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In the world of scholarly publishing, a growing chorus argues that print is for stripped-down versions of articles, supplemented by longer bells-and-whistles versions online, where space and cost are not constraints.

For example, Stevan Harnad, a British professor whose professional life is dedicated to a quixotic quest to have authors deposit copies of their manuscripts in openly accessible online repositories, argues "for authors to self-archive not only the shortened published version, but, prominently hyperlinked, the original full version too (and any revisions, corrections and updates)."

To an extent, the argument makes sense. Many articles, not only in scholarly publishing, could be enhanced by supplementary reference material, and the Web may be the perfect place to store it economically.

Still, I give pause at the prospect of print version articles supplemented by one or more lengthy "director's cut" versions in repositories. A strict word limit, like the prospect of hanging, tends to concentrate the mind wonderfully. Though the deposited version might contain useful supplementary data, it might also be simply represent the self-indulgence of a gassy author.

After all, Watson and Crick's 1953 paper in the journal Nature showing the double helix structure of DNA runs barely more than a page. A paper that modestly suggested "a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material” needed no supplementary detritus to change the world's understanding of genetics.

Perhaps what enabled Watson and Crick to think and to write with such clarity and vigor was the need to be concise. As William Strunk said, "A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts."

We should guard against cluttering the Web with unnecessary parts simply because it is easy to do so.

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