New-generation science journals and the library community

Moshe Pritsker, Ph.D.

CEO, co-founder

JoVE

• New generation science publications – why we need them?

• Why they need librarians?

• How librarians will determine the future of STM publishing

Scientific Publishing – old same from 1665

First Issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society

Academic science workflow

Get funding Do research

Publish

Dissemination (publishing) as essential part of science

Get funding

Do research

Publish

Publication:

- Transfers knowledge (dissemination)

- Creates community

- Provides currency of science

- Managed by publishers and librarians

Get funding

Do research

Publish

Get funding

Do research

Publish

Typical scientific article today – no effective knowledge transfer

Position the metaphase spindle at 3 o’clock and hold it with holding pipette. Apply piezo pulses to penetrate the zona pellucida. Touch the metaphase plate with the enucleation pipette. Aspirate the spindle and withdraw the pipette.

What is this about???!!!

Is the traditional format of science journals good enough or we need something else?

Get funding

Do research

Publish

Get funding

Do research

Publish

Get funding

Do research

Publish

?

1 picture vs. 1,000 words or why we need to publish in video

Position the metaphase spindle at 3 o’clock and hold it with holding pipette. Apply piezo pulses to penetrate the zona pellucida. Touch the metaphase plate with the enucleation pipette. Aspirate the spindle and withdraw the pipette.

Traditional article Real life

No efficient knowledge transfer – no productivity. A lot of time and money lost by scientists, students and their institutions.

Solution: Visualized Description of Experimental Methods

Text doesn’t work?

Show it in video!

JoVE – new type of science article:video article

New format of scientific article: video + text

JoVE - Current Status

- Published 45 montly issues, ~800 video-articles

- 40 video-articles per month published

- Areas covered: Neuroscience, Immunology, Developmental Biology, Cell Biology, Biochemistry, Bioengineering, Plant Biology, Psychology, Medicine and others

- First-and-only video journal accepted for indexing in PubMed and Medline

- Most video articles come from leading research universities in US and abroad: Harvard, MIT, Yale, NIH, Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge, Max Planck, Weizmann Institute....

Content from prestigious universities

Who publishes what in JoVE?

- Group of Eric Lander (MIT) - genomics:Hi-C: A Method to Study the Three-dimensional Architecture of Genomes

- Group of Rudolf Jaenisch (MIT) – stem cells:Generating iPS Cells from MEFS through Forced Expression of Sox-2, Oct-4, c-Myc, and Klf4

- Group of Arturo Alvarez-Buylla (UCSF) – neural development:The Subventricular Zone En-face: Wholemount Staining and Ependymal Flow

- Group of John Cooke (Stanford) – animal model of disease:Murine Model of Hindlimb Ischemia

- Group of John Carlson (Yale) – behavior:Proboscis Extension Response (PER) Assay in Drosophila

Usage

20082007 2009

20082007 2009

• 100,000 unique visitors per months• 250,000 views (~2.5 per each visitor)•20% return users

2010

Testimonials

Super idea. Excellent movie. Best wishes with your novel publishing concept.Thomas D. Pollard, PhDProfessor, Yale University

I just viewed an excellent little article on your site, and I would like to include it in the reference materials for my course.Moses Goddard, MDAssociate Professor of Surgery, Brown University

It is a great way of sharing the kinds of details that make all the difference but are very hard to put into a printed report.Helmut Hirsch, PhD, Distinguished Teaching Professor, University at Albany

Thank you for creating and developing such an astounding resource for scientists! This is truly going to rapidly advance progress in all fields of research and the potential applications are endless.Lalitha Chandrasekher, Candidate for PhD Physiology and Biophysics, Georgetown Univ.

How it works – not your text journal.We film your video for you

Videographer Network to cover all universities

Covers USA, UK, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Israel, Japan and Australia

- Cost-effective platform for large-scale production of scientific videos from all over the world. 40 videos produced per month.

Why new publishers need librarians?

Traditional publishers - text article: ~$3,000 per article

JoVE – video article: ~$6,000 (too expensive for authors to pay)

10 articles per month: $60,000 production costs

Need institutional subscriptions to cover the costs

Librarian as a gate-keeper: the survival of new publishing initiatives depends on librarians

How we (new publishers) see librarians

Librarians have to choose among:

>2,000 publishers

~ 25,000 academic journals in the world

> 500 new journals per year

1,000s e-books

100s databases

100s IT services

Need to prove the new resource is useful!!!

Triangle of “love and understanding”

Publisher

(JoVe)

User

(scientist or student)

Librarian

Content

$

Acc

ess

Feed

back

Access

Publishers can:- email/call librarian directly- forward request from users- ask authors and active supporters to send their recommendation

Judge me on usage

Traffic from a research university in Massachusetts….

What we often hear from libraries

• Many users requested your journal, but I don’t have budget.

• I received too many recommendations from users about your journal.

It is not OK – you have to speak with me first. I like to make my own decisions.

• I got recommendations about your journal from graduate students. I need recommendations from professors. Students are temporary.

• I have to spend all my budget on renewals of “Big Deals”. So, not this year.

• Our university subscribed/got a free trial, but I will not send an email to the biology department about your journal. Why? Because it would be like marketing of your journal.

JoVE suggestions to librarians

• The fate of scientific publishing will be determined by librarians, as they control the resources necessary to develop new publications

• Librarians’ role: Integrating useful resources and filtering out useless.

• Rely on your users. Judge by usage. Nobody will use or give a recommendation to a bad resource.

• Filter resources based on ROI:

e.g. ROI for JoVE:

one post-doc salary: $50K per year

if JoVE saves 6 month for at least one post-doc, savings are $25K

Multiply across the institution, get the result….

JoVE – in the end it works

• ~200 libraries subscribed since April 2009:

Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology – MIT, Brandeis University, Brown University, Cornell University, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, George Mason University, Kent State University, Max-Planck-Institute for Medical Research (Germany), Mount Sinai School of Medicine – MSSM, National Institute of Health – NIH, National Taiwan University (Taiwan), Northeastern University of Illinois, Princeton University, Purdue University, Rockefeller University, Salk Institute, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UCLA, University of Verona (Italy), University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong), University of Iowa, University of Miami, University of New South Wales (Australia), University of Southern California – USC, University of Waterloo (Canada), University of Zurich (Switzerland), Vanderbilt University, Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel), Wellesley College, Yale University, Yonsei University (Korea),…

JoVE sister journals

JoVE

JoVE Neuroscience

JoVE Immunology

….

JoVE Oncology

JoVE Cardiology

Librarian, your choice?