Diversity, inclusion and accessibility (also known as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, DEI) are a major part of OBF and BOSC’s mission and core values.
Below are some of the ways we have worked to promote DEI at OBF, BOSC, ISMB (the host conference for BOSC) and in the broader open bioinformatics community.
The Open Bioinformatics Foundation, funds the OBF event fellowships, which aim to increase diversity at events (including, but not limited to, BOSC) that promote open science as a research practice. These fellowships fund participants whose attendance will contribute to increase the diversity of such events (e.g. underrepresented demographic groups, ethnic origins, career stages, and disabilities).
Authors who submit their work to BOSC can request ISMB registration fee support on the submission form (these requests are not seen by reviewers). This initiative is funded by sponsorships.
Since we introduced this option three years ago, we’ve been able to offer free registration to dozens of people, most of whom are from groups underrepresented at ISMB/BOSC:
- In 2022, 19 people (of whom 18 were from groups that are underrepresented in our community) were granted free registration thanks to a combination of these registration fee waivers and OBF event fellowships.
- In 2023, 15 people (13 from underrepresented groups) were given free registration to ISMB/BOSC.
- In 2024, 14 people (13 from underrepresented groups) received free registration.
To help everyone feel welcome at BOSC, we introduced a code of conduct in 2015, and successfully lobbied our host conference ISMB to adopt one as well. OBF adopted a code of conduct in 2022.
Our 2023 keynote speakers both discussed topics related to inclusion and equity. The first BOSC 2023 keynote was delivered by Sara El-Gebali, who spoke inspiringly about “A New Odyssey: Pioneering the Future of Scientific Progress Through Open Collaboration,” with case studies showing how open collaboration can strengthen inclusive scientific communities and vice-versa.
The first talk at BOSC (and, to our knowledge, at ISMB) to be delivered in a language other than English was given in 2021 by keynote speaker Thomas Hervé Mboa Nkoudou of Cameroon.
Some recent BOSCs have included DEI-focused sessions such as “Inclusion & Open Science” in 2022, and BOSC’s landscape of open science includes citizen science, in which the research subjects themselves (for example, those with a disability) participate in the research. BOSC 2023 included a talk entitled “AutSPACEs: a co-created and open source citizen science project to improve environments for sensory processing in autistic people”.
In a 2023 ISCBacademy webinar organized by BOSC, Long COVID sufferer and advocate Hannah Wei presented Lessons from the Patient-Led Research Collaborative.
Inclusion offers mutual advantages: when we give a wider range of people a voice, they benefit from being included and we in turn benefit from their contributions. 2022 panelist Jenea Adams shared her thoughts in a blog post, commenting, “BOSC not only showcased the remarkable strides made in computational biology but also emphasized the power of collaboration and inclusivity. Through my participation in the panel on Building and Sustaining Inclusive Open Science Communities, I witnessed the true potential of harnessing diverse perspectives to drive innovation and create a sustainable foundation for open science.”
Our 2020 event (BCC2020, which paired BOSC with the Galaxy Community Conference) was groundbreaking for DEI due to being online and presented twice a day for accessibility around the globe, and all videos professionally captioned. Participants at this event hailed from 61 countries, many of which had never been represented before at BOSC.
Further reading: Our annual BOSC reports, published in the open access journal F1000Research, include sections on DEI (see e.g. https://f1000research.com/articles/11-1034/v1 for 2022, or https://f1000research.com/articles/9-1160/v1 for 2021).