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Hi David, Danny,
You two have pretty much covered it. I would only add that yes (to David), science communication (scicomm) is a very robust and active field, and also that it isn’t limited to just teaching researchers how to write better (although that is often the primary focus---there are, in fact, many different kinds of people involved working on different goals with different tools). In a way, I think it’s also a lot like the open scholarship debate---very diverse, lots of different actors, very important, and zero funding (😊). And it’s probably multiple times larger than the open community---there are scicomm people everywhere, largely ununified, working in a field that is large undefined.
With regard to the complexity of writing, I really wish this subject would get more attention. The argument goes that science is complex and requires precise writing to communicate. Unfortunately, precision today is generally taken to mean dense and indecipherable prose---the denser the better. The reality is that some of the most influential science in history has been written in a way that is utterly readable---take Darwin, for instance (although, a tragic caveat here is that Darwin’s work was so readable that it was mis-applied by the masses and resulted in the eugenics craze of the early 1900s and was used to buttress racist philosophies).
To illustrate how much science writing has changed, here’s a passage from Scott Montgomery’s presentation at our (SCI’s) 2013 conference on Science and Journals---http://sciencecommunication.institute/journals-science-conference/ (Scott’s full presentation is under the “Language” tab; there are also lots of other great presentations in this archive):
“So to summarize the trends in these three samples,” he writes, “as indicative of scientific discourse as a whole—and I would wager that an overwhelming majority of researchers would agree to this—we see that this discourse has become progressively:
Given these trends, it would appear there is but little chance that journal science will become more accessible to the public, or even to scientists from other fields.
What all this tells us, finally, is that the transfer of findings from the journal literature to the public involves not just re-phrasing and selection, but an act of actual translation—remembering that translation always involves interpretation and re-writing. People able to do this competently, without inaccuracies or misleading exaggerations, can not be found at your local market or grocery store. Nor do a great many of them exist in media centers. They are rare and their value should be recognized.”
Best,
Glenn
Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osi2016-25/96495BAE-A9F6-42E5-9D0E-E1C68F676704%40dannykingsley.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osi2016-25/016c01d5a871%2458275080%240875f180%24%40nationalscience.org.
Hi Joe,
Maybe----I guess it depends on whether you think this trend toward complex writing is permanent, necessary, a good thing, or even relevant (given that the data is also critically important). I do think that even in your nautilus model, we won’t extract maximum value from universal OA if all we’re doing is making articles free to read/reuse. For one, what good is open information if you don’t understand it? Also, why should we only try to connect some of the dots?---if we hold the belief that most people are going to have zero interest in and/or need for information at the center of the nautilus, we are basically taking the position that we know where and how the next great breakthroughs will happen.
Fundamentally, though, I agree that we need to pause and ask ourselves why we’re doing this, as you’ve done in your article. Where are the needs and the shortcomings? What can be gained by improving communication between disciplines on specific challenges (say, pancreatic cancer research)? What kinds of improved communication are needed (is it clearer writing, or data standards?; better peer-to-peer communication or better research-to-policymaker writing?; on the SCI website we break scicomm into various purposes and categories). There are times when it seems we’re living out an “Emperor’s New Clothes” scenario: “My what a lovely paper you’ve written---so complicated and filled with charts that seem meaningful,” we say, when in fact we’re too embarrassed to admit that we actually don’t have the foggiest idea what the author is saying.
> With regard to the complexity of writing, I really wish this subject would get
> more attention. The argument goes that science is complex and requires
> precise writing to communicate.
That’s definitely one argument, but it’s not the only one. Another argument is that sometimes the science/scholarship being described in an article is irreducibly complex in itself, and can’t be simplified without a loss of content.
Another argument is that sometimes the science/scholarship being described can’t be understood without background education that can’t be provided within the context of an article describing a study.
None of this isn’t to say that science/scholarship can’t or shouldn’t be written as clearly as possible, of course, and of course there are some kinds of science/scholarship that can effectively be simplified and made more accessible to the lay reader. But I think it’s dangerous to assume that all science/scholarship always can be (without a loss of content).
