The video abstract
Today I want to talk about different modes of communication for research (and teaching) and how these are skills you are likely going to have to teach yourself.
As a result of Covid, in person conferences were cancelled. Some moved on-line with more or less success, and this move has prompted a discussion about the efficacy and ethics of in person conferencing and long distance travel. In parallel we have moved to the zoom method of communication for teaching. We have, of necessity, being doing things differently. Some have clearly embraced this shift, making movie trailers for taught courses, and some will be more reluctant to change from doing what they have always done. So now is an apt time to introduce some technology based solutions to communicating research.
The opportunities to disseminate research in various different formats have been around for a while and for some podcasts and video abstracts as methods of research communication are decidedly old hat already. However, for other disciplines, successful adoption of podcasts and videos are still seen as novel (if not down right heresy). Today I want to talk a little bit about one of these modes of communication, and that is the video abstract.
Dissemination by video
Science has been doing video abstracts for ages, and is particularly suited to this mode of delivery with animated cells and complex biological processes rendered undersandable in bite sized chunks through visual aids. Publishers have been keen to jump on the bandwagon offering yet one more thing you can pay them for (besides your free labour) so that they can provide you with a video abstract.
You can of course do this yourself and for free. They are not particularly complicated, and there are many (some terrible) Youtube videos on ‘how to’. Whether you choose to simply talk to camera interspersed with basic graphics or go full on J J Abrams, it is really up to you. How amenable is the subject matter to different media? Record on your iPhone, edit on iMovie - technologically speaking it is not that complex to produce these videos.
The question I want ask and answer first is ‘why’?
If you casually google this question, you will get many a page from the big multinational publishers telling you about increasing your altmetrics. You may or may not care about this, but it is certainly true on a basic level search engines rank video first so that optimising your research content to make it more discoverable can certainly include (amongst many other things) having some video content.
I think a better way to think about it is what is the function of a video abstract, and do you want or need to engage with this style of communication? Clearly a video abstract is not you simply reading your paper abstract out to the camera, or indeed summing up the conclusions of your research in the same way. Neither is it talking over animated lecture slides in an on-line lecture fashion.
Some reasons are:
To tell someone clearly why you wrote the paper, what is the puzzle or problem, and what are your conclusions in a short, clear fashion that indicates to them whether or not they should read the paper for their own research;
To update a paper that has been published but is already out of date when it came out due to publishing lags;
To update a paper previously published with new events/ findings;
To promote a paper / book (as a teaser or trailer);
As a teaching aid to ease students into the content;
To share on social media in an engaging and quick fashion your research findings.
If you have your own website, or use social media a lot, having video abstracts is a good idea in terms of search engine indexing and because you have a forum that you can manipulate to suit your needs. If you are stuck with an institutional page, it is probably not worth it. You most likely won’t be able to in any case.
So since you are about to become achingly familiar with all things video, maybe consider developing the skill of including a video abstract to accompany published work. You are after all a practiced marketing guru.