How to make a video abstract for your research paper

A video abstract is a short video, usually two to four minutes long, in which the authors explain their paper in plain language: the question, how they answered it, what they found and why it matters. To make one, check your journal’s rules first, because length, format and file size vary a lot. Then write a script of about 250 to 350 words for readers outside your field, show the main finding with one clear visual, record clean narration, add a transcript and share the video with a link to the paper. You can film yourself, narrate your slides, or turn the paper’s PDF into a drawn, narrated explainer with AI.

What is a video abstract for?

A written abstract is read by people who have already found your paper. A video abstract helps you reach the ones who haven’t: researchers in neighboring fields, students, journalists, funders and the public, many of whom will never open the PDF but will watch two minutes on their phone. It also gives you something easy to share at conferences, on your lab’s website and on social media.

Do video abstracts get papers more attention?

They are associated with more attention, though it is hard to prove that they cause it.

• Citations, in physics. Zong and colleagues matched 315 articles in New Journal of Physics that had a video abstract with 630 articles from the same issues that didn’t. After adjusting for other differences, the articles with a video abstract had citation counts about 1.2 times higher.
• A caution. In a published comment, Sergio Copiello argued that the advantage may come partly from self-citations and self-selection: authors may choose to make videos for the papers they think are their best.
• Views and attention, in medicine. Among 500 research reports in the New England Journal of Medicine, 152 of them with a video abstract, Bonnevie and colleagues found that video abstracts were associated with more views and higher Altmetric Attention Scores, about 35% and 25% higher. The link with citations, about 15% higher, was uncertain: the data fit anything from almost no effect to a sizable one.

So make one for the people it reaches, not for a guaranteed citation boost.

What do journals ask for?

Rules vary by publisher and by journal, so read your journal’s guide for authors before you start. Three publishers show how much they differ:

Publisher	Length	Format and size	Other rules
SAGE	Less than three minutes	MP3, M4a, MP4 or M4v, under 10 MB	Peer reviewed, in English, a script of about 250 words; captions are added on publication
IOP Publishing	No longer than four minutes	.mov, .mpg or .mp4, up to 100 MB	Understandable outside the field, a narration of everything shown, a .txt transcript, no music soundtracks
Taylor & Francis	2 minutes 20 seconds or less is optimal for social media	.mov, .mpg or .mp4, 16:9, at least 720p	A descriptive transcript; Medicine & Health journals ask for a storyboard at submission

Three rules come up again and again:

• Plain language. IOP asks for a video that is understandable to people outside the article’s field.
• Nothing beyond the paper. SAGE peer reviews video abstracts and asks that everything in the video directly supports the article’s conclusions.
• Permissions. Material from previously published work needs permission, and IOP doesn’t allow music soundtracks at all, open-source music included.

How do you write a video abstract script?

At about 150 words a minute, a two-minute video is about 300 words. This structure fits most papers:

Part	Seconds	What to say
The problem	15–20	Why the question matters, to someone outside your field
The question	10–15	What you set out to find out
What you did	20–30	The method, in one or two plain sentences
What you found	30–45	The main finding, with the one number that matters
Why it matters	20–30	What it changes, and its limits
Where to read it	5–10	The journal and the article’s title

A few rules make the difference:

• One finding. The video is an invitation to the paper, not a summary of every result.
• Explain the number. “Patients went home two days sooner, on average” beats “a statistically significant reduction in length of stay”.
• Define or drop every term that a student in a neighboring field wouldn’t know. Our guide to explaining a complex topic simply has techniques for this.
• Say the limits. One honest sentence about what the study can’t show makes the rest more credible.

What should be on screen?

• One visual per point: the setup, the key result, what it means. Redraw your main figure simply rather than showing it with all its panels.
• No small text. If it can’t be read on a phone, leave it out.
• Your face, briefly, if you like. A few seconds of the authors at the start puts people behind the paper. Let the visuals carry the explanation.
• Captions and a transcript, which most journals ask for anyway.

Three ways to make one

Film yourself

Taylor & Francis’s video abstract guide suggests a quiet place, a plug-in microphone, a tripod and a camera you know well (on a phone or tablet, record in high definition), and speaking naturally rather than reading to the camera.

• Good for: a personal, human introduction to the work.
• Watch out for: methods and results that are hard to show with a face alone. Cut to figures.

Narrate your slides

Build five or six slides that follow the script, one idea each, and record narration over them. PowerPoint can export a deck with recorded narration as an MP4, and our guide to turning a PowerPoint into a video has the steps.

• Good for: figures you already have, and conference slides you can reuse.
• Watch out for: dense slides. A slide made for a talk usually has too much on it for a video.

Turn the paper’s PDF into a drawn explainer with AI

An AI video tool can read the paper and draft the video for you. With Chasca:

1. Upload the paper’s PDF. It needs real text in it, not scanned pages.
2. Say what the video is for: “A two-minute video abstract for non-specialists: the question, the method, the main finding and its limits.”
3. Pick a length that fits your journal’s limit, a narrator and a drawing style, in landscape (16:9).
4. Generate. Chasca writes the script from your paper, splits it into scenes and draws each one stroke by stroke in time with the narration, usually in about a minute.
5. Check every number and claim against the paper. If something is off, say so in your instructions and make the video again; it takes about a minute.
6. Download the MP4 with subtitles, and use the narration as the start of your transcript.

Before you submit, check your journal’s policy on AI tools, and say how the video was made if it asks.

• Good for: papers whose method or finding is easier to draw than to say, and abstracts you want in several languages.
• Watch out for: journal rules on length, file size, music and AI tools.

Where should you share it?

• With the journal, following its guide for authors: some want the video at submission, others after acceptance.
• On a video platform, with the article’s title and a link to the paper in the description.
• On your lab or university page, next to the paper.
• In talks and on posters, as a QR code.
• On social media, where a two-minute video is easier to share than a PDF.

A checklist before you submit

• Your journal’s rules on length, format, file size and transcripts.
• One finding, in plain language, in 250 to 350 words.
• One visual per point, and no small text.
• Clear narration, and no music if the journal forbids it.
• Permission for anything previously published.
• Every number checked against the paper.

Sources

• Zong, Q., Xie, Y., Tuo, R., Huang, J., & Yang, Y. (2019). The impact of video abstract on citation counts: Evidence from a retrospective cohort study of New Journal of Physics. Scientometrics, 119(3), 1715–1727.
• Copiello, S. (2020). The alleged citation advantage of video abstracts may be a matter of self-citations and self-selection bias. Scientometrics, 122(1), 751–757.
• Bonnevie, T., Repel, A., Gravier, F.-E., Ladner, J., Sibert, L., Muir, J.-F., Cuvelier, A., & Fischer, M.-O. (2023). Video abstracts are associated with an increase in research reports citations, views and social attention: A cross-sectional study. Scientometrics, 128(5), 3001–3015.
• SAGE Publishing. Video abstracts.
• IOP Publishing. Editorial guidelines for video abstracts and Technical specifications for video abstracts.
• Taylor & Francis Author Services. Creating a video abstract for your research.