Dear Jonathan Perle ,

Indeed, this is one of the many Science promoting/communication services out there nowadays. Looking at the contact info “288a Gloucester Road, Horfield, Bristol, UK, BS7 8PD” it is used by several of these services (and discussed here on RG):

SciPod https://www.scipod.global scroll down and see the remarkable similarities

https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_reliable_and_scientifically_relevant_is_Scipod

Scientia (Global) https://www.scientia.global

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_Scientia_Global_a_predatory_scientific_publisher

Science Diffusion http://www.sciencediffusion.com scroll down and you see they don’t hide the interrelationship between these companies

Besides these players there are more out there like:

ResearchPod https://www.researchgate.net/post/Could_somebody_know_whether_ResearchPodorg_is_a_predatory_publisher

Research Features

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Anyone_has_experience_with_ResearchFeatures_website_publications

Research Outreach https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_are_peoples_view_of_publishing_on_https_researchoutreachorg_publication

The ‘service’ requires payment and I very much doubt whether it really reach a broader audience. But fair enough it is no scam and/or predatory but personally I see no added value.

Best regards.

PS. SciTube really, the name is lacking so much creativity and the link to the brandname YouTube is too obvious.

I was recently contacted by them and a quick search of SciTube brought up a link to a BBC teach recommendation page. They made no mention in their contact that they were a production facility (similar to many others) and also made no mention of the fact that they would expect payment. I foolishly assumed that they were a science based YouTube channel that wanted to feature my paper as it was relevant educational content.

Had a bizarre phone conversation with someone who sounded like they were reading off a script, and after a lengthy sales pitch was told that it would be £2.2k to produce a video that was a couple of minutes long. When I explained the misunderstanding and said that it would have been better to be transparent about what they were offering in the initial email, the person told me that I could easily have looked them up for more info...

Unless you specifically have several thousand pounds to produce a video, and think they're the best people to do it, save your time and don't engage.

I actually had a very positive experience with SciPod, they produced an animated video highlight a current project that i lead at a very reasonable price. In this case it was not for disseminating research but a video that could be used to highlight the project to the general public and which has received very positive feedback. At no point in the process did i feel i was pressurised or anything else and found the team members i dealt with very easy to work with and the whole process quite painless. I have no skin in the game and i would have no problem working with them in the future and would recommend them to colleagues.

https://www.scipod.global/professor-kieran-kilcawley-using-flavour-chemistry-to-identify-biomarkers-behind-the-sensory-perception-of-irish-grass-fed-beef-and-lamb/

I used their service to generate a piece that would be accessible to the general public about our research. This was important because our work is community engaged and having ways to explain it that is not overly technical is useful to us.

Thank you, everyone!

Dear Jonathan,

I have also been contacted by SciTube, using a name "John Connor".

I would not be too sure that it is not predatory due to that they have already indicated a differnt contact location: "Stapeley House, London Road, Stapeley, Cheshire, UK, CW5 7JW".

I have checked Stapeley House, it is actually a historcial counry house even listed on National Heritage List for England. As an apparent bad luck for them, Stapeley House has its own website where they offer office spaces, however in fact SciTube has not been listed among the resident companies.

I hated to hear that they charged so much for their services. For what it's worth for anyone else who winds up here, here is one of SciTube's videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLK7gIalNOk

I'll let you judge the quality for yourself. But, as a comparison, here is a link to Kurzgesagt, a team who has made fantastic educational videos for a long time (and, to the best of my knowledge, are funded through grants and Patreon): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ck4RGeoHFko

I recently used SciTube to make a video abstract of some of our recent work (posted on BioRXiv). Wellcome.org is keen that we try to publicise the work they fund to a general scientific or lay audience. I had ~£2k available in my grant so I thought give it a go.. I have never done something like this before but I had seen some of SciTube's work on my mobile and thought it was quite cool. I did not shop around so I don't know if there are as-good or better competitors, but I was satisfied with the video SciTube produced for me. The production and editing process was friendly and responsive and would have been quicker if I had responded to emails more promptly :-). They incorporated some of our own videos at our request. I would have preferred an audio voiceover in addition to the ticker- tape commentary, but overall I am happy with the result and now have something that ticks the "outreach" box. If you are interested here is the video abstract, judge for yourself:

https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fscitube.io%2Fprofessor-william-richardson-what-mice-in-mazes-can-teach-us-about-working-memory%2F&data=05%7C01%7Cw.richardson%40ucl.ac.uk%7C88c9fbbbf8f3416246c308db879cb6fe%7C1faf88fea9984c5b93c9210a11d9a5c2%7C0%7C0%7C638252880365207476%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=5%2BTpo7i3W4uhN1PJxNXFf4bLNcs3HLIW%2FhD%2FWyGxhd8%3D&reserved=0

Thank you Jonathan Perle for asking the question and thanks all for the responses. I was contacted recently by them, claiming that they were excited about my recent paper and they even had the audacity to schedule a meeting without me engaging them at all. Anyway it has helped me on what my next move should be regarding the matter.

Dear collegues;

Thank you foe all your usefull answers, you saved my time

Sci-Pod contacted me back in February about making a video / audio podcast based on a recent solo publication I'd put out. It seemed like an odd piece for the podcast format, so I suggested they might be interested in a related piece of work I'd also just had published as second author (seemed like a good opportunity to bring visibility to a colleague just starting out, too). The fees caught me off-guard (no mention of those in the initial outreach!), but I thought the Sci-Pod product looked slick and accessible and am always keen to get work I believe in out to a possible audience who might otherwise never see or hear about it. I'm very, very fortunate to be in a situation where I was able to apply for funding from two internal sources at my university; after committee review, I was granted the funds to pay the Sci-Pod fees and put our work out into the world. I was genuinely impressed by the professionalism and and orientation to detail of the team at Sci-Pod; they worked iteratively with my co-author / co-researcher and I to honour our work and to articulate it carefully in words and images. I'll admit I'm always suspicious of paying to publish / disseminate scholarship, but *someone* always pays – be that a library, the tax payer, student tuition – so I'm grateful for the opportunity to get this work out there in this format. I'd recommend work with Sci-Pod if it makes sense and doesn't cost you out of pocket.

