Academics are often encouraged to write clearly and concisely, but that imperative may actually limit a paper’s impact on scholarship. A new study out of the University of Chicago has found that papers with longer, jargon-laden abstracts are more likely to be cited in other academic works than are brief, clear abstracts, which researchers are typically taught to write. The scholars behind the study compiled 10 rules that academics are urged to follow in writing, but found that the abstracts of the most-cited papers do not heed those rules.

June 1, 2015 ・ From Chronicle of Higher Education