Is academic writing becoming more positive? A large-scale diachronic case study of Science research articles across 25 years

Abstract

Academic writing is developing to be more positive. This linguistic positivity bias is confirmed in academic writing across disciplines and genres. The current research adopted sentiment analysis and examined the diachronic change in linguistic positivity in the full texts of 2,556 research articles published in Science in 25 years. The results showed that academic writing in research articles in the journal Science has become significantly more positive in the past 25 years. The findings of this study confirm linguistic positivity bias in academic writing based on empirical data from Science. Reasons for the increasingly positive language use in science articles might include the popularization of science, the growing number of researchers, and the difficulty of publishing in high-impact journals. Finally, this study discussed the implications of our findings for researchers, editors, and peer reviewers.