5 ms·

I don't read many academic papers, but are the summaries normally 3 pages alone? It reminded me of this YouTube video: https://youtu.be/vtIzMaLkCaM https://you

I don't read many academic papers, but are the summaries normally 3 pages alone? It reminded me of this YouTube video: https://youtu.be/vtIzMaLkCaM https://youtu.be/vtIzMaLkCaM The instructor in the video covers why academics struggle getting published because they're used to writing for individuals who are paid(E.g TAs & Profs) to read what they wrote.

etiam 4y ago
I don't think the initial three pages are to be viewed as article summary in this case, but rather as background to the issue at hand. The post appears to be something akin to a (very?) late draft, and of a book chapter rather than a journal article. I expect there will be an "abstract" published somewhere, but this isn't where.
jll29 4y ago
Abstracts should be less than a page in any discipline (at least the ones I've encountered - computer science, maths, geography, linguistics, Eng. lit...). Good "unstructured" (section-less) abstracts are about three paragraphs long and follow the structucture "what is the problem?" - "What is the state of the art regarding solution proposals?" - "Shortcomings of these that motivated this paper" - "What is proposed here as an alternative?" - [What are the key results?]. People are divided as to whether results should go into the abstract: some say the abstract should be a teaser that entices people to read the paper, others say the abstract should be a self-contained distillation of the paper itself. Structured abstracts are often nearly a page (common in the life sciences): they have explicit section headings like "Method", "Data", "Findings" etc., which is a great idea and should be embraced in all empirical disciplines at least, IMHO.
jraph 4y ago
This video is fantastic. I recommend it. However, that's not my take at all. My take for this video at the time I watched it was that as students we are used to write for teachers who are paid to grade us, and may take bad habits we can get away with as a consequence, but that will not be enough the day we write for people who are not forced to read what we write. But again, teachers won't expect a journal article written with suspense and stuff when they read your dissertation. Academic writing is simply not at all the same exercise as journalism. Expectations are different, sometimes opposite. There's no reason a scientist who write good papers will write good articles, and vice versa. Writing well will help a lot in both cases but that's not sufficient. Many researchers don't write that well, but if your paper is not comprehensible, it will be rejected. As a researcher, you also want your research to be worthwhile usually, that's a motivation to write better. Also, the point of a paper is to report some discovery. People reading your papers are your reviewers (who are not paid for this, it's just extra work for them usually!), and people who need to understand your work. They probably won't read your paper linearly, they will mine it for information. Because of this, your paper should have a boring structure. To allow fast information seeking. In any case, they are not there to entertain themselves, though a well written paper can be entertaining and that's way better in my opinion, but it's not the point. Your mainstream journal article should, however, be as enjoyable and entertaining as possible to read otherwise it won't be read by many people (especially if they are only vaguely interested in the topic of your article), or worse, the journal will not be bought at all if all the articles are dull. At least, that's what the lecturer in this video is saying.
tgv 4y ago
This article is more of a literature overview, and it's a book chapter (if I'm not mistaken). The "normal" you refer to is probably an empirical study defending a theory in a journal. That's a different format. First, because there's a clear goal that can be summarized (my theory is right!), and second, because journals give you a much more limited number of pages.

etiam 4y ago

I don't think the initial three pages are to be viewed as article summary in this case, but rather as background to the issue at hand. The post appears to be something akin to a (very?) late draft, and of a book chapter rather than a journal article. I expect there will be an "abstract" published somewhere, but this isn't where.

jll29 4y ago

Abstracts should be less than a page in any discipline (at least the ones I've encountered - computer science, maths, geography, linguistics, Eng. lit...). Good "unstructured" (section-less) abstracts are about three paragraphs long and follow the structucture "what is the problem?" - "What is the state of the art regarding solution proposals?" - "Shortcomings of these that motivated this paper" - "What is proposed here as an alternative?" - [What are the key results?]. People are divided as to whether results should go into the abstract: some say the abstract should be a teaser that entices people to read the paper, others say the abstract should be a self-contained distillation of the paper itself. Structured abstracts are often nearly a page (common in the life sciences): they have explicit section headings like "Method", "Data", "Findings" etc., which is a great idea and should be embraced in all empirical disciplines at least, IMHO.

jraph 4y ago

This video is fantastic. I recommend it. However, that's not my take at all. My take for this video at the time I watched it was that as students we are used to write for teachers who are paid to grade us, and may take bad habits we can get away with as a consequence, but that will not be enough the day we write for people who are not forced to read what we write. But again, teachers won't expect a journal article written with suspense and stuff when they read your dissertation. Academic writing is simply not at all the same exercise as journalism. Expectations are different, sometimes opposite. There's no reason a scientist who write good papers will write good articles, and vice versa. Writing well will help a lot in both cases but that's not sufficient. Many researchers don't write that well, but if your paper is not comprehensible, it will be rejected. As a researcher, you also want your research to be worthwhile usually, that's a motivation to write better. Also, the point of a paper is to report some discovery. People reading your papers are your reviewers (who are not paid for this, it's just extra work for them usually!), and people who need to understand your work. They probably won't read your paper linearly, they will mine it for information. Because of this, your paper should have a boring structure. To allow fast information seeking. In any case, they are not there to entertain themselves, though a well written paper can be entertaining and that's way better in my opinion, but it's not the point. Your mainstream journal article should, however, be as enjoyable and entertaining as possible to read otherwise it won't be read by many people (especially if they are only vaguely interested in the topic of your article), or worse, the journal will not be bought at all if all the articles are dull. At least, that's what the lecturer in this video is saying.

tgv 4y ago

This article is more of a literature overview, and it's a book chapter (if I'm not mistaken). The "normal" you refer to is probably an empirical study defending a theory in a journal. That's a different format. First, because there's a clear goal that can be summarized (my theory is right!), and second, because journals give you a much more limited number of pages.