Use less language; use more figures, tables, color, highlighting, and multimedia

The primary channel of scientific communication is the research article, whose content is mainly presented in English paragraphs comprised of declarative sentences. Paragraphed, declarative English has two major problems: high resource demands both in creation and consumption (especially for non-native users of English, constituting the majority of researchers); and ambiguity inherent in language creates more uncertainty for consumers. Greater promotion of other communicative tools – e.g. figures, tables, images, bulleted lists, headings, highlighting through color, bold and italics – among a range of stakeholders – e.g. journal gatekeepers, research methods teachers, English language teachers, disciplinary bodies like the APA – would result in scientific communication with improved volume, speed, and clarity. Cognitive science shows that a figure, table, image, sub-heading, or bulleted list is easier to create and to decode than a paragraph, and less ambiguous. Neurath speculated 100 years ago about scientific communication “freed from the slag of historical languages”; multimedia technology makes this increasingly possible.