Byte Size Biology

Hi all,

I’m happy to say that the 2014 International Biocuration Conference is off to a good start. I have attended this excellent meeting twice before, and this year I am honored to be on the organizing committee. There was a lot of work behind the scenes, and we have agreed on five session topics.  I am co-chairing the Functional Annotations session together with Paul Thomas. So please submit your talks and papers! Papers will be reviewed separately from talks for a special issue of DATABASE.

Here’s the official announcement:

The International Biocuration Conference is a unique event for curators and developers of biological databases to discuss their work, promote collaborations, and foster a sense of community in this very active and growing area of research. For the 7th International Biocuration Conference in Toronto, Canada you are invited to submit your work for publication. This call for papers is done in collaboration with DATABASE: The Journal of Biological Databases and Curation. The DATABASE journal will publish an online Virtual Issue of the accepted papers. This is a great occasion to enhance the recognition of your work and of our profession by the greater biological research communities.

This year there are five topic sessions from which submitters are invited to select:

1. Clinical Annotations

2. Systems Biology Curation

3. Functional Annotations

4. Microbial Informatics

5. Data Integration and Data Sharing

The manuscript review process will be expedited for these papers and we will thus need to be firm on the submission deadline:

– Submission deadline: November 15, 2013

– First decisions: December 6, 2013

– Deadline for revisions: January 10, 2014

– Final decisions: February 21, 2014

– Conference: April 6-9, 2014

Authors wishing to submit to DATABASE for the 2014 Biocuration Virtual issue should go to the DATABASE home page (http://database.oxfordjournals.org) and click on the “Submit Now!” after having read the “Instructions to Authors”. Authors should CLEARLY state that they are submitting this manuscript for consideration for the Biocuration 2014 conference so that the DATABASE staff will ensure appropriate fast-track for inclusion in this meeting’s proceedings. We look forward to your participation at Biocuration 2014 the 7th International Biocuration Conference.

To be considered for a Biocuration 2014 presentation you MUST register and SUBMIT an abstract for the meeting. Meeting registration will be opening up in time for the Submission deadline. The selection of oral presentations at the conference is not associated with the publication and review of the DATABASE Virtual Issue.

The proceedings of the 2013 meeting, the Biocuration 2013 Virtual Issue, are online: http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/databa/biocuration_virtual_issue.html

Kind regards,

-Biocuration 2014 Organizing Committee