I agree the format/layout is archaic and not friendly. There’s a reason why no website adopts the same design approach. But I think the reason is not just that aesthetics are not valued - you could conceivably choose any number of other unattractive approaches - why just the one dominant format? I think the reason why one particular approach persists is because it grants academic papers an (undeserved?) appearance of legitimacy. This is almost an unspoken bar for acceptance in the community, due to some mix of momentum, social cohesion, and inward facing norms. Journals and their process of curation, review, and editing all influence this process as well. The centralized gatekeeping of paid journals lends itself to a continuation of the existing practices.
I don’t think this discussion is applicable to just format/layout though. The writing style of academic papers is also anachronistic/archaic. I feel like most are written in an unnecessarily awkward way that impedes understanding. It’s almost an attempt to elevate the “complexity” of the content by choosing difficult writing styles, overusing jargon, and under-explaining. I’ve seen this style of writing previously defended in the same way as the aesthetics, that it is a matter of the content being “technical” or “scientific”. But if you look at any public facing post from companies that write deeply technical blogs or other such things, you’ll see there are definitively better alternatives to communicating deeply technical content.
These norms need to be broken. I think a paper should be given more weight if it is easy to consume. This means free access, nicer designs, simpler language, more transparent explanations.
I don’t think this discussion is applicable to just format/layout though. The writing style of academic papers is also anachronistic/archaic. I feel like most are written in an unnecessarily awkward way that impedes understanding. It’s almost an attempt to elevate the “complexity” of the content by choosing difficult writing styles, overusing jargon, and under-explaining. I’ve seen this style of writing previously defended in the same way as the aesthetics, that it is a matter of the content being “technical” or “scientific”. But if you look at any public facing post from companies that write deeply technical blogs or other such things, you’ll see there are definitively better alternatives to communicating deeply technical content.
These norms need to be broken. I think a paper should be given more weight if it is easy to consume. This means free access, nicer designs, simpler language, more transparent explanations.