Realistically, it is almost never in an academic’s professional interest to write a reply paper (unless they are completely starved of original ideas). Referees are fickle, and if the reply isn’t accepted at the original journal, very few other journals will even consider it, making it a bad time investment. (A real “right of reply”—where the default expectation switches from ‘rejection’ to ‘acceptance’—might change the incentives here.)
Example: early in my career, I wrote a reply to an article that was published in Ethics. The referees agreed with my criticisms, and rejected my reply on the grounds that this was all obvious and the original paper never should have been published. I learned my lesson and now just post replies to my blog since that’s much less time-intensive (and probably gets more readers anyway).
Realistically, it is almost never in an academic’s professional interest to write a reply paper (unless they are completely starved of original ideas). Referees are fickle, and if the reply isn’t accepted at the original journal, very few other journals will even consider it, making it a bad time investment. (A real “right of reply”—where the default expectation switches from ‘rejection’ to ‘acceptance’—might change the incentives here.)
Example: early in my career, I wrote a reply to an article that was published in Ethics. The referees agreed with my criticisms, and rejected my reply on the grounds that this was all obvious and the original paper never should have been published. I learned my lesson and now just post replies to my blog since that’s much less time-intensive (and probably gets more readers anyway).