Highlights Area Chairs Information

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Expectations of editors for Highlights Track
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Expectations of editors for Highlights Track
- Pro-actively recruit the submission of the best presentations you have heard over the last year (this is a very important component of your task!).
- Reserve some of your time for this job between March 3 and March 26, 2014.
- Rank and decide on accept/reject a list of 15-25 published papers submitted for presentation.
- Write short summary for each paper motivating your decision.
- Important: participate in final selection made through telephone conference on Wednesday, Mar 26 (11-12:30 EST).
- Chair a session at ISMB 2014 (at least 60% of the editors will be needed there!).


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More details
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On October 14, we will invite the submission of full papers that have been published between 2013 and the submission deadline (February 28, 2014) or are in press at that point. A group of experts will select the papers to be presented at the meeting considering the impact of the work on the field, the likelihood that the work makes a good presentation, and the relevance for molecular and medical biology, in general.

Submissions must include a 250-word abstract-like argument that explains how the submitted paper(s) suit the goal of presenting highlights that impacted the field. The person who will present will be identified upon submission. Submitters can add links to videos downloaded to Google Video/YouTube/SciVee that demonstrate their presentation skills if they may wish to do so. This should enable editors to handpick the work most relevant, interesting, and of highest value for as many attendees as possible. The impact of the publication should be a criterion as well as the 'presentability' in a talk to a large audience, and the skills of the dedicated presenter.

These 'soft' criteria attempt to capture the underlying concept, namely the presentation of exciting and thought-provoking seminars that will both contribute to the success and attraction-value of ISMB and to the impact the meeting has on advancing computational biology and bioinformatics. The criterion of presentability accounts for the fact that some papers that will completely change the field, or will become citation records may not translate to exciting seminars.

All submissions will be evaluated by a group of editors with formidable expertise in their respective fields, and we hope that you will accept the invitation to become one of these. Upon submission, the authors will identify the editor/expert most suitable to review their work according to either their knowledge of the work of this expert or keywords provided by you.

The PDFs of all published (in press) papers with the covering 250-word argument that explains how the papers suit the selection criteria will have to be submitted through the automated system by February 28, 2014 (midnight by any time zone). No reason will exempt submissions from this deadline.

The chairs will notify authors of the acceptance by April 4, 2014.

Only one submission will be accepted per presenter, and maximally 5 per co-author/group leader on any of the submissions. Although we feel that your efforts should not be punished by not letting you submit, we hope that you will somehow restrict the number of papers submitted with you as a co-author/group leader.

The selected Highlights will be presented in tracks that run in parallel to the main meeting and merged with accepted Proceedings in subject-oriented sessions. All presentations will have to be completed within 20 minutes and will be followed by 5-minute discussions. While presenters are expected to focus mostly on the chosen paper(s), short infusions of more recent data are highly encouraged.

All editors will have rank the submissions, suggest accept/reject, and write a short summary motivating their decision. It remains to be discussed whether or not those evaluations will be communicated to the submitters.

Depending on the quality of the submissions, about 35-42 presentations will be accepted.

The details about how the Editors will review their assignments will be left to them. They may want to add colleagues as helpers to dissipate their load and they may invite input from external reviewers. In any case, we encourage editors to seek some input from their groups/peers. However, ultimately we invite you because of your expertise in accomplishing this assignment adequately. We have no doubt that you will find the best possible solution without directions/rules from us.

Please contact Steven Leard (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), Reinhard Schneider, and Burkhard Rost with further questions.

Reinhard Schneider & Burkhard Rost, Highlights Co-chairs