I’ve been asked to weigh in on this discussion about SciPod / SciTube, and as I have read through the posts, the discussion has led me to a much deeper set of thoughts about the concern (or is it debate?) as played out here. For full disclosure, the request came from one of the ScienceDiffusion (the corporate parent of SciPod and SciTube) executives; further, I have worked with both the SciPoD and SciTube teams on two different summaries / presentations of my work as “commissioned content”. I am based in the US, but was willing to work with these UK-based folks (after doing another bit of commissioned content with a US outlet) after a bit of soul-searching during the pandemic. I have not asked, nor permitted, the ScienceDiffusion folks to review this posting before I made it.

I am what we would now generously call an established, recognized senior scholar (=old, a parent of millennials). Every institution where I have a degree or faculty paycheck is ranked in the top 50 in one or more global evaluations of impact, quality, or visibility. I am an engineer by training and by faculty appointment, though my graduate work was in the social sciences (social psychology). When I got tenure (in the 1990s), the concept of paying for (or even interacting with journalists to promote) public communication of my work was strongly discouraged by many of my senior colleagues; in the flagship journals in my primary and related fields, we have no history of required “page charges” for publications. Therefore, I was originally extremely reluctant to pay money to these organizations to write up a story about my research. By contrast, I have served on university library tenure and review boards, and library services oversight, and other campus efforts where we have discussed the concepts of “alt metrics” and broader impact of STEM research. (In fact, I am on a panel next week to discuss exactly that concept of broader impact.). I have also racked up a lot of frequent flier miles traveling to conferences to present my work, recruit students, and get recognition and visibility among my peers. (Since I have been successful in the research intensive world, this travel has been almost exclusively paid for by grants, not departmental travel allowances.). Obviously, that was severely curtailed during the pandemic; I have also come to a much different view about the role of public communication of science, based on both the general impact of some of my work, and my engagement in a variety of projects that required my interactions with the world beyond my STEM community.

I paid for the SciPod / SciTube projects out of my own pocket (not grants, but my own personal funds), and, like Doug Brugge , have been pleased with the results. I don’t have the skills or patience to manage animation content. I love doing voiceover work (based on scripted text) and unscripted radio / podcast interviews; it is exactly because of that experience that I know how much time it takes. Out of curiosity, I did go to the Kurzgesagt site, and the link provided by Alex Marbut . I actually find the topic (intelligence) of significant interest, and the voiceover similar to that from SciPod. I don’t happen to like the animation at all; this is a matter of taste. I also have the sense that “cheap vs. expensive” is a function of comparison level and valuation of one’s own skills and time. When I was a new faculty member, spending the equivalent of 3000 euros would have been horribly expensive (I also had two young children and a brand new home mortgage). Now, the same quote is less upsetting (no children, no mortgage, higher sense of the cost of my time per hour), and my intention is different: the value is for the public, not just for me.

As I said, there is a lot more going on in my mind regarding this topic. I have posted a new blog entry on it at https://grouperlab.blog/2023/07/28/paying-for-it/ . Feel free to visit or ignore; I include it for completeness, not clicks.

I've read some of the comments and I understand the arguements. But once again, it is a question of money and what it can buy. Poorer universities and/or country and/or researchers that can not afford to pay for publications then for vulgarization will once again be less visible. As for paying with my own salary, i could not since I'm paid less montly than it costs, even as a full professor. Our students (graduate or not) could do that job of vulgarization for us as a assignement. Which I may do :)

I did not solicit the invitation from SciTube and will not pursue it.

I appreciate the discussion!

Yes, me too. Thanks a lot.

This helped greatly. Thanks a lot

Thanks to you all. It is good to know what is behind all these unsolicited emails. They are a good way of promoting science to the public, but I think that paying out of one's pocket is a big minus. I guess it will be cheaper to create my own content in a YouTube Channel, which I have been doing for my own classes anyway.

I was very recently contacted by them, and this discussion helped me a lot to understand what's behind. Thank you!

Same here. Thank you all for your clarifications.

I had a very interesting experience with Scitube, and I strongly recommend if you want to get a larger audience for your findings.

Now our film has around 6000 views, what I find very surprising for a specialized study about the structure of the proton.

I was contacted regarding a publication in Physical Review C. I accepted because I was curious about the possibility to explain such scientific work in simple words to a large public.

It was amazing how the story is made easy and the subject is essentially presented in a few minutes. The graphics is simple keeping the focus on the scientific content. The original publication is clearly indicated, so that a specialized reader can go deeper into it.

The interaction with the corresponding person was very easy and friendly. We were asked for approval and could require modifications at every step.

There were no surprises about the fees, that we found reasonable for such a work. We have obtained all necessary formats and version and we could make translation in other languages, what is convenient for enlarged public in Italy and France.

Same here. Thank you for sharing your experiences and thoughts!

Was also contacted after a publication in a scientific paper (they seem to write to everybody who published in certain papers without, of course, ever having read the published paper). Looked at their homepage and found: costs of 1600 Euro upwards. Wrote to them and told them: I am working in the Humanities. We are poor and cannot afford luxuries like these. (Scientists, so it seems, obviously can and do.)

Thank you for the information