Call for Contributions: International Conference on Biomedical Ontologies (ICBO 2021)

(Apologies for cross-posting)

=== ICBO 2021 Call for Papers ===

The International Conference on Biomedical and Biological Ontologies (ICBO)
is a premier annual conference series that brings together researchers,
students and professionals involved in the development and application of
ontologies, knowledge graphs and semantic technologies in all areas of
scientific research throughout the life and social sciences, including
biology, medicine, diseases, human health, genome biology, human behaviour,
environment, biomes, nutrition, food, plants, agriculture and others.

ICBO 2021 (https://icbo2021.inf.unibz.it/) is currently being planned as a
“blended” event, with a face to face meeting in Bozen-Bolzano, Italy,
accompanied by live streaming and an option for virtual participation.

=== Important Dates ===

Direct to Journal Submissions: 21 April 2021

Main Research Submissions: 5 May 2021
Early Career Submissions: 26 May 2021
Posters and Flash Presentations Abstract Submissions: 16 June 2021

Conference: 15-18 September 2021


=== Call for Papers ===

The theme for the 2021 conference is Ontologies for Global Challenges. This
includes:

- Ontologies relating to COVID-19
- Ontologies relating to the climate crisis and the UN’s sustainable
development goals
- Ontologies overcoming barriers between basic research and translation
- Ontologies addressing the reproducibility crisis in scientific research
- Ontology as a tool for open science to reduce segregation of research
results and improve access to the full body of knowledge across scientific
disciplines, especially as applied to urgent topics such as the climate
crisis
- Ontologies in practice across national boundaries, e.g. medical
ontologies needing to serve international contexts
- Ontology in translation: ontologies supporting knowledge, data and
applications in multiple languages
- Overcoming the practical boundaries of ontologies in integrated
applications including data annotation, data integration, data science,
machine learning and other artificial intelligence technologies

Submissions are particularly welcome that address aspects of this theme,
but submissions outside of the theme are also welcome.

ICBO 2021 is soliciting submissions of novel (not previously published nor
concurrently submitted) research papers in all areas of ontology design,
development, evaluation and use, ontology interoperability, knowledge
graphs, ontology-driven intelligent systems, ontologies for explainable AI,
and the application of ontologies to biological and biomedical problems,
across the full range of life sciences. In addition, we would like to
invite contributions showcasing methods for ontology-based research,
including statistical methods, tool support for ontologies and semantic
technologies including for the annotation of data, visualisation, analysis,
and related applications, and contributions addressing the challenges
associated with working with multiple ontologies at the same time,
including ontology alignment and matching. Submissions are welcome from a
broad range of approaches to ontology building and use.

This year for the first time, in addition to the normal conference
submissions ICBO is inviting submissions in a newly created direct to
journal track in partnership with the Journal of Biomedical Semantics (
https://www.biomedcentral.com/collections/icboseries). Papers submitted to
the ICBO thematic series at the Journal of Biomedical Semantics will be
published immediately after acceptance and presented in the annual
conference following acceptance. For this track, we suggest submission by
the 21st April at the latest for full consideration for ICBO2021. However,
as journal reviewing and revision times may vary, there is no guarantee
that submissions received by the suggested deadline will have completed
 the reviewing process in advance of the conference, thus earlier
submission is recommended.

The conference is also soliciting contributions to several conference
tracks, for which the proceedings will be published with CEUR-WS as usual.
The deadline for the submission of conference main research track papers
(12 pages) is 5 May 2021, for early career submissions (short papers - 6
pages) is 26 May 2021, and for abstracts for posters and flash
presentations (3 pages) the deadline for submission is 16 June 2021.

Contributions to the conference tracks should be submitted in PDF format
following the CEUR-WS single column formatting guidelines found at
http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-XXX/. The direct template download for Latex and MS
Word is available here: http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-XXX/CEURART.zip. There is
also an Overleaf Template available here:
https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/template-for-submissions-to-ceur-workshop-proceedings-ceur-ws-dot-org/hpvjjzhjxzjk

Contributions to the direct to journal track should follow the journal’s
instructions available here:
https://jbiomedsem.biomedcentral.com/submission-guidelines/preparing-your-manuscript

https://icbo2021.inf.unibz.it/