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ISSUES IN SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION:
News for the University of Illinois Community

« Nature's Expose on Publisher's Tactics to Rout Open Access | Main | Renegade Editors Seek to Topple Top Topology Journal by starting up a cheaper rival »

January 25, 2007

"Publish" Videos of Experimental Protocols

The Journal of Visualized Experiments (2006-) is truly living up to the old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words. This online, open access journal is

publishing visualized (video-based) biological research studies. This publication aims to solve some of the most difficult problems in the contemporary life science research:
  • low transparency and reproducibility of biological experiments
  • time-consuming learning of experimental techniques

Each video-article will include step-by-step instructions on an experiment, a demonstration of equipment and reagents, and a short discussion by experts describing possible technical problems and modifications. Every scientist planning on a biological experiment will be able to access the database, find videos relevant to their work, and use them as protocols. High effectiveness of visualized instructions, as compared to currently used written protocols, will decrease failure rates for biological experiments, and, thus, facilitate significant savings in time and cost. It will also increase reproducibility of published experiments, one of the main problems in the current life science research.

There is no charge to authors to submit or have their protocols published. Each submission will be reviewed by members of an editorial board, but, at this time, will not be rigorously peer-reviewed (that will come later). The time lapse from the date of submission to the date of publication should be no longer than 7-14 days. At the present time, there are 17 videos available in JoVE.

Of course, researchers have been putting their videos up on their personal websites and in sites such as YouTube. See for yourself: search for microarray in YouTube or in GoogleVideo.

Posted by Katie Newman at January 25, 2007 9:24 AM