Ontology-based approaches for cross-enterprise collaboration: a literature review on semantic business process management Hanh H. Hoang a *, Jason J. Jung b and Chi P. Tran c a Hue University, Hue, Vietnam; b Yeungnam University, Gyeongsan, South Korea; c Phu Xuan Private University, Hue, Vietnam (Received 28 February 2012; final version received 13 January 2013) Based on an in-depth analysis of the existing approaches in applying semantic technologies to business process management (BPM) research in the perspective of cross-enterprise collaboration or so-called business-to-business integration, we analyse, discuss and compare methodologies, applications and best practices of the surveyed approaches with the proposed criteria. This article identifies various relevant research directions in semantic BPM (SBPM). Founded on the result of our investigation, we summarise the state of art of SBPM. We also address areas and directions for further research activities. Keywords: business process management; semantic business process management; cross-enterprise collaboration; semantic web; ontology 1. Introduction With the purpose of dealing with the problem of cross-enterprise collaboration, the business process management (BPM) research community has aimed to set up a linkage between business and information technology (IT) communities. However, the combination of BPM standards such as Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) 1 , XML Process Definition Language (XPDL) 2 and Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL) 3 has not been satisfied by the two communities while proceeding with the challenges of business-to-business integration (B2Bi). The existing gap is how the cross-enterprise colla- boration has been done and how a graphical process has been set out in a proper executable process (Oh et al. 2005; Mous et al. 2007). This is not based on semantics. The application of semantics to the BPM aims to fill in the gap between the business world and the information systems, particularly in the context of B2Bi. This article addresses the ever- enduring need for new facilities in a struggle for survival in the e-business environment. This article surveys on the state of the art research on the fusion of semantic technol- ogies and BPM. In order to tackle the mentioned issues, new research directions, which are analysed and evaluated in the following sections in this article, are taken. This research survey is carried out by investigating more than 30 selected publications on the previously mentioned problems and e-business standards. Most of the materials used in this survey are from various important publication databases and citation indexes. In addition, the approaches analysed in this article are very recently high rated based on their citations. Based on the data results in this survey and similarities of the research targets, it is possible to identify the relevant research directions in semantic BPM (SBPM). The *Corresponding author. Email: hanh@hueuni.edu.vn Enterprise Information Systems, 2014 Vol. 8, No. 6, 648–664, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17517575.2013.767382 © 2013 Taylor & Francis Downloaded by [University of Gent] at 02:51 13 March 2015