Why Science Needs an Alternative to YouTube: Exploring the TIB AV-Portal for the Needs of the International GreyNet Community

The exponential growth of digital scientific content has transformed how scientific knowledge is disseminated, exchanged, and consumed. Videos have the potential to communicate scientific findings to a broad audience that would otherwise be unlikely to learn about the valuable research findings (e.g., Boy et al., 2020). Similarly, scholarly videos can be helpful in keeping up with the growing body of interdisciplinary research and providing an overview of research inside and outside one's discipline (van Noorden, 2015). Today, video is at the heart of digital communication—over 80% of global data traffic now flows through streaming video, with short explainer videos seeing rapid adoption across disciplines. (Cisco, 2020) For scientists and researchers, YouTube often serves as the entry point for sharing and consuming science videos, delivering global reach and diverse content with just a few clicks. TikTok is also rising, engaging audiences with interactive features. Yet, these commercial platforms come with significant drawbacks for scientific communication: disruptive advertisements, privacy concerns, removal or instability of content as well as a lack of reliable citation and long-term access. True scientific work depends on referencing, persistent links, and trustworthy archiving, none of which is guaranteed by commercial video platforms.