Undisciplined Thinking Facilitates Accessible Writing: A Response to Doubleday and Connell

摘要

In their recent paper, Doubleday and Connell touch on the importance of good scientific writing in promoting interdisciplinary research, noting that 'If difficult writing impedes communication within disciplines, it will certainly impede communication across disciplines'. The authors suggest that researchers who write in an accessible style will have their work glimpsed by academics in neighboring disciplinary fields or silos with these glimpses contributing to the innovation and discovery that are central to science. Doubleday and Connell note that learning to write accessibly requires a constant appreciation of style and its different forms. Here we draw on our experiences in interdisciplinary research to explore the idea that such collaborations may facilitate undisciplined thinking and development of writing styles. Specifically, we propose that working across disciplinary lines necessarily exposes researchers to new academic languages and cultures, highlights the limitations of their own, and encourages the development of new composite communication styles more accessible to readers of all disciplines.