When you're under a word count constraint, it's far more economical and creates cleaner prose to say "Harvard study" than to list all the authors and their official professorial titles.
I had a piece in a prominent publication with something like a 1000 word count constraint, and there were points where the difference between these two amounted to 20 words, which meant losing an entire argument or important qualification.
Giving academics titles like "sociology professor" rather than "Thaddeus Q. Zarathustra Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Executive Director of the Zarathustra Family Intradisciplinary Institute for Sociological Studies" might help here.
