...SciVee is a new site that lets scientists communicate their works as multimedia presentations incorporated with the content of their published articles. SciVee is operated in partnership with the open access publisher the Public Library of Science (PLoS), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC). The so-called “YouTube for science” site has already garnered a great deal of interest and buzz in the blogosphere and media, even though it is still in “alpha” stage and its founders weren’t planning for a launch at this time.
According to one founder, Philip Bourne of the University of California–San Diego (UCSD) and founding editor in chief of PLoS Computational Biology, he talked about the project at a scientific meeting and the buzz began prematurely. “The good news,” he said, “is that more than 44,000 people have already looked at the site in the last few days; the bad news is that there’s not enough content yet.” (There look to be five pubcasts currently available.) The site is approaching 6 million hits and is drawing interest worldwide. The beta release is planned for September, and already some 700 people have volunteered to be beta testers....
The goal is to improve the dissemination and comprehension of science. It not only presents a platform for researchers to explain and share their work but a communication medium for commentary and discussion....Users will be able to subscribe to channels and groups of interest....
PLoS now publishes eight journals. SciVee currently lists content “channels” that correspond to these eight titles.
At this point, the site only accepts articles from PLoS journals. Bourne said that by the end of the year, the site will allow participants to upload all publications held in PubMed Central (a free digital archive of life sciences journals) and will accept abstracts from journals that are not open access. It will also accept papers in fields outside the life sciences. In the next phase, users will be able to create a personal profile and join or create their own science communities.
In addition, the site will eventually allow scientists to upload videos unrelated to a journal publication. “These might be scientific laboratory demonstrations, additional videos that support an existing pubcast, video responses to other scientific videos and pubcasts on our site, or another type of video that supports your scientific work. All these types of videos will be separated from the pubcast channel content, which is based on peer-reviewed publications, in order to ensure that our site features high quality scientific content.” ...
Posted by
Peter Suber at 8/27/2007 11:24:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
