Video Abstract: A Brand-new Approach to Information Dissemination: Production & Evolution Process

Abstract

With the development of the Internet and information technologies, new communication tools have been created that allow researchers to present their research results and communicate with each other. Using visual and audio resources to share research results is a new type of scholarly communication essential for disseminating knowledge and has recently been the focus of journals. Our objective was to help authors, journal editors, and publishers become familiar with the criteria they should consider when producing standard video abstracts. This descriptive study used content analysis. We systematically searched the Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus to identify journals with video abstracts and analyzed their authors’ guidelines to extract the criteria needed for producing and evaluating video abstracts. The research community comprised 209 journals with video abstracts. After reviewing their authors' guidelines, we found that only 90 journals mentioned video abstracts in their authors’ guidelines. Of 90 journals, 22 dedicated authors’ guidelines and 68 journals belong to nine different publishers. Therefore, 31 authors’ guidelines were examined in this study using MAXQDA 12. We identified six main categories, six subcategories, and 87 criteria for producing and evaluating video abstracts. The six main categories included the type of video, technical features, provider features, presentation features, legal aspects, and criteria for publishing and sending video abstracts. Most criteria were related to the technical characteristics of video abstracts, and the least number of criteria were related to attention to legal aspects during the production and evaluation of these abstracts. The scientific community now uses video abstracts as a complementary medium to articles. Researchers can use this type of abstract to share their research results with others. Authors and journals should pay attention to the production criteria when planning to use this type of abstract so that by preparing a suitable video abstract, they can more effectively convey the results of their research to the audience and lead to the promotion of science.

Keywords

• video abstract
• scientific communication
• information dissemination
• research visibility