YouTube for Science? 96
Shipud writes "The National Science Foundation, Public Library of Science and the San Diego Supercomputing Center have partnered to set up what can best be described as a "YouTube for scientists", SciVee". Scientists can upload their research papers, accompanied by a video where they describe the work in the form of a short lecture, accompanied by a presentation. The formulaic, technical style of scientific writing, the heavy jargonization and the need for careful elaboration often renders reading papers a laborious effort. SciVee's creators hope that that the appeal of a video or audio explanation of paper will make it easier for others to more quickly grasp the concepts of a paper and make it more digestible both to colleagues and to the general public."
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Another good video site: fora.tv (Score:5, Interesting)
One of my faves is fora.tv [www.fora.tv] which has lots of really good lectures and readings. A lot of it is from CSPAN, but I like CSPAN, so I'm not one to complain.
This kind of refinement in the online video space is a great great thing, and as online advertising increases in value (At the expense of broadcast advertising dollars) these kinds of websites will have greater and greater viability and from there, increased depth of programming.
Some websites have tried to do this in an entertainment sphere, and for the most part, aren't realy doing too well - audience expectations are high and the material presented is often iffy in quality. OF course, that changing, slowly - better stuff is arriving, but there needs to be filtering systems. Things like the site in TFA and fora.tv are just such filters.
This is a very exciting time for online video!
Now, if we can only keep the bandwidth up before it all chokes itself to death...
RS
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This kind of refinement in the online video space is a great great thing
I don't know. In the case of scientific papers, yes it probably is. But a great deal of the appeal of youtube is the ability to stumble onto things that you didn't know existed (via the 'related videos' links in particular.) If there was a separate site for Japanese game shows, or Harry Potter rap, my life would be a little bit poorer.
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Proof that this may not work out (Score:4, Insightful)
You have the wrong audience. (Score:1)
Well, I think the point of this site is not to reach out to the unwashed masses of laypeople; Rather it is to reach other academics in the field or to reach professionals who want to put new discoveries into practice (engineers / industry).
I think the video site is trying to capitalize the fact that author presented seminars on papers can provide a more efficient transfer of the new idea than just reading the paper does. The problem is, seminars are interactive... When someone doesn't understand a point,
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Good idea (Score:5, Interesting)
I personally work on a digital hologram printer, and wouldn't mind recording a short video describing how it works etc.
Here's an example hologram that I've done: (Yes, I'm a KDE developer as well. It's the KDE dragon, konqi.)
http://img267.imageshack.us/my.php?image=pict0044
(Excuse the mess of my room)
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Re:Good idea (Score:5, Funny)
Very, very cool! (Score:5, Insightful)
Ryan Fenton
Re:Very, very cool! (Score:5, Insightful)
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I just don't like the idea of my tax dollars paying for it.
The not-so-nice part about the internet (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not a bad idea (Score:3, Insightful)
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Currently, scivee.tv only has videos that would be of interest to people that know quite a bit about the topic already (example: Structural Evolution of the Protein Kinase-Like Superfamily).
The videos als
Re:Very, very cool! (Score:4, Insightful)
This doesn't look like a site targeted at the layman. It seems to be a site targeted at the scientific community to help disseminate research results to other scientists. I think this is a great idea. Basically the majority of scientific papers that are written only have their abstracts, intros, conclusions, and figures read until it is determined that the paper is of great interest, then the nitty-gritty details are read. This allows researchers to quickly get the gist of papers to determine which ones they want to read in detail. It would also help the scientific journalist to quickly understand the big picture of a particular recent topic.
Since the videos are targeted at other scientists and engineers, I wouldn't expect too much polish. It would not surprise me if it gets used by company PR departments or researchers on the fringe to promote their ideas (and in which case I would expect pretty slick presentations) because I suspect posting a video on this site would carry more weight than just posting it on YouTube.
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But it does seem that every few years there is a "summarising paper" which summarises, simply, what has been happening across the field in fairly simple language.
