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CALL FOR PAPERS - BPM 2021
The 19th International Conference on Business Process Management
6-10 September 2021, Rome, Italy
https://bpm2021.diag.uniroma1.it/
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**** 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 system management, insofar as they enhance or refine the existing portfolio of theories, methods and tools for managing and improving business processes.

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

**** TRACK I: FOUNDATIONS ****

Track I invites papers that follow computer science research methods, including papers investigating the underlying principles of BPM systems, computational theories, algorithms, semantics, and methods for modeling, automating and analyzing business processes. Track I also covers papers on novel languages, architectures, and other concepts underlying process-aware information systems, as well as papers that use conceptual modeling techniques to investigate problems in the design and analysis of BPM systems. Papers in Track I are evaluated according to computer science standards, including sound formalization, convincing argumentation, and, where applicable, proof-of-concept implementation, which shows that the concepts can be implemented as described. Since papers in this track are not expected to propose an immediate application in concrete business environments, empirical evaluation is not required. Instead, papers will be evaluated based on the soundness of the formalization and the degree to which the developed foundations permit new ways of modeling or analyzing BPM systems.

You should send your paper to Track I if:

- it provides foundational results about the underlying principles and concepts of BPM systems.
- it advances the state-of-the-art in BPM through the investigation of formal methods and algorithms.
- it contributes to the definition of novel concepts, languages, and architectures for BPM systems.
- it tackles conceptual modeling issues of BPM systems and their environment.
- it investigates novel concepts of BPM systems through the development of proof-of-concept implementations.

**** TRACK II: ENGINEERING ****

Track II invites papers that deal with engineering aspects of information systems research. The focus is on the investigation of artifacts and systems in business environments. Track II covers business process intelligence, including process mining techniques, and the use of process models for automation, model-driven engineering, as well as interaction with services and deployment architectures like the Cloud. It further covers BPM systems in particular domains, such as digital health, smart mobility, logistics, or smart government. All papers in this track must include rigorous and repeatable empirical evaluations that demonstrate the merits of the artifact introduced. Where applicable, artifacts should be compared to state-of-the-art in a reproducible manner. Whenever appropriate, artifacts should be evaluated against real and public datasets. When artificial datasets are introduced, clear motivations should be provided together with an assessment of its quality and a discussion of how this impacts the threats to validity. A self-critical discussion of threats to validity is expected. Formalization of problems and solutions should be used where they add clarity or are beneficial in other ways.

You should send your paper to Track II if:

- it has a significant engineering, systems or design contribution.
- its results are empirically evaluated in a rigorous and preferably reproducible manner, e.g., using public datasets or public Cloud infrastructures.
- it reports on a system that you designed, with a maturity of at least a prototype, i.e., it can be evaluated in an application context.

**** TRACK III: MANAGEMENT ****

Track III invites papers that aim to advance our understanding of how BPM can deliver business value (e.g., competitive advantage) by developing process-oriented capabilities to improve, innovate or transform organizations, or to tackle the challenges and opportunities of process-related digitalization. Papers that examine process thinking, organizational routines, process innovation, or the context-aware impact of BPM methods and tools based on empirical observation are highly welcome. Areas of interest include a wide range of capability areas that are relevant for BPM, such as strategic alignment, governance, methods, information technology, and the related human aspects including people and culture. We seek contributions that advance our understanding on how organizations can develop such process-oriented capabilities to achieve specific objectives in particular (cross-) organizational settings. Papers may use various strategies of inquiry, including case study research, action research, focus group research, literature review research, survey research, or design-science research. Papers will be evaluated according to current management and information systems standards.

You should send your paper to Track III if:

- it tackles an organizational challenge/opportunity from a process-oriented perspective.
- it builds on and draws from real-world organizational endeavors in BPM.
- it extends the BPM body of knowledge to better contribute to strategy delivery.
- it advances our understanding and methodology of BPM to support digital innovation.
- it contributes to solving grand societal challenges through BPM.

**** 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 (https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-guidelines). Submissions must be in English and must not exceed 16 pages. 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. Student papers are treated as regular papers in the review process. Importantly, the contribution underlying a student paper must be carried out mainly by the (PhD) student(s), but others (advisors, collaborators, etc.) may appear as authors as well. When submitting the paper, student papers must be clearly marked as such in the EasyChair system. To be eligible for the best student paper award, student papers have to be presented at the conference by a student author.

Papers must be submitted electronically in PDF format via the BPM 2021 EasyChair submission site (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=bpm2021).

Submissions must be original contributions that have neither been published previously nor submitted to other conferences or journals while being submitted to BPM 2021.

Accepted papers will be included in the conference proceedings published by Springer in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science 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 special issues in Elsevier's Information Systems (Tracks I and II) and in Springer’s Business & Information Systems Engineering (Track III).

Innovative papers that have 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 series, and be presented during the main conference. There will be no short papers at the conference.

First-time submitters to BPM may request to be considered for a pre-submission shepherding program in which a selected BPM PC member advises on the presentation and positioning of a shepherded paper. Interested candidates are encouraged to contact the PC Chairs by February 8, 2021.

**** IMPORTANT DATES ****

Abstract submission: 08 March 2021
Paper submission: 15 March 2021 – 23:59 AoE (strict)
Notification to authors: 10 May 2021
Camera Ready submission: 14 June 2021
Conference: 6-10 September 2021

Remark: Deadlines should be interpreted using the Anywhere on Earth (AoE) Time Zone.

**** PC CHAIRS ****

- Artem Polyvyanyy, The University of Melbourne, Australia (Track Chair, Track I)
- Moe Thandar Wynn, Queensland University of Technology, Australia (Track Chair, Track II)
- Amy Van Looy, Ghent University, Belgium (Track Chair, Track III)
- Manfred Reichert, Ulm University, Germany (Consolidation Chair)

**** CONTACT DETAILS ****

Inquiries regarding BPM 2021 can be addressed to bpm2021-organization[AT]diag.uniroma1.it