Open Science at Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing (and BioSysBio)

Shirley has already posted a quick notice on this but I thought I would follow up. Our proposal for a session at the Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing on Open Science was successful and we have been asked to put together a workshop session to run on January 5 next year in Hawaii.

This is a slight departure for PSB. The workshop sessions are slightly shorter than the traditional sessions and full papers will not feature in the proceedings. However as one of the concerns was that getting full papers in six months before the meeting would be difficult, that it might be a challenge to get people to submit conference papers, and they would be out of date by the meeting, this looks like a win-win situation. Also we have more or less complete freedom to structure the session as we see fit.

The current idea is a series of talks followed by a panel discussion but the details are negotiable. We will be putting out a call for submissions soon, and we will be directly contacting some of you to solicit submissions for a talk. Those giving a talk will have to register (and pay) for the meeting by September 19. While there is likely to be some support available from the PSB organizers there are no guarantees. We realise that this will make it difficult for some people but at the moment we don’t have any additional sources of funding available. We are of course very happy to write letters of support for local funding applications to support travel and registration for the meeting.

In addition to this we need to put together a five page introduction discussing the aims and background to the workshop. This is due on September 22. Naturally we will be aiming to write this in the open and will hopefully make a start on that soon. All assistance will be gratefully received and we will almost certainly make significant use of pre-existing material that is available. It might be appropriate to start a discussion on how we manage authorship of such documents for the future before we get too far down that road.

Finally on PSB another question: do people want to try and organise an ‘extra’ session for ourselves around the PSB meeting? How many people think they can make it? This could be as simple as an evening in a bar or restaurant or as formal as seeing if we can get a lecture theatre for an extra half or full day. Obviously that would cost money – which we’d need to find from somewhere but if there is a strong desire for this then we can look into it.

And finally, finally; there are moves afoot to organise an Open Science workshop at the BioSysBio meeting in London (April 20-22, workshop would be on Monday 21st). Could people who are planning to be at the meeting get in touch either in the comments or by email [C doit Neylon blat rl.ac.uk] so we can look at what could be organised for that? Again the thinking is a couple of talks followed by a panel discussion. People from publishers (open access or not) and with contrary views are particularly welcome. Lets have a good and vigorous discussion!