3 ms·

why do they have to write papers in a way that the readers have to chewing on them.

theyinwhy 3y ago
I guess it's more about the reader's lack of knowledge.
tnecniv 3y ago
They shouldn’t. It makes papers less accessible which means they’re less impactful. That said, a lot of academics are good at their discipline and bad at writing.
- volemo 3y ago
  Not necessarily. I agree, being a smart scientist doesn’t make one a good writer , however, most of the times the inaccessibility of a text comes from a high presumed knowledge of the reader. But if you dial the presumption down, then the readers versed in the field would have to drag through the text full of explanations they already know. And, excuse my assumption, most relevant citations come from the people in the field.
- TillE 3y ago
  Every field has jargon and assumed knowledge. If you're writing a computer science paper, you're not going to start by teaching the reader grade school math.
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
  A big problem is prior knowledge. Most papers incrementally increase knowledge so by necessity they have to assume the reader knows it, lest they find themselves repeating it alot. How far back are you expected to go to help your audience understand? The answer in most of academia is: not at all. You're expected to have learnt everything in the field up to that point. Academia is for academics and generally doesn't care about impact outside of academia, who seldom understand it anyway (because of its academic nature).
wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
same reason we have to wear a suit to a funeral. culture.
latency-guy2 3y ago
Papers are designed to be read by a specific audience of highly technical, skilled people in a topic where if it is original research, must be very explicit, and prove and disprove multiple things simultaneously. Of course, standards vary significantly institution to institution and even person to person, and highly technical, skilled people are not indicative of full capability of reading, let alone reviewing the topic, doubly so when it is original research.
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
  Let me translate this for the layman: papers are written using terms and notation that only makes sense if you've gone through the the process of learning their derivation from first principles in the narrow field in which they apply. It has the odd effect of making this stuff comprehensible only to those that essentially already know what it is, and possibly a few people academically adjacent to those people. Other people can decipher it, after long and arduous labor, but it essentially requires rediscovering the path that brought it about, knowing what the outcome will be. In that sense these papers are less useful than they seem. Academia is a little like religion: to outsiders the language and rituals make little sense, only those indoctrinated in its tenets can achieve enlightenment.
  - danbruc 3y ago
    I think this completely misses the point. A paper presents one new idea and builds on top of many existing ideas and generally assumes that the reader is familiar with all the existing ideas. And that is completely reasonable, the purpose of a paper is to concisely present the new idea, not to be a textbook that teaches you the entire field from the ground up. That said, conveying an idea in an easily understandable way is hard and some authors will do better or worse than others. Also papers will usually not purely present the new idea but provide some context so that the reader only needs to be familiar with the topic up to the context but the amount of context given will vary a lot between papers.
    - dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
LAC-Tech 3y ago
I think the chances of a human being existing who knows enough about a specific topic that they can write a paper about it, and who is also an exceptionally clear writer, is pretty low. So if you want the knowledge, you go in knowing this. If you don't want the knowledge that much, wait until it becomes a popular topic and people make books or blogs about it.
Jensson 3y ago
Because you can't avoid that in many cases. Important topics that are read by many people get rewritten into textbooks that are very easy to read compared to the original papers, but people complain a ton about those textbooks as well so there is no way to placate people like you here, no matter how hard they try people demand them to try harder.
abdullahkhalids 3y ago
The trite reasons: 1. Journals have length limits. And readers don't read long papers at all. 2. Many academics have not worked hard enough to attain excellent writing skills - they were too busy becoming excellent at their discipline. The most important reason. - Given a clear lucid explanation of new knowledge that no one but you know, is incredibly difficult. Honestly, anyone, who thinks it's easy should take a stab at undertaking a research project and then trying to summarize months or years of work into 6-10 pages.

I guess it's more about the reader's lack of knowledge.

They shouldn’t. It makes papers less accessible which means they’re less impactful. That said, a lot of academics are good at their discipline and bad at writing.

volemo 3y ago
Not necessarily. I agree, being a smart scientist doesn’t make one a good writer , however, most of the times the inaccessibility of a text comes from a high presumed knowledge of the reader. But if you dial the presumption down, then the readers versed in the field would have to drag through the text full of explanations they already know. And, excuse my assumption, most relevant citations come from the people in the field.
TillE 3y ago
Every field has jargon and assumed knowledge. If you're writing a computer science paper, you're not going to start by teaching the reader grade school math.
dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
A big problem is prior knowledge. Most papers incrementally increase knowledge so by necessity they have to assume the reader knows it, lest they find themselves repeating it alot. How far back are you expected to go to help your audience understand? The answer in most of academia is: not at all. You're expected to have learnt everything in the field up to that point. Academia is for academics and generally doesn't care about impact outside of academia, who seldom understand it anyway (because of its academic nature).

wegfawefgawefg 3y ago

same reason we have to wear a suit to a funeral. culture.

latency-guy2 3y ago

Papers are designed to be read by a specific audience of highly technical, skilled people in a topic where if it is original research, must be very explicit, and prove and disprove multiple things simultaneously. Of course, standards vary significantly institution to institution and even person to person, and highly technical, skilled people are not indicative of full capability of reading, let alone reviewing the topic, doubly so when it is original research.

dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
Let me translate this for the layman: papers are written using terms and notation that only makes sense if you've gone through the the process of learning their derivation from first principles in the narrow field in which they apply. It has the odd effect of making this stuff comprehensible only to those that essentially already know what it is, and possibly a few people academically adjacent to those people. Other people can decipher it, after long and arduous labor, but it essentially requires rediscovering the path that brought it about, knowing what the outcome will be. In that sense these papers are less useful than they seem. Academia is a little like religion: to outsiders the language and rituals make little sense, only those indoctrinated in its tenets can achieve enlightenment.
- danbruc 3y ago
  I think this completely misses the point. A paper presents one new idea and builds on top of many existing ideas and generally assumes that the reader is familiar with all the existing ideas. And that is completely reasonable, the purpose of a paper is to concisely present the new idea, not to be a textbook that teaches you the entire field from the ground up. That said, conveying an idea in an easily understandable way is hard and some authors will do better or worse than others. Also papers will usually not purely present the new idea but provide some context so that the reader only needs to be familiar with the topic up to the context but the amount of context given will vary a lot between papers.
  - dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago

LAC-Tech 3y ago

I think the chances of a human being existing who knows enough about a specific topic that they can write a paper about it, and who is also an exceptionally clear writer, is pretty low. So if you want the knowledge, you go in knowing this. If you don't want the knowledge that much, wait until it becomes a popular topic and people make books or blogs about it.

Jensson 3y ago

Because you can't avoid that in many cases. Important topics that are read by many people get rewritten into textbooks that are very easy to read compared to the original papers, but people complain a ton about those textbooks as well so there is no way to placate people like you here, no matter how hard they try people demand them to try harder.

abdullahkhalids 3y ago

The trite reasons: 1. Journals have length limits. And readers don't read long papers at all. 2. Many academics have not worked hard enough to attain excellent writing skills - they were too busy becoming excellent at their discipline. The most important reason. - Given a clear lucid explanation of new knowledge that no one but you know, is incredibly difficult. Honestly, anyone, who thinks it's easy should take a stab at undertaking a research project and then trying to summarize months or years of work into 6-10 pages.