Making movies…for SCIENCE! (ScienceOnline ‘09)
In the second session I attended at Science Online ‘09, Moshe Pritsker and Apryl Bailey discussed the use of video, images, and sound in the production of peer-reviewed (and non-peer-reviewed) literature in the sciences. The essential concept is the age-old exhortation to writers everywhere: show, don’t tell*. In other words, instead of a beautifully assembled collection of jargon (or shall we say, “terms of the art”) and complex written instructions, why not make a movie? Two services — JoVE (the Journal of Visualized Experiments) and Scivee.tv — approach the idea from different angles.
JoVE endeavors to be a peer-reviewed “journal” (those aren’t scare quotes: JoVE is very much not your grandpa’s scholarly journal), and already has a considerable number of videos. They’ve put a lot into it, too - arrangements with professional studios, assistance with scripting and storyboarding, the works. And the outcome is very professional.
Personally, I think it a rather clever idea. I’ve both used and, more painfully, written lab protocols, and for my money, I really would have rather somebody just filmed me. There are protocols that are “get it wrong until somebody shows you” difficult, and a movie might be an essential resource.
On the other hand, JoVE doesn’t look like a scholarly journal. I’m not clear (following an admittedly cursory inspection) how JoVE’s articles compare to a “traditional” article. Since there is considerable inertia (to put it mildly) in scholarly publishing - this thing doesn’t exactly stop on a dime - JoVE may face a considerable challenge in gaining acceptance if it doesn’t look like a typical journal. As mentioned by in a different session, there are places you publish and places you don’t, and your advisor’s advice may come down to the fact that they know how the system works and there is a way things are done. It doesn’t pay to underestimate “this is how it’s done” in any professional environment.
Scivee.tv tackles this from another angle - why not be the YouTube of scientific video? Conference speeches, experiments, slideshows (slidecasts, actually), spoken presentations linked to papers (nifty!), and even more things that I forget. As far as I can tell, these receive minimal review (reviewed for appropriateness and to avoid the Rickroll, but not peer-reviewed in a rigorous sense), but Scivee does provide an interesting resource of scientific information.
Scivee does not aspire to be a journal, with the scholarly cachet thereunto pertaining (and in so doing, probably dodges some of the obstacles JoVE will face). Instead, it’s much more of a social-networking, community-style resource. In it’s current incarnation, it’s essentially YouTube + Scribd + SlideShare…for SCIENCE!**
Again, I think it’s a neat idea. Not original, but in the realm of Web services, there isn’t much someone hasn’t thought of yet. My concern with Scivee lies not in the services it provides - pubcasts, slidecasts, and postercasts are neat spins on presenting scientific information - but in the business side of things. First, it is my understanding that a critical element of a web service is to target the right audience. I’m not sure who the audience for Scivee really is. “Scientists” is too broad. Second, what is their business model? How will they sustain these resources? I think it’s a good resource, but only if it sticks around.
So after all that, what do these new resources - or the idea of using video in scholarly literature - mean to libraries? Well, the use of video, sound, and images might be relatively new and contentious to the world of scientific publishing, but it’s old hat to librarians. I think we’ll take resources like these in stride.
* My goodness. Did I just reference Wikipedia? No cookie for me.
** I like to add “for SCIENCE!” to things every so often.