Announcements

  • Teaching and learning conceptual modeling

    2020-10-30

    Conceptual modeling constitutes a learning task faced by most students of Informatics related fields such as Business Informatics, Information Systems,and Software Engineering. Viewed as an activity, conceptual modeling involves an intricate array of cognitive processes and performed actions including: abstracting, conceptualizing, associating, contextualizing, interpreting & sense-making, judging & evaluating, drawing & visualizing; and, in group settings: communicating, discussing and agreeing. Learning conceptual modeling is, hence, construed as a complex task based on codified & tacit knowledge and learning processes involving knowledge acquisition through experience. Learning conceptual modeling involves mastering theoretical foundations, modeling languages and methods, and applying them to practical problems. Teaching conceptual modeling is a likewise challenging task faced by didactic and practical challenges.

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  • Special Issue: 100 Years of Graphical Business Process Modelling

    2020-03-18

    100 years of graphical business process modelling? This sounds like a misprint, but it isn’t! On 5-9 December 1921, Frank B. Gilbreth & L. M. Gilbreth presented a new concept named “Process Charts“ at the Annual Meeting of The American Society of Mechanical Engineers. They described the notation as “a device for visualizing a process as a means of improving it.“ This anniversary is a good opportunity to look back on the past 100 years, to review the present, and to take a view towards the future. What has been achieved? Which challenges still remain? In a special issue of the EMISA Journal, we invite researchers as well as practitioners to discuss the history, current state and future of business process modelling.

    Download: CfP Special Issue 100 Years of Graphical Business Process Modeling

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  • Peter Fettke designated as new Co-Editor-in-Chief / Agnes Koschmider and Peter Fettke lead editorial team

    2019-02-28

    Starting in May 2019, Peter Fettke (DFKI and Saarland University, Germany) will lead the editorial team at EMISAJ - International Journal of Conceptual Modeling jointly with Agnes Koschmider (KIT, Germany) who has been serving as Co-Editor-in-Chief since early 2018.

     

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  • Merry Christmas / EMISAJ now is indexed in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI)

    2018-11-29

    As a community-driven open access journal, EMISAJ – International Journal of Conceptual Modeling relies on volunteers to run the journal’s editorial and reviewing processes, and on authors to recognize the value of such a community effort for the scientific community. We are very grateful to our editors, associate editors, reviewers, authors and executive editors in the editorial office for the countless hours they spent on making EMISAJ a success story.

    In Volume 13 (2018), we published 13 research articles and research notes, 2 editorials for special issues as well as an extensive special issue in honor of Heinrich C. Mayr.

    To top things off for 2018, we have just received word from the decision-makers at Clarivate Analytics to include EMISAJ in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI).

    We wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a truly Happy New Year, and are looking forward to your submissions to EMISAJ in 2019!

    Stefan Strecker, Agnes Koschmider (Editors-in-Chief)
    Peter Fettke (Upcoming Editor-in-Chief)
    Michael Fellmann, Hans-Georg Fill, Judith Michael (Editors)

    Read more about Merry Christmas / EMISAJ now is indexed in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI)

  • New Journal Website!

    2018-01-23

    You have probably noticed the fresh new look of our journal website and submission system. Our website is now running the latest version of the Open Journal System (OJS) with many new features and a responsive web design. We hope that you enjoy the new access to the latest in research on conceptual modeling, and submit your next research manuscript to EMISA. If you find a glitch with the new website, please let us know.

    Read more about New Journal Website!

  • Editorial statement

    2017-11-17

    Does your research deal with enterprise architectures, conceptual models, enterprise models and modeling languages or modeling tools?  

    We welcome submissions from all research directions and communities and promote our editorial statement:

    ‘Conceptual Models, Enterprise Models and Information Systems Architectures should be researched from different perspectives, angles, and backgrounds, with a multitude of theoretical and practical lenses and mindsets. We welcome and encourage a broad understanding of Enterprise Modelling research and intend to further its many different facets, theoretical foundation and experiential body of knowledge.’

    The editorial team at EMISA works hard to provide you with constructive and knowledgeable reviews, short review cycles and support with copyediting.

    If you are not sure whether your research fits the journal's scope, do not hesitate to contact us! We gladly offer to provide you with advice in case you have questions before submitting your work to EMISA.  

     

    Read more about Editorial statement

  • Want to help us run EMISAJ? Please get in touch with us!

    2017-02-28

    EMISAJ is a community effort and run by volunteers. If you are interested in helping us run the journal, do not hesitate to get in touch with us at eic@emisa-journal.org!

    As you may have noticed ;-), the journal website is in need of a major overhaul and a remake. If you are knowledgeable in Web technologies and know how to implement a decent frontend with CSS/HTML, we would truly appreciate your help. We are running EMISAJ on OJS, an open source journal management system which provides means to customise its web frontend.

