the Engineering track, or to bpm2024_mgmt@easychair.org for the Management track.

Key Dates

Paper Abstract submission: 1 March 2024 AoE
Paper first submission: 8 March 2024 AoE
Paper final submission: 15 March 2024 AoE

Please make sure to submit a preliminary version of your paper including the abstract by the initial due date: 8 March 2024. Then, an extra-time window of one week will be available to revise and polish your work until: 15 March 2024.

Notification to authors: 17 May 2024
Camera-ready submission: 14 June 2024
Conference: 1-6 September 2024

Program Committee

Michael Rosemann, Queensland University of Technology, Australia (Consolidation Chair)
Andrea Marrella, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy (Track Chair, Foundations Track)
Manuel Resinas, Universidad de Sevilla, Spain (Track Chair, Engineering Track)
Mieke Jans, Hasselt University, Belgium (Track Chair, Management Track)