---
Rick Anderson
Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication
Marriott Library, University of Utah
Desk: (801) 587-9989
Cell: (801) 721-1687
From:
<osi20...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Date: Sunday, December 1, 2019 at 11:01 AM
To: 'Danny Kingsley' <da...@dannykingsley.com>, David Wojick <dwo...@craigellachie.us>
Cc: "osi20...@googlegroups.com" <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: The science communication dilemma
Hi David, Danny,
You two have pretty much covered it. I would only add that yes (to David), science communication (scicomm) is a very robust and active field, and also that it isn’t limited to just teaching researchers how to write better (although that is often the primary focus---there are, in fact, many different kinds of people involved working on different goals with different tools). In a way, I think it’s also a lot like the open scholarship debate---very diverse, lots of different actors, very important, and zero funding (😊). And it’s probably multiple times larger than the open community---there are scicomm people everywhere, largely ununified, working in a field that is large undefined.
With regard to the complexity of writing, I really wish this subject would get more attention. The argument goes that science is complex and requires precise writing to communicate. Unfortunately, precision today is generally taken to mean dense and indecipherable prose---the denser the better. The reality is that some of the most influential science in history has been written in a way that is utterly readable---take Darwin, for instance (although, a tragic caveat here is that Darwin’s work was so readable that it was mis-applied by the masses and resulted in the eugenics craze of the early 1900s and was used to buttress racist philosophies).
To illustrate how much science writing has changed, here’s a passage from Scott Montgomery’s presentation at our (SCI’s) 2013 conference on Science and Journals---http://sciencecommunication.institute/journals-science-conference/ (Scott’s full presentation is under the “Language” tab; there are also lots of other great presentations in this archive):
1. From the Geological Society of America Bulletin, March 1955. Ernst Cloos---Experimental Analysis of Fracture Patterns: “The importance of fractures can hardly be exaggerated. Most likely, man could not live if rocks were not fractured. The loosening of rocks, formation of soil, and erosion would become next to impossible…”
2. From the March 1985 issue. Joseph Walder and Bernard Hallet---A theoretical model of the fracture of rock during freezing: “The breakdown of rocks by freezing, or frost cracking, has been a subject of great interest to geomorphologists for many years. Frost action has been considered to be of paramount importance in the development of landscapes…(Refs).” Scott notes here that “A single point to make—among many others—is how the total potential audience addressed has been reduced from all of humanity (in the first example) to geomorphologists, who represent a single branch of the geological sciences.”
3. From the September 2013 issue. Andrea Festa, Vildirim Dilek, Guilia Codegone, Simona Cavgna, and Gian Pini---Structural Anatomy of the Ligurian accretionary wedge, and evolution of superposed mélanges: “The shape and growth of the frontal wedge of modern accretionary complexes repeatedly change to maintain the dynamic equilibrium in the wedge through alternating tectonic and sedimentary (i.e., gravitational) activities (9 Refs).” Writes Scott, “In this case, I would draw your attention to two things in particular, again among many others that could be discussed. First, the specialized vocabulary (jargon, we might say) of the first two lines determines instantly who may enter here and who would be wasting their time in an attempt to do so. If you don’t know what the wedge of an accretionary complex is, you are not welcome here. But also note the authorship of this article. It is fully international. Affiliations of the authors include universities in Italy, Spain, and China. The journal, in other words, may be named the Geological Society of America Bulletin, but it is fully global in the span of its contributors and their subjects.
“So to summarize the trends in these three samples,” he writes, “as indicative of scientific discourse as a whole—and I would wager that an overwhelming majority of researchers would agree to this—we see that this discourse has become progressively:
· more stylized, specialist
· less open to the kind of relaxed, colloquial, and literary touches seen in the first example.
· greatly dependent on jargon to carry the weight of meaning.
Given these trends, it would appear there is but little chance that journal science will become more accessible to the public, or even to scientists from other fields.
What all this tells us, finally, is that the transfer of findings from the journal literature to the public involves not just re-phrasing and selection, but an act of actual translation—remembering that translation always involves interpretation and re-writing. People able to do this competently, without inaccuracies or misleading exaggerations, can not be found at your local market or grocery store. Nor do a great many of them exist in media centers. They are rare and their value should be recognized.”
