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The target audience point is fair. There are basic concepts that I don't bother defining in any paper I write, and I'm sure there are people who would make the
by mycologos 3y ago
The target audience point is fair. There are basic concepts that I don't bother defining in any paper I write, and I'm sure there are people who would make the same argument about them that I'm making here. But I'm not suggesting writing everything like "An Extremely Gentle And Slow Introduction to X, With Lots of Reassurances That You Can Do It".
The question probably comes down to how accessible a paper should be. Personally, I think a reasonable bar is something like: a third-year PhD student in your broad area should be able to skim the paper and say a couple of paragraphs about what's happening and why it matters, and upon reading the paper more closely, present it in a seminar and defend it at least a couple of questions deep. IMO, most papers are not at this level, and are instead pitched at actual experts.
I think my point (and TFA's point as well) is that going from an experts-only paper to a seminar-ready one is actually not a ton of text. It might increase a paper's length by 5%. It's not about making everything longer, but adding enough context and signposting that the story can be followed at multiple levels, from the 5-minute pitch you'd get at a poster session to the every-detail one the author has. So I think we can have a paper that both the grad students and experts like.
I think doing this takes some skill and effort, which is well within the reach of most of the people who can write these papers, but way less effort is expended on this non-technical aspect.
- kd5bjo 3y agoI’ve started to keep a collection of readable papers (mostly engineering/experimental science, but a little bit of more theoretical work as well) that cover what I consider to be pretty foundational concepts, because additional citations are ~free and it at least gives an entry point for readers that are on the edge of the target audience. As a consequence, I’ve read papers that were written anywhere from the late 19th century to just a year or two ago. In my experience, the older papers tend to be more understandable at a conceptual level but more modern ones tend to be more precise with the details. There is likely some survivorship bias here, though, as there has been more time for the worst of the old papers to be forgotten. The writing style has also changed a lot— The older papers present things in a much more narrative way, and it can be a challenge to bring the kind of motivational context that allows into a paper that would feel at home in a modern publication.