    Read more about Want to help us run EMISAJ? Please get in touch with us!

  • New journal section: Report on Tools and Tool Applications

    2016-07-19

    Submissions to the new section "Report on Tools and Tool Applications" describe and evaluate software tools and tool applications in the journal's areas of interest, e.g., (meta-)modelling tools, tools for M2M- and M2T-transformations, process-aware information systems, process management systems, process engines, software architectures of such tools. A submission to this section should describe and justify the tool design including all relevant design objectives and requirements, design alternatives and decisions and the software architecture. The tool description should focus on the specific features of the tool and relate the tool to other tools and prior related work. It is strongly encouraged that the described tools are openly accessible on the Web (i.e. Libre/Free/Open Source Software at best). If this is not possible, then they have to be made available to the reviewers (contact the editorial office for an arrangement). Submissions to this section are double-blind peer-reviewed by at least two reviewers (with review criteria adapted to this section), and must adhere to scholarly standards in terms of originality, level of abstraction and justification of results.

    Read more about New journal section: Report on Tools and Tool Applications

  • Multilevel Modelling: Theoretical Foundation, Languages, Tools and Applications

    2016-07-15

    Guest editors: Tony Clark and Ulrich Frank

    Designing software systems for reuse, integration and flexibility requires abstractions such as classification, generalisation, or encapsulation. Traditional modelling and programming languages are usually limited to one classification level only. Therefore, they do not support abstractions that would require additional levels of classification. As a consequence, software designers and programmers are confronted with the problem that they cannot express abstractions that would be useful to satisfy important design goals and to represent patterns of domain concepts. Domain-specific modelling languages offer an attractive perspective on introducing advanced abstractions to foster reuse and flexibility. However, their implementation and use are compromised by restrictions of mainstream programming languages.

    Multilevel modelling and programming promise to overcome these limitations by allowing languages, models and instances to co-exist within the same model or program. Multilevel languages increase expressivity and reflective capabilities. In recent years, various languages and tools have demonstrated the potential of this new paradigm. However, research on multilevel modelling and programming languages is still restricted to a relatively small community.

    Multilevel approaches offer an opportunity for a new paradigm that can be applied in a wide range of situations. In order to realise the potential of this approach there is need to demonstrate that it is based on sound principles and that it enables more versatile tools which are suited to empower users of future software systems. This special issue is dedicated to provide a platform for researchers and practitioners who work on multilevel languages, models and tools and/or apply them to develop advanced application systems.

    Enterprise Modelling and Information Systems Architectures (EMISA) is an international scholarly open access journal with a unique focus on novel and innovative research regarding all aspects of Enterprise Modelling. It allows for supplementing articles with additional material such as models, specifications or tools. We seek contributions that address original aspects of developing languages, language concepts, models, tools and related application systems for multilevel modelling.

    Topics of interest for this special issue include, but are not limited to:

    • Methods to guide analysis and design of multilevel systems and languages.
    • Innovative system architectures enabled by multilevel languages.
    • Use of multilevel languages for creating process-modelling languages.
    • Formal foundations for multilevel languages.
    • Utilizing multilevel languages for enabling models at runtime.
    • Tools for multilevel languages.
    • Applications of multilevel languages and tools.
    • Novel multilevel languages.
    • Multilevel extensions to traditional languages.

    Submissions:

    Submissions to this special issue shall follow the journal's author guidelines for general submissions and will be subject to the regular journal review process. For author guidelines and further information on submitting to EMISA, see

    https://www.emisa-journal.org/emisa/about/submissions#authorGuidelines

    Important note: Make sure to enter 'SI Multilevel modelling' in the 'Comments to the editor(s)' text field in step 1 of the online submission process. Also please make sure to select the appropriate type of submission (i.e. 'Original Research Contributions' or 'Experience Reports').

    Timescales:

    (1) Intent to submit: Aug 1, 2016 (via email to ulrich.frank@uni-due.de)
    (2) Full submission of article: Oct 31, 2016

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  • Towards the Model Driven Organisation (MDO)

    2016-02-23
    Modern organisations are faced with the very challenging problem of rapidly responding to continual external business pressures in order to sustain their competitiveness or to effectively perform mission-critical services. Difficulties arise because the continual evolution of systems and operational procedures that are performed in response to the external pressures eventually leads to suboptimal configurations of the systems and processes that drive the organisation.

    The management of continuous business change is complicated by the current lack of effective mechanisms for rapidly responding to multiple change drivers. The use of inadequate change management methods and technologies introduces accidental complexities that significantly drive up the cost, risk, and effort of making changes. These problems provide opportunities for developing and applying organisation modelling approaches that seek to improve an organisation's ability to effectively evolve in response to changes in its business environment.

