Clarity Across the Disciplines

Hartley, James; Sotto, Éric; Fox, Claire L.

doi:10.1177/1075547004270164

Cited by 28 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…One common readability metric is the Flesch Reading Ease score (Flesch, 1948). Flesch found scientific journals to be "very difficult" to read, a finding that has been corroborated frequently and (Weeks & Wallace, 2002) and a geology journal (Hartley, Sotto, & Fox, 2004). Based on the Flesch score and other formulas, it is estimated that only about 5% of the US population can read and understand these medical journals.…”

Section: Evaluating Clarity In Science Communicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…: (1) Short words that can be hard to understand (e.g., "average" vs. "mean"); (2) Short yet confusing sentences (e.g., "These parts store iron ions cells bind") (3) Non-textual features such as numbers and formulas, (4) The text's overall audience appeal, cultural appropriateness, tone, etc. ; and, most importantly for this study, (5) The reader's background knowledge of the topic being discussed, and in particular, the reader's familiarity with the vocabulary used (e.g., "Plants fix carbon") (Hartley et al, 2004;Stableford & Mettger, 2007).…”

Section: Evaluating Clarity In Science Communicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Measuring mumbo jumbo: A preliminary quantification of the use of jargon in science communication

Sharon

Baram‐Tsabari

2013

Public Underst Sci

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Leaders of the scientific community encourage scientists to learn effective science communication, including honing the skill to discuss science with little professional jargon. However, avoiding jargon is not trivial for scientists for several reasons, and this demands special attention in teaching and evaluation. Despite this, no standard measurement for the use of scientific jargon in speech has been developed to date. Here a standard yardstick for the use of scientific jargon in spoken texts, using a computational linguistics approach, is proposed. Analyzed transcripts included academic speech, scientific TEDTalks, and communication about the discovery of a Higgs-like boson at CERN. Findings suggest that scientists use less jargon in communication with a general audience than in communication with peers, but not always less obscure jargon. These findings may lay the groundwork for evaluating the use of jargon.

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Section: Evaluating Clarity In Science Communicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Evaluating Clarity In Science Communicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring mumbo jumbo: A preliminary quantification of the use of jargon in science communication

Sharon

Baram‐Tsabari

2013

Public Underst Sci

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“…1; for another example of this pattern, see Breeze 2016). The mean readability score for both text types in all journals was around 20-25, well below 50, the threshold proposed to delineate accessibility by nonspecialists (Hartley et al 2004;Kirkpatrick et al 2017). This low readability is not surprising, given that guidelines provided to authors for writing summaries do not emphasize characteristics that influence readability, such as sentence length or complexity (Supporting Information Table S1).…”

mentioning

confidence: 89%

“…For each journal we then analyzed the summaries and abstracts published in 2020 and 2021. We quantified readability using the Flesh Reading Ease (FRE) index which uses the length of words and sentences to calculate the ease of reading, with scores ranging from 0 to 100 with a score of 50 or greater recommended to enable access by nonspecialists (Hartley et al 2004; Kirkpatrick et al 2017). We also measured jargon by applying the De‐Jargonizer (Rakedzon et al 2017) which uses a corpus of over 90 million words and identifies “jargon” words rarely encountered by a nonsubject specialist, with a level of 2–5% unfamiliar jargon proposed to be required for accurate comprehension (Rakedzon et al 2017 and references therein).…”

Section: Are Summaries More Accessible Than Abstracts?mentioning

confidence: 99%

How to write lay summaries of research articles for wider accessibility

Falkenberg,

Joyce,

Soranno

2024

Limnol Oceanogr Letters

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Scientific writing can be hard for nonspecialists to understand. Journals are trying to make findings more accessible by asking authors to write "lay summaries." These texts are intended to be more widely understood than abstracts. We show, however, that they are not more accessible due to high jargon and low readability scores of the writing. We offer tips to authors, as well as publishers and editors, for how to improve in this area. Our recommendations aim to make the summaries more easily understood by a wider range of people.Journal articles are the key means for communicating scientific research. In the last century, science has become increasingly specialized such that journals commonly target researchers from ever narrower sub-disciplines. However, even in specialist journals, the research published can be relevant to scientists from other disciplines and to nonscientists including policymakers, managers, educators, and the general public (Knight 2003). Unfortunately, such broad audiences do not always find traditional articles easily accessible because they are written using an academic style that includes low readability of text and confusing jargon (Falkenberg and Tubb 2017).An approach to enhance the accessibility of articles by broader audiences is the inclusion of "lay summaries" (hereafter referred to as summaries) alongside traditional abstracts. Summaries typically describe the issue studied in the paper, the research gap that was addressed, the key conclusion that addresses this gap written in general terms, and highlights the significance of the work with the goal of facilitating communication of the most important contribution of each manuscript across disciplines (e.g., L&O Letters https://aslopubs.

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“…For example, a recent quantitative study found a higher number of hedge words (probably, possibly, etc .) in philosophy compared to other disciplines, and these words hinder comprehension (Hartley, Sotto, and Fox, 2004). An appropriate mood can help the reader grasp the main lines of an argument better.…”

Section: Why Mood Matters For Philosophizingmentioning

confidence: 99%

In the Mood: Why Vibes Matter in Reading and Writing Philosophy

Cruz¹

2023

Roy. Inst. Philos. Suppl.

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Philosophers often write in a particular mood; their work is playful, strident, strenuous, or nostalgic. On the face of it, these moods contribute little to a philosophical argument and are merely incidental. However, I will argue that the cognitive science of moods and emotions offers us reasons to suspect that mood is relevant for philosophical texts. I use examples from Friedrich Nietzsche and Rudolph Carnap to illustrate the role moods play in their arguments. As readers and writers of philosophical texts, we do well to attend to mood.

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Clarity Across the Disciplines

Cited by 28 publications

References 27 publications

Measuring mumbo jumbo: A preliminary quantification of the use of jargon in science communication

Measuring mumbo jumbo: A preliminary quantification of the use of jargon in science communication

How to write lay summaries of research articles for wider accessibility

In the Mood: Why Vibes Matter in Reading and Writing Philosophy

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