SciVee: Science Shared
by
on January 24, 2008,
Too often the scientific community slaves away at solutions to the world's puzzles and problems in near obscurity. Frequently isolated and limited to esoteric academic journals and trade publications, mass amounts of scientific discovery and research never reach the public's eyes. SciVee aims to change all that.
This Web 2.0 application comes fast on the heels of other attempts to make science more accessible and share more knowledge by organizations like the NIH, a recent convert to open access. In fact, without shared technology and the advent of the Web 2.0 age, we may not have reached breakthroughs like the recent stem cell research innovation that allows lab workers to create stem cells from skin, not embryos.
Shared knowledge and open access to research is essential in this ever shrinking global world. No longer can we assume that what someone is learning as far away as China or Australia has nothing to do with research closer to home. In fact, it is shared research and science from all parts of the world that is making possible cures and treatments for major diseases and solutions to global problems like climate change.
SciVee takes the concept of open access to science and research and adds an interface that is fun and easy on the eyes, with the social element of community. Various communities evolve on SciVee around each element - videos (called pubcasts), papers and publications, research labs, organizations, school districts and individual people. In addition to evolving and dynamic communities around research shared on SciVee, users can join and create groups that are based on topics, organizations and other criteria. You can also create and browse SciVee by channel (topics) and tag cloud (key words).
SciVee has gone out of its way to make science accessible to everyone while retaining integrity. It allows users a variety of ways to share their research. Users can upload videos (pubcasts) and publications and associate them together (or keep them separate). The pubcast associated with the publication is often a visual interpretation of the publication's abstract, a short hand way to determine if you'd like to read the full publication that also allows you to get to know the publications author and style. The pubcasts make science personal and remove many of the hierarchy and boundaries normally associated with the scientific community.
By allowing users to comment and communicate about the pubcasts and publications provided by scientists, SciVee also positions itself as a learning tool for the classroom. Students of all ages can join SciVee and learn through direct participation, instead of trying to absorb complex research in a dry classroom setting. It makes cutting edge research more accessible from a young age, and may have the added bonus of encouraging more students to concentrate on science and technology as their chosen profession.
When I first read about SciVee and saw its tag line, “SciVee is about the free and widespread dissemination and comprehension of science.
Created for scientists, by scientists, SciVee moves science beyond the printed word and lecture theater taking advantage of the internet as a communication medium where scientists young and old have a place and a voice.” I must admit I balked at something created by scientists for scientists. I admit my prejudice was to assume it would be hard to use and harder to understand. I was happy to see how engaging and user friendly the site as a whole is.
Obviously, since I am not a scientist I could not complete and upload to the pubcast service, but a quick run through of the steps makes it seems straightforward and easy enough. I'd be interested to know from someone who has completed a video upload if there is any lag time, but my guess would be that there isn't, judging by the video playback on the rest of the site. The information is easy to find, and is sorted and referenced in a variety of ways to accommodate the way multiple people may think to look for a topic.
SciVee received its seed money and other assistance from the Public Library of Science, the National Science Foundation and the San Diego Supercomputer Center. Its founders are Philip E Bourne, PhD (shown in the video below) and Leo M Chalupa, PhD. I think the partner organizations are going to find this was money well spent. I for one am quite excited about the idea of open access to scientific research and the many benefits it can afford so many, and am quite pleased with this innovative Web 2.0 application of the idea. I think SciVee will become a go-to site for educators, scientists and lay people alike.
If the above embedded movie does not show for you, try this link instead .
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Michael Fidler 
I’m all for freeing of scientific information, but the thing is… “hierarchy and boundaries” are a pretty essential part of the scientific process and the scientific community. I worry that a system that is too open will quickly become clogged with the rantings of cranks and crackpots. And most non-scietnists don’t have the background to tell the difference at a glance.
Dave M. (Professor of Physics)
Also… “SciVee” is an awful name!
Are hierarchy and boundaries essential? I disagree. I think they not only slow scientific progress, they keep some people from wanting to become scientists in future. And now more than ever we need science and technology to carry us forward as a society.
As for the rantings of crackpots and cranks… that is a risk in any web service. Also, weren’t the great forward thinkers often called crackpots and cranks before their theories were adopted? How can we know where the next mental quantum leap is going to come from?
Woo hoo! I’m going to go get my video camera… How does this sound:
This is my perpetual motion machine… “Mainstream” scientists will tell you it can’t be done, but here it is! They don’t want to admit they were wrong, but now, via the power of SciVee, I can bring this remarkable breakthrough straight to you!
And don’t worry, you can have your very own perpetual motion machine! It can charge your batteries or power your lightbulbs, ALL FOR FREE, and not just that… but FOREVER!
Order now!
That would be funny, but it would also generate discussion about actual, real, useful alternate energy sources in the community, which would be beneficial, even if indirectly.
And it would show the problem with Scivee and social networking in general. There’s no way to judge credentials, no measure of credibility, just names and comments on a page, all given equal weight. Look at the problems Wikipedia has had with editors and even their CFO… obviously background checks are not big in Web 2.0.
It’s also the reason you see SEO people come on Web 2.0 boards and act like they know something about software or computer science.
The good part is that it’s kind of morbidly funny for those people who actually know what they’re talking about. But I’m sure the humor will wear off for Dr. Dave the first time one of his students brings in some counter-balancing “facts” he/she found on Scivee.
I sent a note to the site creators asking how they address this issue. Hopefully they will respond in the comments
I agree with Grendel and Dr. Dave. I think people need more access to information about science, but from the “out” end not the “in” end.
