Soupe aux acronymes et jargon rendent la science illisible

De plus en plus d'acronymes à coucher dehors lancés tous azimuts et du jargon que même les spécialistes ont de la difficulté à comprendre. Voilà le constat d'une étude récente sur l'évolution linguistique de la communication scientifique..

Barnett and his colleagues analyzed the use of acronyms in more than 24 million paper titles and 18 million abstracts indexed by the biomedical database PubMed between 1950 and 2019.

The study, published in eLife, found that 19% of paper titles and 73% of abstracts included at least one acronym. Of the roughly 1.1 million acronyms identified, the vast majority (79%) were used fewer than 10 times in the scientific literature.

The study also found that the frequency of acronyms used in abstracts has increased tenfold since 1956, from 0.4 acronyms per 100 words to 4 acronyms per 100 words. (extraits)

Singh Chawla, D (2020) Science is getting harder to read. Nature index (blogue), 12 septembre) https://www.natureindex.com/news-blog/science-research-papers-getting-harder-to-read-acronyms-jargon