ISB members’ survey

The ISB is continually looking to improve and optimise its services for members. To help improve the benefits of your membership we are inviting you to fill in a short survey. In this way, you can tell us what you have observed so far and what you would like to see.

We appreciate your participation to help us ensure that we meet (or surpass) all your expectations.

This survey should take approximately 5 minutes to fill in.

Complete survey on Google Forms

We would like to have all responses back by March 21st, 2018 so we can report back to the community at the Biocuration meeting in Shanghai in April.

If you have any problems accessing Google forms, please contact the ISB Exec using intsocbio [at] gmail.com

Microgrant report: Arighi Oct.2017

ISB-Microgrant report of the BioCreative VI workshop
By Cecilia Arighi

The BioCreative VI workshop took place on October 18-20, 2017 in Bethesda, Maryland, USA.

BioCreative is a community-wide effort for evaluating text mining systems applied to the biological and biomedical domain. The meeting attracted participants from the biomedical natural language processing, biocuration, literature/publishing, research and funding
domains (over 60 workshop participants, one third being students), and 36 teams participated in the track activities (with representation from America, Asia, Europe and Australia).

The scientific program covered:

  1. the talks related to the individual tracks (ran previous to the workshop) with biocuration relevant topics (assignment of bioentity IDs to facilitate downstream curation; text mining services for triage for human kinases; extraction of causal network information using the Biological Expression Language; mining protein-protein interactions affected by mutations; and annotation of chemical-protein interactions)
  2. a panel about Innovation in biomedical digital curation with views presented by users, publishers, literature service providers
  3. a panel on funding stakeholders where funding opportunities and needs for text mining and collaborations were presented by representatives from various funding agencies;
  4. a general session for text mining topics that showcased other interesting bioNLP work;
  5. 2 keynote speakers (Dr. Patricia Flatley Brennan, Director, National Library of Medicine, talked about future of data-powered health, and Dr. Hongfang Liu, Mayo Clinic, discussed opportunities and challenges of text mining in precision medicine.
  6. a poster session with Additional points discussed included the challenges of using real data over a gold standard; the strategic direction of BioCreative; and the relationship with other NLP challenge evaluations.

Corpora and datasets from the different tracks are publicly available (with prior registration). The workshop Proceedings is publicly available on the BioCreative website.

Funds were used towards the rental of room for the poster session, and the ISB was listed as sponsor.

The OHSU Library Data Science Institute Promotes Biocuration and the ISB to Librarians and Researchers

By Nicole Vasilevsky

The Oregon Health Science University Library in Portland, Oregon hosted the “OHSU Library Data Science Institute” (GitHub repo) from November 6-8, 2017 in downtown, Portland.

The event was targeted towards researchers, librarians and information specialists with an interest in gaining beginner level skills in data science. The goal was to provide face-to-face, interactive instruction over a  three-day workshop. The learning objectives for the training were:

  • Increase awareness of key skills in data science and how these can be applied to the participants own daily practices, such as research or serving patrons
  • Increase confidence with using data science techniques
  • Increase the ability of participants to use or apply data science techniques in problems outlined in the course

Over 75 participants attended this event, which was held over the 3 days. Participants came from within and outside Portland,  Washington, Idaho, California, British Columbia and Kansas. The topics for the workshop included topics relevant to the biocuration community such as biomedical data standards; data description, sharing and reuse; and data cleaning and preparation. All of the  materials are openly available on our website. I gave a brief talk on the “Trials and Tribulations of a Biocurator” and described the lessons learned as a biocurator and how she wished she knew the things she knows now when she was a bench researcher (and how her biocuration skills can be applied in her current role as well). We hope that we instilled the value of biocuration and proper data management on researchers and librarians alike, and hope that they will apply the skills they learned to better manage and curate their data. We informed participants about efforts that are currently underway at the International Society for Biocuration, and distributed ISB stickers as well. Funds from the micro-grant were used to provide coffee each morning for attendees, which was greatly appreciated, and the ISB is listed as a sponsor on our website.

Deadline extension for Biocuration 2018

If you haven’t yet submitted your abstract for talks, posters or workshops for the 11th International Biocuration Conference, fear not! The deadline has been extended to 15th January 2018. 

Abstracts for talks and posters

Full details on abstract submissions can be found in the original call. They have a maximum length of 300 words and can cover a wide variety of topics from data ontologies to precision medicine.

Submit your abstracts at https://easychair.org/cfp/biocuration2018

Any questions should be sent to biocuration2018@126.com

Workshop proposals

Workshops are a great way to build connections, crowdsource ideas and to promote topics and standards in the global community.  If you’ve got an idea for a workshop, you can submit a proposal be emailing biocuration2018@126.com.

