Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A roughly 900-word JAMA Research Letter reporting a single-centre cohort finding, with one table, an abbreviated methods paragraph, and minimal discussion.
- Is an instance
A brief communication in NEJM reporting a discrete, self-contained clinical or laboratory finding that does not require the full background/methods/results/discussion structure of an original article to be understood and evaluated.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A comment-only submission responding to, critiquing, or extending points made in another published article — with no original data of its own — is a letter to the editor, not a research letter.
- Not an instance
A journal's informally shorter version of a standard article, without a distinct, journal-defined 'research letter' category and word-count/format rules, is better described as a short communication or brief report rather than a research letter specifically.
Editorial commentary
A research letter is a short, peer-reviewed publication type presenting original data in a compressed format — most journals that use the category cap it well under a standard article’s length (commonly around 600-1,000 words), with limited tables and figures and an abbreviated methods section. It is a formally defined, journal-specific category, not an informal shorthand for “a short article.”
How it differs from a letter to the editor
A letter to the editor is a comment on, critique of, or response to previously published work; it presents argument or commentary, not new data. A research letter, by contrast, presents original findings — new data the authors collected or analysed themselves — compressed into a short format. The presence of original data is the defining distinction: a submission with no new data belongs in the letters/correspondence category, not as a research letter, regardless of length.
How it differs from a short communication or brief report
Short communications and brief reports also present condensed original findings, and in many journals the terms overlap heavily or are used interchangeably with “research letter.” Where a distinction is drawn, it is usually that “research letter” is a specific, named, journal-defined category with its own submission instructions and word-count rules (as JAMA, NEJM, and The Lancet all formally define), while “short communication” or “brief report” is used more loosely across journals that have not adopted the research-letter label specifically. In practice, an author should always check the target journal’s own author instructions rather than assume these terms are interchangeable — the same manuscript length and content might be submitted as a research letter to one journal and a brief report to another, purely as a function of each journal’s own category names.
Typical use cases
Journals commission or accept research letters for findings that are genuinely novel and publication-worthy but do not require — or do not yet have enough data to support — a full-length original article: a single-centre observation, a focused secondary analysis, a compact negative or confirmatory result, or a time-sensitive finding a journal wants to get into print quickly.
References
- JAMA Instructions for Authors, Research Letter category
- NEJM Author Center, Brief Communications/Correspondence guidelines
- The Lancet, journal-specific article-type definitions
Also known as
Brief research letter · Research correspondence
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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