Telling Research Stories Through SciVee Philip E. Bourne University of California San Diego AAAS February 21, 2010

Agenda Motivation for founding SciVee A brief history What have we found along the way relevant to researchers and educators How well does it tell the story? The future

Motivation

Motivation The Research Article is Not Necessarily the Best Way to Convey the Science

Motivation We Cannot Possibly Read a Fraction of the Papers We Should Abstract: 1-2 minutes Pubcast: 5-10 minutes Full paper: minutes Renear & Palmer 2009 Science 325:

The Lab Experiment My students enjoyed the experience The shyest student was actually the most bold in front of the camera “We will become a generation of “sciencecastors” They liked the exposure for the most part – rather than the PI it puts them out in front A Brief History

Organic Growth Some of their work viewed 20,000+ times Global audience of researchers, educators and academic/research institutions – 75,000+ unique visitors & 150,000 pageviews/month – 9,000 registered users & 350 communities – 3,500 uploads of video content (about journal articles, conferences, research news and classes) – Growing 4-5% monthly – “YouTube of Science” 2+ Years Later A Brief History

What Emerged? {x}casts – A Mashup of Traditional and New Media A Brief History

Products ApplicationProduct Primary Customers JournalsPubCastJournals, publishers, societies MeetingsPosterCastSocieties, conference orgs. SlideCast Comm.PaperCastSocieties, journals Podcast SlideCast EducationPosterCastSocieties, universities SlideCast BooksBookCastPublishers, book sellers Products: {x}casts A Brief History

Content Synching-1 Video Confirm Selection Content Selector Content Select content to be synched w/cropping tool… A Brief History

What Have We Found Along the Way? “This will change everything” Pavel Pevzner “We should be doing more of this” NSF Director “I will do one” many researchers (but a relatively few follow through) After Ars technicha announcement millions of page views

What Have We Found Along the Way? Like it or not, dissemination often does not bring the necessarily reward DisseminationReward

PubCasts – 1-2 Years Later It is not authors who are the drivers, but a limited number of publishers Pubcasts do increase access/interest in the paper Led to new directions What Have we Found Along the Way?

User Perceptions “Writers” strive for the highest quality “Readers” do not seem to care Synchronization only used in 50% of cases – Perceived value is low? – Web tools too cumbersome? – Time is better spent on your next paper What Have we Found Along the Way?

Services & Features Used Video competitions popular Communities popular Video only remains the most popular media type Publishers increasingly interested Comments feature poorly used Embedding popular Occasionally some content will go viral What Have we Found Along the Way?

How Well Does It Tell the Story? Experiment Gave ½ the class a paper to read for the same time it took the other ½ to watch a pubcast of the same paper Multiple choice questions on the paper Result Pubcast very slightly better result – need more tests for statistical rigor Students liked the pubcast more

There Have Been a Few Ah Hah Moments How Well Does IT Tell the Story?

There Have Been a Few Ah Hah Moments Discussion of latest paper We rediscovered what TV discovered years ago The interview format is compelling

SciVee in Summary “Phil, not sure this will go the way you expect, but something will come of this” David Lipman – Uptake on Pubcasts has been slow – Other {x}casts and video growing steadily – Video competitions popular – Business may depend on traditional publishers and aggregators

Acknowledgements SciVee Team – Apryl Bailey, videographer – Tim Beck, systems – Scott Bourne, videographer – Leo Chalupa, co-founder – Lynn Fink, content management – Marc Friedman, CEO – Ken Liu, VP business development – Alex Ramos, programmer – Willy Suwanto, programmer – Ben Yukich, systems

Questions?