Feature
Stills from Research Square’s video: There is more to dendrites than meets the eye
gpublishers are unable to sacrifice already tight margins, the cost must ultimately be passed along to the author in the form of an increased APC or additional fee. For their part, authors are only beginning to accept responsibility for promoting their work, and to erase the stigma against self-promotion, but it may be years before a majority of authors see the value of a supplemental video and have dedicated funds for this type of content. Once these pieces align, we will see true ‘hockey- sticking’, with many more dollars invested in video and, likely, many more players in the space.’ Kiren Shoman, executive editorial
director at Sage, argues that the value of digital – and particularly video – content in helping researchers showcase their work, or improve faculty engagement with students, is hard to ignore. She explained: ‘From our market research, we found that video (and particularly video that has been deliberately created to tie in to educational needs) increases the likelihood of people staying within the subject or feeling that they are getting more from the subject.’ Shoman continues: ‘About 92 per cent of faculty members surveyed in a recent
‘‘The success of video is very much dependent on the marriage of
excellent scholarly and pedagogical content”
6 Research Information December 2016/January 2017
SAGE Whitepaper said they use videos as teaching tools (either to break up lectures or as assignments outside of class), and about 68 per cent of the students said videos are part of their learning experiences. As a community, we have all begun to learn more about the challenges and opportunities of learning styles, and how students and the wider research community wish to engage with the material. This has undoubtedly impacted the way in which video is developed. ‘We know that learning is moving
beyond the textbook as the nature of the relationship between learning materials and students continues to change.’ Despite the widespread recognition that video is on the rise, it certainly hasn’t been universally embraced across the industry. Moshe Pritsker, CEO and Co-founder of JoVE, tells Research Information that traditional scholarly publishers haven’t fully embraced video publishing, ‘due more to inertia than active resistance’. He continues: ‘The great advantages of video publication to the end-user aren’t obvious to many executives at scholarly publishing companies. These executives often lack hands-on scientific research experience and therefore do not have a first-hand understanding of the end users’ pains and how video can be a game- changer. ‘Also, video publication would require
scholarly publishing companies to acquire new technical skills to conduct large-scale high-quality video production. They would have to invest and build video-production teams combining production skills with scientific knowledge at the Ph.D. level. Established scholarly publishing companies that are showing healthy profit
margins and moderate growth each year are either reluctant or unable to invest significant resources in developing video publishing capabilities. ‘Finally, and maybe most importantly,
the requirements of video publication are contrary to the current direction and ongoing main debate in the publishing industry. Most scholarly publishers, driven by government mandates and online activists, are currently busy integrating the Open Access publishing model and making it profitable. Yet recent studies have shown that about 80 per cent of published science articles are not reproducible. What does it matter if an information unit (article) is expensive, cheap or free if it is not reproducible? Solving the reproducibility crisis should be the scientific publishing industry’s top priority before we discuss open access versus subscription price modelling. The bottom line is that video remains scholarly publishing’s most effective solution to solve the reproducibility problem.’ Visibility and discovery are clearly still hugely important for researchers, but how are video publishers dealing with this? Parker, of Alexander Street Press,
explains that a powerful driver has been the widespread incorporation of text within videos, allowing them to be searched and discovered by researchers more easily. JoVE’s Pritsker elaborates: ‘We make
it easy for scientists, teachers, and students to keyword search our video library of more than 5,500 scientific video demonstrations. Additionally, a full-text transcript accompanies each video and can be downloaded as a PDF. So, in many important ways, a video article is even
@researchinfo |
www.researchinformation.info
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32
