Journal of Biomedical Semantic cover letter draft

[Jerven Bolleman]

Hi All,

Compilation time is a bit long which gave me the opportunity to write
cover letter draft. As this is the first one I have ever written
feedback is appreciated.

Regards,
Jerven

Dear Editor,

We would like to submit the paper titled "FALDO: A semantic standard
for describing the location of nucleotide and protein feature
annotation." for publication in the Biohackathon thematic series in
the Journal of Biomedical Semantics.

FALDO is a small ontology dealing with the position and regions of
features on genomes and proteomes. It has a nice uptake by data
providers and we believe it adds value to disseminate the concepts
further in your Journal.



Regards,
Jerven Bolleman for the authors


--
Jerven Bolleman
m...@jerven.eu

[Peter Cock]

On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 11:10 AM, Jerven Bolleman <m...@jerven.eu> wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> Compilation time is a bit long which gave me the opportunity to write
> cover letter draft. As this is the first one I have ever written
> feedback is appreciated.
>
> Regards,
> Jerven
>
> Dear Editor,
>
> We would like to submit the paper titled "FALDO: A semantic standard
> for describing the location of nucleotide and protein feature
> annotation." for publication in the Biohackathon thematic series in
> the Journal of Biomedical Semantics.
>
> FALDO is a small ontology dealing with the position and regions of
> features on genomes and proteomes. It has a nice uptake by data
> providers and we believe it adds value to disseminate the concepts
> further in your Journal.

The final sentence sounded a bit awkward to me. I'd replace the
"a nice update" with something more positive like "strong uptake".
Did the second half mean disseminate FALDO, or the general
theme of biomedical semantics?

Maybe something like this?:

We feel semantic annotation of sequence locations is clearly of
relevance to the journal's focus on semantic enrichment and semantic
processing in the biomedical domain. FALDO has already seen strong
support from major data providers, and formal publication would help
disseminate this interoperability standard further.

Regards,

Peter

[Hilmar Lapp]

On Jan 29, 2014, at 6:10 AM, Jerven Bolleman wrote:

> We would like to submit the paper titled "FALDO: A semantic standard for describing the location of nucleotide and protein feature annotation." for publication in the Biohackathon thematic series in the Journal of Biomedical Semantics.

No need for politeness fillers. Change beginning to "We are hereby submitting a manuscript titled ...".

> FALDO is a small ontology dealing with the position and regions of features on genomes and proteomes.

Remove "small". (No need to downplay your work.) I would make "dealing with" more specific. Think about this paragraph as being your elevator speech about FALDO. In 2-3 sentences, what are the main take home messages about FALDO of relevance to the journal's readership?

-hilmar

--
Hilmar Lapp -:- lappland.io

[Joachim Baran]

I second Hilmar’s comments. As a rule of thumb, I would avoid adjectives unless necessary.

Joachim

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[Hilmar Lapp]

On Jan 29, 2014, at 7:01 AM, Peter Cock wrote:

> We feel semantic annotation of sequence locations is clearly of relevance to the journal's focus on semantic enrichment and semantic processing in the biomedical domain. FALDO has already seen strong support from major data providers, and formal publication would help disseminate this interoperability standard further.

Assuming that this would be preceded by the major take-home messages of relevance to JBMS' readership, I would just continue like this:

"As such, we deem our work clearly relevant to the journal's focus and readership. FALDO has already seen uptake from major data providers, providing further evidence of its practical merits, and formal publication in JBMS would help increase awareness among and future contributions from the biomedical semantics community."

Note BTW the removal of "strong" for uptake. Strong claims like this need to be in the paper, backed up by evidence, and subject to peer-review, not in the cover letter.

[Toshiaki Katayama]

2014/01/29 23:47、Hilmar Lapp <hl...@drycafe.net> のメール：

>
> On Jan 29, 2014, at 6:10 AM, Jerven Bolleman wrote:
>
>> FALDO is a small ontology dealing with the position and regions of features on genomes and proteomes.
>
> Remove "small". (No need to downplay your work.)

Agreed but I think what Jerven meant with "small" was the size of ontology (no need to be mentioned in the cover letter though).
My alternative would be "FALDO is a fundamental ontology ..." maybe..

Cheers,
Toshiaki

[Toshiaki Katayama]

2014/01/30 1:58、Toshiaki Katayama <toshiaki...@gmail.com> のメール：

I retract my suggestion. It was confusing with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_ontology etc.. Sorry.

Toshiaki