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Join NOW!Academics aren’t exactly known for their simple prose. At the Atlantic, Victoria Clayton details the movement to make scholarly writing more clear and accessible: Bosley, who has a doctorate in rhetoric and writing, says that academic prose is often so riddled with professional jargon and needlessly complex syntax that even someone with a PhD can’t […]
...moreAt The Chronicle of Higher Education, Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, wonders why so much academic writing is—well—bad.
...moreThe university press system has faced a rapid decline. Research libraries, looking to cut costs to pay for expensive electronic journal subscriptions, buy fewer monographs. Subsidies from parent institutions are down. Meanwhile, the researchers who publish with and rely on content from university presses demand access to digital content. The Nation explores the rise and […]
...moreAt the end of last month, Nicholas Kristof published a piece in the New York Times calling for academics to come out from their insular bubble and participate in the mainstream conversation—especially with respect to writing. Joshua Rothman responded in the New Yorker that academic writing is only as “knotty and strange, remote and insular, technical and specialized, forbidding and clannish” […]
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