The Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF) promotes open source bioinformatics software development and open science in the biological research community. The OBF Event Fellowship program is aimed at increasing diverse participation and representation at events promoting open science practices such as open source software and resource development in the bioinformatics and biological research community.
These fellowships are available to support both in-person and remote (virtual) participation at events such as conferences, workshops, training courses or collaborative development sprints.
There are three rounds of applications with the following application deadlines:
- Round-1: 1 April
- Round-2: 1 August
- Round-3: 1 December
The calls for applications are announced through a blog post on the website, official mailing list and Twitter.
The applications are submitted for each round via this application form.
We have created a word template of the form, which can be used for creating a draft of your application. Please make a copy or download this document as a '.docx' file.
If Google Docs and Forms are not accessible from your geographical location, please email the fellowship chair to receive a template document by email.
Applicants will be asked to supply the following information:
Applicants are asked to provide personal information such as name, email address, career stage, and affiliation. This information will not be shared with the review panel but will be used by the fellowship chair to identify who the applicants are.
In this part, applicants will be expected to provide information about the event they have selected to participate in. Requested details include the name of the event, event website, dates (should take place within 1 year from the application deadline), type of the event (conference, training, or other), and confirmation if the event is taking place in-person or online. Applicants should also describe the nature of their participation (presenter, attendee or other) and how it relates to open science practices or open source software.
OBF Event Fellowships are intended to enable awardees to participate in events that promote open source bioinformatics and/or open science. We ask applicants to describe (maximum 250 words) how this event and their participation in it relate to these goals.
OBF promotes the development of open-source bioinformatics software, documentation, or other content useful for research communities. In this section, applicants are asked to provide a link to a repository to which they have contributed and evidence of open-source licensing.
They are further expected to describe the project that their participation in the event involves (either because they are presenting, co-developing, or because the event involves activities around this topic). If they cannot provide links to specific resources and licenses, then they can describe how their participation furthers open science practices.
One of the goals of the OBF fellowship is to enable and enhance active participation from groups otherwise underrepresented at the event or in the broader community, including but not limited to underrepresented country of residence or origin, ethnic background (historically underrepresented and other minority groups), career stages, sexuality, gender identity and expression, and people with disabilities.
We ask applicants to describe how their participation in this event helps promote diversity and representation of members from marginalised and traditionally underrepresented groups in the overall open source bioinformatics and/or open science communities.
Note that applicants may have an answer to this question even if they are not personally a member of an underrepresented group. This section is important for the evaluation of their application.
The OBF Event Fellowships are available for the awardees to cover conference registration fees and other participation-related costs of up to USD 1,000.
Applicants are asked to provide details of expenses they hope to be reimbursed through the OBF Event fellowship. Here, they can provide as much detail as possible to help the review panel make a fair recommendation for the fellowship awardees.
Please see the next section for more details.
The OBF Event Fellowships are available for the awardees to cover conference registration fees and other participation-related costs of up to USD 1,000.
The fellowship can be used to cover conference registration fees and direct travel costs (such as travel insurance, airfare, train, metro, bus and taxi), hotel, poster printing (if presenting a poster at the conference), and/or child-care up to a value of USD 1,000. Note that rental car expenses and personal car mileage are not eligible for reimbursement. Lodging for earlier than the night before the first day of the event, or beyond the night the event ends, requires justification and is subject to Board approval. If the applicants anticipate that they would require more than USD 1,000 to attend the event, they should include that information in the application form. Please note that requests made for more than $1000 may not be granted if not justified by the applicants.
The fellowship can be used to cover conference registration fees and the costs of small hardware (such as a microphone, speaker and webcam), childcare for the duration of the event and/or other supporting materials.
The cost of remote participation will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. For example, we are aware that due to the load-shedding issues in many developing countries, our applicants might need to pay for the fuel for the generator to keep their electricity running for the duration of the event. Similarly, the cost of high-speed internet may vary across countries and may also be requested by applicants from many developing countries.
Applicants are eligible to apply for the cost of a communication platform only if they are hosting a virtual event and will require a paid subscription to access the necessary premium features of the software used in their event. When applying for the cost of hardware, please note that this fellowship will not cover the cost of buying laptops and computers. However, this fellowship may cover the rental cost of the large hardware (for example, a second screen) required to attend or host a virtual event. The cost will be capped to a maximum of $40 (USD) each for small hardware such as headphones, webcam, speaker, and/or microphone. If the cap is insufficient, applicants can describe their hardware needs in their application.
