The readability of scientific texts is decreasing over time

Clarity and accuracy of reporting are fundamental to the scientific process. Readability formulas can estimate how difficult a text is to read. Here, in a corpus consisting of 709,577 abstracts published between 1881 and 2015 from 123 scientific journals, we show that the readability of science is s...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Pontus Plavén-Sigray, Granville James Matheson, Björn Christian Schiffler, William Hedley Thompson
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: eLife Sciences Publications Ltd 2017-09-01
Series:eLife
Subjects:
Online Access:https://elifesciences.org/articles/27725