Ten Simple Rules for writing algorithmic bioinformatics conference papers

PLoS Comput Biol. 2020 Apr 2;16(4):e1007742. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007742. eCollection 2020 Apr.

Abstract

Conferences are great venues for disseminating algorithmic bioinformatics results, but they unfortunately do not offer an opportunity to make major revisions in the way that journals do. As a result, it is not possible for authors to fix mistakes that might be easily correctable but nevertheless can cause the paper to be rejected. As a reviewer, I wish that I had the opportunity to tell the authors, "Hey, you forgot to do this really important thing, without which it is hard to accept the paper, but if you could go back and fix it, you might have a great paper for the conference." This lack of a back and forth can be especially problematic for first-time submitters or those from outside the field, e.g., biologists. In this article, I outline Ten Simple Rules to follow when writing an algorithmic bioinformatics conference paper to avoid having it rejected.

Publication types

  • Editorial
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Computational Biology / methods
  • Congresses as Topic
  • Humans
  • Information Dissemination / methods*
  • Publishing / standards
  • Writing / standards

Grants and funding

This work has been supported in part by the National Science Foundation (www.nsf.gov) awards DBI-1356529 and CCF-1439057 to PM. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.