The crux for me is whether “published reply in journal” could and would be (mis?)construed by some people as a sort of quality signal.
To the extent that journals are allowing replies-by-permission by third parties, then we don’t want to diminish the value of getting one of those published. As Richard notes, the incentives are already weak. Yet I think replies-by-permission are undervalued already, because I think ~ direct dialog is usually better than ~ talking past one another.
If I were too concerned about this issue for a reply author with standing, I’d probably at least offer to publish an Editor’s Note with a link to the reply author’s off-journal response.
The crux for me is whether “published reply in journal” could and would be (mis?)construed by some people as a sort of quality signal.
To the extent that journals are allowing replies-by-permission by third parties, then we don’t want to diminish the value of getting one of those published. As Richard notes, the incentives are already weak. Yet I think replies-by-permission are undervalued already, because I think ~ direct dialog is usually better than ~ talking past one another.
If I were too concerned about this issue for a reply author with standing, I’d probably at least offer to publish an Editor’s Note with a link to the reply author’s off-journal response.