4. And finally, from today. A.K. Abdel-Fattah, K.Y. Kim, M.S. Fnais (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, South Korea), “Slip distribution model of two small-sized inland earthquakes and its tectonic implication in north-eastern desert of Egypt”; Journal of African Earth Sciences. “Seismicity of Egypt is attributed to the relative tectonic motion between African, Arabian, and Eurasian plates…The identification of active fault planes in these seismogenic zones is essential for the potential seismic hazard that may carry on the closed urban cities.” “In this final passage,” writes Scott, “we see something quite different than what we’ve been discussing. Most of the passage is in perfect good, comprehensible English. But then we encounter the final few phrases, which leave us puzzling. How did this get past the editors? In fact, the journal’s editors include geoscientists from the U.S. and other Anglophone nations. The fact is that a sizeable number of journals have begun to publish articles with non-standard English—meaning non-Anglo-American (the standard most widely adopted and followed by the highest prestige journals like Nature and Science). The degree to which this might expand in the future is difficult to discern. The reality of World Englishes, meaning varieties of English that have developed around the world through adaptation to different cultural-linguistic settings (e.g. Nigerian English, Hong Kong English, Jamaican English, Indian English, etc.) may well dictate that such flexibility will have to grow. We will have to wait and see. “
To view this discussion on the web visit
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To be clear (which I guess is the whole point here), I’m not necessarily saying that brain surgeons should be able to write like Toni Morrison---not that anyone could, even with a lifetime of training). I also think that’s a misdirection of resources, and unrealistic to boot. I’m saying that the entire science writing enterprise has fallen under the spell of complexity----that any paper not conforming to a certain style won’t be taken seriously. I mean, there’s a reason why all journal papers kinda’ sound alike. It isn’t because all PhD students forgot how to write: it’s that they’ve all been taught that “serious” writing looks a certain way, and “readable” ain’t it. If we can escape from these expectations (requirements?), we might begin to see a lot more creativity and diversity of scientific expression, which might over time lead to new and better norms and best practices.
Best,
Glenn
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osi2016-25/01a201d5a895%2483602f50%248a208df0%24%40nationalscience.org.
Sounds like what you’re proposing is a sort of Flesch-Kinkaid reading level measurement specifically for science literature? For lots of complex materials written for the general public (e.g., medical consent forms), the goal is to go no higher on the F-K scale than about the 8th grade level.
http://www.readabilityformulas.com/flesch-grade-level-readability-formula.php
From: osi20...@googlegroups.com <osi20...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of David Wojick
Sent: Sunday, December 1, 2019 3:01 PM
To: Danny Kingsley <da...@dannykingsley.com>
Cc: osi20...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: The science communication dilemma
I do not know what "dumbing down" means but here is what we did and found. Science uses a great many technical terms, because it is talking about things that are not talked about in ordinary language. We catalogued the technical terms taught at each learning level, from first grade through undergrad college. There are thousands.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osi2016-25/33F9F86B-D023-4407-90B2-9D5DB6D3F55D%40craigellachie.us.
Margaret Winker, MD
Trustee, WAME
***
@WAMedEditors
-Views are my own.
This undercuts one argument for universal OA, making scientific literature available to a wide public audience. I wrote about David's general point
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osi2016-25/01ae01d5a896%24e7aa34f0%24b6fe9ed0%24%40nationalscience.org.
Off-list, an OSIer with expert-level geology chops has called bulls**t on the examples I emailed earlier---the earliest text was apparently taken from a conference presentation, and the later texts reflect new concepts in geology that weren’t present in 1955. So the trend line toward complexity in this case might be explained away.
Therefore, never mind.
Take a look at this study instead, showing the increase in F-K score and sentence length over time (across disciplines): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5584989/
Here’s the main part of the discussion section from this paper (FWIW, not to insist that the increasing complexity point of view is real and unjustified, just to make this point more authoritatively instead of with anecdotal evidence):
From analyzing over 700,000 abstracts in 123 journals from the biomedical and life sciences, as well as general science journals, we have shown a steady decrease of readability over time in the scientific literature. It is important to put the magnitude of these results in context. A FRE score of 100 is designed to reflect the reading level of a 10- to 11-year old. A score between 0 and 30 is considered understandable by college graduates (Flesch, 1948; Kincaid et al., 1975). In 1960, 14% of the texts in our corpus had a FRE below 0. In 2015, this number had risen to 22%. In other words, more than a fifth of scientific abstracts now have a readability considered beyond college graduate level English. However, the absolute readability scores should be interpreted with some caution: scores can vary due to different media (e.g. comics versus news articles; Štajner et al., 2012) and education level thresholds can be imprecise (Stokes, 1978). We then validated abstract readability against full text readability, demonstrating that it is a suitable approximation for comparing main texts.
We investigated two possible reasons why this trend has occurred. First, we found that readability of abstracts correlates with the number of co-authors, but this failed to fully account for the trend through time. Second, we showed that there is an increase in general scientific jargon over years. These general science jargon words should be interpreted as words which scientists frequently use in scientific texts, and not as subject specific jargon. This finding is indicative of a progressively increasing in-group scientific language ('science-ese').
