Are journal articles getting too long? Weatherson thinks so, writing, "This feels like a bad thing; articles are getting bloated, and we need to find a way to get them back to a reasonable length."
Why should a journal article need to raise and respond to possible misunderstandings and objections? Why not instead simply ask, "Is this article's argument interesting enough to publish?", and then let the subsequent literature explore possible objections?
I’m writing my dissertation now, so this is kind of trigger material for me. I wholeheartedly agree, though. I think about this all the time, especially reading and writing about philosophy...
I’m writing my dissertation now, so this is kind of trigger material for me.
I wholeheartedly agree, though. I think about this all the time, especially reading and writing about philosophy articles written before the first half of the 20th century. They are short, succinct, and if there is any review of opposing viewpoints, it is integrated as part of the main argument. If there are objections, they are voiced in subsequent articles and responded to by the original author. But in the 21st century, to voice an idea about these articles or at least based on them, I have to first summarize what has already been said about them ad nauseam.
I feel ridiculous having to recap the main points of contention or previous scholarship on a particular issue, especially when it’s something anyone studying the topic is already aware of. So much of the work in writing academic papers is “showing your work” in a way, which is to say, just showing that you’ve read what everyone else has (or at least skimmed it, which is the norm now!). It is necessary and appropriate at times, but why do we have to rehearse the familiar talking points just to propose an idea? Does it really make that idea any clearer? It feels especially ridiculous in a field like philosophy—are academic papers really the most effective way to communicate and make use of critical perspectives?
You’re exactly right. In general, academia needs to ditch the archaic publishing customs it has long outgrown. The whole free information/open access movement is a salient example of the evolving...
You’re exactly right. In general, academia needs to ditch the archaic publishing customs it has long outgrown. The whole free information/open access movement is a salient example of the evolving milieu, I think.
Recently, I've seen several people make this complaint, both in humanities and the hard sciences. Is this related to the "publish or perish" adage? I am not all that familiar with the inner...
(or at least skimmed it, which is the norm now!)
Recently, I've seen several people make this complaint, both in humanities and the hard sciences. Is this related to the "publish or perish" adage? I am not all that familiar with the inner workings of professional academia, but this seems like a huge problem?
I don’t know that it’s really perceived as a problem, but more a basic skill. It seems more appropriate in some fields than others. It seems awkward in the humanities, though, because it assumes,...
I don’t know that it’s really perceived as a problem, but more a basic skill. It seems more appropriate in some fields than others. It seems awkward in the humanities, though, because it assumes, in a way, that the main idea is sufficiently grasped in terms of a few propositions—as if the thesis is intelligible without reflecting on the details—which is questionable in topics of literature, philosophy, etc. It is a useful skill when “searching” through articles to find what is worth analyzing further.
As a student reading papers in astrophysics - specifically, papers from a range of subfields, since I'm not in any particular field yet - I tend to find context being given to the work and results...
I feel ridiculous having to recap the main points of contention or previous scholarship on a particular issue, especially when it’s something anyone studying the topic is already aware of
As a student reading papers in astrophysics - specifically, papers from a range of subfields, since I'm not in any particular field yet - I tend to find context being given to the work and results of the paper very helpful. It lets me understand this one paper I have to read, without diving into a lot of related papers and following that chain of work back (something I'm not experienced in yet). Basically, papers are already pretty inaccessible if you don't have a background in the field, which is fine, but there are reasons not to make them even less accessible, I think.
It is certainly helpful, and there’s a good reason that literature review is an important part of scholarship. Maybe it’s more of an issue in the humanities (and admittedly, I’m venting!). I guess...
It is certainly helpful, and there’s a good reason that literature review is an important part of scholarship. Maybe it’s more of an issue in the humanities (and admittedly, I’m venting!). I guess the issue is, how much review is really necessary, and at what point does it make getting at the point more laborious? Is it really necessary to draw attention to all these other viewpoints that have ever overlapped the topic at hand? It is certainly useful/helpful in mapping the context, but that’s not always appropriate or necessary (especially when it’s just a ritualistic rehearsal of the most visible scholarship everyone references anyway).
Yeah I'm not familiar with arts papers, I suppose by their nature they'll be more text-heavy and arduous to read and write. So it could be much more of an issue!
Yeah I'm not familiar with arts papers, I suppose by their nature they'll be more text-heavy and arduous to read and write. So it could be much more of an issue!
