School of Public Health and Social Work, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia.
Future Industries Institute, University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia.
Elife. 2020 Jul 23;9:e60080. doi: 10.7554/eLife.60080.
Some acronyms are useful and are widely understood, but many of the acronyms used in scientific papers hinder understanding and contribute to the increasing fragmentation of science. Here we report the results of an analysis of more than 24 million article titles and 18 million article abstracts published between 1950 and 2019. There was at least one acronym in 19% of the titles and 73% of the abstracts. Acronym use has also increased over time, but the re-use of acronyms has declined. We found that from more than one million unique acronyms in our data, just over 2,000 (0.2%) were used regularly, and most acronyms (79%) appeared fewer than 10 times. Acronyms are not the biggest current problem in science communication, but reducing their use is a simple change that would help readers and potentially increase the value of science.
有些首字母缩略词很有用，也被广泛理解，但科学论文中使用的许多首字母缩略词却阻碍了理解，导致科学的碎片化程度不断加剧。在这里，我们报告了对 1950 年至 2019 年间发表的超过 2400 万篇文章标题和 1800 万篇文章摘要的分析结果。在标题中，有 19%包含首字母缩略词，在摘要中这一比例则高达 73%。首字母缩略词的使用也随着时间的推移而增加，但缩略词的重复使用却有所减少。我们发现，在我们的数据中，超过 100 万个独特的首字母缩略词中，只有 2000 多个（0.2%）被经常使用，而且大多数首字母缩略词（79%）出现的次数不到 10 次。缩略词并不是当前科学传播中最大的问题，但减少它们的使用是一个简单的改变，这将有助于读者，并有可能提高科学的价值。
