Why should footnotes be avoided in scientific publications (natural science)? Here are some guidelines and rules regarding the use of footnotes for different journals in Earth Science and IT:


  Footnotes are used only for author affiliations and tables.  Incorporate all other footnoted information into text.


Source: http://publications.agu.org/author-resource-center/text-requirements/


  Footnotes should be used sparingly. Number them consecutively throughout the article. Many word processors build footnotes into the text, and this feature may be used. Should this not be the case, indicate the position of footnotes in the text and present the footnotes themselves separately at the end of the article.


Source: https://www.elsevier.com/journals/information-and-computation/0890-5401/guide-for-authors or https://www.elsevier.com/journals/journal-of-volcanology-and-geothermal-research/0377-0273/guide-for-authors

I am wondering what the reasoning is behind making people avoid using footnotes. Can I not, in some cases, create more readable text by adding some kind of tangential information in a footnote rather than incorporating it into the text?
If you don't stop/discourage researchers from adding footnotes, you will end up with articles with huge amounts of footnotes. As you are doing research you will learn a lot about a specific topic, and most of that will not end up in the final article. The temptation is to add that to footnotes. However, a good article is one that has a very specific aim and does only that. So you should resist that temptation. Such rules are there to help you.