Call for Proceedings

Please note that the submissions deadline has passed. The call for Proceedings is closed.

Proceedings track chairs: Josep-Lluís Gelpí, Toni Gabaldón, Artemis Hatzigeorgiou, Mark Wass, Patrick Aloy

The ECCB2022 Proceedings Committee invites the submission of manuscripts that demonstrate the development of new computational techniques and their applications in biology, biomedicine, agriculture, and environmental sciences.

The organisation of the conference presentations will be according to six main topics:

Topic	Keywords
Data	Organisation, management, categorization, integration, analysis of data, knowledge discovery
Genomes	Sequence analysis, alignment, evolution, phylogeny, genetics, epigenetics, 3D conformation
Genes	Expression, function, regulation, transcription, translation, geno-phenotype
Proteins	Structure, function, alterations, assemblies, interactions, design, proteomics
Systems	Systems biology, pathways, molecular networks, dynamics, signalling, multi-scale modelling
Climate crisis and health (by invitation only)	Air quality, heat stress, infectious diseases

The authors should indicate one of the six topics. The ECCB2022 Proceedings Committee will determine to which topic a submission is assigned taking authors preferences into consideration. The topic assigned will be used to streamline the review process and to group the conference presentations in appropriate thematic sessions. 

The accepted submissions will be presented in person from the venue of the conference in talks distributed in parallel tracks. The presentations should be no longer than 15 minutes and will be followed by discussions limited to 3 minutes.

The accepted manuscripts will be published as conference proceedings in the journal Bioinformatics under an online-only and Free to View (i.e. free to read supplement) publication licence. The authors of accepted papers will have the choice to upgrade the publication of their manuscript to an Open Access licence by paying a £1,469.00 fee. The proceedings will be available online prior to the conference opening.

The publication of the proceedings as a supplementary issue in Bioinformatics will result in fully citable articles, indexed by Medline and ISI. See the ECCB2020 supplementary issue for an example of published conference proceedings by Oxford University Press.

Taken together, the ultimate goal of the Proceedings track is to attract exciting and ground-breaking computational developments that will both contribute to the success of the conference and to the impact the meeting has on advancing computational biology and bioinformatics.

All submissions will be evaluated by a group of topic co-chairs and reviewers based on the following criteria:

1. Relevance, interest, and value of the topic to conference attendees.
2. Impact of the submission on biology and/or medicine.
3. Scientific quality.
4. Originality (previously unpublished work). At the time of submission to ECCB2022, and for the entire review period, the submission should not be under review by any other conference or scientific journal.
5. “Presentability” of the work to a large, diverse audience.
6. We aim to balance across topics and may factor this into the acceptance decisions.

Given these six criteria, the ultimate decision of acceptance for a Proceedings track submission lies with the ECCB2022 Proceedings Committee.

The presenting authors of accepted manuscripts are required to deliver a talk about the content of their paper in person from the venue of the conference, and they must register and pay to attend the conference.

For each presenting author, only one submission to the Proceedings track will be considered.

Submissions must be made to the EasyChair Proceedings track submission site (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=eccb2022). Submissions should include the following:

1. Name, affiliation and email of the presenting author. Note that the presenting author cannot be changed. The presenter must register for the conference and deliver the Proceeding talk in person. The presenting author does not necessarily have to be the first author of the manuscript.
2. Names, affiliations and emails of all co-authors. Note that all co-authors have to agree to the submission. It is the responsibility of the submitter to guarantee that all co-author email addresses are correct (email notifications of the submission will be sent to all co-authors).
3. Title.
4. At least three keywords (also known as key phrases or key terms) to characterise your submission.
5. Application domain (choose one):
   • Health
   • Agro-Food
   • Biotechnology
   • Biodiversity
   • Fundamental (fundamental/basic research with no immediate application domain)
6. Topic (choose one):
   • Data: Organisation, management, categorisation, integration, analysis of data, knowledge discovery.
   • Genomes: Sequence analysis, alignment, evolution, phylogeny, genetics, epigenetics, 3D conformation.
   • Genes: Expression, function, regulation, transcription, translation, geno-phenotype.
   • Proteins: Structure, function, alterations, assemblies, interactions, design, proteomics.
   • Systems: Systems biology, pathways, molecular networks, dynamics, signalling, multi-scale modelling.
   • Climate Crisis and Health (by invitation only):  Air quality, heat stress, infectious diseases.
7. 150-word description of the presentation for promotion on the conference website. ^A)
8. The manuscript in Word, PDF or LaTeX format (although Word is preferred).
   • The manuscripts should be submitted using the template for author submission of the Oxford University Press (OUP) journal Bioinformatics, which can be found here in Word and LaTeX format: https://academic.oup.com/bioinformatics/pages/submission_online
   • The manuscript with embedded figures and tables must not exceed 7 pages of length or 5000 words and must contain an abstract whose length does not exceed 250 words.
   • Note that papers should be submitted in their final form according to the layout style required by the OUP bioinformatics journal; the evaluation procedure does not allow for additional rounds of refinement/modification in response to referee criticisms. Formatting requirements can be found here: http://www.oxfordjournals.org/bioinformatics/for_authors/submission_online.html.

9. Supplementary material (if any) compiled in a single PDF file. It is the responsibility of the submitter to verify that the PDF is completely viewable/printable by all major operating systems (LINUX, MacOS, Windows). Please adjust the content of the supplementary material to the  guidelines specified in the instructions for authors: https://academic.oup.com/bioinformatics/pages/instructions_for_authors 
10. If your manuscript is published as a preprint, please specify its DOI or its link to the preprint server.

A) Please note there is no word count available on the EasyChair form, but you can check the number of words using a tool like e.g. https://wordcounter.net. Submissions that exceed the maximum number of words will not be admitted to the review procedure.

The supplementary material will be published on the proceedings site alongside the online version of the conference paper. We do not support supplementary material presented at any other than the publisher’s site. OUP does not edit or typeset supplementary data – it is uploaded online exactly as it is received, so authors must ensure its accuracy before submitting it.

Any data or code published with the manuscript should be made available in public repositories/websites. If the manuscript includes the description of new software, the authors should link the repository where the code is available. We advise authors to follow the recommended practises in research software development. 

We allow and encourage the authors to share the pre-publication of their manuscripts on preprint servers. Please read carefully the General Policies section in the Instructions for authors at OUP Bioinformatics and follow their rules in the publication of your preprint. The authors of the manuscripts accepted for publication will be required to update the status of their preprint as specified in the Author Self-Archiving policy page.

The submissions will be assigned to the different Proceedings topics based on the authors’ indicated preference. In case of receiving an unexpectedly high number of proceedings submissions, a preselection based on their impact and suitability for the conference (criterion #1) determined from the abstract alone may be necessary before papers are sent out for review. Each preselected submission will be assigned three reviewers by the topic co-chairs. Based on the reviews, the topic co-chairs will rank the submissions assigned to their topic. According to the rankings, the Proceedings Committee together with the topic co-chairs will decide on the final acceptance for each submission.