Submission

Call for Papers · Full Paper Submission

Call for Papers

The 17th Conference on Learning Factories (CLF) 2027 invites papers for its annual conference which will be held from 27-30 April 2027.

We welcome you to join us in Shanghai, the largest City of China East (by citizens), for an inspiring conference that brings together academics and researchers from the global Learning Factory community. Set in the east of China in the Yangtze River Delta, the conference offers a unique opportunity to connect, exchange ideas, and share innovative learning experiences and best practices. The Conference on Learning Factories aims to foster collaboration and advance excellence in teaching and research in manufacturing engineering and production management.

Please note that there are two categories of papers, i.e. short papers and long papers.

Short papers

Short papers are non-scientific, practical papers—such as LF descriptions or historical summaries—presented in poster sessions during breaks, and they are not scientifically published after the conference, but they may be made available via the IALF homepage.

Long papers

Long papers address a methodologically defined or identified research gap through experiments, explorative research, research results, concept development, and validation, and they are presented in presentation sessions and regularly published after the conference.

Submission Guidelines

  • Provide a descriptive title. Please use “Title Case”, i.e., start each word with a capital letter and continue in lower case. Do not use capital letters or lower case only. The paper title should be concise and clearly convey the subject of the paper.
  • A maximum of 3 papers per presenting author may be submitted.
  • The paper should describe the context and rationale for the study, the aim, the approach/ methodology, the main contribution (s), and relevance to learning factory concepts or applications.
  • When submitting the paper using the ConfTool, please select at least one, and a maximum two conference categories from the list provided in the submission tool that best suits your submission.
  • Please keep in mind that final paper presentations for the conference should be done in person – this is not a hybrid conference.
  • For a final paper to be published in the conference proceedings, a paper has to be presented at the conference. No presentation, no publication.

Submission Categories / Topics

  • Implementation of AI and robots in learning factories and related evaluation
  • Learning and didactic processes and evaluation related to learning factories
  • Learning factory business models and cooperation (industry and academic)
  • Learning factories for sustainability, new energy and new concepts
  • Future engineers oriented practical training and infrastructure
  • Organizing learning factory and practical teaching in the Age of AI
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Full Paper Submission Guidelines

The paper submission platform will be available from 15 November 2026

Paper Submission deadline

20 January 2027

Notification of paper acceptance

20 February 2027

Presentation submission deadline

31 March 2027

  • The accepted papers will be published after the conference in the bookseries “Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems” of Springer. The proceedings will be indexed in Web of Science and Scopus.
  • Please use one of the following templates from the publisher (only these template formats will be accepted):
  • CLF2027 Template.docm: sample Microsoft Word document with formatting macros
  • CLF2027 Template_Mac.docm: sample Microsoft Word document with formatting macros. A special version of the sample document for users of Microsoft Word for Mac 2016 and newer. Please note that the macros are NOT compatible with Microsoft Word for Mac 2011.
  • SPLNPROC Technical Instructions.pdf: Detailed instructions on how to use the template and its macros.
  • LaTex package: the template in LaTex format
CLF2027 Template CLF2027 Template Mac SPLNPROC Instructions LaTex package

Template downloads will be available soon.

  • Please submit your final paper using the ConfTool before the deadline of 7 March 2027.
  • The papers must be submitted in English.
  • Don’t add any author details in the paper itself – please leave the author details within the template blank/as is, to ensure a double-blind peer review process. Please also remove any institution, Learning Factory name and funding statements in your full paper for review purposes.
  • Each paper should consist of a minimum of 4 pages and a maximum of 8 pages (including references and appendix).
  • If the paper was done in LaTex, please submit the paper in pdf format.

Review Process

  • All papers will undergo a double-blind review process.
  • Each paper will be allocated to at least two reviewers of the Scientific Committee
  • Feedback from the reviewers will be communicated via ConfTool and additionally via e-mail to the authors.
  • Note that reviewer comments may require rework to the paper, and authors need to plan accordingly
  • The registration fee includes the publication of one paper. For any additional paper contribution an additional fee will apply, up to a maximum of 3 papers per presenting author.
Submit via ConfTool