Overview

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SciVee brings Internet video and rich media to scientific and scholarly publishing. It is designed for fast and easy video uploading, synchronization and sharing. Its do-it-yourself (DIY) model means that:

• Authors can create and upload the videos on their own with minimal help from publishers or SciVee support.
• SciVee requires minimal resources by editorial staff and can be easily integrated into the current publishing workflow.
• No special equipment or software is needed.
• All work is done on the Scivee site in a browser with nothing to download. The author starts working as soon as he is logged in.

In summary, the PubCast creation process takes three steps:

Create and Upload Video

Tip: One does not need to register or log in to SciVee to watch the videos and SciveeCasts. But anyone wishing to upload videos, create SciveeCasts, join a community, or interact with members must register and log in..

The author creates a video presentation summarizing the article, highlighting the key points by referring to the relevant text, graphics, charts and tables. Follow well-known tips on basic video production. Depending on the content and purpose, the most effective videos are between 5-15 minutes long.

The author can be as creative as desired—anything from standard talking heads to Q & A format, documentary or even shooting on location or using special effects. Using a typical consumer videocam or a webcam under good lighting and audio conditions is perfectly acceptable. Unless there is a special reason for it, there is no need for a complicated or expensive shoot. Scholarly and scientific viewers care much more about the content than the video production quality.

The video creation process is now familiar to most researchers. Scholars who are not comfortable with video creation can rely on their research assistants, students or institutional media services if needed. The four steps in generating a video are:

Total time required is typically 1-2 hours. SciVee supports 11 most common video formats (asf, avi, flv, mov, mp3/4, mpeg, mpg, wav, wma, wmv), and allows a 1GB upload capacity(~one hour of video).

Tip: Jot down the timelines (start-end times) of the parts of the article you are presenting in the video. This will help you save time when you are synchronizing those parts to the video on the SciVee site.

Content Upload and Synchronization

Once the author registers and logs into the SciVee site, she is ready to create a PubCast by going to Upload on the homepage. The Upload interface is used for all SciVee products, with only minor differences at various points to account for the different document types. Example: the only difference between PubCast and PaperCast is that the former is about a peer-review article and the latter is not.

Access and Upload an Article

For journal articles the preferred approach to access and upload the article is through its DOI, through which SciVee will automatically retrieve the paper and extract PubMed metadata for use on the SciVee website if the article is registered in PubMed Central. If the article is not archived in PubMed Central, the article can alternatively be retrieved at its source through a link. SciVee recommends that the author (or editor) especially review the keywords and tags, and make any enhancements necessary to improve identification and searchability. If the DOI or PubMed ID is not available, then the author uploads a PDF copy of the paper, and fills out the metadata fields manually. The publisher has the option to offload this aspect of the work by doing it for the author, so all he has to do is to synchronize the video. Once the paper is published and DOI is available, the DOI can be entered at that time.

Tip: Once the video is uploaded and the content synchronization process has begun, your work in progress is saved automatically to enable you to quit and return to finish later. Go to My Media (in My Account) to find your unpublished PubCast, click on Edit/Publish, and you will be returned to the spot where you left off.

Content Synchronization

Synchronization is the heart of the SciVee system. It is extremely easy through an intuitive graphical interface that guides the author through the process step-by-step, and should take about 30 minutes to complete. There is an optional online tutorial at the start of the synchronization step which the author can view or skip:

Tip: Play the video in “Full Screen” mode when viewing, synchronizing and editing.

Synchronization Editing

During the editing and review step, just click on Edit Syncs and Next when finished:

Publishing

Up to now, the upload flow is the same for all users. Once the author is ready to publish, edit or make other related decisions, the paths to do so by authors working on their own vs. those publishing a PubCast with a journal (or other institution) diverge. The reason for this is the publisher’s need to have a two tier creation/edit process where the author creates the PubCast and the editor or publisher reviews, edits and makes the final publishing decisions. Authors working independently will make their own publishing decisions without this additional review.

The upload interface clearly guides the author to choose one of two paths:

The Individual Author

There are 3 decisions the author makes once the PubCast is created:

1. Publish — the PubCast is immediately published and viewable by all visitors to SciVee. The author can take the embed code for the newly created node and place it to be viewed across the Net.
   The author can also publish the PubCast and make it private by designating specific individuals who can view the PubCast. This is a great way to solicit comments and edits from colleagues about the PubCast before publicly publishing it.
2. Publish Later — essentially makes the PubCast a private node that can be made public at a later date. The author can set the publish date now or later.
3. Save and Quit — not quite finished, the PubCast is saved for future editing.

If the author selects the publish or publish later options, he then goes to the SciVee shopping cart and pays, either through credit card or available units in his account.

