ASA Discoveries: A Journal Bridging Statistics,
Data Science, and AI

Q&A with Editor Bo Li

The open-access journal, ASA Discoveries, launched in August, is dedicated to fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and shaping the future of statistics. The editor-in-chief is Bo Li, an American Statistical Association Fellow who has served on the editorial boards of several journals, including the Journal of the American Statistical Association and Environmetrics. We wanted to know more about Li’s plans for this new journal, so we asked her to answer the following questions.

As the inaugural editor of ASA Discoveries, what excites you most?

The flourishing of modern statistical research calls for a new outlet that serves both statistics-focused and interdisciplinary work. Disseminating such research is essential to ensuring statistics remains central to discovery-driven science. ASA Discoveries is uniquely positioned as an open-access journal that unites statistics, data science, and AI; embraces diverse research types; and promotes fairness, transparency, and accessibility in our field.

As statisticians, we all share the responsibility to support our community, and I find it deeply rewarding to help shape a venue for impactful contributions that will leave a lasting mark on our discipline.

You’ve assembled an editorial board with a wide range of expertise, from computation to biostatistics. How will this diversity shape the journal’s content?

Our co-editors represent diverse domains and methodological perspectives, and this breadth will allow us to cover the full spectrum of modern statistics and data science. From theory and methods to applications and computation, the board’s collective expertise will guide the journal in publishing innovative work that bridges disciplines and reflects the wide-ranging impact of statistics across science and society.

How do you hope ASA Discoveries affects research?

I hope the journal will lower barriers to dissemination and accelerate the exchange of ideas by being fully open access and publishing on a continual basis. By emphasizing innovation in emerging research fields while upholding rigor, reproducibility, and ethical standards, ASA Discoveries aims to serve as a trusted home for cutting-edge research and related contributions that inspire new methodologies, strengthen applications, and foster global collaboration.

You mentioned in a Practical Significance podcast episode that you would like to keep statistics pivotal in emerging research fields. Can you share examples of the kinds of articles you hope to see?

I hope to see work that demonstrates how statistical thinking drives innovation in areas such as AI, climate science, health data, and social networks. This includes methodological advances such as new models or algorithms, but also applications in which statistics enables meaningful insights from complex, high-dimensional, or real-time data.

I am also enthusiastic about review articles with an educational focus, which can provide broad overviews, offer deep insights, and guide the next generation of statisticians and data scientists.

In addition, I welcome contributions that introduce new data to spark further research and rapid communications that highlight timely breakthroughs in our field.

If you could summarize the vision for ASA Discoveries in just a few words, what would they be?

Innovation, emerging, accessibility, and impact.