Call for Papers:  RECOMB 2020

http://recomb2020.org

The 22nd International Conference on Research in Computational Molecular
Biology (RECOMB) 2020, Padua, Italy, May 10-13, 2020

The RECOMB conference series was founded in 1997 to provide a scientific
forum for advances in computational biology and applications in molecular
biology and medicine. The conference aims at bridging the computational,
mathematical, statistical, and biological sciences, and bringing together
researchers, professionals, students and industrial practitioners from
all over the world for interaction and exchange of new developments in
all areas of bioinformatics and computational biology. The conference
will feature keynote talks by leading scientists, presentations of peer-
reviewed high-quality research papers, presentations of exciting research
developments that were published within the past year and poster sessions
on latest research progress.

Papers reporting on original research (both theoretical and experimental)
in all areas of computational molecular biology are sought. Topics of
interest include, but are not limited to:

* Molecular sequence analysis
* Sequencing and genotyping technologies
* Regulation and epigenomics
* Transcriptomics, including single-cell
* Metagenomics
* Population and statistical genetics
* Evolution and comparative genomics
* Structure and function of non-coding RNAs
* Computational proteomics and proteogenomics
* Computational structural biology
* Protein structure and function
* Biological networks
* Computational systems biology
* Privacy of biomedical data
* Bioimaging

Submissions should represent original, previously unpublished work.  The
Program Committee will rigorously review submitted extended abstracts
(approximately 10 pages).  Selected papers will be accepted for
presentation at the conference. Accepted abstracts will be published as a
proceedings volume in the Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics (LNBI) series
from Springer-Verlag, which will be available at the conference.  Authors
who prefer not to publish their papers in the LNBI proceedings, must
submit a final two-page extended abstract for inclusion in the Springer
LNBI proceedings in lieu of the full paper and must submit the full paper
to the preprint server arxiv.org or bioRxiv.org by the deadline of the
camera ready version to ensure that the presented paper is
accessible.  RECOMB is partnering with Cell Systems and the Journal of
Computational Biology. Authors of selected accepted papers will be
invited, but not required, to submit an edited journal version for a
special issue of Cell Systems (as detailed below).  Authors can
alternatively choose to submit extended versions of accepted proceedings
papers to the Journal of Computational Biology or to pursue the Parallel
Submission option, detailed below, to submit their work to an alternative
journal of their choosing in parallel with RECOMB submission.

Cell Systems Partnership

All papers accepted for oral presentations at RECOMB that are of salient
biological interest will be considered for the RECOMB special issue of
Cell Systems.  Selected authors will be invited to submit to Cell Systems
and, if papers are accepted there, they will be included in the RECOMB
special issue. Editors at Cell Systems will actively collaborate with
RECOMB authors during a streamlined review process involving the RECOMB
reviewers and up to 2 additional biological reviewers. Authors will be
notified of whether their paper is accepted for oral presentation at
RECOMB and simultaneously whether they will be invited to submit to Cell
Systems for consideration in the RECOMB special issue by December 23,
2019.

Parallel Submission

If a paper is submitted for oral presentation at RECOMB, the authors can
simultaneously submit their full paper to the journal of their choice and
elect to have a two-page short paper published in the LNBI proceedings in
lieu of a full proceedings paper.  Note that full papers accepted to
RECOMB must be submitted to a preprint server by the camera-ready
deadline as described above.  Papers accepted for oral presentation that
have been accepted to a journal other than Cell Systems or Journal of
Computational Biology at the time of the meeting may be moved to the
Highlights track at the discretion of the PC Chair.

Key dates  (all deadlines are for 5:00 PM, Eastern U.S. Time)

• Paper submission opens: September 4, 2019
• Paper submission deadline: Nov 1, 2019 (November 5 for final revisions)
• Paper acceptance decision: December 23, 2019
• Final versions of papers due: January 17, 2020
   
• Highlights submission deadline: January 31, 2020
• Highlights acceptance notification: February 21, 2020
   
• Poster submission opens: December 2, 2019
• Poster submission deadline: February 1, 2020
• Poster acceptance: February 15, 2020
   
• Travel fellowship application deadline: February 19, 2020
• Travel fellowship notification: February 27, 2020  
• Early registration deadline: March 6, 2020

See the conference website for announcements of Keynote Talks, PC
Committee, and information about Satellite Meetings at
http://recomb2020.org

Manuscript preparation

A manuscript should start with a succinct statement of the problem, the
results achieved, their significance, and a comparison with previous
work. This material should be understandable to non-specialists. A
technical exposition directed to the specialist should follow. The
length, excluding cover page, bibliography, and appendix, should not
exceed 10 pages. The manuscript should be easy to read, using at least 11
point font size on U.S. standard 8 1/2 by 11 inch paper with no less than
one inch margin all around. If the authors believe that more details are
absolutely necessary to substantiate the claims of the paper, they may
include a clearly marked appendix, or supplementary data, which might be
read at the discretion of the reviewers. An email address for the contact
author should be included. Manuscripts that deviate significantly from
these guidelines risk rejection without consideration of their merits.  

Paper submission procedures and notification

Submission of papers to RECOMB2020 will be through the EasyChair
conference system, following the link from the conference web page. The
submission system will be open starting Tuesday, September 4 and ending
November 1 (November 5 for final revisions) 2019. For full details,
please see the submissions instructions at the conference website.

The Program Committee, chaired by Russell Schwartz (Carnegie Mellon
University, Pittsburgh, PA), will referee the conference submissions.
Authors will be notified of acceptance or rejection by email on or before
December 23, 2019. We request that an author of each accepted paper
provides LaTeX files or an MS Word file in the special format for Lecture
Notes in Bioinformatics by January 17, 2020.

Authors should consult Springer's authors' guidelines and use their
proceedings templates, either for LaTeX or for Word, for the preparation
of their papers. Springer encourages authors to include their ORCIDs
in their papers. In addition, the corresponding author of each paper,
acting on behalf of all of the authors of that paper, must complete and sign
a Consent-to-Publish form. The corresponding author signing the copyright
form should match the corresponding author marked on the paper. Once
the files have been sent to Springer, changes relating to the authorship
of the papers cannot be made.

Note that Springer LaTeX templates are now available in Overleaf
(https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/springer-lecture-notes-in-
computer-science/kzwwpvhwnvfj#.WsdHOy5uZpg) for authors who wish to use
Overleaf in their manuscript preparation.

An author of each accepted paper is expected to attend the conference and
present the paper; in case of unexpected circumstances, alternative
arrangements, approved by the conference chair, should be made to have
the paper presented.

Late Revisions Deadline: Nov 5th 2019

The motivation behind the ìrevisions onlyî deadline is to maximize
opportunity for quality submissions, while keeping sufficient time for a
thorough review.  We will begin assigning reviewers to papers based on
the submission as of November 1 but will allow updates until we make
papers available to reviewers on November 5.  As a result, we require the
following:
        
* A substantively complete and comprehensible manuscript must be received
by November 1 for a paper to be considered for review

* Revised versions of manuscripts received before November 5 will be
accepted if and only if they use the same title as the initial submission
and improve their content. They can include revisions of both text and
methods and may introduce new results, but cannot substantially change
the scientific premise or methodology. For example, a manuscript
describing a deep learning approach to protein structure prediction
cannot be revised to describe a combinatorial optimization algorithm for
phylogenetic tree reconstruction. Revisions that do not adhere to these
guidelines will not be considered.

* No revisions will be allowed after November 5

We look forward to seeing you in Padua next May!!