Nature Letters has historically been a "safety valve" for scientific publication in that it provided a way for a Nature Editor to allow the publication of short and possibly controversial pieces that might potentially be important, but that would find it difficult or impossible to pass normal peer-review.
In October 2019 Nature announced that the suspension of the Letters section was now a permanent feature of the journal's new redesign.
- " ... From now on, all our research content will also be published in the 'Article' format; the shorter, 'Letter' format has been retired. "
This is, obviously, the end of an era. Was the format redundant? Did the science community not produce enough interesting but controversial material to keep it going? Are scientists today more conservative than they used to be and less willing to take risks with their reputations? Does this leave the scientific community without a respected "official" channel for communicating controversial ideas and results?
The highest-profile "Nature Letter" I can think of (for the late Twentieth Century) is Stephen Hawking's "Black hole explosions?" letter, in 1974:
Article Black Hole Explosions?
https://www.nature.com/articles/248030a0
Hawking's letter outlined the concept of Hawking radiation, an idea that was unable to be published in mainstream journals as a paper, as it directly contradicted a key prediction of Einstein's general theory that was assumed to have been proved beyond reasonable doubt.
When Hawking gave a talk on the idea, the meeting was called to a premature halt by the organiser, John Taylor, who famously walked out declaring the idea to be rubbish. Taylor also supposedly advised Nature not to publish the letter ... but Nature's Editor decided to print it anyway, and the rest is history.
With Hawking's argument now published in a high-profile journal, a number of theorists then set to work identifying why the argument was wrong ... and found to their surprise that it wasn't.
How big a part did Nature Letters play in the uptake of Hawking's idea?
If Hawking hadn't been able to publish in a major journal, would the idea still have "broken through", or would it have risked disappearing without a trace?
Nature letters are gone, that is a sad day for science. I so agree with Eric Baird So many wonderful researchers like Octave Levenspiel, Thomas Gold, et al have said that peer-review can be a wall that is unsurmountable even or perhaps especially if your idea is true. I can not stress enough to put a preprint at Researchgate and elsewhere. Be sure to generate a DOI number. If your ideas have merit then they will be read and spread. If you are lucky you may be cited before you are published. Thanks for listening
CGY
I completely agree with Eric and Christopher that this is a black event in the world of science. This is something similar to political correctness, is not it?
Hi
I think these nature letters are short reports of original research that were focussed on an outstanding finding whose importance means that it will be of interest to scientists in other fields.....but now that concept has been totally changed..we have to make our research valuable in terms of citations...h index...n many more....
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