ASA Connect

We need your input! As part of its review of its journal policies and procedures, the ASA presidents will host a town hall meeting focused on journal publication. We will ask participants to consider questions like:

• What are the main factors that shape your decision to submit your manuscript to a certain journal?
• What do you consider to be a realistic timeframe for receiving feedback after submitting a manuscript?
• What factors make a review helpful to you?
• What would convince you to serve as a reviewer, associate editor, or editor (if you aren't already serving in one or more of these roles)?

Our moderators, ASA President Kathy Ensor and President-Elect Dionne Price, will lead the discussion and offer some thoughts of their own. Your participation will help the ASA to identify common problems and solve them.

As a bonus, Kathy will ask for some input that will inform her presidential address at JSM (https://magazine.amstat.org/blog/2022/05/02/foundation-for-innovation/), so you will have an opportunity to contribute as part of this town hall meeting.

Please join us on July 12 at 4pm ET. There is no cost, but registration is required. Register here.

Thank you.
Ron

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Ron Wasserstein
Executive Director
The American Statistical Association
Promoting the Practice and Profession of Statistics
Striving to be an antiracist
732 N. Washington St.
Alexandria, VA 22314
703-684-1221
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That sounds very interesting and unfortunately for me I won't be able to attend.

However, I did want to make a comment that I believe is at least loosely related:

Everybody seems to think they are a statistician these days.  And that's especially true of reviewers of subject matter journals (i.e., physical and biological science journals, economic journals, etc.).  And to paraphrase Rodney Dangerfield, "Statisticians don't get no respect."

So I wonder if ASA might facilitate having some of us volunteer to review subject matter journal articles.  (Yes, everyone is busy reviewing manuscripts for statistics journals.)  But maybe giving constructive reviews for subject matter journals might do more to help our image and get better science done.  A (good/real) statistician can see the generic logic (or illogic) in a paper without having to be an expert in the applied field.

Such reviews certainly have to constructive.  We can't be just saying "Don't do that" (which is the punchline to a Henny Youngman joke).

Despite being retired for a few years, I still do statistical reviews for a couple of Wildlife journals.  I have time do do a few more.

Jim

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Jim Baldwin
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