Daniel J. Eck
David Banks is right to question whether our journals and publication processes still serve the profession. My experience with Full House Modeling illustrates both the limitations of the current system and the possibilities of a more modern approach.
The relevance of this work was obvious well before the journal article appeared in print. By hosting interactive results and producing public-facing narratives, we attracted an early audience of baseball fans and analysts. That audience elevated the project to Tom Tango, a leading voice in MLB analytics, who validated the work publicly.
Soon after, Foolish Baseball, a YouTube channel with more than 350,000 subscribers, featured the research in a video essay. All this happened before the Annals of Applied Statistics’ print edition was released.
Meanwhile, the journal process was slow. After more than a year under review, the Journal of the American Statistical Association ultimately rejected the paper. AOAS then handled the work efficiently and provided the necessary anchor of credibility. But pre-publication momentum was already underway. A University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign press release pointed to the interdisciplinary publication along with the Foolish Baseball feature, which in turn enabled a front-page New York Times science article just two months after AOAS published our paper. The Institute of Mathematical Statistics later amplified that feature on social media.
This sequence reflects what Banks describes: Refereeing is inconsistent, and journals remain constrained by outdated models that undervalue modern communication. In contrast, interactive tools, video essays, and early institutional press channels recognized and validated the work quickly, ultimately carrying it into public dialogue. Yet across nearly three years of review at both AOAS and JASA, the peer-review process largely overlooked these public-facing aspects (though the AOAS reviewers did engage closely with public-facing technical reports). If statistics wants to remain relevant, our publication practices must evolve. Otherwise, we risk that broadly impactful contributions will be recognized more widely outside our journals than within them.
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