I think it’s fairly easy to see why a hospital that was run Wikipedia-style would be a bad idea. The same goes for science. Credentials are not just fancy clothing.
Are there really budding scientists out there, working outside the university systems, who don’t have access to papers via Google Scholar or their university’s library? Local universities here in MA are pretty friendly with their library access. I don’t have to be staff, faculty or a student to read journals in the library. A community member might even be able to get a VPN account and a university email address and read journals from home if they asked nicely; a university has some responsibility to the community it serves, and I know UMass has opened access to information channels for community members in the past. I am unfamiliar with their current policies, however.
That said, Carl Sagan was a real believer in better communication TO the public about science. And commercial channels like the Discovery Channel have done a crappy job of it. We need more and better science writers. Emphasis on the better, though.
Unless SciVee has some sort of authority structure for weeding out crackpots, it will become overrun, and the real scientists will flee. When you’re young, debunking bullshit is fun. But it quickly becomes a waste of time. The premise that academia slows the pace of science is exactly reversed. What would slow the pace of science is if the community had to weed out crackpots repeatedly through open discussion.
Imagine if there were no authority setting the rules for tiered competition in sports. How long would it take to complete football season if no teams were ever eliminated and everybody discussed who is better until consensus was reached? Imagine I could come in, knowing very little about football, having not been interested until recently, and argued with a longtime fan who knows the rules. Think how frustrated the fan would get if I just sit here and insist that the Dolphins are the best! Now imagine there are 20 of me and 1 of him.
I think he’d look for another hobby.
My issue is that NOT everyone has access to a university like UMass, much less one with an open door policy like that . Massachusetts has a lot of liberal policies in general, not just in education. MIT broke new ground my offering its classes online for free to anyone who wants to audit them, but again - that’s a Mass college, following a principal of social responsibility that is valued in that state.
Also, not everyone knows that they can even ask their university about access to their libraries and records like yo mention, and not everyone can even get to their local university - transportation is real issue for people. However, the Internet is the great equalizer. Families that can’t afford a continual car payment have kids that go to a school with computers. Families that live in rural areas have internet access, and most people have a grasp of the internet for learning new things. Also, the internet is much less intimidating to many people than walking onto a college campus, especially if you feel undereducated or undervalued in some way.
The access is a great idea, but the authority is part of what keeps quality high. There are great, well-staffed publications, like Science News, that can reach anyone with a mailbox. Anyone with a library should have access to good science publications through their subscriptions.
Opening it up on the input side just means lowering the quality.
Perhaps not everyone knows about their library, or not everyone has a good library, or not every library can afford to subscribe to good publications. The solution is to support libraries, not hope that quality people suddenly start publishing their stuff for free. It would be a shame if this thing gets off the ground in a half-hearted way and budget-slashers use it to justify less library funding. Slightly less access to good info is always better than universal access to mediocre info. Those that are more motivated will either get access to the info or pressure their local government to support the infrastructure. And that infrastructure will benefit everyone.
It’s horribly difficult to debunk bullshit, especially once it becomes universally available.
That said, I can’t tell for certain whether SciVee won’t come up with its own vetting structure and credentialling. Perhaps if people disclose their funding sources, that is a form of vetting in itself. I think that this could be good in the short run and possibly run into problems as it gains attention. We’ll see.
We are pleased that SciVee is generating so much discussion among scientists and non-scientists. Since we were specifically invited to respond to your comments, we would like to do so; however, we also want to make it clear that we don’t have a rigorous agenda of what SciVee should mean to the internet community. We have ideas that we implement that support a general direction but we are also very responsive to user feedback and we aim to give our users as much freedom of expression as possible.
Many people question how we ensure quality content. With regard to pubcasts, we remove ourselves entirely from the role of judgment since we only accept pubcasts for papers that have been through the peer-review system – if it is good enough for a journal and it’s subscribers, then it is good enough for SciVee. We also require that the author creating the pubcast allows their co-authors to review the pubcast prior to releasing it to the public and, finally, we rely on the author’s sensibility – no one wants to present themselves, or their work, badly and indeed, we have found that pubcast submitters are extremely conscientious during their pubcast creation process.
This also reminds us to mention that SciVee is for scientists. While the general public is welcome to participate, the point of pubcasts is not to make a paper comprehensible to the layman, but rather more accessible to peers.
With regard to video acceptance, when a video is uploaded the member is required to agree to our Terms of Use which includes that they not only agree to the best of their ability that it is a true representation of the paper and or research to which the video refers, but that all content on SciVee contains scientific experiments and research content leading to specific experimental results. We also allow the community to have a say in reporting egregiously offensive or inappropriate videos with a “Report Abuse” button.
Beyond allowing authors to present their work, one of our goals at SciVee is to encourage free discussion among readers (viewers). If the pubcast does show the rantings of a crackpot, the community has ample opportunity to respond both to the author and to other viewers (who may well be crackpots themselves) in an open discussion. But remember that scientists are, by nature, critical thinkers and we have faith that both the pubcasts and discussions will not merely be full of ranting and name-calling. This type of open discussion also has the effect of democratizing scientific discourse since everyone who responds gets an equal voice be it grad student, post-doc, or professor – something that it is distressingly rare in many scientific arenas. And since web 2.0 online communities are based on trust and mutual respect, we would like believe our members will support these principles.
We hope this continues to generate more discussion. We appreciate all your feedback.
Vadlo is a cool search engine for scientists, with great cartoons!