[Piwoslaw]

Tas, the problem with scientific papers is that as they get more and more advanced, you need more and more background to understand them. When someone publishes their research, they define every new term, and often a few which are in earlier papers on the subject, plus citations to helpful sources. If they were to define everything from the ground up, then the "paper" would be a multivolume brick.

So yes, it is a pain when just the paper isn't enough to understand what's going on. But it is more efficient than rewriting the history of that whole branch of science each time someone slightly changes a single equation or gives a new proof of something-or-other. It's a compromise.