Write to Me Please: The Scholarly Importance of Letters to the Editor

Abstract

Letters to the Editor are few and far between in USbased nursing research journals.RINAH last received one in 2013, and in the past five years we have published a total of five.In my recent search, four other general nursing research journals had slightly higher counts of two to five per year.Some were hard to find because they were not searchable or retrievable in global indexes or the journal issues' tables of contents and could be accessed only via a link on the journal homepage.Large United-Kingdom-based nursing research journals fared a bit better, with an average of a letter or two per issue.General medical journals, by contrast, had five or six per issue.In a review of major medical journals, more than half of the published randomized controlled trials were addressed in letters to the editor (Kastner, Menon, Straus, & Laupacis, 2013).When editors do not get many letters, they speculate on the reasons.Perhaps (but probably not), the peer review process is so rigorous that the work in that journal is definitive and virtually flawless; perhaps (and more likely), many researchers are simply behind in their reading (Anstey, 2014).Perhaps, instead of writing a letter, a researcher in the area plans to answer a publication with one of her own, in which she critiques and builds on the first work.Perhaps readers are too busy with other obligations.Or perhaps, in the reader's jaded view, the work lacks sufficient quality or importance to merit a comment.When you consider the value of letters to the editor, however, none of these reasons is compelling.

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