We recommend you purchase travel insurance, and include this as part of your expenses claim. In the event of cancellation, we would expect to reimburse your travel insurance premium and any insurance excess fee (as long as the total reimbursement does not exceed the originally agreed award).
If the awardee elects not to purchase travel insurance, any reimbursement is at the discretion of the Board.
The fellowship chairs will make sure that the call for applications is announced at least four weeks before the deadline by updating the application form for each round, drafting a blog post, coordinating with the newsletter chair and receiving approval from the OBF board members.
After the application period is over, chairs will coordinate with the OBF board members to invite volunteers to serve in the review panel and create all the required documents such as applications (assign alias and remove personal information) and reviewing form with rubrics to share with the panel.
- In the first week after the deadline, the review panel will be asked to review all or selected applications (based on the number of applications for that round).
- In the second week, the fellowship chair will conclude the review period and create a summary of the scores to discuss it with the board members to identify the awardees for that round.
- In the third week, ideally chairs will decide on the selected and declined applications in agreement with the OBF board.
- Preferably, by four weeks after the application deadline, the fellowship chair will notify the chosen awardees and ask for confirmation regarding the fellowship acceptance. In their communication (acceptance email), awardees will be informed of the OBF Event Fellowship process, which includes writing a blog post summarizing the fellowship experience after the conclusion of the event as a prerequisite to get reimbursed for their expenses associated with the event. They will also inform the applicants who were not selected and provide feedback when requested.
- After attending their approved event under this fellowship, awardees will draft a public blog post.
- Chair will maintain communication with the awardees helping them publish their post-event blog post.
- The OBF treasurer will help sort the reimbursement for the fellowship awardees after the blog post is published.
- The fellowship chair will summarise details from each awardee from a previous round and share them in the blog post announcing the next call for applications.
The review panel is drawn for every round of applications from the OBF Board members and volunteers based on their availability. Any panelist with a clear conflict of interest[1] will recuse themselves from deliberation.
[1] A conflict of interest may occur despite the anonymization if the applicant is known to the reviewer via the project description or online repository.
We expect applicants to include sufficient information in their application to allow the review panel to evaluate their eligibility fairly. We specifically assess the applications based on the following details that are asked in the application form:
The review panel will assess how the event that the applicants have selected and the nature of their participation promote open science practices in the bioinformatics and/or biological research community. It's important to keep in mind that the event should be scheduled to occur anytime in a one-year window starting one month after the application deadline.
Eligible events may include but are not limited to conferences, workshops, code fests, hackathons, training courses, collaborative sprints, informal meet-ups or other skill-building and networking events. If an applicant intends to attend OBF events BOSC and/or the OBF CoFest and other events hosted by the member projects, their application may be given a slight preference.
The review panel will look at the nature of the applicant's participation (their roles) at the event. For example, they may be hosting the event, giving a talk, chairing a session, running a Birds of a Feather discussion, offering a training event, facilitating a sprint (or similar session), leading a project at a code fest/hackathon, presenting a poster, participating in a panel discussion, reviewing abstracts for the event, contributing to the event as a co-organiser, or volunteering to help the organizing committee during the event.
The review panel may look at the applicant's general involvement in open source development (such as their GitHub contributions to the Open Source project) or open science communities (for example, their previous work advocating for open practices and diversity).
Any information regarding past participation in the project that they are representing will be useful for evaluating their application as well. Therefore, please supply the link to the public repository or online resources that will help the panel in the review process.
This will not be a limiting factor if applicants are new to bioinformatics and open science and express their enthusiasm and willingness to practice open science principles learned from the OBF community and other events of their choice.
The review panel will look at how applicants' attendance will contribute to increasing participation from diverse members at the event. We are aware that members from many marginalised groups are still underrepresented in bioinformatics, computational fields or the tech community more broadly. Our goals with this fellowship are to support members from underrepresented demographic groups including but not limited to diverse ethnic backgrounds, career stages, sexuality, gender identity and expression, people with disabilities and members from low-income backgrounds (such as from developing nations).
If applicants are not from a minority or underrepresented group but have a track record for advocating for diversity as an ally through their work or involvement in an event, they are welcome to apply for this fellowship as well.
We do not consider the diversity of operating systems, programming languages or scientific domains as a criterion for the OBF Event Fellowship.
This draft is built on the application assessment rubric by Open Life Science which itself builds on resources developed by the Mozilla Open Leadership Team.
We ask reviewers to evaluate the application across multiple dimensions with scores of 1, 2, or 3 that they share via a Google Form with the Event Fellowship chair. These correspond generally to reviews of "criteria not met", "criteria partially met" and "criteria fully met":
- Applicants who score mostly 1s do not have a clear understanding of the overall goals of this fellowship to support Open Source software practices and diversity of attendees in bioinformatics/biological research/open science events and communities.
