Say what? More jargon in a paper means fewer scientists will read it, study finds
Cave scientist Alejandro Martinez found that researchers who lean too hard on jargon also risk alienating their peers in the same field some of whom may not even agree on what those terms mean in the first place.
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Posted: Apr 13, 2021 6:17 PM ET | Last Updated: April 13
An archaeologist looks at newly-discovered cave paintings in Khao Sam Roi Yot national park in the coastal Prachuap Khiri Khan province in Thailand, on Sept. 10, 2020.(Lillian Suwanrumpha/AFP via Getty Images)
Are you confused by scientific jargon? So are scientists
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Are You Confused by Scientific Jargon? So Are Scientists
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Apr. 6, 2021 , 7:01 PM
If you want your work to be highly cited, here’s one simple tip that might help: Steer clear of discipline-specific jargon in the title and abstract. That’s the conclusion of a new study of roughly 20,000 published papers about cave science, a multidisciplinary field that includes researchers who study the biology, geology, paleontology, and anthropology of caves. The most highly cited papers didn’t use any terms specific to cave science in the title and kept jargon to less than 2% of the text in the abstract; jargon-heavy papers were cited far less often.
“I was really, really interested in what the study did,” says Nandita Basu, an associate professor at the University of Waterloo who serves as an editor-in-chief at the