Expanding Scholarly Research from Print to Video

Student research papers are microcosms of print journal articles, yet the trajectory of today’s journal literature now includes emerging scholarly, refereed video journals. Research papers are now undergoing significant changes as the text-based world rapidly transforms into a digital landscape, including video journal articles. This research addresses a new horizon where video replaces text in academic work by faculty and students. It explores the current issues related to the reasons the academy is substituting written text with multimedia presentations. It points to a future different in degree from the one we are now familiar with: reporting scholarship in print or digital representations of print. Data collected from a research university survey of 148 faculty, librarians, and teaching assistants were augmented by 16 in-depth interviews, including professors who published in peer-reviewed video journals. This exploratory study used data from four academic subject areas of humanities, social sciences, sciences, and professional schools. The results suggest that this transition to dynamic multimedia presentations may need to redefine research papers in academia and accept video as an expanded scholarly work