Abstract
This letter proves the interest of scientists in writing and citing letters to the editor and shows the importance of letters to the editor for worldwide scientific community.
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Notes
The countries that mostly published letters to the editor between 1996 and 2018 are the United States of America (232,417 letters), England (99,846 letters), Italy (45,513 letters), Germany (39,869 letters), France (37,338 letters), Japan (35,980 letters), Spain (35,308 letters), and Australia (30,013 letters) (Clarivate Analytics 2018a). This dominance of major research countries in the publication of letters to the editor is not recent and dates back decades (Braun et al. 1989).
The journals that mostly published letters between 1996 and 2018 are New Scientist (19,761 letters, 2017 Impact Factor: 0.386), New England Journal of Medicine (19,687 letters, 2017 Impact Factor: 79.258), Lancet (17,152 letters, 2017 Impact Factor: 53.254), The BMJ (14,023 letters, 2017 Impact Factor: 23.259), Journal of the American Medical Association (10,839 letters, 2017 Impact Factor: 47.661), The International Journal of Cardiology (10,106 letters, 2017 Impact Factor: 4.034), Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (6970 letters, 2017 Impact Factor: 3.843), Nature (6434 letters, 2017 Impact Factor: 41.577), Science (6319 letters, 2017 Impact Factor: 41.058), and Anaesthesia (6056 letters, 2017 Impact Factor: 5.431) (Clarivate Analytics 2018a, b). This finding is a confirmation of past similar results found in publications such as (Braun et al. 1989; Garfield 1986).
The institutions that mostly published letters to the editor between 1996 and 2018 are: University of London (16,535 letters), University of California (15,208 letters), Harvard University (14,421 letters), Hospitals of Paris (10,116 letters), University College London (8540 letters), University of Texas (7276 letters), University of Toronto (7140 letters), and VA Boston Healthcare System (6971 letters) (Clarivate Analytics 2018a). Further than this involvement of excellent research institutions in publishing letters to the editor, there are world-class organizations such as International Committee of Medical Journal Editors that support the use of letters to the editor as a means for scientific communication (Winker and Fontanarosa 1999).
References
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Clarivate Analytics. (2018a). Web of science core collection. Retrieved from https://webofknowledge.com.
Clarivate Analytics. (2018b). Journal citation reports. Philadelphia: Clarivate Analytics.
Garfield, E. (1986). Which medical journals have the greatest impact? Annals of Internal Medicine, 105(2), 313–320.
Johnson, C., & Green, B. (2006). How to write a letter to the editor: An author’s guide. Journal of Chiropractic Medicine, 5(4), 144–147.
Von Elm, E., Wandel, S., & Jüni, P. (2009). The role of correspondence sections in post-publication peer review: A bibliometric study of general and internal medicine journals. Scientometrics, 81(3), 747–755.
Winker, M. A., & Fontanarosa, P. B. (1999). Letters: A forum for scientific discourse. JAMA, 281(16), 1543.
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Turki, H., Hadj Taieb, M. & Ben Aouicha, M. The value of letters to the editor. Scientometrics 117, 1285–1287 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2906-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2906-4