Talk:Process science

Answer to Carchasm

Thank you very much for your interest and time to read this Wikipedia article.

I fully agree that Wikipedia entries should be based on high qualitative, reliable sources and so I would like to take your comment as an opportunity to substantiate the statements.

As stated in the article, process science is an initiative to integrate different disciplinary contributions to better understand processual dynamics in different contexts (see more explanations in the article).

Your concerns can be summarized into two major points. You see a leap from “significant coverage” addresses the topic directly and in detail, so that no original research is needed to extract the content. This gives your reasons to assume that the timing for this article is too early. I would argue, however, that it is exactly the timing that makes this article both relevant and useful for the community. I see process science-related claims in a variety of contexts, countries, and disciplines. Prestigious universities, for example, establish chairs and whole research agendas that run under the label of “process science”. These observations taken together provide solid grounds for this article.

Below, I give a list of verifiable and independent sources:

University endowments, appointments, and initiatives:

- Process Science Research Cluster at the European Research Center for Information Systems (ERCIS)

- Process science research group at the Centre for Data Science, Queensland University of Technology, led by Michael Rosemann

- Process science research group at the Chair for Databases and Information Systems, University of Bayreuth

- RWTH Aachen, Chair of Process and Data Science at RWTH Aachen (a world’s top ranked university), led by Wil van der Aalst (a world’s top ranked academic)

- Einstein-Professor of Process Science with the Department of Computer Science at Humboldt-University Berlin, Germany, led by Jan Mendling

Research findings and presentations:

- Research publications and agendas: Publication on process science in SSRN (Social Science Research Network, available at SSRN)

- Publication on process science in IEEE Transactions on Services Computing (available at IEEE)

- Publication on process science in ZEUS workshop proceedings (available at CEUR)

- Academic presentation on process science at renown scientific conferences, such as keynote by Jan vom Brocke at the 18th International Conference on Business Process Management (BPM 2020), Seville, Spain; keynote by Jan Mendling at the 20th International Conference on Business Process Management (BPM 2022), Münster, Germany

- Community with over 140 active contributors across disciplines, which is more than other communities included in Wikipedia, such as: Neuro-Information-Systems, computer security, computing, applied mathematics, business analytics, industrial engineering, accounting, organization studies, and others

Looking at established claims reveals that process science is a broad field that makes ambitious claims. In that regard, I understand your concern expressed before. However, the field is emerging and “in the making”; thus, it is not surprising that some of the goals may seem ambitious. From a broader perspective, similar observations can be made in relation to other, meanwhile established fields. Consider the field of artificial intelligence, for example, that has been initiated with key claims that were far from met at the early stage; see e.g., the charter of the 1956 Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence; McCarthy et al. 1955[GT1] ). Or, consider how the recent field of computational social science was based on ambitious claims regarding the study of all sorts of social matters through computational means. Seen from that point of view, since process science is in an early stage of development as an academic field, I do not think that the ambitious claims are problematic or exceptional, for that matter.

Against this background, the Wikipedia article conceptualizes the field from a holistic point of view and gives theoretical foundations to foster starting research projects that embrace and advance the field.

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[GT1]McCarthy, J., Minsky, M., Rochester, N., Shannon, C.E., A Proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence., http://raysolomonoff.com/dartmouth/boxa/dart564props.pdf August, 1955 Bpmscholar (talk) 14:05, 4 June 2023 (UTC)