Bosc

We are excited to announce that BOSC and Bio-Ontologies will join forces for part of a day at ISMB 2022. The joint session will include talks chosen from abstracts submitted to BOSC or Bio-Ontologies, plus a keynote speaker who is well known in both the ontology and open science communities!

BOSC and Bio-Ontologies are two of the longest-running COSIs (Communities of Special Interest) at ISMB: BOSC started in 2000 and Bio-Ontologies in 1998. Bio-Ontologies focuses on the FAIR development and application of ontologies and other Linked Open Data resources and the organization and dissemination of knowledge in biomedicine and the life sciences; BOSC covers the full spectrum of open source, open science, open data and open standards in the life sciences.

Yesterday we hosted the OBF/BOSC contribution to the ISCBacademy webinar. Our former OBF-board member and Open Life Science co-lead Yo Yehudi presented how internship programs such as Google Summer of Code or Outreachy can be a great way to grow your open source community. If you missed the event, you can now watch the recording on YouTube.

Lalit Narayan, who is an undergraduate student at the Indian Institute of Technology Mandi, was a first-time webinar attendee:

Date & Time: Tuesday, February 22, 2022, 15:00 UTC / 11am EDT

Location: online webinar hosted by ISCB

Speaker: Yo Yehudi, Open Life Science (former OBF board member and Google Summer of Code admin & mentor)

Topic: Growing open source communities with internships

The ISCB, which runs the annual ISMB conference, is offering a series of ISCBacademy webinars hosted by the Communities of Special Interest (COSIs), which include BOSC/OBF. These webinars are free to ISCB members.

The ISCB, which runs the annual ISMB conference, is offering a series of webinars hosted by the Communities of Special Interest (COSIs), which include BOSC/OBF. These webinars are free to ISCB members.

The first BOSC/OBF ISCBacademy COSI webinar will take place on Tuesday, September 14, 2021, at 15:00 UTC / 11am EDT, and will feature Mad Price Ball of the Open Humans Foundation speaking about “Open Sourcing Ourselves - Together.” Before Dr. Ball’s talk, BOSC 2021 Chair Nomi Harris will give a brief overview of the OBF and BOSC.

The BOSC-OBF 2021 Event Support Fund was awarded to Ariel Mundo Ortiz, a researcher from the University of Arkansas, to participate in BOSC 2021, an annual conference hosted by the Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF). Based on the OBF Event Fellowship program, this fund aimed to facilitate the participation of diverse researchers from historically underrepresented groups at BOSC to help wider awareness and adoption of open source bioinformatics practices in the biological research community. Find more information here.

The BOSC-OBF 2021 Event Support Fund was awarded to David Twesigomwe, a PhD student based at the Sydney Brenner Institute for Molecular Bioscience (SBIMB) - South Africa, to participate in BOSC 2021, an annual conference hosted by the Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF). Based on the OBF Event Fellowship program, this fund aimed to facilitate participation of diverse researchers from historically underrepresented groups at BOSC to help wider awareness and adoption of open source bioinformatics practices in the biological research community. Find more information here.

BOSC 2021, which is a track (COSI) of ISMB/ECCB 2021, will take place online the 29th and 30th of July. The complete schedule is here.

The event is being held in the Showcare platform – check out our tips for making the most of your online conference experience.

We invite all attendees to join us at the pre-BOSC happy hour at the BOSC [roundtable](http://All attendees are invited to our pre-BOSC happy hour today from 17:30-18:30 UTC! Look for us at the BOSC roundtable. https://ismbeccb2021.showcare.io/roundtables/) on Wednesday, July 28, from 17:30-18:30 UTC!

Birds of a Feather (BoFs) are informal, self-organized meetups focused on specific topics. They are a great way to meet other like-minded community members and have an in-depth discussion on a topic of shared interest.

BoFs at ISMB/ECCB 2021 will take place each day of the meeting except the last day, at the same time as the poster session (not ideal, we know–but there are only so many viable hours in the day), from 15:20-16:20 UTC. We recommend that you choose either Thursday, July 29 (the first day of BOSC) or Wednesday, July 28 (the day before BOSC).

Thanks to funding from our sponsors, we are opening a special call for applications to the BOSC-OBF Event Support Fund. This fund aims to increase participation of members from groups otherwise underrepresented in BOSC or in bioinformatics community events in general, including but not limited to underrepresented demographic groups (country of residence and citizenship), ethnic background (historically underrepresented and other minority groups), career stages, gender identity and expression, people with disabilities and members from low income/resource organisations.

There’s still a chance to submit your abstract in the Late Poster round, which closes June 3 at 11:59pm ET!

What about late-breaking lightning talks? Unfortunately/fortunately, we got so many high-quality abstracts in the early round, we were not able to save any talk slots for the late round. Talk slots will open up only if some early-round speakers decide not to attend the conference.

Abstract format. To be considered for a poster, you only need to submit a 200-word short abstract. However, you should feel free to add a PDF (2 pages max) that better describes your work! Your PDF should include the title, author name(s), open source license, and code or project URL (even though this information is also requested on the submission form). Accepted abstracts are published on the BOSC website as-is.