ISB Newsletter – June 2018

Hello! This is the second quarter newsletter for the International Society for Biocuration, a series providing with the latest information on activities and ideas contributed by our community members; upcoming biocuration-related events; news on ISB funding opportunities and awards; job openings and updates of the ISB Executive Committee activities.

The 1st National Symposium on Database Development and Biocuration (NSDDB 2018) was organized at the University of Delhi. The goal of this symposium was to lay a foundation for a vibrant and active biocuration community in India. Future meetings aim to have hands-on modules on various biocuration techniques and attempts will also be made to forge a close association with the international biocuration community.
Rama Balakrishnan, member of the ISB’s Executive Committee, addressed this meeting via a recording about the mission of the ISB, the various activities that the ISB has been involved in and invited the Indian curation community to join the ISB and make use of the vast networking and other benefits/opportunities that ISB has to offer.

The (Re)usable Data Project

The (Re)usable Data Project assesses how licensing behaviors impact reuse. They created a rubric to determine the reusability of data resources and have applied it to 56 scientific data resources to date. The results show significant barriers to reuse and interoperability.
For more information go to: http://reusabledata.org

MoonProt 2.0 release 

Moonlighting protein is a single protein that has multiple functions. The Jeffery lab at the University of Chicago has recently updated their MoonProt Database. For more information go to: doi:10.1093/nar/gkx1043
The lab plans to continue adding examples of moonlighting proteins and expanding the annotation of the ones that are included.
If you have information to submit to the database or you want to help with moonlight protein curation (as a volunteer), please contact: Connie Jeffery

Need to hire a biocurator?

As an outcome of the Careers in Biocuration Workshop at the Biocuration 2018 conference, a generic position description for the biocuration profession is now available on our website.

Funding Opportunities from the ISB

The ISB offers microgrants to sponsor local and regional short meetings of ISB members to foster synergy of their work efforts.
To promote collaboration and exchange between biocuration groups ISB offers fellowships. The fellowship will fund the visit of a biocurator to another laboratory or organization with long experience in biocuration.

Biocuration Training Materials Available Online

Interested in learning new skills relevant to biocuration? Online educational materials are now available online through GOBLET and via the Elixr TeSS widget on our website.

If you have materials you’d like to contribute and make publicly available, please let us know.

Our first fellow!

Congratulations to Dr. Luana Licata from the MINT database at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, who received our first fellowship. She will visit the Protein Function Team at EMBL-EBI and the Gene  Annotation Team at the UCL London, to learn Gene Ontology (GO) annotation.

Upcoming conferences:

  • Other related meeting and conferences are on our website

Executive Committee Elections 

The Executive Committee Elections will be held this fall for 4 vacancies. The call for nominations for the Executive Committee will be announced soon, please check your inboxes.

Call for volunteers

We have a variety of needs for the ISB, and we’d love your help. Please contact us if you’d like to help out with any of the tasks below:

 Website development and maintenance 
  • Maintain and improve the WordPress site that is running
    .biocuration.org
  • Optimize membership signup / renewal / reporting system.
Social media
  • Contribute to Society’s presence on Twitter and Facebook.
Review committees
  • Contribute to selection of impactful exchange fellowships.
  • Contribute to selection of relevant candidates for the ISB elections.
  • Contribute to selection of ISB awardees.
Reviewers
  • Are you willing to act as a reviewer for journals who need your expertise?
Newsletter
Thank you to Andrei Kiselev for your help with this newsletter.

Share your news and ideas with the ISB

Have an upcoming paper that you’d like to highlight for the ISB community? Let us know.

We welcome your feedback and ideas. Please contact us at intsocbio@gmail.com

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