If your references allow them to discover the literature, they will forever consider you one of the experts in the field. While writing the body of the article, I stop every few paragraphs and visualize the three people I have chosen for the audience. If someone's head is nodding, I speak to them, tell them what they want to know, and then rewrite to include material of interest to all readers. Changing the length and complexity of your sentences and paragraphs keeps your writing lively and interesting. Long sentences add a richness and complexity.
Short paragraphs emphasize.
The scientific literature is immutable. Researchers a hundred years hence will still be reading the great works. Make yours one. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.