Academics spend countless hours toiling over research papers—running analyses, crafting arguments, and painstakingly choosing each word. But does writing quality actually matter for how the substance of a paper is perceived? A new study provides evidence that better writing does lead to more favorable evaluations of both the form and content of academic papers among economists and writing experts.

The study, titled “Writing matters” and published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, was conducted by Jan Feld, Corinna Lines, and Libby Ross. Their goal was to isolate the causal effect of writing quality on how experts in the field judge economics papers. To accomplish this, the researchers collected 30 papers written by PhD students in economics at New Zealand universities. They then had professional editors improve the writing of these papers, focusing particularly on making them clearer and simplifying the language to make them easier to understand. Importantly, the editors did not change substantive content or results—just the writing style and presentation.

With both the original and edited versions of each paper in hand, the researchers recruited 30 economists and 18 writing experts to evaluate the papers. Each expert was given ten papers to review: five originals and five edited versions (but never both versions of the same paper). The economists were asked to judge the overall quality of the papers, while the writing experts focused specifically on assessing the writing quality. The results show that writing quality does indeed matter. 

The writing experts judged the edited papers to be significantly better written overall (0.60 standard deviations higher). Specifically, they found that the editing made it easier to find the papers’ key messages (0.58 SD improvement) and that the papers had fewer mistakes (0.67 SD improvement), were easier to read (0.53 SD improvement), and were more concise (0.50 SD improvement).

More significantly, the economists judged the edited papers more favorably on several key metrics. They rated the overall quality of the edited manuscripts 0.20 standard deviations higher and were 8.4 percentage points more likely to accept the edited than the unedited papers for a conference. They also rated the papers’ chances of being published in a top economics journal 4.1 percentage points higher.

The effects were particularly noticeable for papers that were poorly written to begin with. For these papers, editing improved overall quality ratings as judged by the economists by 0.30 standard deviations, perceived writing quality by 0.40 standard deviations, and conference acceptance likelihood by 11.1 percentage points.

These findings have important implications for academics across fields. As the authors note, “For papers to have scientific impact, they need to impress our peers in their role as referees, journal editors, and members of conference committees.” This study provides strong evidence that better writing helps papers make it past these critical gatekeepers. 

Clearer writing benefits everyone—making it easier for good ideas to be recognized and for important research findings to be understood and built upon.

It’s worth noting that the economists in this study were given only some 5–8 minutes to review each paper. This mirrors how papers are often initially screened for conferences or by journal editors. The results suggest that, in these quick evaluations, writing quality can make a real difference in first impressions. 

The magnitude of the effects is substantial, especially considering that the editors spent only about six hours on each paper. As a point of comparison, the authors note that the effect sizes are similar to or larger than the estimated impacts of factors such as gender or personal connections in academic evaluations. 

Of course, every study has limitations, and there are some open questions to consider. This study focused on economics papers, and the effects might differ in other academic fields with different writing conventions. The editing concentrated heavily on the abstract and introduction, so the impacts might vary if the entire paper received equal attention. Additionally, the long-term effects on citation counts or other measures of a paper’s eventual impact remain unknown. There may also be diminishing returns to writing quality improvements beyond a certain point.

Despite these considerations, this study offers some clear, practical implications for academics. Investing time in improving writing is worthwhile, as the potential gains in how work is perceived seem to outweigh the time costs. Focusing especially on polishing the abstract and introduction appears to be particularly important for initial impressions. Extra attention to writing quality for conference submissions, where quick evaluations are common, is advisable. For nonnative English speakers or those who struggle with writing, professional editing services could be a good investment.

At Standard Error, academic editing is as much about applying social and institutional knowledge and norms as about keeping track of applying grammar and style rules. Our function is to help a paper’s merits shine through. When authors choose to work with Standard Error, we bring our editorial expertise and extensive experience working on quantitative social sciences research to align authors’ work with the expectations of their peers worldwide.

Ultimately, clearer writing benefits everyone—making it easier for good ideas to be recognized and for important research findings to be understood and built upon. This study provides provocative evidence that such efforts are not just about aesthetics but can materially impact how work is received by the scientific community.

—Hannah Hancock contributed to the development of this post.