许多人抱怨现在科学文献越来越难看懂了。确实,随便翻一翻专业杂志和某些一般性的科学杂志,就可以发现阅读其上刊登的文章并非易事。《科学》杂志最近刊登的一篇论文运用客观的分析方法对这个问题作了定量的探讨,得出了一些引人注意的结论。该论文采用一种衡量“文章难度”的方法考察了过去145年间某些科学杂志上刊登的文章。这些科学文献可以分为四类:一般科学文献(包括《自然》、《科学》和《科学美国人》)、10种专业杂志(包括天文学、生物学、化学、地质学和物理学等领域)、大学初级科学教科书以及通俗科学杂志。这一分析的结果总的说来符合人们的印象,即现在的 Many people complain that the scientific literature is getting harder to read now. Indeed, just looking through professional magazines and some general science magazines, you can find it hard to read the articles on it. A recently published paper in Science uses a quantitative analysis of the issue using objective analysis and draws some notable conclusions. The paper examines articles published in certain scientific journals in the past 145 years using a measure of “difficulty of the article.” These scientific literature can be divided into four categories: general scientific literature (including Nature, Science and Scientific American), 10 professional journals (including fields such as astronomy, biology, chemistry, geology and physics) , University junior science textbooks and popular science magazines. The result of this analysis is, in general, in line with people's perceptions, that is, now