I’ve been banging this drum for some time now—and it appears that the eggheads are finally on my side. From a paper co-authored by Jan Fields, senior lecturer in economics at the School of Economics and Finance, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand:
We have shown that writing matters. Making the writing easier to understand causes economists to evaluate academic papers more positively. This finding has obvious implications. To improve your chances of publishing well, you can work on your writing by, for example, spending time polishing your paper and paying for language editing. These efforts are likely to be particularly valuable if you find writing challenging.
Bonus! Appendix B, “Language Editing Guidelines for Experiment,” which begins on page 38 of the paper, contains some pretty helpful information on how to write more clearly—or, in the words of the authors, “so that an expert who has 10 minutes to evaluate the paper will understand it more easily.”
