Life sciences research products provider Sigma-Aldrich, US, has announced the publication of its first peer-reviewed video protocol in the PubMed accessible Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE). This is claimed to make Sigma-Aldrich the first life science company to submit a video protocol to the traditional scientific publication process. Peer-reviewed video protocols are seen as an innovative and highly effective tool to increase the efficiency of scientific communication and with it the speed of basic research and drug discovery (http://www.jove.com/index/Details.stp?ID=899).
JoVE is a scientific journal that publishes video articles of biological experiments from academic institutions including Harvard, MIT, Stanford and Berkeley. The journal recently became the first and only video-based scientific journal to be indexed in MEDLINE and PubMed, the official repositories of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institute of Health (NIH).
The first video protocol, titled Sigma's Non-Specific Protease Activity Assay - Casein as a Substrate, is a multipurpose protease assay employed by life science researchers in academia, biotech and pharmaceutical industry. It can be viewed on JoVE and the Sigma Aldrich website and is available in both English and Chinese. Sigma Aldrich plans to continue creating video protocols spanning many different topics of scientific research.