    Modelling an organisation to better support organisational evolution leads to what we call a Model Driven Organisation (MDO), where an MDO is an organisation in which models are the primary means for interacting with and evolving the systems that drive an organisation.

    Definition: A Model Driven Organisation uses models in the analysis, design, simulation, delivery, operation, and maintenance of systems to address its strategic, tactical and operational needs and its relation to the wider environment.

    An organisation's Enterprise Systems (ES) support a wide-range of business activities including planning, business intelligence, operationalisation, and reporting. ES are thus pivotal to a company's competitiveness. Modelling technologies and approaches that address the development, analysis, deployment and maintenance of ES have started to emerge. Such technologies and approaches must support a much broader collection of use-cases than traditional technologies for systems design modelling. Current ES architectures do not adequately address the growing demands for inter-organisational collaboration, flexibility and advanced decision support in organisations.

    Realising the MDO vision will require research that cross-cuts many areas, including research on enterprise architectures, business process. and workflow modelling, system requirements and design modelling, meta-modelling, and models@runtime.

    This special issue will bring together articles that describe issues and results relating to achieving the MDO vision. In particular the following issues are deemed in scope:

    • Models used to support organisations.
    • Model-based simulation of organisations.
    • Model-based quality assurance of organisations.
    • Achieving organisational agility through models.
    • Using models to enhance organisation capability.
    • Using models to allow organisation to engage with emerging technologies.
    • Using models to understand and analyse organisations.
    • Languages and meta-modelling to support organisations.

    Submission:

    The Guest Editor (Tony Clark, Sheffield Hallam University, UK, t.clark@shu.ac.uk) invites submissions to this special issue that are deemed within scope as described above.

    The submissions must follow the journal's guidelines for general submissions and should be either 'Original Research Contributions' or 'Experience Reports' and will be subject to the normal journal review process.

    In particular, authors should ensure that they follow the author instructions and style guidelines available from

    https://www.emisa-journal.org/emisa/about/submissions#authorGuidelines

    Make sure to enter 'SI Towards the Model Driven Organisation (MDO)' in the 'Comments to the editor(s)' text field in step 1 of the submission process.

    Timescales:

    (1) Intent to submit including abstract: April 1, 2016 (via email to t.clark@shu.ac.uk)
    (2) Full submission of article: July 4, 2016
    (3) Deadline for first round reviews: Nov 1, 2016

     

    Read more about Towards the Model Driven Organisation (MDO)

  • We started to assign DOI to our articles

    2016-02-15

    We are pleased to announce that EMISA - An International Journal features DOI for its published articles. The first six DOI have been assigned to articles in the current issue (Vol. 10, No. 1) today:

    http://dx.doi.org/10.18417/emisa.10.1.1
    http://dx.doi.org/10.18417/emisa.10.1.2
    http://dx.doi.org/10.18417/emisa.10.1.3
    http://dx.doi.org/10.18417/emisa.10.1.4
    http://dx.doi.org/10.18417/emisa.10.1.5
    http://dx.doi.org/10.18417/emisa.10.1.6

    Read more about We started to assign DOI to our articles

  • Revised EMISA LaTeX package for authors released

    2016-02-07

    Today, we released the revised EMISA LaTeX package for authors, version 2.0 at Github. The current development version with bug fixes, new features and the most recent authors instructions is available from Github as well.

    The canonical release version of the LaTeX package is available from CTAN at

    http://www.ctan.org/pkg/emisa

    @Authors:  Please use to revised package for manuscript preparation, and let us know your suggestions for improvements. Consult the LaTeX package documentation for author instructions and style guidelines.

    Read more about Revised EMISA LaTeX package for authors released

  • Change in publishing mode

    2015-09-18
    Starting with Volume 10, No. 1 (2015), emisa-journal.org will be used to publish the journal (similar to the publishing model used, for example, by the journal 'Semantics and Pragmatics' at http://semprag.org).  Each article will be available for download in PDF format. Frontmatter and editorials will be published as an additional download. Moreover, we are planning to publish all earlier issues as well. Read more about Change in publishing mode

  • Revised LaTeX template for EMISA in Q4/2015

    2015-05-26

    The LaTeX template for preparing submissions to EMISA is currently under development. A revision is scheduled for release in Q4/2015. The revised LaTeX document class will simplify manuscript preparation for authors and will entail detailed author guidelines for using advanced LaTeX features for manuscript preparation. Meanwhile,  the initial submission to the journal may either be prepared using the current LaTeX template, or by using another text processing system, e.g. Microsoft Word or LibreOffice.

    Read more about Revised LaTeX template for EMISA in Q4/2015