A youtube for scientists...
Offline A website being dubbed the YouTube for scientists has been launched, raising new hopes of bringing science closer to the people.
SciVee allows scientists to upload published papers, as well as a podcast presenting the paper. As the site is relatively new, content is still fairly sparse. Those behind the initiative are however confident that it will contribute to the widespread dissemination and comprehension of science.
'SciVee, created for scientists, by scientists, moves science beyond the printed word and lecture theatre, taking advantage of the Internet as a communication medium where scientists young and old have a place and a voice,' explains the website.
The benefit for scientists is the opportunity to disseminate their research to a wider and potentially new audience. They are also able to create a professional profile and join science groups. The larger scientific community is able to access new scientific information, comment on what is published, and subscribe to relevant channels and groups.
Authors must have published their paper in an open access journal in order to upload it to SciVee.
This dynamic form of presentation could also encourage a lay audience to investigate science. The appeal of the website to a general audience does however depend on the quality of the content, and the presentation skills of the scientists submitting their work. Users are able to tag, rate and comment on videos.
The current offerings are all biology-focused, dealing with subjects from evolution to proteins. Most would be challenging for a non-scientific audience, although Dr Eric Scheeff, presenting 'Structural Evolution of the Protein Kinase-Like Superfamily' does introduce the Protein Kinase family with a slideshow before moving on to the more technical aspects of his paper.
The initiative has three high-profile backers: the Public Library of Science (PLoS); the US' National Science Foundation (NSF) and the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC).
To access SciVee, please visit: http://www.scivee.tv/
Source: Cordis
http://www.physorg.com/news107584786.html
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Wow! This is very awesome Larry.
This is a great way to present findings and papers to be easily accesibile to other scientists.
It's down, right now, but it's a good idea. I'm looking forward to seeing how they operate it. No doubt, though, it'll have more than its fair share of overtly religious people.
The idea is to introduce the public to actual scientific research. The only type of research that will be allowed on the site is published peer reviewed research. Theists can join and comment but will not be able to post any of their "research" because most of it is not peer reviewed. Although there is a feeble attempt to start a creationist network of "peer" reviewed papers.
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No doubt creationists will whine about being persecuted and try to spam the site. Looks like it'll be our job to help weed out the pseudoscience they try to sneak onto the site.
Oh I'm sure they'll gripe, but this is not even about religion...it's strictly about science..that's all. If they are going to gripe about this..let them whine their little asses off.
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Is it restricted to biology, or is it they don't have other discipline papers yet?
I believe it is open to any discipline, it's just that PLoS mainly deals with biology and medicine. Most of the work you will see will be in regards to cell biology, genetics, medicine and evolutionary biology, they all tie in together to form a unified theory (ok, I've been listening to Greydon Square
) But yeah to answer your question, mostly biology I believe.... The big thing now is also bioinformatics, so I'm sure you'll see plenty of that eventually as well. I just hope that the researchers who post on here will do a good job at explaining their research to the common public. It is very hard to follow scientific research if you are not very familiar with the material. Which is why every single theist I've ever debated evolution with, has no idea about the mechanisms of cellular biology, and that, I think is the problem.
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They'll make there own place and call it "Creationistheonlysciencesciencesucksthisisthetruthdontquestionit.com.