Understanding formal scholarly communication in information science by exploring generational evolution of academic writing patterns

Professional academic writing skills can improve the validity of scholarly communication. Aiming to reveal the generational differences of academic writing patterns, by applying quantitative linguistic analysis to explore 53 information scientists in China and 2,328 papers of them, we found that (1) the writing pattern evolves smoothly, (2) sentences that scientists compose in a paper have become longer and longer, and syntax has become more and more complex as time goes by, and (3) scientists tend to be more and more cautious on choosing expression manners and norm words. This research will continue the matters of exact relationships between the age differences and writing patterns, and will be extended to other languages.