ScienceCast is a free open-access platform for researchers to disseminate their scientific results and ideas to a wide audience of fellow scientists, journal Editors, grant program managers, and other professionals working at the cutting edge of science and innovation. The project was launched by a group of academics in collaboration with arXiv.org in response to the following obvious problems facing all scientific disciplines:

1. Exponential proliferation of data. Just 20-30 years ago, it was possible for a professional scientist to follow all important developments in their field. But it is no longer the case. 90% of world’s data was created in the last two years and the process is accelerating. Whether it is medicine or physics or social sciences, it is no longer possible to stay on top of relevant papers that appear daily.
2. Lack of a high-quality collaboration platform for scientists. While social media platforms abound, there is no collaboration platform for scientists to discuss new developments and exchange their related ideas and results in a professional setting. Most existing social media platforms suffer from the ubiquity of low-quality content, which has a distracting effect on focus and prevents meaningful conversations from occurring. It is highly desirable to have a collaboration space intended for scientists and moderated and managed by scientists to enable a continuous dialogue and collaboration among experts on the most important topics in their disciplines.
3. Shortcomings of the traditional peer review process. Scientific journals play a critical role in sharing and creating knowledge. However, the exponential data proliferation problem presents a serious challenge to journal Editors, handling the large and growing volume of submissions, and the traditional peer-review model all together. Most authors are familiar with the scenario where a manuscript, written after a months-long sometimes years-long research project, is rejected in a cavalier way based on superficial comments by a referee. On the other hand, questionable papers sometimes get accepted and promoted. Peer review, which used to imply a long and deep analysis of scientific manuscripts, became a bit of a gamble – a one-time event, which dictates the fate of a research paper in a somewhat random fashion.

While there is no silver bullet to solve these existential problems once and for all, ScienceCast proposes a model, where the key problem associated with the growing volume of scientific data is presented front and center. The proposed solution is based on the observation that the younger generation of scientists consumes information differently from the previous generations (not “better” not “worse” but differently, and it is a fact) and there is a constant competition for attention from highly addictive media. The central component of the platform is a stream of ScienceCasts – short 3–5-minute video elevator pitches directly linked to actual old-fashioned manuscripts. The goal of a pitch is to present the context & motivation for research and the main research result(s) in a concise manner giving users the option to further explore the details (or not). A collaboration environment will be built around the casts and enable a dialogue between the author(s) and their peers, potentially paving the way for a continuous peer review process.

In addition to a built-in ranking system and AI-based algorithm (currently in development) to select content for a particular user, based on their preferences, the platform will be moderated as needed by a board of professional scientists to ensure high professional standards of the activity on sciencecast.org

ScienceCast’s pledge is to prioritize the needs of the scientific communities and protect its users and their data. The ultimate goal of ScienceCast - a digital ecosystem for research built by scientists for scientists – is to make it into a social good.

We hope you find content here worth creating and consuming.