Last March I introduced the Hanson research group’s five minute GEOSET videos. I’ve since learned that, in July 2013, Prashant V. Kamat (Deputy Editor), George C. Schatz (Editor-in-Chief) and their co-workers at the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters announced ACS LiveSlides™, a user friendly mechanism for generating and sharing video slideshows for each manuscript. As noted in their editorial piece, they were motivated by the “changing publication landscape and the wide availability of new electronic tools have made it increasingly important to explore new ways to disseminate published research.”

We recently created an ACS LiveSlides™ presentation for our J. Phys. Chem. Lett. manuscript, “Photon Upconversion and Photocurrent Generation via Self-Assembly at Organic–Inorganic Interfaces.” The paper introduces self-assembled bilayers as a means of facilitating molecular photon upconversion and demonstrates photocurrent generation from the upconverted state. It’s arguably the first example of directly extracting charge from a molecular upconverted state if using the first submission date, first public disclosure, or the patent application date as markers. If using the manuscript acceptance date, Simpson et. al’s publication holds that distinction.

An invitation to create an ACS LiveSlides™ presentation immediately followed the message notifying us that our manuscript was accepted. All we needed to do was provide 5-8 Power Point Slides summarizing the manuscript (using a format provided by the ACS) and record an accompanying <10-minute mp3 audio file. The editors took the files (and a list of times for each slide transitions) and published our LiveSlides™ presentation in less than a week. It was an easy process and now anyone can view our presentation. No subscription necessary.

One drawback is that the video cannot be embedded on a webpage. As stated in their terms:

Files available from the ACS website may be downloaded for personal use only. Users are not otherwise permitted to reproduce, republish, redistribute, or sell any Supporting Information from the ACS website…

So we have a backup plan for those preferring an embedded video. Below you’ll find our GEOSET video summary presented by Sean Hill.