At this point in our academic development I think that we have a certain idea of the way articles and stories are created, am I right? There are certain genres and patterns that we are susceptible to unconsciously and consciously. We read a novel and we can usually recognize within a few pages the style of writing, what is a probable ending, and what we should focus on. For example, in any story by Lee Child, we can usually skim over the description of background. It sets a setting, but for the main part of the story it is not essential. Likewise, in articles we can also (if well versed in a genre's patterns) follow the argument that the author is pointing towards.
Previously, before reading this article, and even after (taking me a good night's sleep to digest the information), I didn't buy the idea of skimming as acceptable in the academic community. Upon further reflection I see that it is possible and like Sosnoski says, essential. Before, perhaps due to my inexperience, I needed the whole story to make sense of the argument. Yet, the more versed I become in a genre or theory, familiar with key terms and ideas, the easier it is for me to see the direction of an argument. For example in the article by Jakobs, I had a good sense of the direction of the paper from the abstract and first opening paragraphs. At that point, I was able to skim over the paper, focusing on the topics that interested me.
But, we have to remember that skimming is made possible and becomes much much easier when an author is aware of a reader's tendency to skim, looking for relevant information. We don't want to see huge long paragraphs with no end in sight for an entire page. We also don't want to see paragraph after paragraph with no headers, subheaders, or framework. I just recently read De Oratore, by Cicero, and one thing that greatly increased my comprehension was the use of headers in front of each section. I'm not sure if this was done by Cicero or the editors of the text, but it really helped me set the own framework for my mind, and in a sense getting ready for the paragraph and knowing what to expect. Likewise, Jakobs and Sosnoski (awesome last name), are aware of the reader's comprehension and how to focus attention with digital texts.
If we do want to create texts that a reader will read from beginning to end, it takes a lot more guiding and logical means of persuasion. Of course there is the heart of the message, and also the writer's style, which affect the reader and may persuade them to keep reading, but generally I believe it is the framing, or the structure of the paper that needs to be first managed before a reader, with hundreds of articles at his disposal, will choose to pick up and read.
Reading your post, I though of a few different things. Headers do seem to be important in reader comprehension, especially when the piece is published online. When we read articles or even prose in a book format, we have some idea of where each section will end based on the font size and number of pages among other things. We can put a legitimate bookmark where we want to continue at a later time. If I read an article online (not as a downloadable PDF) we lose this comfortable framework and can find ourselves scrolling for what seems like forever. This is especially true if the text was uploaded by a sloppy editor, where the formatting of their word processor is lost and it is just one giant block of text. So yes, I like when there are headers or even simple section divisions. These at least allow students and others to skim when they need to and remain informed about just what it is that they're reading.
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