Editing, Publishing and Aggregating Video Articles: Do We Need a Scholarly Approach?

The article supports the idea of providing infrastructure and training for preparing and publishing quality video articles. Properly edited, formatted, and verified video items can present graphic contents of interest to the global scientific community. It is suggested to apply traditional attributes of scholarly articles to video items and aggregate them on a specifically designed editing, publishing, and indexing platform, called PubTube. As a mega platform, PubTube may provide space for a variety of open-access sources of information, ranging from short audio-video presentations to research protocols and educational lectures. Video articles on the platform have to pass quality checks by skilled reviewers. Global editorial associations should be prepared to improving the whole process of publishing and aggregating video articles.

The current generation of scientific authors and readers has wide access to digital media, which contains much greater volume of scholarly information than traditional hubs of print sources. We are all aware that "pictures speak louder than words" and that effective visual communications can covey highly influential messages. As the complexity of recent research methods and academic activities are steadily increasing, limitations of textual communication are becoming obvious (12). The aim of the current article was to briefly reflect on the current state of video publishing and suggest ways for improving indexing of trustworthy and properly edited video articles.

Interest toward visual communication channels and platforms is growing among science editors and publishers, and some successful journals, which prioritize articles with still images, photographs, multidimentional animations, and other types of graphical contents, pave their way to indexing services. Some of the relevant examples of the influential periodicals are the Journal of Visual Communication and Image Representation (Elsevier), Visual Communications (SAGE), and the Journal of Visual Communication in Medicine (Informa Healthcare). Many leading scholarly periodicals have started promoting contents of their print issues by publishing supplementary video abstracts, announcements, and podcasts (e.g., The Lancet, The New England Journal of Medicine). The journals frequently publishing movie clips provide instructions, helping their authors to choose proper movie viewer software and file format for online submission and publication (e.g., QuickTime, AVI, MPEG) (3). Moreover, the Journal of Visualized Experiments (Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA), which was launched in 2006, published more than 3,000 video articles, describing new methods and experiments from all over the world. This first video journal's aim is to improve the reproducibility of experiments in the life sciences and physics by presenting operating protocols in acceptable video formats (MP4, WMV). The journal is indexed by MEDLINE, Scopus, Science Citation Index, and archived in PubMed Central. Some of the journal's video files are also available on the SpringerProtocols platform, the most comprehensive collection of tested protocols in biomedical and life sciences (4).

Media broadcasting channels such as YouTube™ are now widely used by individuals and organizations, who wish to reach out to the global audience and share information about scientific and popular issues. The contents, format, color, resolution, and length of the posted files vary widely. These can be short announcements, instructions for patients, interviews, lectures, PowerPoint presentations with collections of photographs and synchronous audio commentaries. Tools for interaction are also available to archive comments and count 'likes' of the users (5). Recent studies of YouTube documents suggest that these sources hold promise as educational tools for scientific disciplines, utilizing sophisticated visual didactic materials (e.g., dermatology, rheumatology, dentistry, diagnostic imaging, surgery, anatomy) (6789). The trustworthiness of a large amount of publicly available YouTube files, however, remains questionable as not all files are authoritative and based on solid evidence (1011). Too often for-profit organizations publicize unchecked files that contain misleading promotional information, threatening patients' health (12). More scrutiny over the editing audio and video materials by competent health professionals, medical illustrators, and operators as well as users' discretion toward downloaded sources is required (13).

One of the solutions to the problem would be the creation of a specialized video editing and publishing mega platform, let us call it PubTube, aggregating different types of verified scholarly open-access presentations. Items on the platform may combine features of traditional publications, such as structured textual abstracts, keywords, Digital Object Identifiers (DOI), reference lists, and links to Creative Commons (CC) licenses, facilitating cross-linking with a wealth of available scholarly sources, proper distribution, and re-use. Importantly, the attributes of traditional publications can help retrieve relevant video sources by currently available search engines and track their scholarly influence by counting citations. A set of instructions on posting video materials would be also necessary to highlight priority topics, proper structuring of video sections in an article, acceptable formats, ethical requirements (e.g., confidentiality, disclosure of any conflict of interest, respect of patients' rights), reviewers involved, and approvals of all contributors and supporting academic organizations. Such instructions can be drafted and discussed at the meetings of the global editorial associations such as the Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE) and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

PubTube as a mega platform may absorb a wide variety of currently available moving graphical items: PowerPoint slides of figures, graphs and tables with synchronous voice recording and/or subtitles, scientific animations and cartoons, short interviews (5-15 min), monologues of scholars, research and diagnostic protocols, scenes of unique educational activities, and interactive lectures. All these materials should be reviewed by relevant health professionals and edited by skilled specialists (i.e., medical illustrators, photographers, operators) to draw users' attention on essential components of the recordings and cut off lengthy, imprecise, digressional, biased, discourteous, promotional, and potentially damaging contents. To comply with the best ethical practice, conflicts of interest, funding, and contributions of authors, reviewers, and editors should be listed in the footnotes of the articles' final drafts.