[bioportal-announce] Letter of support to keep NCBO going!

Friends,

I apologize for the cross-postings, but this message is very important.  As most of you know, the National Center for Biomedical Ontology (NCBO) is a National Center for Biomedical Computing (NCBC) supported under a special grant program of the National Institutes of Health.  The NIH envisioned the NCBC program as a 10-year initiative to create national infrastructure for biomedical computing.  Alas, the 10 years of funding that have allowed us to create tools such as BioPortal, the NCBO Annotator, the NCBO Resource Index, and many other widely used technologies will be coming to an end in the coming year.

The NCBO team is in the process of seeking new funding to continue our work to provide scalable services in support of semantic technology for use in biomedicine.  This funding will allow us to retain much of our engineering team and to engage with our user community.  For those of you have have benefitted from the NCBO and the resources that it offers, we would be extremely grateful if you could help us to secure ongoing funding so that you can continue to receive these benefits.

I am asking for something very simple:  A letter of support that we can include in our grant application.

When our request for new grant funding will be reviewed by the NIH, the testimonials that we receive from our user community will have a major role in determining whether we will receive future funding and, if so, whether we will be supported at the level that we request in our proposal.  Letters from major projects that rely on NCBO technology will go a long way to ensuring uninterrupted user support and many exciting new features in the years ahead.  

It would be best if you could send me a letter on letterhead (either hardcopy or PDF) that I can include in the grant application.  Sending me e-mail is fine, but a letter on formal letterhead with a real signature will have more impact.  If you send e-mail, please do not quote this request in your reply.

Every letter should provide a brief description of the project or projects for which you rely on NCBO services.  If a project is the result of federally sponsored research, please include a reference to the agency that is funding the work and the corresponding grant or contract number.  Grant numbers are particularly important to the NIH.

Although there is no required format for your letter, it would be wonderful if you could comment on the following kinds of things:

* How are you using NCBO resources?  Please describe the project or projects with which you are using our services.

* If the availability of the NCBO and its technologies is important to you, please comment on why this is the case.

* Overall, how has the NCBO made a difference to you and your work?

Formal letters are best but, if it is impractical to write a letter, a brief e-mail message will be greatly appreciated.  Fundamentally, the continued existence of the NCBO depends on our ability to demonstrate the importance of our work to the community that we support.

I know that this request imposes on your time, and the entire NCBO team will be grateful for any statement of support that we can include in our grant application.  One of the most exciting aspects of our project has been the ability to serve and support a user community that believes in our work and what we are trying to do.  All of us who work at the NCBO are grateful to all of you who have contributed your support and your suggestions to the project.

Please send your letters to me at the address below by January 23, 2015.

Many thanks,

Mark


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Mark A. Musen, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor of Medicine (Biomedical Informatics)
Principal Investigator, the National Center for Biomedical Ontology
Director, Stanford Center for Biomedical Informatics Research
Stanford University
1265 Welch Road, Room X-215
Stanford, CA  94305  USA

Phone: +1 (650) 725-3390
Fax: +1 (650) 725-7944

musen@Stanford.EDU <mailto:musen@Stanford.EDU>