Maybe this is just a once-off in my field though.
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Re:Very, very cool! (Score:4, Informative)
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Preparing reasonably accurate, easily digested science popularization isn't easy. Making it easily available [via a youtube clone] won't change that.
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Yes! (Score:5, Insightful)
Any system that makes academic papers more digestible is a benefit for three reasons:
1) Researchers. Youtube like social networking amongst peers can boost awareness of research and give researchers a better sense of the "field" to dig into when doing background research allowing them to find relevant works quickly. It also does the opposite allowing them to spark others interest in their work so it doesn't get retired to the shelf. Even when reading papers in your own field understanding complex methods and results can sometimes be hard to digest if unclear writing is involved. A video (mainly of the researcher explaining things in their own spoken words) is worth a thousand words.
2) Business. Putting businesses in touch with research and programs relevant to them. This is a win/win. Companies get information that betters their products and services and hopefully in return they provide much needed research dollars to those doing the work.
3) The general public. Keeping the general public in the loop is important for countless reasons. Two of them being it lets them see where there tax research dollars are going and why they should support such funding and also because hopefully it will inspire people to take interest in the goings on of higher education and ward of general stupidity. It always brightens my day to see science videos of cool physics research or psychology tricks littered in with sports highlights and comedy clips. Even if it only raises peoples awareness slightly I think its worth it.
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Something doesn't seem quite right here.
Re:Yes! (Score:5, Insightful)
- in some places it is the quantity of papers produced that counts and not the quality
- because they are not published in open websites where they can be indexed by search engines.
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Only for Bio (Score:2)
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Might be the novelty of the site. (Score:2)
Personally I'm interested in data compression and information theory.
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I hope so. I'm not really a bio guy, so I can't understand most of what is up there. I'm no expert in physics, or hardcore CS, but I at least have enough of an interest in those fields that I might have a shot of getting some benefit from watching the videos.
Peer review, or clique acceptance? (Score:3, Insightful)
Video and Audio presentations should go with each paper to a reviewing publication if it helps reviewers and laymen. More importantly the reviewers need to be able to remember their primary motivation. To be skeptical in the name of science.
cluge
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Did you teach me physics? Seriously though, what's the point of this principle, to prevent cheating? I understand the need to include the unanalyzed data, but why do I have to explain relatively simple things, especially to my physics professor? Example: If I have
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Paper Format (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, having said all of that, I do think that a site which offers video presentations of papers would be a more interesting way of learning information. In acadamia, a lot of professors and researchers are expected to become involved in their area of research, which means that they perform research, present research, and attend presentations of other researchers. In many areas you could attend presentations almost every day of the week. While this is encouraged, it does take up valuable time, and many in acadamia have to be selective about which presentations would be most valuable to attend, as presentations take more time than would reading the relevant portions of the paper. Finally, I have seen enough awful presentations to realize that just because the information is presented in another format does not mean that the author has become any less dry.
This sounds a bit like... (Score:2)
Is this practical? (Score:2)
Also, there's that nasty question of peer review. I know that there are many papers from crackpots that en
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Just because one /can/ speak (well) in one context does NOT mean that one can speak well in another.
Certainly speaking to a camera lacks certain cues such as audience interaction, but it has the benefit that you can go back and edit the results until it looks right.
Nor does it mean that one is inclined to.
What do you mean? Why would someone be disinclined to speak well in a context where speaking well will enhance your subjective credibility, and give you greater impact on your audience? (Unless you meant "has the talent to", rather than, "is inclined to". If so, see my
YouTube for Science? Does this mean... (Score:2)
New learning way... (Score:1)
the public? (Score:2)
Tut-tut (Score:2)
Long, long overdue (Score:2)
Personally, I think researchers owe it to yourselves to buy a decent HD camera (Canon HV20, for example) and a piece of software that will encode their v
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Or you could read the dense parts of a paper several times, and ask questions through email. Wouldn't that be easier?
