Dear researchers, I would like to know the opinion and analysis of researchers experienced in this matter regarding the value of the publication "Letter to the editor" in relation to the formal article.
Some defend it as technical production. The Letter to the editor would have less content and would not go through the same criteria, processes and requirements as a published full article. Others like me who think that it is a publication, that undergoes a hard analysis by editors and often reviewers, have doi, generate impact factor and generate h index.
As articles, the letters are also submitted to more or less important magazines, with more or less visibility and impact factor.
There are smaller, short, sometimes weak articles, but they are published in journals, this also happens with the letters ..... they are undoubtedly more focused and punctual documents. However, when they are strong and in strong journals, they can change the line of research, they can question results, hypotheses and consolidated theories and review excellent published articles.
Dear Alexandro Andrade, exellent question. I understand the point of view from Drs. Robert Trevethan and Wolfgang R. Dick and can to contribuite writting that peer-reviewed journals highly value letters to the editor and encourage their readers to send their comments and considerations to be considered for publication. According to Tierney E., O'Rourke C., Fenton J.E. What is the role of “the Letter to the Editor”? Eur Arch Otorhinolaryngol. 2015; 272: 2089–2093 letters to the editor serve two main purposes: post-publication peer review and sharing experiences with other readers. Both are equally important for maintaining the journal's high standards. For this purpose, they receive indexations such as DOI, PMCID, PMID, etc. so they can be referenced and accompany the original manuscript.
As far as I know, most journals require a title, affiliation, declaration of conflicts of interest and bibliographical references just like an original article. So, except for better judgment, the letter to the editor is a type of intellectual production and has the value equivalent to an original article.
It would be discouraging that intellectual production not to be considered as an article because it would go in the opposite direction to that desired by good scientific publications.
It's my opinion.
Alexandro Andrade, I agree with your perspectives. I have cited letters to the editor when I believe those letters provide landmark information. I have also written two letters to editors, and each time those letters went through quite rigorous review. Furthermore, in order to write my letters, I needed to do considerable research and to take care to polish the manuscript.
Certainly, I did not expend as much energy on my letters as I have always done with articles, but I suspect I did more careful (and informed) research, and spent more time, on my letters than do many people whose names appear as authors on articles.
I agree with Robert Trevethan. However, in my opinion the question should be mainly whether to read letters to the editor or not and whether to cite them (my answer is yes in agreement with Robert's opinion). The hunt for impact factors, high h index values, etc. is doing a lot of harm to science, so the question whether a letter to the editor should be regarded as a formal published article seems not so important to me.
Dear Alexandro Andrade, exellent question. I understand the point of view from Drs. Robert Trevethan and Wolfgang R. Dick and can to contribuite writting that peer-reviewed journals highly value letters to the editor and encourage their readers to send their comments and considerations to be considered for publication. According to Tierney E., O'Rourke C., Fenton J.E. What is the role of “the Letter to the Editor”? Eur Arch Otorhinolaryngol. 2015; 272: 2089–2093 letters to the editor serve two main purposes: post-publication peer review and sharing experiences with other readers. Both are equally important for maintaining the journal's high standards. For this purpose, they receive indexations such as DOI, PMCID, PMID, etc. so they can be referenced and accompany the original manuscript.
As far as I know, most journals require a title, affiliation, declaration of conflicts of interest and bibliographical references just like an original article. So, except for better judgment, the letter to the editor is a type of intellectual production and has the value equivalent to an original article.
It would be discouraging that intellectual production not to be considered as an article because it would go in the opposite direction to that desired by good scientific publications.
It's my opinion.
Letters to the editor serve two main purposes; post-publication peer review and sharing experiences with fellow readers. Both are equally important in maintaining journals' high standards. Indexing needs to be improved otherwise valuable comment does not endure while the original manuscript's message lives on. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25231709/
“Letter to the Editor” or “Correspondence” is considered a “post publication peer review”. ... They are generally listed in the scientific databases as a publication. Therefore, the evidence against or in favor of the discussed subject should be strong enough to attract the journal editors and readers. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4881237/
In academic publishing, letters to the editor of an academic journal are usually open postpublication reviews of a paper, often critical of some aspect of the original paper. The authors of the original paper sometimes respond to these with a letter of their own. Controversial papers in mainstream journals often attract numerous letters to the editor. Good citation indexing services list the original papers together with all replies. Depending on the length of the letter and the journal's style, other types of headings may be used, such as peer commentary. There are some variations on this practice. Some journals request open commentaries as a matter of course, which are published together with the original paper, and any authors' reply, in a process called open peer commentary. The introduction of the "epub ahead of print" practice in many journals now allows unsolicited letters to the editor (and authors' reply) to appear in the same print issue of the journal, as long as they are sent in the interval between the electronic publication of the original paper and its appearance in print. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_to_the_editor
Alexandro Andrade , I agree with you, the letter to the editor is a publication which is strictly analyzed by editors and is not easy to publish. It is for sure a great addition if it is published on an impact factor journal, the only problem which I foresee is that at times it is not considered in academic promotions, depending on the institution for sure.
If the purpose of the letter to the editor is to gain "points" for promotion, your time will be much better spent by publishing an accredited research journal.
So, considering several good answers and arguments, verifying that many in favor of which letters to the editor should be considered publications as articles, respecting their technical characteristics, we can objectify which better criteria and procedures must be respected for a better and stronger letter to editor? I will put this point as a new question.
Dear Prof. Andrade,
In my experience as evaluator, a Letter to the Editor is never considered as a formal published article. Similarly, abstracts from conferences that are frequently published as special issues in many academic journals. This said, a Letter to the Editor, as previous answers state, can be very valuable and provide significant data and insight on the topic which is under discussion. They should be assessed in this line, which, sadly, is not common in nowadays quantitative-style scientific production assessment procedures.
Dear all,
this is a new ‘search engine’ for scientific journals and their impact factors.
https://journal-if.com/
You just have to type the journal’s name or the field/category of journals you are interested in
Dear Dr. Chinaza, I went to check your researchgate and I see that you are very active in the responses on this platform. Thank you for your interest. We need to improve and deepen this debate. It seems to me that the letters to the editor are not limited to these 2 functions, don't you think? Although I basically publish full scientific articles, I published 2 letters I believe, among the papers, but I have read and followed several letters that are very important. They can change hypotheses, question consolidated results and procedures, among other relevant scientific functions.
This importance is not exclusively related to the idea of being equivalent to articles, but I believe that we cannot maintain this division without reviewing the quality and relevance when placed alongside so many articles considered complete.
Dear Dr. Carlos Gutiérrez-García, Thank you very much for your interest and considerations. Your experience must be highly regarded for your work and efforts ahead of an international scientific journal. Thanks also for your understanding of the letters and abstracts. Without a doubt, there are differences in the way of evaluating these productions, between countries, academic culture, and between journals. These themes are current and should be revisited, for example, the valorization of the publication of a letter to the editor in relation to an article, depending on the scope and depth of the letter and vice versa, the issue of citations and productivity indexes. I will seek to raise some new issues that deserve to be discussed through this channel on researchgate. Congratulations and thank you
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