"The readability of scientific texts is decreasing over time", according to a new paper just out. Swedish researchers Pontus Plaven-Sigray and colleagues say that scientists today use longer and more complex words than those of the past, making their writing harder to read. But what does it mean? Here's the key result. This image shows text readability metrics from 709,577 abstracts, drawn from 123 biomedical journals, published in English between 1881 and 2015.
There's been a clear decrease in Flesch Reading Ease scores, along with increases in New Dale-Chall difficulty scores, both of which indicate declines in readability. These metrics are often used to estimate the 'reading level' of a text, and Plaven-Sigray et al. say that "more than a fifth of scientific abstracts now have a readability considered beyond college graduate level English." What's driving the change? These readability metrics are based on a combination of the average sentence ...
