Martínez Alejandro, Mammola Stefano
Molecular Ecology Group (Dark-MEG), Water Research Institute (IRSA), National Research Council (CNR), Verbania Pallanza, Italy.
Laboratory for Integrative Biodiversity Research (LIBRe), Finnish Museum of Natural History (LUOMUS), University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
Proc Biol Sci. 2021 Apr 14;288(1948):20202581. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2020.2581. Epub 2021 Apr 7.
Words are the building blocks of communicating science. As our understanding of the world progresses, scientific disciplines naturally enrich their specialized vocabulary (jargon). However, in the era of interdisciplinarity, the use of jargon may hinder effective communication among scientists that do not share a common scientific background. The question of how jargon limits the transmission of scientific knowledge has long been debated but rarely addressed quantitatively. We explored the relationship between the use of jargon and citations, using 21 486 articles focusing on cave research, a multidisciplinary field particularly prone to terminological specialization, and where linguistic disagreement among peers is frequent. We demonstrate a significant negative relationship between the proportion of jargon words in the title and abstract and the number of citations a paper receives. Given that these elements are the hook to readers, we urge scientists to restrict jargon to sections of the paper where its use is unavoidable.
词汇是科学交流的基石。随着我们对世界的理解不断进步，各科学学科自然会丰富其专业词汇（行话）。然而，在跨学科时代，行话的使用可能会阻碍没有共同科学背景的科学家之间的有效交流。行话如何限制科学知识传播的问题长期以来一直存在争议，但很少有定量研究。我们以洞穴研究为重点，使用了21486篇文章来探究行话使用与引用之间的关系。洞穴研究是一个多学科领域，特别容易出现术语专业化，同行之间也经常存在语言分歧。我们证明了标题和摘要中行话词汇的比例与论文获得的引用次数之间存在显著的负相关关系。鉴于这些元素是吸引读者的关键，我们敦促科学家将行话限制在论文中不可避免要使用的部分。
