Science is getting harder to read | Nature Index

Science is getting harder to read | Nature Index

Papers are increasingly impenetrable

From obscure acronyms to unnecessary jargon, research papers are getting harder to read – even for scientists. Statisticians analysed the use of acronyms in more than 24 million paper titles and 18 million abstracts and found that the use of acronyms is commonplace and on the rise. Of the roughly 1.1 million acronyms identified, the vast majority (79%) were used fewer than 10 times in the scientific literature. “Scientists love to write these acronyms,” says statistician Adrian Barnett, “but other scientists don’t necessarily pick them up, and they end up hanging around and causing a lot of confusion.”

Nature Index | 5 min read