PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Pontus Plavén-Sigray
AU  - Granville James Matheson
AU  - Björn Christian Schiffler
AU  - William Hedley Thompson
TI  - The readability of scientific texts is decreasing over time
AID  - 10.1101/119370
DP  - 2017 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 119370
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/03/22/119370.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/03/22/119370.full
AB  - Clarity and accuracy of reporting are fundamental to the scientific process. The understandability of written language can be estimated using readability formulae. Here, in a corpus consisting of 707 452 scientific abstracts published between 1881 and 2015 from 122 influential biomedical journals, we show that the readability of science is steadily decreasing. Further, we demonstrate that this trend is indicative of a growing usage of general scientific jargon. These results are concerning for scientists and for the wider public, as they impact both the reproducibility and accessibility of research findings.