[pugz]

Who do you think the audience is for the papers published in academic journals? I imagine the intended audience is their peers and therefore the precise, unambiguous language is much more effective at conveying the ideas. Jargon exists for a reason, it isn't invented in a vacuum.

If the audience is the layperson, then of course you are right. The ideas being expressed will be completely lost upon the audience because they won't understand half the terminology used. But I suspect you might be in the minority if you think academic journals are intended to have an audience that broad.

[clnq]

I am definitely in the minority, but let's not appeal to the masses. Excessive jargon is becoming more and more unwelcome in academia as readers and reviewers are getting tired of insubstantial jargon-padded papers bordering fraud. Moreover, the ineffectiveness of jargon in communication is now generally better comprehended. For example, jargon makes the articles difficult to consume for non-English speakers, enthusiast audiences, practitioners of applied science, and academics in different domains of research. There is a small counter-culture forming that embraces the value of effective plain English communication in research and I am a part of it.

Of course, I appreciate the value of jargon where it is necessary to convey meaning. Although Wikipedia has shown us plain English often conveys the entire meaning and details just fine, making jargon superfluous.

This paper, however, isn't the best example of jargon abuse. Some phrasing in it triggered me and I've reacted too strongly. Overall, it is relatively well-written.

More thoughts from another simple English advocate like me - http://www.paulgraham.com/simply.html

[thfuran]

But removing all the details and jargon that the lay person might not understand isn't even the right way to go about making the jounal articles more comprehensible to a general audience. That thows away most of the information.