[gww]

The length limits also forces authors to increase the complexity of their figures to cram as much data into the limited space as possible. I've seen papers with figures that have 10+ graphs all squished into a half page figure.

EDIT: This usually limits proper explanations of the data in the text too because of very limited word counts.

[patrick451]

Yup. And then half the paper is fluff, citing similar work (and all the room those citations take up), trying to make an argument what they did is novel.

It's interesting to note the difference between papers 30 (this might vary by field) years ago compared to now. The old papers are mostly substance, and spend very little space on the introduction and political "positioning". Partly this makes sense since things were younger and work tended to be more novel by default back then.

But I also think it's a sign of a sort of petty dysfunction. Academics get graded on their "impact", and citations is part of that. So reviewers want you to cite their results, and your reviewers are likely to be folks with similar papers. So authors go citation crazy, trying to appease selfish reviewers, leaving themselves with less than three pages to describe what they actually did.