This announcement comes from Richard Bruskiewich:

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Plant & Animal Genome Bioinformatics Workshop

Call for Competitive Paper Submissions

BACKGROUND

Based on feedback from PAG meeting attendees, it was decided to change the structure and organization of the bioinformatics workshops at the conference, such that the three bioinformatics workshops previously held on three separate days in 2001-3, are now consolidated into two sessions to be held on one day, Monday, January 12th, 2004.

As an additional innovation, the afternoon session of the revised bioinformatics workshop will now be structure into one keynote speaker and five (5) competitive slots, the paper proceedings of which will now be peer reviewed and published in the Bioinformatics Journal [1] following the model of other conferences such as the ISMB.

This new format intends to provide a fresh public venue for the presentation and publication of exciting bioinformatics-driven genome research at PAG. Here are the details:

PREFERRED PAPER THEMES

Submitted papers should focus on the application of bioinformatics-centric methodologies to answer significant research questions in plant and animal genome biology. This competition will favor papers that emphasize fundamental genome biology and actually undertake some significant computational analysis on genome data, as opposed to simply presenting a specific bioinformatics resource, database or software package. It is assumed that these latter topics are best presented at PAG in the computer software demonstration sessions.

SCHEDULE

Papers will be peer reviewed and published by a stepwise process:

August 15th, 2003: Deadline for submission of abstracts for pre-selection by peer review

September 1st, 2003: Submissions of full papers invited for competitive peer review from authors of selected abstracts.

September 30th, 2003: Deadline for submission of full papers by authors of selected abstracts

October 31st, 2003: Successful authors notified of acceptance for paper presentation; papers sent to the Bioinformatics for layout; papers not accepted for presentation may still be published at the discretion of Bioinformatics editors.

November 30th, 2003: Corrections to final proofs to Bioinformatics Journal should be submitted

January 2004: Papers in print

LENGTH AND FORMATS

Abstracts: should be submitted to the session organizer, Richard Bruskiewich, via email [2], should not exceed 250 words in length and should provide full details of paper authorship including affiliation. Abstracts should generally follow the Bioinformatics journal format of abstract subheadings (i.e. "Motivation", "Results", "Availability", "Contact", "Supplementary Information") as required.

Papers: invited papers will be limited to 8 pages with about 750 words per page, following the normal formatting guidelines and word processing templates of the Bioinformatics Journal (see instructions to authors at [3]). Bioinformatics editors will have the final say on suitability of papers for publication.

1. http://bioinformatics.oupjournals.org
2. r.bruskiewich[at]cgiar.org
3. http://www3.oup.co.uk/jnls/list/bioinformatics/instauth/auth1.html