I can only talk about computer science. The research papers in the past would probably not be able to get published in prestigious journals today. They'd need t

I can only talk about computer science. The research papers in the past would probably not be able to get published in prestigious journals today. They'd need to get expanded from sketchy 8 page papers into very rigorous 25 page papers. I think we've overshot though. With papers in the modern style you need to wade through a lot of cruft to get to the key idea. As for the quality of the ideas...the older papers do win. I think that's because there was more low hanging fruit, but some part of it may be due to an incentive structure that rewards safe bets.