About ResearchReels
ResearchReels makes short video trailers of newly published research. Each trailer introduces one paper in about fifteen seconds and links straight to it. The paper is the destination; the trailer is only a way in.
This is a pilot. We are testing whether short trailers help more people find and read open research. Things will change, and some trailers will have flaws. We would rather hear about them than not: see corrections below.
Why
More research is free to read than ever, yet most of it is never seen outside its own field. Meanwhile, many people learn about the world through short videos. ResearchReels tries to bring the two together: a quick, honest taste of a finding, with the source one tap away.
How a trailer is made
- Choosing papers. We look for peer-reviewed journal articles and reviews that are open access under a licence that allows adaptation (see licences). We use the open catalogue OpenAlex and favour recent papers in established journals and widely cited work, plus papers on topics our viewers look for.
- Reading the paper. An AI model reads the full text, not just the abstract.
- Writing the trailer. The AI writes a short script in plain language. Every claim in it must be tied to an exact passage of the paper, and every number shown must appear in that passage. A program checks this word for word.
- Fact-checking. A second, separate AI model compares the script with the paper and looks for wrong numbers, overstated conclusions (for example, presenting a link as a cause), missing qualifiers and unclear wording. Papers in health and medicine get stricter checks. A script that does not pass is rewritten, or dropped.
- Making the video. The script is read by an AI voice and shown with captions and a simple graphic drawn from the paper's own numbers. We do not copy figures or images from papers.
- Review. During the pilot, a person looks at new trailers before they are published. Viewers can report problems at any time.
The writing and checking use Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic. The voice is the open-source Kokoro model. Every trailer is labelled as an AI-assisted summary with an AI voice.
What a trailer is, and is not
- It is a simplified introduction. It leaves out methods, limitations and nuance that the paper explains.
- It can contain mistakes, despite the checks. The paper is the authority: read it before relying on a finding.
- It is not reviewed or approved by the authors, their institutions or the journal, and it does not represent their views.
- It is not advice of any kind: not medical, financial, legal or other professional advice.
Respect for researchers
The trailers exist because of the work of the researchers who wrote the papers, and the reviewers and journals who published them. We try to treat that work with care:
- Every trailer names the authors and the journal and links to the paper through its DOI, so credit and readers go to the source.
- We aim to describe findings as the authors do, including their caveats, and never to make a study say more than it does.
- Featuring a paper does not mean the authors endorse ResearchReels, and we never suggest that they do.
- Authors can ask us to correct a trailer or take it down, for any reason, and we will. Later we plan to let authors verify themselves and suggest changes directly.
Licences
We only make trailers of papers whose licence allows others to share and adapt them, including for commercial purposes, as long as the source is credited:
- CC BY (Creative Commons Attribution), the most common open-access licence;
- CC BY-SA (Attribution-ShareAlike); trailers of these papers are themselves shared under CC BY-SA;
- CC0 and works in the public domain.
We do not use papers under licences that forbid adaptations (“NoDerivatives”, ND) or commercial use (“NonCommercial”, NC), or papers that are free to read but have no open licence. Each paper's licence is confirmed by two independent sources (OpenAlex and Crossref or Europe PMC) before a trailer is made, and it is recorded with the trailer.
As these licences require, each trailer credits the authors and the paper, links to it, and makes clear that it is a changed, shortened version (an AI-assisted summary). Graphics are drawn by us from numbers in the text, not taken from the paper's figures, which can have separate rights. If you believe we have used a paper we should not have, tell us and we will remove the trailer while we look into it.
Reports and corrections
Every trailer has a Report button. Tell us what is wrong and, if you can, quote the passage of the paper. A trailer that several people report is taken off the feed until it has been checked. When we correct a trailer, it says so.
Who runs ResearchReels
ResearchReels is run by Fred Isaksson AB (Swedish limited company, organisation number 559421-4032), Uppsala, Sweden. It is independent: it is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, the universities, journals or publishers whose papers appear in it.
Contact: contact@researchreels.app. See also the terms of use and the privacy policy.