“Unintelligible Management Research and Academic Prestige”, 1980-04 (; backlinks; similar):
Modest support was found for the “Dr. Fox phenomenon”: Management scientists gain prestige by unintelligible writing.
A positive correlation (+0.7) was found between the prestige of 10 management journals and their “fog indices” (reading difficulty).
Furthermore, 32 faculty members were asked to rate the prestige of 4 passages from management journals. The content of the passages was held constant while readability was varied.
Those passages that were more difficult to read were rated higher in research competence.