An alternative explanation for the main finding is that the cumulative growth of scientific knowledge makes an increasingly complex language necessary. This cannot be directly tested, but if this were to fully explain the trend, we would expect a greater diversity of vocabulary as science grows more specialized. While accounting for the original finding of the increase in difficult words and of syllable count, this would not explain the increase of general scientific jargon words (e.g. 'furthermore' or 'novel', Figure 6B). Thus, this possible explanation cannot fully account for our findings.
Lower readability implies less accessibility, particularly for non-specialists, such as journalists, policy-makers and the wider public. Scientific journalism offers a key role in communicating science to the wider public (Bubela et al., 2009) and scientific credibility can sometimes suffer when reported by journalists (Hinnant and Len-Ríos, 2009). Considering this, decreasing readability cannot be a positive development for efforts to accurately communicate science to non-specialists. Further, amidst concerns that modern societies are becoming less stringent with actual truths, replaced with true-sounding 'post-facts' (Manjoo, 2011; Nordenstedt and Rosling, 2016) science should be advancing our most accurate knowledge. One way to achieve this is for science to maximize its accessibility to non-specialists.
Lower readability is also a problem for specialists (Hartley, 1994; Hartley and Benjamin, 1998; Hartley, 2003). This was explicitly shown by Hartley (1994) who demonstrated that rewriting scientific abstracts, to improve their readability, increased academics’ ability to comprehend them. While science is complex, and some jargon is unavoidable (Knight, 2003), this does not justify the continuing trend that we have shown. It is also worth considering the importance of comprehensibility of scientific texts in light of the recent controversy regarding the reproducibility of science (Prinz et al., 2011; McNutt, 2014; Begley and Ioannidis, 2015; Nosek et al., 2015; Camerer et al., 2016). Reproducibility requires that findings can be verified independently. To achieve this, reporting of methods and results must be sufficiently understandable.
From: osi20...@googlegroups.com <osi20...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of David Wojick
Sent: Sunday, December 1, 2019 3:01 PM
To: Danny Kingsley <da...@dannykingsley.com>
Cc: osi20...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: The science communication dilemma
I do not know what "dumbing down" means but here is what we did and found. Science uses a great many technical terms, because it is talking about things that are not talked about in ordinary language. We catalogued the technical terms taught at each learning level, from first grade through undergrad college. There are thousands.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osi2016-25/33F9F86B-D023-4407-90B2-9D5DB6D3F55D%40craigellachie.us.
Hi Joe,
Maybe----I guess it depends on whether you think this trend toward complex writing is permanent, necessary, a good thing, or even relevant (given that the data is also critically important). I do think that even in your nautilus model, we won’t extract maximum value from universal OA if all we’re doing is making articles free to read/reuse. For one, what good is open information if you don’t understand it? Also, why should we only try to connect some of the dots?---if we hold the belief that most people are going to have zero interest in and/or need for information at the center of the nautilus, we are basically taking the position that we know where and how the next great breakthroughs will happen.
Fundamentally, though, I agree that we need to pause and ask ourselves why we’re doing this, as you’ve done in your article. Where are the needs and the shortcomings? What can be gained by improving communication between disciplines on specific challenges (say, pancreatic cancer research)? What kinds of improved communication are needed (is it clearer writing, or data standards?; better peer-to-peer communication or better research-to-policymaker writing?; on the SCI website we break scicomm into various purposes and categories). There are times when it seems we’re living out an “Emperor’s New Clothes” scenario: “My what a lovely paper you’ve written---so complicated and filled with charts that seem meaningful,” we say, when in fact we’re too embarrassed to admit that we actually don’t have the foggiest idea what the author is saying.
Best,
Glenn
Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)
“This undercuts one argument for universal OA, making scientific literature available to a wide public audience.”
I could not disagree more. The fact that some (probably most) of peer-reviewed research is written for a specialist audience and therefore cannot be understood/appreciated by the wider public does not undercut the case for universal OA. The aim of OA is to make peer-reviewed research accessible to anyone interested in it, irrespective of their ability to pay for access.
The discussion about the complexity of scientific writing is a red herring as far as OA is concerned, even though if there were universal OA and ways of monitoring reach some researchers would have an incentive to increase the reach of their work by making it relevant to a wider (but still not “general”) audience.
