Edit: sibling comments add good perspective to this. While I agree papers should be clearer, and should be accompanied by auxiliary material making the paper e

Edit: sibling comments add good perspective to this. While I agree papers should be clearer, and should be accompanied by auxiliary material making the paper easier to understand and apply, I do not agree academia deliberately encourages papers that are difficult to learn from, or of obfuscation. I have a little experience reviewing and writing papers in computer science, specifically security. As in any field, yes a lot of mentioned but also unmentioned background knowledge may be assumed; and jargon may be used; and it may be written with imperfect style and structure (researchers aren’t professional writers after all, and papers are often written on a harsh deadline). But I don’t think it’s in anyone’s interest, neither the authors nor the community at large, to make the paper inaccessible as a goal and I’ve never perceived this to be happening [1]. Source: have served on many conference PC’s and have been on the receiving end of many reviews, from which I can tell a paper being hard to follow can be grounds for rejection, and a paper being written with clarity and being easy to follow, learn from, reproduce, and build on, is greatly appreciated. [1] with one exception, come to think of it: needless formalism and mathematical notation, by one research group I remember. I got the impression the intention was to impress/intimidate the reader/reviewers and this was not appreciated.