Letters to the editor 1991. An audit of the MJA's correspondence columns

To evaluate correspondence published in The Medical Journal of Australia, with particular emphasis on the level of post-publication peer review which it represented.

An audit of all letters submitted to the Journal for publication in 1991.

Six hundred and forty-eight letters were received; 506 (78%) were published and 142 (22%) were not. Three hundred and twenty-nine of the published letters were written in response to material published in the Journal: 96 of these were related to other letters, 71 were replies to other letters by authors, 43 related to original articles, 42 to leading articles and 77 to other articles. Approximately 20% of all original articles published in the Journal attracted correspondence which was published. The commonest reasons for writing were concern about possible flaws in the design of a study, to add information of interest to the subject or to criticise the conclusions reached in the study.

Readers are perhaps not taking full advantage of the opportunity for post-publication peer review provided by correspondence columns in the MJA.