ScienceStage

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ScienceStage is a global, science-oriented multimedia portal that specializes in online video streaming, which is used to support communication between scientists, scholars, researchers in industry, and professionals. It is also used by academics and students as a virtual educational tool. Video content ranges from conference recordings, to interviews, documentaries, webinars, and tutorials. ScienceStage, as its slogan suggests, also functions as a 'hub' by creating a meta-layer that enables the networking of both users (individuals and groups) and content (video, audio, and documents), which forms an integrated multimedia and social networking platform for scientists.

Website

By creating 'Stages' and groups and by uploading content, users can communicate their ideas in a broad network and participate within and across discourses of the global scientific community. ScienceStage thus functions as an effective communication platform that serves the advancement of the sciences.

Content

Content primarily consists of personally uploaded video files, but users also upload audio files, publicly available video streams (for example, opencourseware and TED Talks), and documents such as research papers under creative-commons license. Users can also bookmark content they find useful or interesting and create their own media library and playlists for video and audio streaming. Other online communication tools include messaging, blogs, and setting up online video conferences for discussing projects or conducting tutorials. Users may also monitor the quality of content posted by other users by posting comments and rating specific content. Through the website, one may also access external online scientific databases, for example, PubMed, the IEEE, and CiteSeer.

Networking

Stages

As users, individuals and organizations create public profiles, called Stages. By uploading content to their Stage, users can then publicly present their research, academic institution, or their company. Uploaded content can then be linked to similar content across all media types (video, audio, documents) as well as relevant Stages and groups.

Groups

When users share similar interests or expertise, they can become a member of or form a group. A group is often created in order to discuss a particular topic or to collaborate on a specific project. Unlike a Stage, groups can be either public or private. Groups can consist of as few as two members who wish to privately share content, to many members who wish to make public their collaborative efforts. For example, if a scientist in Germany has published a paper on landmark-identification using eye-movement tracking, she can upload this paper to her Stage. Once uploaded, the document can be linked to a video posted by a researcher in the U.S. who belongs to the same virtual group, and both of these can be subsequently linked to a company or university lab developing new eye-tracking technology that is presented on its Stage.

See also

• Social networking
• List of social networking websites