- Applicants who score mostly 2s are enthusiastic if not wholly aligned with the event fellowship's goals, for example, they may not be attending an open-source related event but have an interest in learning and promoting best practices, or they want to attend a suitable event but do not represent any underrepresented minority groups.
- Applicants who score mostly 3s are ready, goal-oriented, interested in contributing to open source and represent traditionally underrepresented or minority groups in open science/bioinformatics.
Reviewers are also asked whether they would recommend an application. The available answers are "No", "Yes", "Unsure" or "Request to discuss". Candidates who have ratings of "No" or "Unsure" across all reviewers will be rejected. All other candidates will be discussed at the panel selection.
We ask all reviewers to finish the review with a few summary sentences to describe the application and the motivations for their scores to facilitate conversation during the selection panel discussion. Below we provide a copy of our review form.
- 1 (criterion not met) Does not provide enough information or seems to misunderstand what kind of event OBF Event fellowship supports
- 2 (criterion partially met) The event or the nature of their participation may not directly relate to Open Source in bioinformatics, but they have some understanding/plan on how they would use the knowledge gained at this event to promote open source practices and diversity
- 3 (criterion fully met) Seems to have a clear understanding of how their participation in this event relates to open-source bioinformatics or open science in general, and how they will further use and promote the knowledge obtained at this event
- 1 (criterion not met) Shares none or unrelated/irrelevant information on open source resources and how they relate to their proposed event
- 2 (criterion partially met) Shares some relevant information on open source resources and how they relate to their proposed event
- 3 (criterion fully met) Shares appropriate and relevant information on open source resources and how they relate to their proposed event
- 1 (criterion not met) The application lacks information or any justification on how their participation will help promote diversity and representation
- 2 (criterion partially met) The application provides little information or some justification on how their participation will help promote diversity and representation
- 3 (criterion fully met) The application provides sufficient information or justification on how their participation will help promote diversity and representation
- 1 (criterion not met) The requested funding does not fit our criteria of qualified items that can be funded through this fellowship and the applicant has not provided enough justification
- 2 (criterion partially met) The requested funding partially fits our criteria of qualified items that can be funded through this fellowship and the applicant has provided enough justification
- 3 (criterion fully met) The requested funding completely fits our criteria of qualified items that can be funded through this fellowship and the applicant has provided sufficient justification
- No
- Yes
- Unsure/Request to discuss
Please provide 1-2 summary sentences about this application to facilitate the selection. Please include what this application is about, what its open source aspect is, how it promotes diversity and representation and what funding would you recommend to cover.
- [Open text response]
Please highlight any diversity/minority groups this applicant belongs to, which should be supported for their representation in open source bioinformatics and biological research fields.
- [Open text response]
Anything else?
- [Open text response]
The review panel provided these assessment criteria in a Google form that can be previewed here. Event Fund chairs create a copy of this template for each round, updating links and details where appropriate.
Applicants will be notified of the outcome no later than 4 weeks after the application deadline.
Those who receive the fellowship award will be able to discuss any further details with the fellowship chair and/or the OBF board members.
Applicants who are unsuccessful in a round can request feedback. They will be able to apply again with a revised and updated application in the next round.
We expect that the applicant's participation in the event will promote open science practices in software development, training, documentation, publication and collaborative efforts in the biological research community, and will ideally promote diversity in their communities.
After the event, the awardees are required to write a blog post on the OBF blog about their experience attending the event and describing the main outcomes of their participation.
The fellowship chair will help create a WordPress account on the OBF website where they will provide editorial support for publishing the blog post. Please note that this should be completed within three weeks after the event ends, and is a prerequisite before the awardee can receive payment.
Meanwhile, the awardees will be put in touch with the OBF treasurer who will share the reimbursement form and help sort out the expenses as per the guidelines shared with them.
If for any reason the awardee's circumstances change and they can no longer attend the said event or accept the fellowship award, they should discuss the details with the fellowship chair and/or the board members.
The OBF will reimburse the recipient after the event based on receipts provided, proof of attendance has been submitted to the OBF treasurer, and the blog post about the event has been published. There is no cash value beyond eligible and documented expenses. All reimbursement claims must be filed (and all prerequisites for receiving payment must be met, see below) within 3 months after the conclusion of the event, after which the fellowship award expires.
We will ask the fellowship awardees to state for our records that none of their claimed expenses has been or will be reimbursed from another source (for example, their employer, or other grants).