Have you ever wanted to learn how to dissect Drosophila ovaries or to freeze stem cells? Then you need to check out the Journal of Visualized Experiements.
Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE) is an online journal publishing visualized (video-based) biological research studies. This publication aims to solve some of the most difficult problems in the contemporary life science research:
– low transparency and reproducibility of biological experiments
– time-consuming learning of experimental techniques
Aims and motivation: why a video-based scientific journal?
As every practicing biology researcher knows, it takes days, weeks or sometimes months and years to learn and apply new experimental techniques. It is especially difficult to reproduce newly published studies describing the most advanced state-of-the-art techniques. Thus, a major part of the Ph.D. and post-doctoral training in life sciences is devoted to learning laboratory techniques and procedures. It is a never-stopping process for experimental scientists since methodologies in this fast-growing field undergo significant changes every few years (e.g. genomics and proteomics, most recently). Economically, time- and resource-consuming process of training and retraining in techniques and procedures represents a bottleneck for scientific research and drug discovery.
Video-based visualization of biological techniques and procedures provide an effective solution to the problem described. For example, the nature of equipment and biological samples employed becomes more obvious in visualized demonstrations. Visual instructions are also less prone to misinterpretations of “how to do the experiment”, as compared to written “protocols”. Therefore, we established this on-line journal as a forum for publication of visualized biological experiments. Each video-article will include step-by-step instructions on an experiment, a demonstration of equipment and reagents, and a short discussion by experts describing possible technical problems and modifications. Every scientist planning on a biological experiment will be able to access the database, find videos relevant to their work, and use them as protocols. High effectiveness of visualized instructions, as compared to currently used written protocols, will decrease failure rates for biological experiments, and, thus, facilitate significant savings in time and cost. It will also increase reproducibility of published experiments, one of the main problems in the current life science research.
There is no fee for authors to publish their video articles. Also, video-articles published in JoVE will be freely available to the scientific community.