A digital library of virtually limitless content exists. While social media and entertainment platforms dominate content creation, advances in digital multimedia presentations have enabled the creation and delivery of high-quality, educational and informational content to interested masses. In addition to traditional peer-reviewed publications available online instead of in print, advances in audio, video and internet-presentation platforms have elevated the quality of information presented. They have also permitted instantaneous and global dissemination of peer-reviewed ideas and data.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its associated social distancing mandates served as a catalyst for peer-reviewed publications to rapidly advance and adopt web-based, virtual methods of distribution of information within the science community, and specifically within neurosurgery. As a result, the widespread adoption of multimedia web-based presentations helped to lay the foundation for the future distribution of research ideas and data (Figs. 1, 2)

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“Tumor Talk” is streamed and hosted via YouTube and the Cassyni platform permitting synchronous and asychronous viewing options

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Fig. 2
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The new Cassyni platform provides authors with a unique DOI number and allows references to be published in an easy to search web-based application

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Tumor Talk started in 2020 as a collaborative effort between Dr. Randy D’Amico, Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery at Lenox Hill Hospital/Northwell Health and Dr. Jason Sheehan, Editor-In-Chief of the Journal of Neuro-Oncology (JNO) soon after the pandemic placed appreciable global restrictions on neurosurgical education and travel. Tumor Talk follows a podcast/webinar format and invites the authors of recently published JNO articles to describe their work using modern multimedia tools. JNO contributors are given the opportunity to discuss the rationale, design, results, and limitations of their study. They also describe the context of their work within the broader neuro-oncology literature and the significance of their research to investigators, clinicians, caregivers, and patients while engaging in interactive discussion with panelists and viewers. The webinars are delivered live and hosted on YouTube where they can be viewed synchronously or asynchronously (Figure 1). To date, Tumor Talk has amassed over 5000 views during a period of less than 2 years. In addition, Tumor Talk has collaborated with a number of industry partners with educational grants and has raised funds for the Neurosurgical Research Education Foundation which supports neurosurgical research and education efforts.

With its growing success and the continued evolution of digital multimedia web-based educational initiatives, Tumor Talk has now partnered with Springer Nature and Cassyni to facilitate easier hosting of the seminar (Figure 2). The format is the same, but the new platform allows easier subscriptions and scheduling. Cassyni also permits enhanced indexing of the talks to allow for keyword searches and referencing. The Cassyni platform integrates webinars into a scholarly ecosystem that is intuitively designed and easily accessible to users. Cassyni’s artificial intelligence system extracts transcripts, slides, and references from webinars and places them at the fingertips of researchers. In addition, each talk is assigned its own unique digital object identifier (DOI) allowing for easy referencing and citation. The Journal of Neuro-Oncology is delighted to partner with Springer Nature and Cassyni to continue providing high-quality multimedia content to further disseminate neuro-oncology education and research thereby better using JNO content and fulfilling its mission. For more information, visit https://cassyni.com/s/tumortalks.

Fully using JNO content to meet the needs of our audience and better promote our contributors’ efforts are goals that are advanced by Tumor Talk. In the years to come, the digital content of Tumor Talk will come to represent a major resource to the neuro-oncology field and to the patients that we treat. JNO has taken a more contemporary view for fulfilling its missions by moving beyond print and PDF. The future has never looked brighter for peer reviewed journals such as JNO which embrace digital multimedia web-based ecosystems like Cassyni, Youtube, Zoom, and Instagram to disseminate knowledge and facilitate education.