Influential psychology papers tend to be more readable, according to research conducted by psychologist James Hartley, PhD, of the United Kingdom's Keele University and Eric Sotto, an educational writer in Haifa, Israel.
Overall, the authors looked at 72 influential journal articles with matched controls. They based readability on such standard measures as sentence length and word difficulty. Presenting their findings to the British Psychological Society at its 2001 Centennial Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, Hartley and Sotto revealed that influential papers have significantly shorter, easier-to-digest sentences than do less influential papers.
"Most psychology articles in the standard journals are pretty unreadable," concludes Hartley.
Papers were chosen as "influential" according to any of the following three criteria: ratings given in introductory psychology textbooks (as in J.V. McConnell and D.W. Gorenflo's 1989 book, "Classic Readings in Psychology"); being listed in R.R. Hock's 1992 text, "Forty Studies that Changed Psychology: Explorations in the History of Psychological Research"; and inclusion in the January 2000 list of The Most Influential Works in Cognitive Science by the Cognitive Science Millennium Project.
The authors admit that readability ultimately depends on the knowledge and understanding readers have before they tackle a journal article. But, the authors stress, it's important to maintain the goal of making scientific ideas more accessible and understandable. A benefit of clear writing, they say, is to close the gap between researcher and practitioner.
The authors conclude that though readability alone does not determine the influence of papers, it probably helps.
Copies of the conference paper--in the process of being published--can be received through the primary author at j.hartley@psy.keele.ac.uk.
--K. HEWLETT