BOSC 2025, the 26th annual Bioinformatics Open Source Conference, will take place July 21-22, 2025 in Liverpool, UK (as part of ISMB/ECCB 2025). BOSC covers all aspects of open source bioinformatics and open science.

BOSC 2024 took place place July 15-16, 2024, as part of ISMB 2024, in Montréal, Canada and online. Videos of the talks from BOSC 2024 are available on our YouTube channel. Our report about BOSC 2024 is published in F1000Research.

2025 Key Dates

  • January 20, 2025: Call for abstracts opens
  • April 17, 2025: Abstract submission deadline (talks and posters) – no extensions
  • May 15: Late poster submission deadline
  • July 20-24, 2025: ISMB/ECCB 2025 (Liverpool, UK, and online)
  • July 21-22, 2025: BOSC 2025 (part of ISMB/ECCB 2025)
  • July 23-24: Open Bioinformatics Codefest (part of ISMB/ECCB 2025)

Topics

  • Open Science and Reproducible Research
  • Open Biomedical Data
  • Citizen/Participatory Science
  • Standards and Interoperability
  • Data Science
  • Workflows
  • Data Access and Visualization
  • Translational Bioinformatics
  • Developer Tools and Libraries
  • Inclusion, Outreach and Training
  • AI/ML: open approaches
  • …and more! This is not intended to be a complete list of topics we cover.

Registration and Financial Assistance

To participate in BOSC 2025 or the Codefest, you will need to register for ISMB/ECCB 2025. Those who submit abstracts to BOSC can request a fee waiver on the submission form. You can also apply for an Open Bioinformatics Foundation Event Award.

Sponsorships

Sponsorships from companies and non-profit organizations help to defray some of our costs and support our diversity/inclusion efforts. Thanks to our sponsors, we were able to grant free registration to 15 participants at BOSC 2024, offer honoraria to keynote speakers, and cover other expenses.

If you’re interested in sponsoring BOSC 2025, please see our sponsors page!



2024 Platinum Sponsors:

seqera

Seqera makes complex data analysis accessible at any scale
    
    
            
CZI

2024 Gold Sponsor:

NIH Data Science


2024 Silver Sponsor:

GigaScience

  

BOSC 2024 Organizing Committee

 

Chair: Nomi L. Harris (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)

  • Karsten Hokamp (Trinity College Dublin)
  • Jason Williams (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
  • Jessica Maia (BD)
  • Chris Fields (University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana)
  • Deepak Unni (SIB, Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics)
  • Swapnil Sawant (Phoenix Bioinformatics)
  • Monica Munoz-Torres (Univ. of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus)
  • Hervé Ménager (Institut Pasteur)

BOSC 2024 Organizing Committee

About BOSC

The Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC) has been held annually since 2000. BOSC is organized by the Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF), a non-profit group dedicated to promoting the practice and philosophy of open source software development and open science within the biological research community.

Since its inception, BOSC has provided a forum for developers and users to interact and share research results and ideas in open source bioinformatics. BOSC’s broad spectrum of topics includes practical techniques for solving bioinformatics problems; software development practices; standards and ontologies; approaches that promote open science and sharing of data, results and software; and ways to grow open source communities while promoting diversity within them.

BOSC is usually preceded or followed by what we now call CollaborationFest (CoFest for short), a two-day community development session. This is an opportunity for anyone interested in open science, biology and programming to meet, talk and work collaboratively. All are welcome to attend CoFest, whether or not you attend BOSC!

More about BOSC…

Code of Conduct

As part of ISMB/ECCB 2025, BOSC 2025 is covered by the ISCB Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct.