JRSS-C editorial 2025
这篇社论介绍了皇家统计学会C辑（应用统计学）的定位、论文类型（常规、讨论、综述、特刊）及投稿要求，强调方法创新与真实应用结合，适合应用统计学者了解期刊方向。
The Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series C (Applied Statistics) is—obviously—one of the journals published under the auspices of the Royal Statistical Society (RSS), with Series A (Statistics in Society) and Series B (Statistical Methodology) being its established siblings and with the more recent addition of the new, open access journal — RSS: Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. This division of the established journals into three series exists now since 2009 and reflects the dedicated foci of the respective series (we will elaborate further on the specifics for JRSS-C below). Despite their association with the RSS, all the Society's journals have a strong international orientation, publishing research by scientists from any part of the world. Many early methodological innovations in statistics grew out of the need to answer specific scientific questions based on available data, including John Graunt's life tables and Florence Nightingale's data visualizations. This process is still an important aspect of scientific work; new methods are motivated from applications to solve real problems and tell important stories otherwise hidden in the data. The purpose of JRSS-C is to publish papers with this focus. Our papers present new methodology, or an innovative combination of recent methods, motivated by and seriously engaging with their applications. Rather than just reporting the results obtained when applying the methods, they provide insightful discussions of new insights and explain how the new methods change stories and conclusions. For reproducibility, papers should be accompanied by data and code that allows the interested reader to reproduce the analysis without great effort. How can you contribute to the future success of JRSS-C? The most obvious way is to submit your papers! If you believe—as we do—that applied statistics is an important, specific part of statistical sciences, continue to write papers with an applied statistics focus and make others aware of your work. JRSS-C currently commissions five issues per year, with about 50 papers in total. In addition to regular papers, the journal also considers discussion papers, review papers, and special issues. For discussion papers, discussability is a requirement, i.e. the paper should offer sufficient room for discussion with respect to aspects that are central for the application. For example, discussability could relate to the consideration of a novel type of data structure such that different approaches may be considered, and the suitability of such approaches could be the focus of the discussion. Discussion papers could also address a current controversy about how to appropriately analyse certain types of data or the principles of certain types of statistical analysis of applied relevance. In essence, discussion papers should focus on a challenge that can be addressed from different angles (the challenge itself being applied or methodological) and should be ground-breaking, with the potential of large impact. Review papers will typically summarize the developments of a certain type of statistical approach and illustrate it through one or multiple applications. Similarly as with discussion papers, they could also focus on a current controversy about how to appropriately analyse certain types of data. Related to this but on a larger scale, JRSS-C also considers proposals for special issues that combine multiple papers on a specific topic. Proposals can be submitted informally to the co-editors at any time and should comprise the names and contact details of the guest editors that would serve as associate editors for the special issue and why they are qualified for the proposed topic; a short summary of why the topic is timely and relevant for applied statistics; a draft for the Call for Papers. Special issues may be associated with a specific conference or workshop that place emphasis on the topic envisioned for the special issue. In this case, submission would not be limited to presentations at the conference, and the fact that something was presented at the conference is by no means guaranteeing acceptance for the special issue. We look forward to your submissions and hope that you share our enjoyment in reading the papers published in JRSS-C, with their broad and varying applied foci across most scientific disciplines. Conflicts of interest: None declared. No data was used for this editorial.