Jargon use in Public Understanding of Science papers over three decades

Public Understanding of Science is an interdisciplinary journal serving the scholarly community and practitioners. This article reports an analysis of the readability and jargon in articles published in Public Understanding of Science throughout its almost three decades of existence to examine trends in accessibility to diverse audiences. The accessibility of Public Understanding of Science articles published in 1999/2000 (47), 2009 (49) and 2019 (65) was assessed in terms of readability and use of jargon. Readability decreased and use of jargon increased between 1999 and 2000 and the two following decades for empirical and non-empirical papers, and all parts including the abstracts. An analysis of rare words shows that most are not part of the general academic vocabulary or disciplinary jargon, but rather words that appeared only in one article. Public Understanding of Science has moved away from everyday language. This does not mean it is incomprehensible to its scholarly readership, but may have consequences to other audiences such as practitioners.