Letters to the editor: the new order

BMJ 1998;316:1406-1410 ( 9 May )

Editorials

Letters to the editor: the new order

Please respond to articles using website, email, or disk $---$ but not paper

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Letters are important to us. They often provide more penetrating critiques of articles than any form of prepublication peerreview.¹ If the publication of a scientific article resemblesan appearance in court then the letters columns is where the juryof peers records its verdict. Imagine our regret therefore thatwe have the space to publish only a third of the letters we receive $---$ andthose five to six months after the articles to which they refer.Put another way, many of the carefully crafted responses we receive,and the insights they contain, end up in the bin.

The world wide web has rescued us, just as the whole letter publishing enterprise seemed about to collapse under its own weight.Since last week correspondents have been able to respond to articlesdirectly via our website (www.bmj.com) using a response form thatis linked to each article. These responses are screened . . . [Full text of this article]

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