Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE): Peer-reviewed video journal articles

Remember that Large Hadron Rap that blew up on YouTube? A fellow classmate in my writing about science course wrote about “viral” videos like that one for his term paper. It’s a really cool idea, since he took the angle that education about science could benefit from more videos like these.

From another angle, scientists could educate other scientists through video as well.

The Journal of Visualized Experiments is unique in that all of their publications are in video format. There is an accompanying text article, but the video is the centerpiece. Many of the articles are about techniques in labs and procedures, but I would be interested to see what else can be done in this style.

From reading the “About JoVE” page, JoVE is all about “rapid knowledge transfer,” “addressing complexity,” “lifting the laboratory time sink,” “integrating time,” and “a new movement in science publishing.”


One thing I would think would be interesting to see in video format was a topic that Joe Thornton recently gave a talk about as part of the Darwin Speaker Series (the same one that Rosemary Grant came for).

His lab investigates evolutionary mechanisms through experiments with receptor proteins and gene function. He spoke to us about a series of experiments where they were attempting to reconstruct the evolutionary pathways of 2 receptors from a common ancestor.

Internet video is still new in terms of using it as a learning tool, but it has tons of appeal nowadays since it is so accessible. Every time I’ve given a presentation, I think about how I could use a video from YouTube to break up the monotony. Maybe there will come a day when most of my presentations will be made up of various videos!