Clareza, concisão e coesão: princípios e métricas de legibilidade aplicados ao texto de pós-graduandos em Ciência da Informação

Introdução: a barreira da língua dificulta publicar em inglês mesmo quando há mérito científico, pois o problema começa em português, na dificuldade em escrever como a ciência requer. Qual o impacto da aplicação de princípios de clareza, concisão e coesão na extensão e legibilidade de textos científicos? Esta pesquisa objetivou verificar esse impacto ao comparar extensão e indicadores de legibilidade antes e após a aplicação dos princípios. Método: vinte e cinco estudantes de pós-graduação em Ciência da Informação anotaram um texto científico próprio e o de três colegas, em revisão por pares duplo-cega, indicando problemas de estilo de quatro tipos: palavra desnecessária, distância sujeito-verbo excessiva, nominalização excessiva e contextualização tardia. Cada autor reelaborou seu próprio texto para resolver os problemas anotados. Os textos originais e reelaborados foram comparados em extensão e escore de facilidade de leitura de Flesch. Textos originais e reelaborados da literatura também foram mensurados como referência. Resultados: Todos os textos diminuíram em extensão após reelaborados, embora tenha havido mais atenção a problemas gramaticais do que aos quatro problemas de estilo. Houve 13 aumentos, duas manutenções e 10 diminuições nos escores de legibilidade. Esse resultado é compatível com o estudo-referência com textos da literatura. Conclusão: a aplicação dos princípios de legibilidade diminui a extensão e, em acordo com a literatura, tem impacto duvidoso no escore de legibilidade. Resta investigar a traduzibilidade comparada para verificar o pressuposto de que aplicar os princípios é "escrever em inglês em português".Introduction: The language barrier makes it difficult to publish in English, even when there is scientific merit, as the problem starts in Portuguese, in the difficulty of following scientific writing principles. What is the impact of applying principles of clarity, conciseness, and cohesion in the extension and readability of scientific texts? This research aimed to verify this impact when comparing extension and readability indicators before and after applying those principles. Method: Twenty-five Information Science graduate students annotated their own scientific text and that of three colleagues, in a double-blind review, indicating writing style problems of four types: unnecessary word, excessive subject-verb distance, excessive nominalization, and late contextualization. Each author then reworked their own text to solve the problems. The original and reworked texts were compared in length and Flesch Reading Ease score. Original and reworked texts from the literature were also compared, as a reference. Results: All texts were shortened after rework, although annotations were directed most to grammatical problems than to the four style problems. There were 13 increases, 2 maintenance, and 10 decreases in the readability scores. This result is compatible with the benchmark study with texts from the literature. Conclusions: Applying readability principles improves conciseness but, in accordance with the literature, has a dubious impact on the readability score. Compared translatability remains an open research topic, to verify the assumption that applying the principles equates to "write in English in Portuguese"

An assessment into the characteristics of award winning papers at CHI

The overall readability of CHI publications is not known. In addition, little is understood about what lexical or demographic characteristics are unique to award winning papers at CHI and if they are significantly different from non award winning papers. We therefore carry out an exploration and assessment into the readability metrics as well as a meta analysis of 382 full papers and 54 notes from the 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 editions at CHI. Our results illustrate that notes did not have any significant trends whatsoever. On the other hand, award winning full papers were shown to have lower readability as compared to non award winning full papers. The type of research contribution played an important role; such that award winning full papers were significantly more likely to have a theoretical contribution as compared to non award winning full papers and full papers that presented an artifact as their contribution were more readable than other full papers. Our demographic analysis of authors indicated that the experience of authors nor their region of affiliation were not associated with the likelihood of their full paper being awarded. The experience of authors did not effect the overall readability of full papers however the region of affiliation did have a significant influence on the overall readability of full papers. In conclusion, we speculate on our obtained results through linkages with prior work in readability analysis