Specialized terminology reduces the number of citations of scientific papers

Abstract

Words are the building blocks of communicating science. As our understanding of the world progresses, scientific disciplines naturally enrich their specialized vocabulary (jargon). However, in the era of interdisciplinarity, the use of jargon may hinder effective communication among scientists that do not share a common scientific background. The question of how jargon limits the transmission of scientific knowledge has long been debated but rarely addressed quantitatively. We explored the relationship between the use of jargon and citations, using 21 486 articles focusing on cave research, a multidisciplinary field particularly prone to terminological specialization, and where linguistic disagreement among peers is frequent. We demonstrate a significant negative relationship between the proportion of jargon words in the title and abstract and the number of citations a paper receives. Given that these elements are the hook to readers, we urge scientists to restrict jargon to sections of the paper where its use is unavoidable.

Psychological Trauma and Emotional Upheaval as Revealed in Academic Writing: The Case of COVID-19

“…Prior work suggests academic abstracts can reflect the general language patterns of scientist (Markowitz, 2019;Markowitz & Shulman, 2021;Martínez & Mammola, 2021;Plavén-Sigray et al, 2017;Rains et al, 2020). To validate this idea in the current paper, a random sample of 50 arXiv articles and their associated abstracts were extracted.…”

Peer Review in a Generalist Journal

“…Although there has been controversy about which kind of peer review is best, double-blind review has benefits, particularly for those who are not already prominent. Some studies show it helps less experienced scholars, those from less prestigious institutions, women, and those otherwise marginalized to become published, and at least it does not hurt such authors (Garvalov, 2015;Kaji-O'Grady, 2017). For example, in computer science, conferences use both single-and double-blind review, meaning the two processes can be compared.…”

The use of the term ‘limnology’ and its scientometrics consequences for limnologists

“…The long-lasting discussion about the good and bad of scientific jargon remains open (Montgomery, 1989;Nation, 2006;Bullock et al, 2019;Martínez and Mammola, 2021). On the one hand, to achieve clarity in scientific communication, scientists need to develop a specific and unambiguous vocabulary, allowing them to efficiently define and communicate objects and concepts not available in the common language (Hirst, 2003).…”

“…On the other hand, recent bibliometric analyses have stressed the fact that the (ab)use of scientific jargon, acronyms, and other technical terms has increased in recent years (Plavén-Sigray et al, 2017;Barnett and Doubleday, 2020). Such extensive use of jargon may hinder communication not only between scientists and the general public, but also among researchers from different backgrounds and disciplines (Martínez and Mammola, 2021). When reading an hypothetical text such as this one:…”

“…Another difference that we expect is in the number of cited references in each paper: if the field is narrow and with a limited number of papers, the reference list could follow the same trends (Evans, 2008;Bornmann and Mutz, 2015;Fox et al, 2016). As a consequence of reduced visibility and reduced impact to a broader scientific audience for the use of jargon (Martínez and Mammola, 2021), we expect that the number of citations received by papers explicitly mentioning limnology could be lower than those of similar papers, and that such difference could increase through time.…”