Manfredi
From: osi20...@googlegroups.com <osi20...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of JJE Esposito
Sent: 01 December 2019 18:33
To: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osi2016-25/CABcSf%2BgSx73noyznGCYbU63soSRtnM%2BwajSet2itELMQBCZRcA%40mail.gmail.com.
On Dec 2, 2019, at 10:07 AM, JJE Esposito <jjoh...@gmail.com> wrote:
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osi2016-25/CABcSf%2BjP_EDphXyRgBmVw-GLzAwxakL%3DW91u_Cm%2BO8RsxJnk%2BQ%40mail.gmail.com.
It may be helpful to distinguish between supply and demand: Open Access is universal (rather than targeted) because resources are saved by making it so rather than some Big Brotherish person-specific scheme that restricts access to knowledge only to those individuals who can absorb it and for whom it is relevant. OA is silent as to whom may demand peer-reviewed research, the presumption being that only interested people will actually access the material and that they belong to a set that is larger than the set of interested people able to pay for access. Is this too simple?
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osi2016-25/550C3211-FE9C-462F-B8E5-3CEA76DEB797%40appstate.edu.
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I think you’re both right. The readability of research articles is a tangent. But it’s important to think about if our goal is to create a world of research articles that are free to all interested parties. OA is a monumental undertaking. Why do it if all we’re going to end up with is free access to articles no one understands (outside a tiny circle of experts)? The marginal benefits may be narrow given the disruption this change will cause. Improving the usability of this freed information (not just be improving readability but by standardizing data, improving infographics, etc.) is in keeping with the ethos of the OA movement, and is going to be essential if we are to realize the full potential of open.
And to Joe’s point, the goal posts aren’t so much moving as finally getting erected. “World peace” isn’t a goal---it’s an aspiration. We need to stop treating BOAI as a documented handed down to Moses on stone tablets. It’s just a nice starting point for discussion, and the more meat we can put on the bones the better. BOAI states that “Removing access barriers to this literature will accelerate research, enrich education, share the learning of the rich with the poor and the poor with the rich, make this literature as useful as it can be, and lay the foundation for uniting humanity in a common intellectual conversation and quest for knowledge.” This is a beautiful sentiment, and one that we share in OSI. But in terms of a policy instrument, it sucks. We need feedback, proof, pilot projects, achievable goals and timeframes, flexible implementation, and more---i.e., we need to construct and erect our goalposts, which is what we’re trying to do here. Doing this together is key---we can’t achieve open with the aspirational goalposts described in BOAI, nor can we achieve open with goalposts constructed by single parties whose worldview is set in stone (e.g., “the subscription-based model of scientific publishing, including its so-called ‘hybrid’ variants, should therefore be terminated”).
Best,
Glenn
Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osi2016-25/CABcSf%2BjP_EDphXyRgBmVw-GLzAwxakL%3DW91u_Cm%2BO8RsxJnk%2BQ%40mail.gmail.com.
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> Why do it if all we’re going to end up with is free access to articles no one
> understands (outside a tiny circle of experts)?
One good reason is that in many cases, the world can benefit tremendously from content that the majority of people in the world can’t understand. (For example, I don’t need to understand an endocrinology study myself in order to benefit very directly from my endocrinologist’s access to that study.)
---
Rick Anderson
Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication
Marriott Library, University of Utah
Desk: (801) 587-9989
Cell: (801) 721-1687
From:
<osi20...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Date: Monday, December 2, 2019 at 8:49 AM
To: 'JJE Esposito' <jjoh...@gmail.com>, 'Manfredi La Manna' <m...@st-andrews.ac.uk>
Cc: 'Danny Kingsley' <da...@dannykingsley.com>, David Wojick <dwo...@craigellachie.us>, 'The Open Scholarship Initiative' <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: The science communication dilemma
I think you’re both right. The readability of research articles is a tangent. But it’s important to think about if our goal is to create a world of research articles that are free to all interested parties. OA is a monumental undertaking. Why do it if all we’re going to end up with is free access to articles no one understands (outside a tiny circle of experts)? The marginal benefits may be narrow given the disruption this change will cause. Improving the usability of this freed information (not just be improving readability but by standardizing data, improving infographics, etc.) is in keeping with the ethos of the OA movement, and is going to be essential if we are to realize the full potential of open.
