BioSharing at ISMB/ECCB 2011, Vienna

At the 19th Annual International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB 2011) the BioSharing team and members of its community were present in full force!

During the Bio-Ontologies SIG, Susanna-Assunta Sansone (co-chair) explained the growth of the BioSharing catalogue's content, the need for the harmonization of standards and the creation of 'usability' and 'popularity' metrics. At the "Unifying Bio-Resources Descriptors" workshop, Susanna-Assunta Sansone, Dawn Field, Philippe Rocca-Serra (of BioSharing) and Pascale Gaudet (of the International Society of Biocuration) co-chaired a well attended discussion on BioDBcore. This is a strawman uniform system for describing databases, in particular, indicating in a consistent manner which community-defined standards (minimal information checklists, terminologies and exchange formats) they implement. A panel with journals and representatives of bio-resources showed their support for BioSharing and the BioDBcore initiative; they include:

- Naomi Attar, BioMedCentral

- Adriaan Klinkenberg, Elsevier

- Rebecca Lawrence, F1000

- Francis Ouellette, DATABASE and Bioinformatics Links Directory

- Nicolas Le Novère, MIRIAM resource

- Jeffrey Grethe, Neuroscience Information Network

- Trish Whetzel, NCBO and Biositemaps

Agenda and presentations from these events will be available at the Nature Precedings' BioSharing Collection soon.