In the August issue of EMBO Reports (8, 712 – 716;2007), Matias Pasquali argued for a more important role for video to record the work of laboratories as an effective way to portray an accurate view of science to society. He wrote: “By enabling the public to observe a cloning procedure or a microarray experiment, the concept becomes less obscure, and the mysterious and frightening becomes the mundane and ordinary. Studies of the effect of seeing an experiment on a person’s perception of science have to be carried out, but exploring new methods of communication is essential to attract the public’s attention to everyday scientific topics.”

In the current issue of the journal (EMBO Reports 8, 10, 886–887; 2007), Nikos Darzentas and coauthors extend Pasquali’s suggestion that communication of science for the next generation of scientists will require the use of other media. They think that social websites such as del.icio.us, WebSphere and YouTube are promising, in that graduate students are probably vary familiar with these web resources. They suggest that educators or science communicators appreciate that many young scientists would rather watch a ‘science’ video than sift through masses of written information. (A suggestion to use YouTube for scientific outreach was made on Nautilus in April by Clements et al.)

Darzentas et al. also think that journals’ and scientists’ use of video and web media will help to counteract the detrimental effect of scientific misinformation from non-authoritative sources. They describe their struggles to communicate a dense manuscript on the Net of Life—an intricate network of horizontal and vertical gene flow patterns across the microbial world. They write: “Despite excellent editorial handling, it was the traditional medium of the manuscript that limited the presentation of the data, algorithm and the visualization of the results. During conference presentations, we therefore demonstrated the complexity of this work by a simple sequence of alternative views of the gene flow network. To present the main results to our peers, students and the general public in an aesthetically more engaging way, we created a ”https://www.thesecondmethod.com/nof.wmv">science communication video—the result of a collaboration between our research group and a digital media company." Videos have an even greater potential than just enhancing communication among scientists, they conclude: “In the near future, it seems possible that journals will look more like video collections that, after peer-review and editorial processing, users can evaluate using a star-rating system. These clips could represent the entry points to the scientific work; first triggering the curiosity of the reader, then directing them to the relevant material and enhancing their interactive experience.”

Those interested in this concept might like to look at Nature Precedings, where scientists can upload their manuscripts and other material for online comments and rating by other readers.