1. From the Geological Society of America Bulletin, March 1955. Ernst Cloos---Experimental Analysis of Fracture Patterns: “The importance of fractures can hardly be exaggerated. Most likely, man could not live if rocks were not fractured. The loosening of rocks, formation of soil, and erosion would become next to impossible…”
2. From the March 1985 issue. Joseph Walder and Bernard Hallet---A theoretical model of the fracture of rock during freezing: “The breakdown of rocks by freezing, or frost cracking, has been a subject of great interest to geomorphologists for many years. Frost action has been considered to be of paramount importance in the development of landscapes…(Refs).” Scott notes here that “A single point to make—among many others—is how the total potential audience addressed has been reduced from all of humanity (in the first example) to geomorphologists, who represent a single branch of the geological sciences.”
3. From the September 2013 issue. Andrea Festa, Vildirim Dilek, Guilia Codegone, Simona Cavgna, and Gian Pini---Structural Anatomy of the Ligurian accretionary wedge, and evolution of superposed mélanges: “The shape and growth of the frontal wedge of modern accretionary complexes repeatedly change to maintain the dynamic equilibrium in the wedge through alternating tectonic and sedimentary (i.e., gravitational) activities (9 Refs).” Writes Scott, “In this case, I would draw your attention to two things in particular, again among many others that could be discussed. First, the specialized vocabulary (jargon, we might say) of the first two lines determines instantly who may enter here and who would be wasting their time in an attempt to do so. If you don’t know what the wedge of an accretionary complex is, you are not welcome here. But also note the authorship of this article. It is fully international. Affiliations of the authors include universities in Italy, Spain, and China. The journal, in other words, may be named the Geological Society of America Bulletin, but it is fully global in the span of its contributors and their subjects.
“So to summarize the trends in these three samples,” he writes, “as indicative of scientific discourse as a whole—and I would wager that an overwhelming majority of researchers would agree to this—we see that this discourse has become progressively:
· more stylized, specialist
· less open to the kind of relaxed, colloquial, and literary touches seen in the first example.
· greatly dependent on jargon to carry the weight of meaning.
Given these trends, it would appear there is but little chance that journal science will become more accessible to the public, or even to scientists from other fields.
What all this tells us, finally, is that the transfer of findings from the journal literature to the public involves not just re-phrasing and selection, but an act of actual translation—remembering that translation always involves interpretation and re-writing. People able to do this competently, without inaccuracies or misleading exaggerations, can not be found at your local market or grocery store. Nor do a great many of them exist in media centers. They are rare and their value should be recognized.”
4. And finally, from today. A.K. Abdel-Fattah, K.Y. Kim, M.S. Fnais (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, South Korea), “Slip distribution model of two small-sized inland earthquakes and its tectonic implication in north-eastern desert of Egypt”; Journal of African Earth Sciences. “Seismicity of Egypt is attributed to the relative tectonic motion between African, Arabian, and Eurasian plates…The identification of active fault planes in these seismogenic zones is essential for the potential seismic hazard that may carry on the closed urban cities.” “In this final passage,” writes Scott, “we see something quite different than what we’ve been discussing. Most of the passage is in perfect good, comprehensible English. But then we encounter the final few phrases, which leave us puzzling. How did this get past the editors? In fact, the journal’s editors include geoscientists from the U.S. and other Anglophone nations. The fact is that a sizeable number of journals have begun to publish articles with non-standard English—meaning non-Anglo-American (the standard most widely adopted and followed by the highest prestige journals like Nature and Science). The degree to which this might expand in the future is difficult to discern. The reality of World Englishes, meaning varieties of English that have developed around the world through adaptation to different cultural-linguistic settings (e.g. Nigerian English, Hong Kong English, Jamaican English, Indian English, etc.) may well dictate that such flexibility will have to grow. We will have to wait and see. “
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Hi Rick,
Absolutely. And this is one area where more research would help. There is anecdotal evidence both ways with regard to the scope of “essential use” access problems. I’m not aware of any study that puts a hard number on this. Anyone? I’m not talking about how long it takes to find an article---this is also an issue---but whether, say, a study on the latest treatment for pancreatic cancer is completely unavailable to a cancer doc through Research4Life, ILL, email sharing, etc. This isn’t Manfredi’s “interested” group, but a “necessary” group. Fulfilling the needs of this group needs to be a central goal of open, I agree.
