> Since the point of a title and abstract of a paper is to be a useful summary of the whole paper,
I'd like to nit pick this a little. The title and abstract of the paper is optimized towards reviewers. There is the assumption that reviewers are aligned with researchers seeking to read new papers (after all, papers are simply the act of communicating from researcher to researcher), but I don't think this assumption is actually valid.
I complain a lot about reviews, but I'll give an example that is simple and I'm sure is true in almost every domain: paper length. There are far too many papers that could be a page or two but are 10 because that's what the journal/conference requires. If you don't fill the pages you're more likely to get rejected as the reviewer has more validity to claim your work was not thorough enough rather than your explanation simply being concise[0]. This is only exaggerated as we are in a publish or perish paradigm and publishing faster and in more competitive environments. But papers are like wizards: they're meant to be as long as they're meant to be. No more, no less. (At least that's how they should be if you're targeting fellow researchers in your niche)
It's an all too common mistake to believe that metrics are perfectly aligned with some well defined but abstract goal. Rather they are generally aligned with proxies that correlate with the desired goal. You'll find this everywhere from trying to measure the quality of LLMs to trying to exterminate cobras in Colonial India. Pay close attention or Goodhart will be turning in his grave.
I'd say more about the science communication aspect but I don't want to rant too much and I think one could guess a much lengthier response extrapolating from my thoughts above.
[0] Similarly papers get cut to fit the length and tough decisions are made about what goes in the front matter vs the appendix because reviewers are not required to read the appendix and a large portion simply do not (https://twitter.com/sarahookr/status/1660250223745314819).
I'd like to nit pick this a little. The title and abstract of the paper is optimized towards reviewers. There is the assumption that reviewers are aligned with researchers seeking to read new papers (after all, papers are simply the act of communicating from researcher to researcher), but I don't think this assumption is actually valid.
I complain a lot about reviews, but I'll give an example that is simple and I'm sure is true in almost every domain: paper length. There are far too many papers that could be a page or two but are 10 because that's what the journal/conference requires. If you don't fill the pages you're more likely to get rejected as the reviewer has more validity to claim your work was not thorough enough rather than your explanation simply being concise[0]. This is only exaggerated as we are in a publish or perish paradigm and publishing faster and in more competitive environments. But papers are like wizards: they're meant to be as long as they're meant to be. No more, no less. (At least that's how they should be if you're targeting fellow researchers in your niche)
It's an all too common mistake to believe that metrics are perfectly aligned with some well defined but abstract goal. Rather they are generally aligned with proxies that correlate with the desired goal. You'll find this everywhere from trying to measure the quality of LLMs to trying to exterminate cobras in Colonial India. Pay close attention or Goodhart will be turning in his grave.
I'd say more about the science communication aspect but I don't want to rant too much and I think one could guess a much lengthier response extrapolating from my thoughts above.
[0] Similarly papers get cut to fit the length and tough decisions are made about what goes in the front matter vs the appendix because reviewers are not required to read the appendix and a large portion simply do not (https://twitter.com/sarahookr/status/1660250223745314819).