Ten simple rules for organizing a webinar series

The webinars series form part of the regular activities of any scientific consortium that aims to strengthen research activities and foster collaborations amongst the different partners. The webinars are intended to foster the exchange of ideas, build potential collaborations across multiple disciplines and enabling the participation and sharing of knowledge in current research. The Ten Simple Rules for organizing a webinar series can be summarized as follow: The webinar coordination team assists with all the planning and logistics for hosting a webinar (Rule 1); Choosing webinar themes requires mapping of the target audience needs and interest (Rule 2); Drafting a webinar planning checklist through regular planning meetings as well as post webinar meetings (Rule 3); Decentralized webinar organization of tasks and resources through accessible shared space (Rule 4); Planing early and settling on the provisional dates and times of the webinar events along with their themes (Rule 5); Choosing and settling on convenient and user friendly webinar platform (Rule 6); Approaching and confirming potential speakers (Rule 7); Obtaining the webinar title, abstract and presenter’s biography for creating the webinar announcement through emails and social media channels (Rule 8); Allocating time for the platform orientation (Rule 9); and Keeping close-up track of webinar metrics for regular assessment and evaluation (Rule 10). These Ten Simple Rules shared with the computational biology community will help those who have not yet ventured into training through webinars to learn from our experience. In our experience, the feedback from the post-webinar surveys clearly demonstrate that webinars are an effective way to create a two-way conversation between presenters and participants via a web-based platform.