Shopping Cart

SciVee offers a combination of free and paid services. Free services include unlimited viewing of all content, use of the community and unlimited upload of videos. Uploading of synchronized videos (SciveeCasts) and associated services require payment. There is one price for all products in the SciveeCast product family: PubCast, PaperCast, PosterCast and SlideCast, and each one is considered one unit. A user thus can pay by credit card for each upload of a SciveeCast, or buy multiple units and use them as each SciveeCast is published.

The Institutional Author

SciVee’s approach with authors working with journal editors is based on the principle that the author should focus on creating the PubCast—with video creation and content synchronization at its core—and leave the rest to the editorial/publisher staff. It is modeled after the journal publishing model. Thus, the author is instructed to create the PubCast, enter a code number provided by the publisher when finished, and explore other areas of SciVee or leave. That’s all she needs to do. This code is a unique ID that tells the system that this is an institutional piece of work that belongs to a specific Channel and the editing/publishing rights are transferred over to the Channel administrators (i.e., editor/publisher staff) once the PubCast has been created. Of course, the exact division of labor for each journal, article or author will be determined by the journal or publisher in conjunction with the author.

SciVee will email a notification to the Channel managers once a PubCast is created. That node will have two copies: one in the author’s My Media page, the other in the assigned Channel. A Channel manager will log in to the Channel and review, edit and publish the node. All changes an editor makes in a Channel will be reflected in the copy in MyMedia. Once a PubCast has been published, it will be automatically locked down to ensure its integrity and availability. The Channel manager can turn on/off this lock. The manager can set the access control level of the node at this point, and take the embed code to distribute.

Author Editing Rights

The institutional author has more limited editing privileges. After the PubCast has been created and the publisher code has been entered:

Note: This workflow applies only when the author enters the unique publisher code when working with a journal. When uploading a video or PubCast on her own, the author makes all the publishing decisions as usual.

My Media

Every registered user has a My Account page (top of homepage) in which to manage all her activities. Within My Account, MyMedia contains all uploaded content in SciVee: videos, podcasts and SciveeCasts, in all phases of completion. This is where the author comes to review, edit and change the status of each upload. The thumbnails for published works are clear, while those for all unpolished works in all phases of completion are grayed out. Authors can edit each PubCast or video by either clicking on the title or the "Edit/Publish" button below it:

By clicking on the "Edit" tab at the top of each video or SciveeCast, she can edit the following:

Note: Wherever you are on the SciVee site, you can always go back to My Account by clicking it atop the page.

Channels

A Channel will be set up for each journal, event or conference for institutional customers to be their main work space where:

• All content associated with the Channel is found. The public will only see fully published nodes, whereas Channel admins can see unpublished nodes and work in progress as well.
• Multiple admins can be assigned
• Admins review transaction and activity reports
• Admins review, edit and publish the nodes created by the author
• There are 4 levels of access control for the Channel:
  • Public - totally open
  • Private - closed to members only
  • Moderated - request to join made to admin
  • Invite only - specific individuals invited

Publish and Distribute

When a PubCast is made, two things happen:

1. A Node is created, and is stored in SciVee servers to be played in SciVee and viewable by all of its visitors around the world (unless the author or publisher doesn’t want that, at which time they can make that node private.)
2. An embed code is generated. This code is a video player that can be embedded in any website that accepts HTML code (which is the majority) across the Internet to be watched by visitors to those sites, starting with the publisher’s. The code plays the complete PubCast.

The code is found in the Share tab on the SciVee video player and can be copied and pasted on other sites:

Note: The embed code cannot be embedded in other video sites because each site has its own proprietary video encoding and metadata schema. SciVee is unique because its synchronized videos are beyond what any consumer Internet video site can support, and many of its videos are longer than 10 minutes, which is the limit for most other sites. Of course the video portion of the PubCast can be uploaded to other video sites if it fits under that site’s time limit.

Traffic can also be increased by providing links to social networks and other sites that do not support direct embeds of HTML code from external sites.

Viral Web Distribution - Driving Traffic

The primary purpose of a PubCast is to enhance the knowledge discovery experience, generate interest in the author’s work, and increase traffic to the sites of the journal, publisher, society, university or research institution associated with the work. To accomplish those goals, the author or publisher should take the SciVee embed code and insert it in their own sites, affiliate sites, social networks, and any other site of their choice.

A viewer watching a PubCast will see the journal citation as well as a link "To View Original Article" prominently displayed at the top of the video, prompting them to the article. This is the purpose, and power, of the PubCast.

Note: To link to the original article directly from the PubCast, there must be a DOI/PM/PMC identifier entered in the PubCast. If a PubCast is published without one, then the identifier can be added later to enable this feature. Otherwise the viewer can find the citation in the PubCast and go to the article.

Communities

Communities are the main forum for collaboration on the SciVee site, and are formed around topics or events. Thus one PubCast can be relevant to several communities and placed there to promote viewing. The community admins can edit a variety of items, including: