Publishing Videos and Podcasts on Canal-U
Managed by the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme and supported by the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research, Canal-U is open to all institutions wishing to distribute their scientific audiovisual productions: universities, research organisations, laboratories, foundations, schools and cultural institutions.
Each institution can create a dedicated channel and organise its content freely according to its editorial policy. The platform enables the distribution of conferences, symposia, interviews, lectures, documentaries and podcasts.
Content distributed on the platform
Canal-U offers contributing institutions a plateform to distribute scientific audiovisual resources, in video or podcast format, including:
- conferences, symposia and seminars
- lectures, recorded teaching sessions and masterclasses
- interviews with researchers and academics
- scientific documentaries and reports
- lecture series and scientific events
Content may be broadcast live or made available on replay, and organised into collections or thematic dossiers.
Resources must meet standards of scientific quality and be accompanied by documentation work (title, abstract, speakers, keywords) enabling indexing, discoverability and reuse.
Distributing, structuring and showcasing content
Canal-U provides an environment designed to meet the needs of scientific audiovisual production. Resources can be distributed by contributing institutions and enriched with features such as chaptering, subtitles, transcripts and related documents in order to facilitate their use and circulation.
Each published resource is assigned a DOI (Digital Object Identifier), ensuring reliable citation and the long-term preservation of its metadata. Content is structured, indexed and linked to speakers and thematic areas, enhancing visibility and reuse across the higher education and research ecosystem.
Who is Canal-U made for?
Canal-U is intended for all institutions involved in the production and dissemination of knowledge: universities, higher education institutions, research organisations, laboratories, schools, foundations and cultural institutions connected to research.
The platform is open to all disciplines and welcomes productions from a wide range of contexts – academic research, teaching and public engagement with science – provided they contribute to the dissemination of knowledge.
Why joining Canal-U?
Joining Canal-U enables institutions to distribute their resources within an environment dedicated to the promotion of research and open science.
The platform offers:
- free and open-access distribution
- national and international visibility
- a dedicated space for showcasing audiovisual productions
- tools for structuring and enriching content
- sustainable indexing through metadata and DOIs
Canal-U therefore contributes to the development of a shared scientific audiovisual heritage.
Creating a Canal-U channel
Creating a Canal-U channel – enabling institutions to distribute all their resources, live or on replay, and to sustainably showcase their scientific audiovisual productions – can be requested by contacting the platform team at webmestre@canal-u.tv.
Following initial contact, support is provided to define distribution arrangements, structure the channel and integrate the first resources. Once the channel is created, the contributing institution can manage its content independently.