Strangely, though, this problem doesn’t seem to be very sexy to funders. Since we haven’t quantified this deficit yet, funders aren’t moved by it. We can’t say that 5 million children a year are dying because their doctors can’t read the latest issue of Nature. If that were the case there would certainly be a call to action that would make open access the law of the land by next year. Rather, funders seem to be more enamored with the potential of open to create interdisciplinary connections and new, revolutionary insights and discoveries. And getting to this interdisciplinary nirvana from here will require breaking down not only the “access” walls but the “translation” walls as well---clearer writing, standardized data, etc. (more interoperability).
So you’re right Rick. The “why do it all” refrain is over the top. OSI is concerned with the issue of equitable access, but we don’t have much company in this, and not much company in the way of funders who are willing to stand behind this concern. And maybe there’s a reason. Maybe the problem isn’t pronounced---we need to find out. Or maybe there’s an easier way to do open if the benefit is going to be limited to “just” people who need to know---e.g., just mandate (and have governments pay for) free and immediate access to all clinical trials research work that is more than 50% government funded (or some such). Certainly, if we can establish there’s an unmet need for information and that the consequences of our inaction are real and not hypothetical (lost lives, etc.), then moving the ball on this will be much easier. IF, however, our primary goal is more of the interdisciplinary ilk---to provide free info to anyone who is interested, for whatever purpose---then we need better goalposts, including (at some point) addressing the issue of how usable journal articles are in their current state.
Does this sound right to you? My F-K score is awful here….sorry.
> Does this sound right to you?
I guess I’m just not quite sure what “this” is. All other things being equal, of course it’s better for more people to have more access, and all other things being equal, of course it’s better for science and scholarship to be intelligible to the lay reader. The problem is that in the real world, all other things never are equal—and that means that making content accessible (in the OA sense) entails costs that need to be taken into account when evaluating any particular openness proposal, and making content accessible (in the comprehensibility sense) also entails costs that need to be taken into account. It’s easy to say “openness and comprehensibility are both good.” What’s harder is figuring out ways to create more openness and more comprehensibility that offer a good balance of benefit to cost.
---
Rick Anderson
Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication
Marriott Library, University of Utah
Desk: (801) 587-9989
Cell: (801) 721-1687
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Hi Kaveh,
Yes---sounds familiar (in my experience). I like your introduction of the word “pompous”---this probably makes the point more clearly than “complexity” or “density.” So, searching Google for “pompous science writing,” this nice essay in the Atlantic popped up: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/10/complex-academic-writing/412255/
This research article attempts to explain why this type of writing persists: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3701243/
The volume of scientific literature is enormous, but it is largely inaccessible to non-expert readers, including scientists from other fields. This is not just because the content is highly specialized but also because scientific writing itself is far from simple and clear. Generations of editors, reviewers and readers have struggled to understand complex, exaggerated and often pompous prose that does little to enhance the reader's understanding but aims to demonstrate the scholarly prowess of the author. The causes go beyond an inadequate command of the English language: they are rooted in long-standing practices that value pretentiousness over clear communication. These practices are passed down from senior to junior scientists, which explains why scientific writing remains generally poor despite regular criticism. It will take the combined efforts of scientists, research institutions and scientific journals to achieve a marked and long-lasting improvement.
I’d be curious to hear what the editors on this list have to say---whether, for instance, you ever see submissions that are super clear (and how you react to these), or whether all submissions are murky plus or minus a dozen obfuscations.
To your point, David, about level-appropriate writing, that’s true but here (I think) we’re talking just about journal articles, which are all written for consumption by other researchers. The point isn’t whether these journal articles need to be “dumbed down”; it’s whether they can be made more readable by toning down the pomposity. ECRs know this puffery is what’s expected, as the author notes in the above article. For further proof, there was a popular thread on Twitter recently where researchers were giving convoluted journal-sounding titles to their favorite television shows….funny but true (sorry---can’t find it now---I’ll keep looking).
Best,
Glenn
Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)
From: osi20...@googlegroups.com <osi20...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Kaveh Bazargan
Sent: Tuesday, December 3, 2019 1:53 AM
To: The Open Scholarship Initiative <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: The science communication dilemma
Coming somewhat late to the party, we all agree that any specialism has jargon that is necessary and that aids fast communication with peers. My problem is with the extra layer of unnecessary jargon that makes a publication sound more professional or elite, but that does not aid communication, even with peers. To echo some of Glenn's points, I feel that in many fields there is a kind of accepted convoluted, and if I may say, pompous writing style that few question and that Early Career Researchers learn is the norm.