This should be a short paragraph (or two) describing the following:

  • Proposed scope and main objective, and their relation to biocuration
  • Brief discussion of why the topic is of particular interest at this time
  • Suggested format (talks, panel discussion, etc.)
  • Potential speakers, panels, or other activities

Visas

Biocuration 2018 is set to be a great conference and Shanghai is a wonderful location. Many people will require a visa so please remember to apply well in advance.

If you need an invitation letter for the visa, please send an email to biocuration2018@126.com , including your registration form. Local organizers will send the invitation letter within two days.

We look forward to seeing you in April!

Biocuration 2018 Call for Abstracts

DEADLINE EXTENDED: 15th January 2018

The 11th International Biocuration Conference will be held from April 08-11, 2018 in Shanghai, China. The conference is a unique event for biocurators 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.

You are invited to submit an abstract for a talk or poster presentation at the upcoming conference. This is a great occasion to enhance the recognition of your work and of our profession by the greater biological research communities.

This year abstracts are invited for the following topic areas:

  • Precision Medicine
  • Phenotypes, genotypes, and variants
  • Data Standards and Ontologies
  • Text Mining
  • Functional Annotation
  • Community Annotation
  • Data Integration and Visualization
  • Deep Learning in curation process
  • Softwares, Applications and Systems in biocuration
  • Curation Standards and Best Practice; inference from evidence; data and annotation quality

Abstracts on topics outside the above will also be considered for presentation.

Please be mindful of the following deadlines:

Submission deadline: EXTENDED to: January 15, 2018

Notifications: January 15, 2018

Conference: April 8-11, 2018

Please submit your abstract here: https://easychair.org/cfp/biocuration2018

All questions about submissions should be emailed to biocuration2018@126.com

Before submitting your abstracts please take into consideration:
  • All abstracts must be written in English.
  • The title and the abstract should be entered in plain text and should not contain HTML elements.
  • The abstract should be written in an unstructured format. Separate sections for Background, Materials and Methods, etc., are not needed.
  • Copy-paste text may include hidden formatting that exceeds the character limit. We recommend either: saving as ‘text only’ in your editor or e-mail program, OR copy-pasting it into Notepad and then onto the website.
  • Abstracts should not exceed 300 words, with the limit of 2000 characters (with spaces).
  • Some web browsers do not accept abstracts close to the 2000-character count.
  • If you have special symbols in your text, please ensure you are using Unicode characters; otherwise these will not be recognized.

New ISB Executive Committee (2017-2018)

The election of the 2017 – 2018 ISB Executive Committee (EC) took place last October. Please join us again in giving a warm welcome to Nicole Vasilevsky and Rama Balakrishnan to the Executive Committee, and congratulating Sylvain Poux for his reelection.

Cecilia Arighi has been elected as the new Chair of ISB, Nicole Vasilevsky is the new Secretary, and Sandra Orchard continues serving as Treasurer for the 2017-2018 period. The Executive Committee is also composed by Suzanna Lewis, Peter McQuilton, Andrew Su, and Zhang Zhang. As always, please reach out to any of us on the ISB EC as your representatives. The official handover date for the new EC took place November 1st.

After many years of service to the Biocuration community as members of the ISB Executive Committee, we bid farewell to Melissa Haendel and Monica Munoz-Torres. We are thankful for their invaluable contributions to the improvement of the International Society for Biocuration.

We again would like to thank all the candidates for their time and effort in running for election, and of course, all the ISB members who voted. Your participation in the society’s activities is greatly appreciated. We would like to also thank this year’s volunteers which oversaw the electoral process:

  • 2017 Nominating Committee: Pascale Gaudet, Stanley Laulederkind,  Raja Mazumder, Elvira Mitraka, and Randi Vita.
  • Elections Officer: Mary Ann Tuli
  • Membership Officer: Lorna Richardson

Biocuration 2018 Travel Fellowships

Call for Applications: ISB Travel Fellowships for Biocuration 2018

The International Society for Biocuration and the 11th International Biocuration Conference invite current ISB members to apply for Travel Fellowships to attend the 2018 conference in Shanghai, China.

Details

We are pleased to provide current ISB members with a travel fellowship opportunity. We intend to support up to ten (10) applicants. Students, junior curators, curators from low-income countries, and curators from countries suffering from natural disasters are encouraged to apply. Selections will be prioritized by financial need.

Please note that applying for a fellowship does not guarantee that you will receive funding.

Awards
Each award will be issued as reimbursement for up to CHF $ 1,000 per fellowship depending on the costs of your registration and travel (e.g. hotel, flight, and ground transportation). 

