Methods and systems consistent with certain aspects of the present invention may manage the generation, modification, and publication of documents. In one aspect, a computer-implemented method is disclosed for managing documents implemented in a business processing chain. The method may include receiving a request from a first computing entity to generate a document for electronic publication and determining, by a second computing entity, a first object to be included in the document. The method may also include analyzing, by the second computing entity, a first semantic primitive associated with the first object, the first semantic primitive reflecting a class describing a characteristic of the first object and being stored in a document definition associated with the document. Further, the method may include generating, by the second computing entity, a first document model based on a result of the analysis, wherein the first document model and document definition are used to publish the document.