Video-Abstract Guidelines

We would like to encourage authors of all accepted Theory, Culture & Society and Body & Society papers to produce video-abstracts. As well as becoming increasingly recognised as a powerful tool for disseminating and making authors’ work more visible through search engines, they can also provide a highly accessible digest.

The video-abstract should take the form of a number of brief key statements about the paper.

Introduce yourself (and co-authors), state the title of your paper, and the journal it is published in. Address questions such as:

∙ how you became interested in the topic;

∙ what your paper is trying to achieve;

∙ the overall importance of the topic and how you see the associated field developing.

Normally this will take the form of a face-to-camera monologue, but authors are also encouraged to include images and/or additional video footage or multimedia materials as part of their video abstract, as these elements can add a further dynamic and/or informative layer to the presentation. If you are able to insert a title card at the beginning of your video, please do so - examples and logos are available here.

Video-abstracts should be short – around 3 minutes works best; please try not to go over 5 minutes.

You should also endeavour to direct your remarks to a non-expert and whenever possible unpack elaborate theoretical and technical terminology.

Video-abstracts can be produced by authors using a computer video camera, smartphone or other device. Most cameras will have built-in microphones, and as long as you are relatively stationary, close to the camera and filming in a quiet environment, this should be fine. If the audio quality is poor, however, it may be advisable to use an external microphone. Please ensure before recording that your camera is positioned at eye-level; if you are using a laptop, for instance, and the camera is low, you should consider using a pile of books to raise it. Please also try to ensure that your recorded file is under 100MB. If you are recording your video using a smartphone, place the phone in a horizontal position when recording, not vertical. For guidance on how to record a video using a webcam on your computer, see: http://www.wikihow.com/Record-from-a-Webcam.

You can see examples of video-abstracts below, or in our archive.

Your video-abstract should be submitted to us at tcs@sagepub.co.uk via WeTransfer, DropSend, Dropbox, or by uploading it to Vimeo, or YouTube and sending us the link, or similar alternative, but not as an email attachment, please.

(Updated: February 2021)