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Hi Kaveh,
Yes---sounds familiar (in my experience). I like your introduction of the word “pompous”---this probably makes the point more clearly than “complexity” or “density.” So, searching Google for “pompous science writing,” this nice essay in the Atlantic popped up: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/10/complex-academic-writing/412255/
This research article attempts to explain why this type of writing persists: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3701243/
The volume of scientific literature is enormous, but it is largely inaccessible to non-expert readers, including scientists from other fields. This is not just because the content is highly specialized but also because scientific writing itself is far from simple and clear. Generations of editors, reviewers and readers have struggled to understand complex, exaggerated and often pompous prose that does little to enhance the reader's understanding but aims to demonstrate the scholarly prowess of the author. The causes go beyond an inadequate command of the English language: they are rooted in long-standing practices that value pretentiousness over clear communication. These practices are passed down from senior to junior scientists, which explains why scientific writing remains generally poor despite regular criticism. It will take the combined efforts of scientists, research institutions and scientific journals to achieve a marked and long-lasting improvement.
I’d be curious to hear what the editors on this list have to say---whether, for instance, you ever see submissions that are super clear (and how you react to these), or whether all submissions are murky plus or minus a dozen obfuscations.
To your point, David, about level-appropriate writing, that’s true but here (I think) we’re talking just about journal articles, which are all written for consumption by other researchers. The point isn’t whether these journal articles need to be “dumbed down”; it’s whether they can be made more readable by toning down the pomposity. ECRs know this puffery is what’s expected, as the author notes in the above article. For further proof, there was a popular thread on Twitter recently where researchers were giving convoluted journal-sounding titles to their favorite television shows….funny but true (sorry---can’t find it now---I’ll keep looking).
Best,
Glenn
Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)
From: osi20...@googlegroups.com <osi20...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Kaveh Bazargan
Sent: Tuesday, December 3, 2019 1:53 AM
To: The Open Scholarship Initiative <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: The science communication dilemma
Coming somewhat late to the party, we all agree that any specialism has jargon that is necessary and that aids fast communication with peers. My problem is with the extra layer of unnecessary jargon that makes a publication sound more professional or elite, but that does not aid communication, even with peers. To echo some of Glenn's points, I feel that in many fields there is a kind of accepted convoluted, and if I may say, pompous writing style that few question and that Early Career Researchers learn is the norm.
As an example from my own previous life as an ECR in physics, I wrote the draft for a short letter to an Optics journal and showed it to a more senior colleague for comment. After a cursory look he said it would not get published in the particular journal as there were no equations in it. A quick look at the journal showed that all letters had 2–3 displayed equations. So I managed to find an excuse to put in a couple of complex equations even though my point was clear without them. Did it help explain my point? No. Was the paper published? Yes.
If I may paraphrase Einstein, in my view the prose of scholarly publications should be as complex as they need to be, but no more complex.
Kaveh
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“The lower the [writing] level, the less science can be conveyed.” Charles Darwin, Richard Feynman, Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Dawkins, Brian Greene, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Carl Sagan, Natalie Angier, and Rachel Carson would beg to differ. In any case, we should probably retire this topic for another day---it’s not central to our work right now. It seems we all mostly agree there can be readability issues in research. What this means and what to do about it (if anything, assuming there’s anything we can do about it) is a different matter.
From: osi20...@googlegroups.com <osi20...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of David Wojick
Sent: Tuesday, December 3, 2019 10:41 AM
To: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
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OMG---that’s a must-read article. Thanks Maggie.
4. The more references you include, the more scholarly your reader will assume you are. Thus, if you write a sentence like, “Much work has been done in this field,” you should plan to spend the next 9 hours tracking down papers so that your article ultimately reads, “Much work has been done in this field1,3,6-27,29-50,58,61,62-65,78-315,952-Avogadro’s Number.” If you ever write a review article, EndNote might explode.
For the record, I really enjoy discussing this topic---it’s kinda my home court---maybe yours as well. But the reason we should “probably” move on (although this is not up to me---it’s just a recommendation, noting how not everyone enjoys getting 30 emails/day from OSI) is that it seems we’re mostly coming at this issue from personal perspectives---moi aussi---and that we aren’t really referencing a common set of facts. It’s also a bit of a tangent. All this said, I think we have established that this is an interesting and worthwhile topic for further consideration, so maybe we should circle back to it after we solve open access, peer review, predatory publishing, embargoes, impact factors, global flips, APCs, and repository interoperability.
From: Margaret Winker <margare...@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, December 3, 2019 7:15 PM
To: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
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