Letters to the Editor Policy

I am interested to know whether it is general policy among medical journals to allow the author of the article a letter to the editor is commenting on to see the letter before it is published so that the author can provide comment.

Jacinta Miller
Production editor, Aust. & NZ Continence Journal
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I believe this is the general practice. I typically have both the authors of the paper being discussed, and the editor who was in charge of the peer review process for that paper, review the letter before I accept it for publication, to help me assess the merits of the letter. In some cases, the authors and/or editor will convince me that the letter's issues are trivial, biased, overly political, or otherwise not good science, in which case I will decline the letter. If we agree to accept the letter, the authors are given a chance to submit a reply for publication.

David C. Cone
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Yes, we routinely do that (assuming that a reply is called for—if it's just a letter showing another nice example of something the original paper described, then clearly there's no point). And, like Dave, I often need to ask the advice of the appropriate specialist referee/assistant editor before deciding whether to accept the letter in the first place.

Bob Bury
Clinical Radiology
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There are several reasons why authors should be asked to comment on letters to the editor about their work. Perhaps the simplest reason is that in a paper journal it stops the correspondence continuing over several issues. For example, if you just publish the letter, the author of the article can only respond to it by writing you another letter. In a quarterly publication, like the Aust. & NZ Continence Journal, this could result in the correspondence appearing many months after the original article.

John S Dowden
Editor, Australian Prescriber
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To avoid any misinterpretation by the author who issued the letter, and to avoid giving the impression that the article was manipulated, the author who wrote the article must see the letter after its submission. Regarding the letters that have deviated objectives, there is journal staff that can track them, and, if we want to be ethical, a peer-review process for the letter is necessary.

To be more precise, the article's author has no right on the acceptance or refusal of the letter. Only the journal in question should intervene without taking into account the ideas of the author of the article about that letter. Then, systematically, the author who wrote the article must see the letter after its acceptance by the journal. If the letter is accepted by the journal, it can be shown to the author before its publication in the journal, and, to avoid any intervention under the table, the agreement to publish the letter must be sent to the author of the letter before alerting the author of  the article about the existence of the letter and its acceptance by the staff journal as a letter to publish.

Technically speaking, the journal that cooperates with the author of the article on acceptance or refusal of a letter issued by other authors about that article simply demonstrates that the journal is trying to hide the black points of that article and, therefore, misuse of the journal staff that have accepted that article.

Hnid Karim
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It is standard policy at the MJA for all letters commenting on published articles to be sent to the original authors for right of reply before publication. We may occasionally preface our offer with a recommendation that we are sending it "for your interest only" if we do not believe a reply is necessary. It is good manners, it keeps all correspondence together, as John notes above (we always ask the original authors to write a single reply, regardless of the number of letters to which they are responding), and it adds an extra layer of "peer review" before publication of the letters. Occasionally, correspondents make incorrect statements or misinterpret data from the original article or have already made the same points elsewhere—it is a much better service to readers (and the reputation of your journal) to seek the original authors' input and weed these problems out before committing to publication.

Bronwyn Gaut
Deputy editor, The Medical Journal of Australia
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Do you not believe that the editorial board  alone can decide whether the letter is or is not irrelevant? And if not, a peer-review process can do the things.

Hnid Karim