On 2017 Jul 21, Horacio Rivera commented:

Are citations related to a faulty writing style or simply to content? The results got by Weinberger et al. (2015) in their analysis of >1,000,000 abstracts may not be so surprising. Taking into account the pervasiveness of an improper writing style (Woodford FP, ed. Scientific Writing for Graduate Students, CBE 1986; Gopen&Swan, Am Sci 1990, 78: 550; Knight J, Nature 2003, 423: 376; Editorial, Nat Struct Mol Biol 2010, 17: 139), I guess that the decreased citation rate associated with half of 15 well-known stylistic features can equally be ascribed to the papers’ content. Actually, the opposite pattern found for the remaining features suggests that style alone is not a consistent predictor of citation rates. A more reliable study would compare a sample of "well written" vs "poorly written" abstracts, classified according to conventional wisdom by expert colleagues, instead of analyzing all available abstracts in a given period. I do two additional comments: 1. Rule 4 of the authors "Use the present tense" is unsuitable when dealing only with abstracts. At least in biomedicine, the general advice is to use the past tense in the "M&M" and "Results" sections that account for half or more of an abstract. Obviously, the results would have been the opposite ones if the rule "Use the past tense" had been applied. 2. The assertion that in "writing a paper, the limiting step is the ability to find the right article" appears nonsense inasmuch it disregards the crucial intellectual input required for successful writing. In other words, "to find the right article" is a preparatory rather than limiting step. To conclude, I praise the effort of Weinberger et al. (2015) in summarizing ten simple rules aimed to improve our writing style.

On 2016 Oct 02, Atanas G. Atanasov commented:

Readers might also find of interest the study “Does a Graphical Abstract Bring More Visibility to Your Paper?”: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27649137

On 2016 Oct 02, Atanas G. Atanasov commented:

Readers might also find of interest the study “Does a Graphical Abstract Bring More Visibility to Your Paper?”: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27649137

On 2017 Jul 21, Horacio Rivera commented:

Are citations related to a faulty writing style or simply to content? The results got by Weinberger et al. (2015) in their analysis of >1,000,000 abstracts may not be so surprising. Taking into account the pervasiveness of an improper writing style (Woodford FP, ed. Scientific Writing for Graduate Students, CBE 1986; Gopen&Swan, Am Sci 1990, 78: 550; Knight J, Nature 2003, 423: 376; Editorial, Nat Struct Mol Biol 2010, 17: 139), I guess that the decreased citation rate associated with half of 15 well-known stylistic features can equally be ascribed to the papers’ content. Actually, the opposite pattern found for the remaining features suggests that style alone is not a consistent predictor of citation rates. A more reliable study would compare a sample of "well written" vs "poorly written" abstracts, classified according to conventional wisdom by expert colleagues, instead of analyzing all available abstracts in a given period. I do two additional comments: 1. Rule 4 of the authors "Use the present tense" is unsuitable when dealing only with abstracts. At least in biomedicine, the general advice is to use the past tense in the "M&M" and "Results" sections that account for half or more of an abstract. Obviously, the results would have been the opposite ones if the rule "Use the past tense" had been applied. 2. The assertion that in "writing a paper, the limiting step is the ability to find the right article" appears nonsense inasmuch it disregards the crucial intellectual input required for successful writing. In other words, "to find the right article" is a preparatory rather than limiting step. To conclude, I praise the effort of Weinberger et al. (2015) in summarizing ten simple rules aimed to improve our writing style.