Academic Paper Readability

It’s impossible to argue meaningfully without an example (for a field with tens of thousands of papers a year), but the purpose of academic papers is to convince experts of the ideas. If the paper is clear enough for an expert, it is serving its intended purpose. People are free to write blog posts and summarize papers on YouTube in a simplified way but it’s not compatible with technical writing and will likely get the paper rejected if it is done there. Journalists should consult with experts n

Tell HN: When submitting scientific research it would be very helpful to consider that some people do not readily understand the abstract and the importance of the findings. A brief description in laymen's terms would be appreciated.

That's normal, most papers are written unnecessarily complex, likely to make them appear more impressive than they actually are. Many blog posts that contain just as much information as papers, but presented in a much more intelligible way.

I couldn't follow this. I'm usually capable of following technical papers. The jargon was thick as a jungle, it seems auto-generated. Use plainer language next time, please.

This is a general problem in many technical fields.People in a technical field, learn to "chunk" complex phrases. Their natural communication style becomes complex. Which makes them hard to understand to those outside of the field. If they want to be understood, the solution isn't to try to educate the world. It is to educate themselves. To learn how to write simply and directly.Depending on the readability test used, the section up to "Introduction" - which is sup

Why aren't all scientific papers written this simply?

That's fascinating; thank you for that. I often find academic papers are too densely written to me to read, but the authors of that paper have gone out of their way to describe everything in a straightforward manner.

Scientific papers aren't written for you, the layman. They are written specifically for scientists in that particular field. I'm a PhD student, and never have I read a paper with wording that I would describe as "convoluted."

Papers like this are so terse.I understand the need to use correct verbiage; but to the layman, this is incomprehensible.

Agree, the author really needs to mention reading good academic papers