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Multimedia Friday: Which Online Science Mags Have Videos?

Many, if not most, science magazines have blogs and podcasts now, which we all know is so Web 2.zzzzz. The new internet craze is all about video. So where do science magazines stand when it comes to posting original videos on their websites? We took an informal survey of several major science magazine websites to see not only which sites had videos, but which had good, interesting videos. It turned out that we were lucky to find any videos at all! To keep things simple, we only considered online sites of paper-based publications (i.e., not the Discovery Channel), and we only searched the homepage of each website. If videos were buried beyond the first click, too bad; we didn't go looking for them, and most casual readers won't either. Here's what we found.

First stop, Nature.com. We've been so impressed by their dot-comness lately that we thought surely they'd be on the ball with video. However, a quick search on their homepage reveals not a single video. How sad.

Next, Nature's archrival on the other side of the Atlantic, Science. Nope, no videos there either. I see a competitive opening here.

Now the question is, do we move toward more popular science magazines, or more research-oriented journals? Heck, we'll just keep surfing until we find some videos, dammit.

The Scientist - No videos.

New Scientist - No videos.

We're starting to get depressed and, frankly, a little bored. On to the popular science mags....

Discover - Lots of videos! And you can watch them right on the front page! Here's one gold star for Discover.

Seed - Seed has a video link tab right at the top of their homepage and a list of several links to videos on the right-side quick link bar. This is all very good, but you can't watch the videos on the homepage like you can at Discover. Tsk-tsk.

Popular Science - We were going to skip this one, because we thought it would be too easy and a little too 'pop' for us scientists. But surprisingly enough, NO videos!

There are actually tons of science videos on the web. We've posted plenty of them here before. So why haven't the science magazines caught up? Who knows. Science magazines that have been slow to share their content on the internet's series of tubes have one more chance to make a splash online, and that is by creating original video content for the web.


  • Find links to cool science videos in the Element List Science Videos category.

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    Posted on March 9, 2007 | | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

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    Comments (3)

    Eva:

    Wait, I'm pretty sure Science has videos. It's probably just hard to find on the site.
    Here they are, on the multimedia page: http://www.sciencemag.org/multimedia/

    Posted by Eva | March 9, 2007 10:15 AM

    Posted on March 9, 2007 10:15

    Jackie:

    Thanks, Eva. The video section is few clicks down. All Science needs to do is post it on the homepage to make it more accessible.

    Posted by Jackie | March 10, 2007 11:03 AM

    Posted on March 10, 2007 11:03

    David Bradley:

    I posted to the Sciencebase site a video showing pop sci experimentalist Robert Krampf demonstrating water's properties using a balloon filled with water held in a candle flame. I thought it was quite an impressive demo, it never occurred to me that it was at all controversial. But, this morning I had an outraged email telling me this video is dangerous and that kids could start filling balloons with inflammable liquids and cause themselves and others serious harm.

    I called the post "Saving a Balloon with Water" and you can watch the video here

    Should I remove the vid, is it really going to wreak havoc in households across the world when kids start filling balloons with petrol, lighter fluid, and other nasties. Or is it just a bit of harmful fun with far more exciting alternatives on Youtube and elsewhere like WD40 stunts and Mentos and Diet Coke tricks, for kids intent on wreaking havoc to try?

    db

    Posted by David Bradley | April 17, 2007 7:20 AM

    Posted on April 17, 2007 07:20

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