Conceptual Modeling

The International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER) is the leading global forum for current research on conceptual modeling (CM) and trendsetting CM applications. The topics of interest span the entire spectrum of CM: theoretical and ontological foundation, methods and tools for developing and communicating conceptual models and meta models, techniques for transforming conceptual models into effective implementations, and the impact of CM techniques on databases, business strategies, and information systems development. The ER conference is rotating in successive years between Europe, the Asia-Pacific region, and the Americas, and attracts an international community of scholars.

This volume contains the research and technical papers comprising the main program of ER 2017 in its 36th conference edition held during November 6–9, 2017, in Valencia, Spain. More than 450 researchers from all over the world followed the call for papers and submitted 153 papers about their latest research results. Each paper was carefully reviewed by at least three members of the Program Committee, which consisted of renowned scientists from more than 40 nations. Finally, 28 papers, i.e., about 18%, were selected as full papers to be presented at the conference and to be included in this volume. An additional 10 submissions were accepted as short papers. The quality of these 38 papers is a tribute to the authors and also to the reviewers who guided any necessary improvements.

Focal points of these papers are: (1) CM and ontologies in the context of requirements analysis, business processes, and other domains; (2) foundations of CM, for example, regarding multi-level modeling; (3) CM methodology with a broad spectrum of innovative answers to interesting research questions; (4) ontologies; and (5) model efficiency.