Abstract
Lay summaries provide a brief account of scientific articles and are supposed to be written in accessible language. However, it remains largely unknown whether lay summaries are readable to the intended non-technical audience. Here, we present a case study that examines the readability of and the use of technical jargon in lay summaries and their corresponding scientific abstracts collected from the journal Medical Mycology. It was found that (1) the average reading grade level of lay summaries was significantly higher than that of scientific abstracts, and (2) a higher proportion of technical terms were used than the recommended threshold in both lay summaries and scientific abstracts. In other words, improvements are needed to make lay summaries more readable for the non-technical audience. Possible explanations for the findings were discussed and suggestions to enhance the readability of lay summaries were offered.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to extend their sincere gratitude to the Editor and anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions.
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This work was supported by the Sichuan Office of Philosophy and Social Science under grant number SC22WY002 and the National Natural Science Foundation of China under grant number 82060123.
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Appendix
Appendix
Lay summary
Lay summaries are concise summaries of research papers written in clear and simple language. However, it is not clear whether these lay summaries are easy to read. This study compares lay summaries and abstracts in terms of readability scores and use of technical words. We found that both lay summaries and abstracts were difficult to read and contained a higher proportion of technical words. Surprisingly, we found lay summaries were less readable than abstracts. We discussed the findings and offered advice on how to make lay summaries more readable.
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Wen, J., Yi, L. Comparing lay summaries to scientific abstracts for readability and jargon use: a case report. Scientometrics 128, 5791–5800 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-04807-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-04807-1