Funnily enough, I just finished up a journal paper a few weeks ago that got rejected because of length. There's a space that some conferences/journal are moving towards where works shouldn't be...
Funnily enough, I just finished up a journal paper a few weeks ago that got rejected because of length.
There's a space that some conferences/journal are moving towards where works shouldn't be longer than they need to be. I think the response to "things are getting too long" has sometimes been "well, let's have arbitrary length requirements" which generally ends up hurting scientific output. Not everyone wants to write 20k+ word papers, but sometimes (in my case) the results for the study you ran ended up being 20k words, and it's hard to cut perspectives from qualitative work without harming the validity.
Anyways, I'm low-key triggered too. Hearing "oh this is too long, so it's not good science" makes me furious, especially when length is often required for proper scholarship.
I’m writing my dissertation now, so this is kind of trigger material for me.
I wholeheartedly agree, though. I think about this all the time, especially reading and writing about philosophy articles written before the first half of the 20th century. They are short, succinct, and if there is any review of opposing viewpoints, it is integrated as part of the main argument. If there are objections, they are voiced in subsequent articles and responded to by the original author. But in the 21st century, to voice an idea about these articles or at least based on them, I have to first summarize what has already been said about them ad nauseam.
I feel ridiculous having to recap the main points of contention or previous scholarship on a particular issue, especially when it’s something anyone studying the topic is already aware of. So much of the work in writing academic papers is “showing your work” in a way, which is to say, just showing that you’ve read what everyone else has (or at least skimmed it, which is the norm now!). It is necessary and appropriate at times, but why do we have to rehearse the familiar talking points just to propose an idea? Does it really make that idea any clearer? It feels especially ridiculous in a field like philosophy—are academic papers really the most effective way to communicate and make use of critical perspectives?
This was probably way more useful before we had internet.
You’re exactly right. In general, academia needs to ditch the archaic publishing customs it has long outgrown. The whole free information/open access movement is a salient example of the evolving milieu, I think.
Recently, I've seen several people make this complaint, both in humanities and the hard sciences. Is this related to the "publish or perish" adage? I am not all that familiar with the inner workings of professional academia, but this seems like a huge problem?
I don’t know that it’s really perceived as a problem, but more a basic skill. It seems more appropriate in some fields than others. It seems awkward in the humanities, though, because it assumes, in a way, that the main idea is sufficiently grasped in terms of a few propositions—as if the thesis is intelligible without reflecting on the details—which is questionable in topics of literature, philosophy, etc. It is a useful skill when “searching” through articles to find what is worth analyzing further.
As a student reading papers in astrophysics - specifically, papers from a range of subfields, since I'm not in any particular field yet - I tend to find context being given to the work and results of the paper very helpful. It lets me understand this one paper I have to read, without diving into a lot of related papers and following that chain of work back (something I'm not experienced in yet). Basically, papers are already pretty inaccessible if you don't have a background in the field, which is fine, but there are reasons not to make them even less accessible, I think.
It is certainly helpful, and there’s a good reason that literature review is an important part of scholarship. Maybe it’s more of an issue in the humanities (and admittedly, I’m venting!). I guess the issue is, how much review is really necessary, and at what point does it make getting at the point more laborious? Is it really necessary to draw attention to all these other viewpoints that have ever overlapped the topic at hand? It is certainly useful/helpful in mapping the context, but that’s not always appropriate or necessary (especially when it’s just a ritualistic rehearsal of the most visible scholarship everyone references anyway).
Yeah I'm not familiar with arts papers, I suppose by their nature they'll be more text-heavy and arduous to read and write. So it could be much more of an issue!
Funnily enough, I just finished up a journal paper a few weeks ago that got rejected because of length.
There's a space that some conferences/journal are moving towards where works shouldn't be longer than they need to be. I think the response to "things are getting too long" has sometimes been "well, let's have arbitrary length requirements" which generally ends up hurting scientific output. Not everyone wants to write 20k+ word papers, but sometimes (in my case) the results for the study you ran ended up being 20k words, and it's hard to cut perspectives from qualitative work without harming the validity.
Anyways, I'm low-key triggered too. Hearing "oh this is too long, so it's not good science" makes me furious, especially when length is often required for proper scholarship.
It might be interesting to have a short length limit combined with appendices that it doesn't apply to.