I came up with this idea last year, and had a feeling researchers and publishers may dismiss it as undermining the value of the science being delivered. I disagree with this perspective. I’ve been in research publishing for 20 years and, since putting print articles into an online format, there have been very few shifts in the mechanics of research publishing. As a result, we are not keeping up with other industries…
We need to think about the up and coming generations. They assume that information is delivered and findable in video and voice form. They automatically film and photograph themselves as a natural part of their daily world. Those born in the 1970s and 80s are now well behind the times in content dissemination – we photographed ourselves and waited a month for the physical photograph. Generation X will not tolerate the inaccessibility of information in the research publishing world when they reach the point of Undergraduate and Postgraduate. What are we going to offer them in order to meet their needs? Saying video trivialises research quality is an excuse, not a real reason.
Please suspend your disbelief that video cannot be generated by the author for their peers, in a valuable way. This value-add content can be done in parallel with the formal publication methods, so let’s bring genuine innovation into our ecosphere. As Helen King mentioned in PubTech Radar Scan please create space for new ideas to succeed or fail. Rapid research dissemination through video is an entirely viable idea: essentially ‘TikTok for Research’!
Kind regards, Ruth x
P.S. Somewhat eaten my words today after finding out about these new services:
https://science-octopus.org/
https://www.flashpub.io/
https://www.libscie.org/
https://www.protocols.io/
https://www.jove.com/journal
Well Thought Through 