Video abstracts (VAs) are an emerging scholarly genre that offers researchers the opportunity to share their research in plain language and in a brief audiovisual format.
Canadian science journalist Jacob Berkowitz suggests that the first VA posted online “may have been a Cell Press video posted on May 21, 2009” (Berkowitz, 2013). Over a decade later, researchers are still trying to understand the qualities of a good VA and their overall efficacy in translating research.
This latter question piqued the interest of Alice Li, a former Master’s student at the University of British Columbia’s iSchool. Her thesis, Communicating research: Internet users’ comprehension and perceptions of video abstracts in the social sciences (2022), draws “from foundational work in educational psychology and information science, in order to better understand how people interact with research in audiovisual format, specifically video abstracts” (p.3).
Alice’s study tackles some big questions related to VAs and offers tangible insights to consider from design through to production. These high-level learnings have been summarized in an infographic to support anyone interested in picking up a camera to communicate their own research.
REFERENCES
Berkowitz, J. (2013, February 6). Video abstracts, the latest trend in scientific publishing—University Affairs. https://www.universityaffairs.ca/features/feature-article/video-abstracts-the-latest-trend-in-scientific-publishing/
Li, A. (2022). Communicating research: Internet users’ comprehension and perceptions of video abstracts in the social sciences [University of British Columbia]. https://doi.org/10.14288/1.0417421