ArticleFrontiers in psychology2021
Better Writing in Scientific Publications Builds Reader Confidence and Understanding.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Factors associated with risk perception among school and nursery school teachers concerning potential health effects of exposure to electromagnetic fields.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Cognitive, affective, and behavioral engagement with science news predicted by the use of accessibility strategies in science-minded and general audiences.Public understanding of science (Bristol, England) · 2025Article
- Open and impactful academic publishing.Frontiers in research metrics and analytics · 2025Article
- "I" versus "the author": The power of first-person voice when writing about science.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Conclusiveness, readability and textual characteristics of plain language summaries from medical and non-medical organizations: a cross-sectional study.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Linguistic analysis of plain language summaries and corresponding scientific summaries of Cochrane systematic reviews about oncology interventions.Cancer medicine · 2023Article
- Article
- Climate Donations Inspired by Evidence-Based Fundraising.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Scientific publications are the building blocks of discovery and collaboration, but their impact is limited by the style in which they are traditionally written. Recently, many authors have called for a switch to an engaging, accessible writing style. Here, we experimentally test how readers respond to such a style. We hypothesized that scientific abstracts written in a more accessible style would improve readers' reported readability and confidence as well as their understanding, assessed using multiple-choice questions on the content. We created a series of scientific abstracts, corresponding to real publications on three scientific topics at four levels of difficulty-varying from the difficult, traditional style to an engaging, accessible style. We gave these abstracts to a team of readers consisting of 170 third-year undergraduate students. Then, we posed questions to measure the readers' readability, confidence, and understanding with the content. The scientific abstracts written in a more accessible style resulted in higher readability, understanding, and confidence. These findings demonstrate that rethinking the way we communicate our science may empower a more collaborative and diverse industry.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.