Business process modelling languages typically enable the representation of business process models by employing (graphical) symbols. These symbols can vary depending upon the verbosity of the language, the modelling paradigm, the focus of the language and so on. To make explicit different constructs and rules employed by a specific language, as well as bridge the gap across different languages, meta-models have been proposed in the literature. These meta-models are a crucial source of knowledge on what state-of-the-art literature considers relevant to describe business processes. The goal of this work is to provide the first extensive systematic literature review (SLR) of business process meta-models. This SLR aims to answer research questions concerning: (1) the kind of meta-models proposed in the literature, (2) the recurring constructs they contain, (3) their purposes and (4) their evaluations. The SRL was performed manually considering papers automatically retrieved from reference paper repositories as well as proceedings of the main conferences in the Business Process Management research area. Sixty-five papers were selected and evaluated against four research questions. The results indicate the existence of a reasonable body of work conducted in this specific area, but not a full maturity. In particular, in answering the research questions several challenges have (re-)emerged for the Business Process Community, concerning: (1) the type of elements that constitute a Business Process and their meaning, (2) the absence of a (or several) reference meta-model(s) for the community, (3) the purpose for which meta-models are introduced in the literature and (4) a framework for the evaluation of the meta-models themselves. Moreover, the classification framework devised to answer the four research questions can provide a reference structure for future descriptive categorizations.

业务流程建模语言通常通过采用（图形）符号来实现业务流程模型的表示。这些符号可能会根据语言的详细程度，建模范例，语言的重点等而有所不同。为了使特定语言明确地采用不同的构造和规则，并弥合不同语言之间的差距，文献中提出了元模型。这些元模型是了解哪些最新文献认为与描述业务流程相关的知识的重要来源。这项工作的目标是提供首次广泛的系统文献综述（SLR）业务流程元模型。该SLR旨在回答有关以下方面的研究问题：（1）文献中提出的元模型的种类；（2）它们包含的重复构造；（3）目的；（4）评价。SRL是手动执行的，考虑了从参考文件存储库中自动检索的文件以及业务流程管理研究区域中主要会议的议事录。选择了65篇论文，并针对四个研究问题进行了评估。结果表明在该特定领域中存在合理的工作体系，但还不完全成熟。特别是，在回答研究问题时，业务流程社区面临（重新）面临的一些挑战，包括：（1）构成业务流程的要素类型及其含义，（2）没有针对社区的（或几个）参考元模型，（3）文献中引入元模型的目的，以及（4）评价该元模型的框架，自己建模。此外，旨在回答这四个研究问题的分类框架可以为将来的描述性分类提供参考结构。