In: LNCS 2128: Unifying Petri Nets, pages 427-pp. Advances in Petri Nets / H. Ehrig, G. Juhás, J. Padberg, G. Rozenberg (Eds.) --- Springer Verlag, 2001.
Abstract: We show that the so-called 'Petri nets are monoids' approach initiated by Meseguer and Montanari can be extended from ordinary place/transition Petri nets to contextual nets by considering suitable non-free monoids of places. The algebraic characterizations of net concurrent computations we provide cover both the collective and the individual token philosophy, uniformly along the two interpretations, and coincide with the classical proposals for place/transition Petri nets in the absence of read-arcs.