Need a citation? Then make your paper harder to read

Giant letters scattered and stacked up along a building to illustrate Sloppy writing, sloppy science

Sloppy writing is not a sign of sloppy science

Accurate reporting of results is important, but meaning is rarely distorted by orthographic or grammatical slips, says Adrian Furnham

By Adrian Furnham

2 February

Scientific abstracts ‘getting harder to read’

Analysis of more than 700,000 biomedical texts reveals growing use of jargon

By Holly Else

31 March

Person pushing overloaded shopping trolley

Scientists: ignore the rules on writing to get citations

A study suggests that short and clear abstracts are associated with lower than expected citations

By Holly Else

28 May

To write better, cut the clutter

Too many adjectives and adverbs spoil academic broth, scholar argues

By Paul Jump

29 August

Reader's comments (1)

#1 Submitted by timothy... on February 27, 2022 - 4:48pm

Not all that new. There is a nice and simple paper by K. Eriksson, The nonsense math effect, Judgment and decision making 7.6 (2012): 746. Been using it with grad students for years. http://www.decisionsciencenews.com/sjdm/journal.sjdm.org/12/12810/jdm12810.pdf

Need a citation? Then make your paper harder to read

Study analysing readability and citations suggests academics may have an incentive to keep their abstracts complex

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Sloppy writing is not a sign of sloppy science

Scientific abstracts ‘getting harder to read’

Scientists: ignore the rules on writing to get citations

To write better, cut the clutter

Reader's comments (1)

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Need a citation? Then make your paper harder to read

Study analysing readability and citations suggests academics may have an incentive to keep their abstracts complex

Register to continue

Subscribe

Related articles

Sloppy writing is not a sign of sloppy science

Scientific abstracts ‘getting harder to read’

Scientists: ignore the rules on writing to get citations

To write better, cut the clutter

Reader's comments (1)

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