Background

In summer 2018 Journal of Marketing Management (JMM) published a special issue on the subject of ‘Screening Marketing: Videography and the Expanding Horizons of Filmic Research’, consisting of a combination of video-articles and traditional text-based manuscripts.

This blog summarises our recommendations for future video submissions to JMM (and outlines the procedure for other journals that may be interested in this methodology).

The following advice is for Video-Articles, that is, videos embedded within, and integral to, an academic article, rather than videos being hosted as supplemental material to a text article.

Making a Video Submission to JMM

JMM accepts the following type of video submission: video plus text commentary (3,000-5,000 words)

For video files to be embedded within an article, we recommend the following:

  • Preferred file format for video is .mp4
  • Video frame size must be a minimum of 640 × 360 pixels and a 16:9 aspect ratio is recommended.
  • Embedded multimedia files should be kept below 500MB file size. Remember that academic content is accessed from around the world, and many users do not have the bandwidth to easily view a large file size. 500MB is also a recommended limit for social sharing. A number of factors contribute to the size of the video: the definition, expressed as the pixel ratio (e.g. High Definition is 1920 x 1080, based on an aspect ratio of 16:9), the bit rate (bits per second, bps), and the video length and content, e.g. if a background musical soundtrack is included, this increases the overall size of the video. We recommend that authors create high quality versions of their videos and make a compressed copy of them for submission. Just remember that whilst files can be compressed, this can only be done to a degree before losing quality, so it is useful to be aware of the final parameters from the outset.
  • Video length – Evidence has shown that the shorter the video, the better, in terms of engagement and views. Videos should be a maximum of 10 minutes in length.

Authors should note that:

  • Video articles are subject to the same requirements as text articles, that is, authors are responsible for ensuring submissions are original and that they have the necessary consents and permission for the use of any third party material.

Review process

Authors should first upload their films to Vimeo (http://vimeo.com) and password protect them. (Vimeo Basic is currently free, and allows the password protection of content). The video for submission should be anonymised as far as possible, so, no identifying credits in the version for review. The video should also be download enabled.

Authors should then make a submission through the journal’s ScholarOne Manuscripts site so the peer review process can be managed in the normal way.

In the cover letter to the Editors, authors should include the link and password details for their video. The Editorial Office will then access the file and download it, rename it and upload the video into the journal’s own Vimeo channel, where it is again password protected and given a private link for review.

This file name and link are then put into ScholarOne so that the journal Vimeo details are those seen by the reviewers, and the review process proceeds in the normal way. Revised versions of the videos in response to reviewers’ comments are uploaded and dealt with in the same way at each round of review.

Whilst all steps are taken to preserve anonymity, this can be difficult if the authors appear in the video themselves. As is the case with reviewing a text manuscript, reviewers are selected that are unconnected with the authors, and instructed that if they can identify the authors they should not review the video, and notify the Editorial Office.

Permissions and Third Party Material

Authors are reminded it is their responsibility to check and provide the appropriate permissions for the use of third party material in the publication of their content. If authors used any third party material in their video, this needs to be included in a reference list at the end of the video along with the necessary permissions information. Even if authors use something that is available via a Creative Commons licence, this should be referenced and acknowledged as being reproduced under that licence.

If authors used any third party material under the auspices of fair dealing, fair use or the authors’ own country equivalent, this material must also be included in the reference list. We suggest that at the end of the reference list the authors included a statement to acknowledge this.

Once the video is accepted for publication, the authors will be invited to submit the complete final file including credits. Authors should provide the reference list from their video in text format so that this can be provided as a supplemental file.

The authors should also provide a high-resolution still image from the video which will be used to illustrate the video in the hard copy version of the paper. This would normally be a still image of the title screen of the video.

Authors will be asked to sign a bespoke copyright assignment form. Current JMM Policy is that videos are published under a Creative Commons licence, and authors should note any specific requirements when getting permissions which may impact which CC licence is appropriate.

When the video is hosted on Taylor & Francis Online (TFO), the video will be embedded with the abstract where it will be freely available. Additional text content will be subject to the standard JMM copyright terms, and of course authors also have the option to make their whole submission available via Open Access.

Transcripts and Accessibility

Once the final version of the video has been received, this will be sent to a third-party provider to provide a full transcript, captions, and an audio-described version of the video to maximise accessibility.

  1. Full Transcript – this is a time-stamped text file which included the captions and the transcription of the audio and subtitles from the video.
  2. Captions – Captions are different from Subtitles in that they include descriptions of noises in the video, e.g. [music playing]. The Captions display on the bottom centre of the video, but are also set up to automatically move to a different location on the screen if the video has subtitles and the Captions would interfere with these.
  3. Audio-Described version of the video – based on the full transcript, synthesised speech is used to narrate the video for visually impaired users. We have chosen to have a specific version of the video with the audio description included, which meant that the user can listen to the video and the narration simultaneously and the video will pause when necessary to allow the narration time to describe what is happening when there were not sufficient gaps in the soundtrack.

All of the above items are full editable and authors are given a proof to check and amend if necessary before the files are finalised for publication.

Publication

Authors will be sent a final proof of the hard-copy version of their paper to check. Transcripts and Video reference lists will be published as supplemental material to the article.

JMM has its own Vimeo channel to host the Captioned and Audio-described versions of the videos, and links to these are provided from the online version of the article. As these play in the Vimeo player it is possible for users to turn Captions on or off, and also to select the resolution they wish to watch the video at.

Authors are invited to submit a blog about their research. We also used still images of the title screen from each film for sharing on social media when promoting the video articles. Videos are promoted via the journal’s Twitter and Facebook feeds. We recommend that authors also promote their research through their own networks and social media accounts.

This post is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, unless otherwise stated. Third party materials remain the copyright of the original rightsholder.

Anne Foy

Anne Foy

Anne Foy, PhD, is Publishing Director of Westburn Publishers Ltd. Westburn Publishers is the owner of Journal of Marketing Management, and is responsible for the editorial process and policy of the Journal.

Disclaimer: Any views expressed in this posting are the views of the Author(s), and are not necessarily the views of the JMM Editors, Westburn Publishers Ltd. or Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.