Expandable abbreviations

I am currently wading through a new area of scientific literature, much of it published in the last decade. Almost all journals impose strict page- or word-limits on their publications, most of which exist in both paper and digital editions. For this reason, abbreviations are often very heavily used.

Some abbreviations are well-known and would be tedious to read in full (DNA, for example). But many are not at all well- known. For instance, just now I am reading a review article which is about 10 pages long, and it begins with a list of about 60 abbreviations; very few of them are "standard" - they have just been invented by the authors to save space.

The use of abbreviations is all very well and etc, and may be justfiable in a print edition where space is at a premium. But for digital editions, there is surely no need to save so much space.

What I propose, therefore, is that jargony digital articles have "optionally expandable" abbreviations. By default, you'll see the article with all the abbreviations the author put in. But click on "Expand Some", and the obscure or topic-specific abbreviations will be expanded into full words, leaving only the most well-known abbreviations (DNA, mV etc) in situ. Click on "Expand All", and even these terms will be expandulated (deoxyribonucleic acid; milliVolts).

Thuswise, people familiar with the literature can skim across the abbreviations like an ice skater on, uh, ice. But those who are less familiar with the field can have things spelled out so that they don't have to constantly search backwards through the paper for the initial use and definition of the abbreviation.

Of course, the miracle of the internet means that abbreviations could be expanded in little pop-ups when you mouse over them, but that is fiddly and distracting. Also, it would be nice to have the option of printing out a PDF with the abbreviations expanded or not.

That is all.