Research Debt
A lot of this seems to be a problem with academic publishing, peer review, and the pedantry contained therein.<p>I tried (twice!) to publish a paper that was scientifically sound, but written such that it could be understood by a lay audience. It was rejected; quoting a reviewer: &quot;This paper lacks math.&quot; That sentiment made me lose a lot of faith in academia. Now, I simply refuse to contribute any more time to writing papers or performing peer review (esp. in non-open publications).  I&#x27;m sure I&#x27;m not alone; I know of at least one &quot;seminal&quot; robotics paper that was rejected from top venues multiple times for &quot;simplicity&quot; (lack of mathematics content) that went on to become a foundational paper in the field after appearing in a lower-tier venue years later.<p>The irony: it takes researchers a lot of time to make a paper dense &amp; concise.  If they &quot;showed all steps&quot;, it would probably improve researcher productivity &amp; make the material more approachable to newcomers. Instead publishers enforce length restrictions... for which authors dedicate upto 25%  to related work (some of which is useful; much of which is pandering to likely peer reviewers in small, niche fields). Length restrictions seem equally foolish in the age of digital publishing. And again, inadvertent pedantry is the only explanation I can imagine... but happy to be wrong.