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For conference papers, sure. Most conference papers are never read anyway. They exist merely to fill in some of the details that a speaker won't have time to cover in a 15-minute seminar at the conference. Good journals have a much higher bar, so I stick with journal papers.
When giving seminars, researchers explain things simply, but leave out important details and much of the discussion, either because there simply isn't time or bec
UTube is great for politics though (Score:2)
Ok, but.... (Score:1)
I mean, just imagine doing this on YouTube. People would watch the video and be educated. Then they'd glance down at the comments and instantly become retarded. I believe that personally, I have lost at least 30 IQ points from accidentally reading YouTube comments.
It would be naive to assume that the same people won't shamble over to the new site and drool all ov
Impenetrable mathematics and terminology (Score:3, Insightful)
I suppose part of the problem is the terminology used in research papers. You get groups of researchers in specialisations that use terminology that only they know, because they have developed it in their own little corner of the research world. You can end up with a newcomer to a field writing a perfectly good paper, but because s/he didn't use the now accepted proper terminology the paper is not understood by the people it is actually targeting.
Also sometimes I get the feeling that people are writing papers with impenetrable terminology to make themselves feel clever. The more big words the better. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so.
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Like? Is the children's description precise and general enough to be used mathematically?
I've read papers that are describing techniques that I myself have implemented and yet still not recognised what was being described.
There are many ways to describe concepts, even mathematically. Some are more general than others. Some are more a
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I always find it interesting that some really simple concepts that could probably be understood by a child become completely unfathomable when presented in mathematical form.
Ditto. The simplest algorithms look so complicated once written as a mathematical formula, it's getting quite problematic when you're trying to implement something not so complicated but that the documentation about it requires a BA of some sort to be deciphered, my point being that the formal way algorithms are described in papers an
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You are precisely correct about the original purpose of the academic style of writing. However, if everyone now writes like this, it's hard to feel clever relative to other scientists simply by writing in this way. This style of writing is perpetuated because it has become the standard and it would be difficult fo
Evolution (Score:2)
Nothing New (Score:1)
A good idea ---- just like poster talks (Score:1)
Darn tootin' (Score:2)
I wonder of they got the good idea from http://sciencehack.com/ [sciencehack.com]
Oh well, the more the merrier. Perhaps the new one will have videos from talks given. Not the nifty graphics oriented demonstration-type stuff, but that kind of stuff has been accumulating and not being used.
That's right, let's do to science what TV has done (Score:2)
I don't know... (Score:1)
government lags private efforts (Score:2, Informative)
DOH! (Score:1)
hmm let us see (Score:2)
- text online. Check
- supplementaries including text, audio, video, whatever. Check.
There is no need for the "new" site.
More important is to have an effective system of rating of papers. Traditional peer-reviewed system is prone to favoritism.
There was a site with 1000 experts in different sciences reviewing regularly papers. That is another way.
Applying digg system to science directly probably won't work.
SciVee (Score:3, Informative)
A friend blogged about SciVee [scivee.tv] which is intended to be Youtube for scientists.
And it runs on Drupal [drupal.org].
Check Videolectures.net - over 2500 science videos (Score:2, Informative)
We are running a http://videolectures.net/ [videolectures.net] science video site with over 2500 science videos and presentations mostly related to Computer Science, Machine Learning, Data Mining, Semantic Web, etc.
If you click it right now, please also check http://videolectures.net/site/live/ [videolectures.net] where live webcast of the Machine Learning Summer School which is going on right now (http://www.mlss.cc/tuebingen07/ [www.mlss.cc]).
And please don't put it on the slashdot front page (i.e. slashdot-it) just jet, because the server probably won't
Re:Check Videolectures.net - over 2500 science vid (Score:1)
Its nirvana! (Score:1)
pissed my company filters youtube (Score:2)
Typo in main article (Score:2)