Key Dates

• Submission due: Friday 2nd May
• Notifications: Friday 23rd May
• Final Version Due: Friday 30th May
• Workshop: Sunday 20th July

Introduction

Bio-Ontologies has existed as a SIG at ISMB for more than a decade, making it one of the longest running. For this time, Bio-Ontologies has provided a forum for discussion on the latest and most cutting edge research on ontologies.

In this decade, the use of ontologies has become mature, moving from niche to mainstream usage within bioinformatics. Following on from last year's reflective look, this year we are broadening the scope of SIG; we are interested in any formal or informal approach to organising, presenting and disseminating knowledge in biology.

So, for example:

• Semantic and/or Scientific wikis.
• Multimedia blogs
• Folksonomies
• Tag Clouds
• Collaborative Curation Platforms
• Collaborative Ontology Authoring and Peer-Review Mechanisms

are topics which will be of relevance to the SIG, in addition to the more traditional areas for bio-ontologies.

• Biological Applications of Ontologies
• Reports on Newly Developed or Existing Bio-Ontologies
• Tools for Developing Ontologies
• Use of Ontologies in Data Communication Standards
• Use of Semantic Web technologies in Bioinformatics
• Implications of Bio-Ontologies or the Semantic Web for drug discovery
• Current Research In Ontology Languages and its implication for Bio-Ontologies

Please note, that this year ISCB have made an innovative schedule, holding some of the SIGs DURING ISMB. Bio-Ontologies is on the Sunday parallel to the main conference.

Programme

The full programme will be released following the close of paper submission.

This year's keynote speaker will be Professor Philip E. Bourne, from the Skaggs School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences, UCSD.

Our panel session will the following members:

• Philip E. Bourne, UCSD
• Helen Parkinson, European Bioinformatics Institute
• Matt Cockerill, BioMed Central
• Mark Wilkinson, University of British Columbia

Organisers

Phillip Lord, Newcastle University
Susanna-Assunta Sansone, EBI
Nigam Shah, Stanford
Matt Cockerill, BioMedCentral

News

19th June

The programme booklet is now available.

9th June

The programme has now been released.

29th April

The papers from last years meeting have now been published.

10th April

As with last year, the best from papers from Bio-Ontologies 2008: Knowledge in Biology will be published in BMC Bioinformatics.

3rd March

Submissions are open now.

1st March

We are pleased to announce that this year's keynote speaker will be Phil Bourne.

10th Jan

This year, we have two new conference chairs, namely Matt Cockerill and Nigam Shah. Full details are available.