Video abstracts can be like a movie trailer in some aspects. Such an abstract provides a preview of your entire work, and based on what you present, the reviewer or journal decides to accept or reject your paper. Using a good video abstract, you can boost your paper’s citation. Some international publishers claim that articles with video abstracts gain more views than those with no video abstract. It has been seen that allocating a little time to preparing a video abstract for your paper can significantly increase the article views, boosting your paper’s citation. But what is precisely a video abstract, how to make a good one, and how to use it to increase your paper citations? Stay tuned with us to learn everything about video abstracts.
What exactly is a video abstract?
As previously said, a video abstract is like a movie trailer. Like conventional abstracts, a video abstract is a part of a paper but more attractive and possibly informative than conventional ones. These kinds of abstracts usually take three to five minutes, and their role is bolding the highlight of your research and attracting more and more readers and citations. These days, you, as a researcher, can produce such an abstract using your academic paper, a digital and compact camera, and the internet.
How would video abstracts be beneficial to promote paper citations?
It is noteworthy to know that academic video abstracts can be potentially beneficial for authors and journals. The higher visibility of articles is the main reason journals and authors embrace this approach. You want other scientists to read and cite your papers like any researcher. However, sometimes due to lag time between the cited and citing publications, your article may don’t get accrue citations for years. During this time, your paper could make an impact on peers who read, download, and share if it is published. The higher visibility of your article may cause higher readership and more citations.
In addition, a researcher who produces a video abstract may find the process of preparing a video abstract beneficial since it can give them new perspectives and ideas. The last but not least benefit is that it can be seen as a way to get funding for their research, and it can enhance the research’s ability to get grant funding.
Essential parts of an academic video abstract
Like conventional abstracts, a video abstract should contain the following parts:
- Introduction: first of all, you should provide a brief introduction and briefly explains the research questions and objectives
- Explain methods: you should briefly describe the methods used for your research.
- Results and discussion: In the third part of a video abstract, explain your findings and discuss them in brief.
- The last part of a video abstract is a conclusion that summarizes the elemental points of your video abstract.
Tips to prepare a good video abstract to promote your paper citation
In general, each journal has its roles regarding video abstracts, such as video length, file size, and type of content. So, to prepare a good video abstract that fulfills journal expectations, you should check the journal guidelines. Many journals accept video abstracts with lengths between four to seven minutes. In addition, your video should be straight to the point since its goal is to attract academics’ attention, not give a seminar about it. To prepare a good one, the following point will come you handy:
- Your prospective audiences are other researchers and scientists, so there is probably no need to explain obvious concepts. Instead, it would help if you talked about specific aspects of your research that make it unique and prominent. That’s the only way you can raise academic interest to listen to your work and increase your article’s visibility.
- To attract your peers’ attention, you need a good message to spark their interest. You may tempt to use your article title as a message, but it would be better to use a simplified version of your article conclusion for this purpose. More precisely, it would be best to mention your work’s broad topic and what you’ve achieved (including new information and findings).
- Since these abstracts are about scientific works, it is unnecessary to spend a lot of money on them. You need just minimal equipment, including a digital camera. You don’t need a specific background; a minimal one or a place with lab machines you have already used in your research would be pretty suitable.
- During filming, you should consider the below-mentioned points:
- Position your camera in a place that avoids light reflection
- Your video should be recorded in a silent area without any noise
- Set the camera settings to the camera on high-resolution feature
- Look directly into camera lenses and speak clearly
- Stick to your research subject, and don’t sidetrack your work purpose
Use antimicrobial nanofibers for wound dressing: An example of a video abstract
Our bodies can heal properly, but the story is different in people with diabetes. Even a small scratch in these patients may lead to deep wounds. In this stage, wrapping such a wound with a sterile, clean gauze dressing won’t be beneficial. Constructing a wound dressing containing antibiotics that release at a controlled rate can guarantee faster healing.
… college researchers used cellulose acetate and different antibiotics to prepare a wound dressing via electrospinning. In this process, researchers used a mixture of cellulose acetate and different concentrations of different antibiotics and finally prepared nanofibers. Antibiotic molecules are encapsulated between fibers, and in exposure to wound moisture, these molecules can release slower and during the time. Their antimicrobial wound dressing showed excellent results regarding healing diabetic foot wounds, and none of the patients showed infection. These dressings released their antibiotics constantly in a controlled way and didn’t need to replace them frequently.
Conclusion
Video abstracts can be a powerful tool to promote the visibility and citation of your article. However, to prepare a good video abstract, you need to know the main parts of such videos as well as some tips. These abstracts usually take 4 to 7 minutes and should focus on highlighted features of your work that make it prominent.