Mangrove peat accumulation beneath an island

In an earlier post, I talked about reproducibility of scientific studies and how video might help improve replication of results by showing methods in greater detail than in a text-based description. In this post, I wanted to elaborate on the idea of using video to show scientific methods—either as a stand-alone information product or as supplemental material to a journal article.

Although it’s possible to repeat someone else’s method based on a written description, actually seeing them perform each step in the process is usually helpful, especially for those who are less experienced (students, for example). When I started out making videos, I had not thought too much about how the medium might help others understand and use my methods. Before getting into videography, I had not realized that there were students and other researchers who wanted to use my methods but who could not visualize what I did or how I did it—no matter how detailed my written description was.

A few years after I had published a few science videos, someone told me that they had watched a few of my videos, which had helped them understand exactly how a particular method was done. They had read my papers in which I had described a method in words but had never considered trying it themselves—until they saw me actually using the method in my video. And we’re not talking about rocket science (or gene sequencing) here. The method involved taking peat cores in a mangrove forest with a type of coring device. Like any method, however, there are things that a novice needs to be shown—even a fairly simple sampling procedure.

The value for some researchers—particularly those with limited funds to visit other laboratories for training—is that video can be an inexpensive way to learn a new technique. For an author, a methods video clearly depicts what you did. You not only can show each step, you can explain in your own words what you did and why you did it. In addition, you can reach a huge audience with video—many more people than could be trained in your laboratory or in a workshop.

I’ve since heard from a couple of other people who also said that they had been inspired to try a method after seeing one of my videos. So I’ve been thinking about various approaches and designs for methods videos. If the objective is to produce a visual summary to augment a more detailed written description, then it is very easy to put together a short video to show key steps and how they are carried out.

To illustrate, I’ve created a brief methods video with some old footage and other media I had used previously in conference presentations. As you will see, this video demonstrates a method I used in connection with a relatively old publication (2007). Because there are few such videos on this topic, it will be ranked high by search engines and ultimately direct viewers who are interested in the topic to the publication.

Note that I was able to depict all the essential information in 3 minutes (select HD and full-screen for best viewing):

As you saw, the video is divided into three parts: a beginning in which I explained what the video would show, a middle in which I showed each step in the coring process, and an ending in which I briefly showed how the method might be used. I used freeze-frames to pause the video at key points. Because a lot of mangrove researchers work in other countries and may not understand spoken English well, I decided not to use a voiceover to narrate and instead explained everything in text. The viewer can pause the video to read more slowly if necessary.

You’ll notice also that I used the publication citation as a watermark in the video. This not only marks the video as intellectual property but directs the viewer to the published paper.

I also decided to try out one of the musical sound tracks offered by YouTube (uploaded by an artist). This was a good opportunity to investigate this option and see whether the process would be easy. After selecting the audio icon, I was able to search for tracks with a similar length to the video. There is an option to limit the search for tracks that match your video’s length and to music without advertisements. You can search for types of music (instrumentals, R&B, etc.) or for a particular artist. It was easy to preview the music tracks alongside the video as well as trimming the selected track. There is also a button to revert to the original if you change your mind. So if you have run out of iMovie jingles to use in your videos and don’t have any musical talent (to create your own), this may be a useful option.

Videos like this one could be submitted as supplemental material for a journal article or published as a stand-alone methods video.