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Overview Changes in the publishing industry such as open access and online availability of research articles means that research is available to a larger audience than ever before. While traditional journal article elements (e.g., key words, abstracts, summaries, takeaway points) help give context to a paper or emphasize the point the authors are trying to make, they assume a level of expertise with the topic that may no longer be the case for some readers. Although plain language summaries (PLSs) have existed for a long time, they can better appeal to this broader audience because a PLS serves a different purpose altogether. Generally, a PLS is a short summary of a scientific article written in nontechnical language1 that makes the main idea of the paper easier to understand for a nonexpert audience. Scholarly journals tend to cater to a specific professional audience. In general, they are intended for practitioners or researchers who are familiar with the topic of the journal as it relates to their profession. Readers of scholarly journals are assumed to have the basic knowledge required to interpret the articles, despite the use of jargon and complex terminology. For example, a reader of a cancer journal could be assumed to understand the basics of chemotherapy, the current standards of care, common abbreviations, or other technical jargon without those things having to be explained in the article. However, this means that a person whose specialty lies outside the topic of an article, or who has none of the basic …
Emilie Gunn (Tue,) studied this question.