I like the advice about avoiding footnotes. Citing sources is fine. Almost all other footnotes and information from links should either be omitted or incorporated into the main text. They are too disruptive to the flow of reading.

> Find a good editor you can trust and who will spend real time and thought on your work.

Haha, sure, I will send it to my LLM -- ... I mean "editor." :)

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parpfish 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Footnotes are very tempting in a methods section where there’s no end to additional details to add in. However, it’s probably better to put all of that into an appendix/supplemental material section (if the journal allows it). Having a section like that can be a bit freeing — it’s an info dump meant to be read by those looking for a specific implementation detail so it doesn’t need to “read well”

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ghaff 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think it depends on what the situation and format is. When I was writing research notes and a few books, I found bottom of the page footnotes really useful as, not only references, but also as parentheticals and other purposes that some readers might find useful or interesting but didn’t really justify breaking the flow of the text.

	▲	cubefox 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Pretty sure footnotes disrupt the flow of reading. The improvement of the "flow of the text" is an illusion which would only exist if the text wasn't sprinkled with footnotes.

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buildmonkey 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Footnotes make scientific work more accessible and enrich the conversation. In Laurie Garrett’s “The Coming Plague”, the footnotes alone are worth the price. Even in monographs, when reviewing literature in an area where I’m not a specialist, I find footnotes valuable.

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cubefox 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Footnotes make scientific work more accessible and enrich the conversation.

I disagree. Readers have no way of knowing whether they can be safely skipped or not. Relevant information should go into the main text. If a paragraph starts out uninteresting enough, readers will skip it anyway.

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gmueckl 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Footnotes effectively have no place in CS, engineering or natural sciences. Other disciplines treat footnotes very differently, I think.

	▲	suuuuuuuu 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		This is certainly too strongly worded to be correct. I use footnotes quite a bit in my papers (physics) as a strategy to handle the "two audiences" problem - that many or most readers just skim for main ideas, but some (and those whom I might argue are more important) try to follow the details closely. I presently use footnotes for the latter audience for certain supplementary details or technical qualifications that would break the reading flow or add unnecessary length for the former. I do appreciate the arguments that footnotes can be distracting, or that one doesn't know whether to skip them, but at present I see them as the best option for keeping the main body streamlined/as short as possible without sacrificing points that I'd like to make that wouldn't make for or fit into an appendix.
	▲	MangoToupe 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I disagree completely. There are many different sorts of works you can publish relating to a given field, and some of them benefit from the asides and additional context that footnotes can provide, particularly pedagogical works targeting an audience of a wide breadth of experience.