There has been some confusion about the difference between position and research papers for BELIV’10, as a potential participant asks:

I’m thinking about submitting a paper to BELIV, but I’m not sure what
category to put it in – it’s a bit more than a position paper but not
quite a full research paper – i.e. I think it’s a nice idea and it’s
worked for me in the past, but it doesn’t have any formal validation.
Am I better of submitting it as a position paper (which I presume has
a high change of being accepted) or should I try for a full paper?
(and can I still submit it as a position paper if it is rejected?)

Our co-chair Enrico thoughtfully responds:

I understand we have a problem here, you are the second person to ask.   Of course, even if we have had very good quality papers in the past, BELIV is just a workshop and we don’t expect lots of validation or strong results. What we are aiming at is more well-reasoned, innovative and, if possible, thought provoking, ideas.

So, if you think your paper has these characteristics, go on and send a full paper! Position papers are just a way to say: “hey I want to participate and this is what I have to put on the table when we will discuss”. And if anything goes wrong, you can of course always convert your paper in a position paper, no worries.

In any case I suggest to you to give a look to the papers of past editions. Many good papers don’t have any formal validation at all. You can for instance give a look to Catherine’s paper on MILC methodology (BELIV’06), or the one of Heidi and Tamara in BELIV’08 on the utility of empirical studies, or the one of Petra et al. on Grounded Evaluation.