Guest blog post by Prof Jason Moore, co-Editor-in-Chief of BioData Mining, a journal which publishes research on data mining applied to high-dimensional biological and biomedical data. Jason is Professor of Genetics at Dartmouth College and Director of the Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Sciences; his research focuses on understanding how DNA sequence variations increase or decrease susceptibility to common diseases.

A rapid increase in the amount of data produced by the life sciences, has led to a new era of ‘big data’. Much work has been completed in recent years to address issues such as the storage and curation of large amounts of data, and progress has been made with encouraging researchers to deposit their findings in repositories. However there is a clear necessity for tools with which to analyse this data – big data, by definition, challenges our ability to move, store, manage, retrieve and analyze information to maximize knowledge generation.

These informatics, information technology and data analysis challenges are compounded by the complexity of problems that are of practical importance. Genetics, genomics and proteomics, for example, are rapidly becoming systems sciences as we move from understanding the biology of single molecules to understanding how networks of functional elements work together to influence phenotypes.

In response to this need for such technology, BioData Mining is seeking to publish high-quality tools for the analysis of big data. Our future success in biodata mining will arguably depend on our ability to embrace and confront both the scale and the complexity of big data.

We are keen to consider submissions which examine (but are not limited to):

-Mining high-dimensional data
-Visualizing big data
-Integrating diverse data
-Sharing complex data
-Computing big data

We look forward to receiving your research!

To submit your manuscript to this exciting new article series, please do so via our online system, and state clearly within your covering letter that it is intended for the ‘big data thematic series’. Contact editorial@biodatmining.org if you have any queries. Follow us on Twitter @moorejh.