It seems as though academic writing manages to simultaneously use too many words and too many references. Few papers get to the point and cover the point convincingly when they do.
I liked Adlemen's genetic computing paper. It had tons of jargon and references but was only ~ two pages long. It's a super dense two pages if you're new to molecular biology though. I think that's what most academic writers should really be aming for but they get trained by professors/TAs measuring their papers in terms of length rather than content.
