The sophistication of academic research often creates a cognitive barrier for readers when they understand and utilize new knowledge. Cognizant of this issue, scholars in various fields, including Operations and Supply Chain Management (OSCM), have called for improved communication in academic research. Readability is a key pillar of written communication and is particularly important in OSCM. This is partially because OSCM articles tend to be diverse in terms of methods, theoretical lenses used, and author origins. OSCM is also a field where knowledge is created with the purpose of interfacing with real business problems closely and engaging with diverse external stakeholders. The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between readability and knowledge diffusion in academic OSCM research. Using cognitive load as the theoretical lens for readability, we analyze a full-text dataset of 1476 articles published in leading OSCM journals between 1998 and 2018. We find that readability has a positive impact on citations garnered. This relationship holds over 3-year short-term spans and 6-year long-term spans, indicating lasting effects. In addition, the results show that the impact of readability on knowledge diffusions is nonlinear. This finding confirms the additive nature of cognitive load and suggests that there is a level authors and journal editors should achieve to make their work more understandable and more likely to be diffused. Suggestions are made to help researchers reduce cognitive loads and to increase the likelihood that knowledge generated in their research is more likely to be disseminated by future researchers.

中文翻译：

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写作促进知识：OSCM 中可读性对知识传播的影响

学术研究的复杂性往往会给读者理解和利用新知识造成认知障碍。认识到这个问题，包括运营和供应链管理（OSCM）在内的各个领域的学者都呼吁加强学术研究中的沟通。可读性是书面交流的关键支柱，在 OSCM 中尤为重要。部分原因是 OSCM 文章在方法、使用的理论视角和作者出身方面往往多种多样。OSCM 也是一个创造知识的领域，其目的是与实际业务问题密切联系并与不同的外部利益相关者互动。本研究的目的是探讨 OSCM 学术研究中可读性与知识传播之间的关系。我们使用认知负荷作为可读性的理论视角，分析了 1998 年至 2018 年间发表在主要 OSCM 期刊上的 1476 篇文章的全文数据集。我们发现可读性对引用量有积极影响。这种关系存在超过 3 年的短期跨度和 6 年的长期跨度，表明具有持久的影响。此外，结果表明可读性对知识传播的影响是非线性的。这一发现证实了认知负荷的累加性质，并表明作者和期刊编辑应该达到一定的水平，以使他们的工作更容易理解，更有可能被传播。提出的建议是为了帮助研究人员减少认知负担，并增加他们研究中产生的知识更有可能被未来研究人员传播的可能性。