Tuesday, September 11, 2007

SciVee - a YouTube for science

I learn from ars technica here about SciVee which will

...provide a form of scientific communication that's intermediate between abstracts (which take a few minutes to read) and a full reading of a paper (which can take hours). The primary type of video presentation that SciVee intends to host could be called a "pubcast," in which a researcher provides a short video description of their work that's synchronized to the display of text from the paper.

and also about the process of creating a SciVee presentation

What's the incentive for researchers to put the effort into creating a pubcast? "There's actually a low barrier to entry," Bourne said. "All you need is a webcam and iMovie or Movie Maker." The SciVee site has tutorials for recording and editing video content on both Mac and Windows platforms. Once the resulting video is uploaded, the site's software walks users through synchronizing it with the text of the paper.

I think SciVee will catch on very quickly indeed. There is a large gulf between reading just a paper's abstract and reading the entire paper which SciVee fills well, and because it is video it is (potentially) a very engaging medium with which to attract people's attention. No doubt I will try out SciVee before long, and I will write about my impressions of it here.

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