  • ISB Travel Fellows must be able to cover their own conference registration fees and travel cost before attending the conference. ISB Travel Fellows will then submit receipts to request a reimbursement from ISB. Save your receipts! 
  • A bank transfer for up to CHF $1,000 – depending on your registration and travel costs – will be arranged for ISB Travel Fellows.
  • The Biocuration Travel Fellowships Committee will advise you on how to receive these funds as reimbursement at the end of the conference.

Requirements and Procedures
Each applicant for a travel fellowship must satisfy the following conditions:

  • The applicant must be an active ISB member. To become a member go here: https://www.biocuration.org/membership/membership-levels/
  • The applicant should have submitted a poster or oral presentation at the Eleventh International Biocuration Conference.
  • Only the presenting author from a multi-author abstract may apply for a fellowship.
  • The applicant must submit an accompanying letter explaining why s/he is requesting travel funds and how s/he envisions that attending the Biocuration Conference will benefit her/his career.
  • Application Deadline: application materials should be sent to ISB via email to intsocbio@gmail.com with the subject line ‘Travel Fellowships to Biocuration 2018’ on or before January 31, 2018.

Notification of award will be sent via email by 16 February, 2018 and announced on the ISB website after acceptance of the award.

Applicants should review visa requirements and make all necessary arrangements on their own. The conference can provide an invitation letter for registered participants. Please contact biocuration2018@126.com to request a letter of invitation.

Sincerely,

Your colleagues at the ISB Executive Committee.

Announcing the 2018 Biocuration Awards

The International Society for Biocuration (ISB) is happy to announce the 2018 Biocuration award. Next year, the ISB will give the Biocuration career award to a person who has made sustained contributions to the field of biocuration.

Biocuration Career Award

The Biocuration Career Award recognizes biocurators in non-leadership positions who have made sustained contributions to the field of biocuration. The recipient will be required to present a talk at the Biocuration 2018 Conference, with expenses paid by the ISB. The nominations will be reviewed by the ISB Award Committee, comprised of one member of the ISB’s Executive Committee (ISB-EC) and six (6) additional members from the wider biocuration community; these members were nominated by the ISB-EC based on diversity in area of expertise, organization type, role, and geographic location.

 Who can nominate and/or be nominated?

  • Any currently active ISB member may nominate anyone in the field of biocuration, whether the potential nominee is a member of ISB or not.
  • Members of the ISB can make no more than 1 nomination per award.
  •  Those who hold Principal Investigator or Group Leader positions are not eligible for the Biocuration Career Award.
  • Current members of the Executive Committee or the ISB Award Committee are not eligible for the awards.
  • Self-nominations will not be considered.

 How to submit your nomination:

  • Nominations should be sent via email to the award committee at intsocbio@gmail.com with the subject line “Biocuration Award Nominations”.
  • The nomination email should contain the following fields:
    • Nominator details (name, e-mail and affiliation, member of ISB);
    • Nominee details (name, e-mail and affiliation);
    • Short list of scholarly contributions (a maximum of 50 words);
    • Brief description of why you are recommending this person (a maximum of 350 words).
    • The recipient of the award will be invited to give a presentation at the upcoming International Biocuration Conference, in Shanghai, China, from 08-11 April 2018, with all expenses paid by the ISB.

Deadline for submitting nominations: 15 December 2017

Results of 2017 Elections of ISB Executive Committee

The results of the 2017 Elections of the
ISB Executive Committee are in!

Congratulations to 
Dr. Rama Balakrishnan, Dr. Nicole Vasilevsky,
and Dr. Sylvain Poux!

 

We express our sincere gratitude to all ISB members who participated in this year’s electoral process with your vote. One hundred and four out of 226 eligible ISB members voted in this year’s election; a breakdown of the votes we captured is attached.

Your votes have elected Rama and Nicole as new members, and re-elected Sylvain for a second term in the Executive Committee. Rama and Nicole will fill two open positions when the terms of Monica Munoz-Torres and Melissa Haendel come to completion on 31-October-2017.

Please join us in thanking Moni and Melissa for all their work over the past years! 

We would like to also express our sincere gratitude to the rest of the nominated candidates who considered volunteering their time as part of the ISB-EC this year:

Dr. Sirarat Sarntivijai, Dr. Taner Z Sen, and
Dr. Christopher Southan.

We are also very grateful with the following ISB members who volunteered their time for a successful execution of the 2017 EC election:

  • 2017 Nominating Committee: Pascale Gaudet, Stanley Laulederkind,  Raja Mazumder, Elvira Mitraka, and Randi Vita.
  • Elections Officer: Mary Ann Tuli
  • Membership Officer: Lorna Richardson

Thank you again for participating in the 2017 ISB Electoral Process!

Sincerely,
Your Colleagues at the ISB Executive Committee. 

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