Journal of the Royal Statistical Society - Series A (Statistics in Society)
Special Issue: Networks and Society
We are inviting submissions for a special issue of JRSS-A focusing on statistical modelling of networks and its impact on society.
Society inter-connectedness plays a key role in many domains, such as the study of human behaviour and its drivers (sociology, psychology), how financial risk or infectious diseases propagate through a network of contacts (finance, epidemiology, telecommunication), how migrations of peoples have shaped society over the course of the last 100,000 years or even more recently (history, genetics) to name a few. Advanced statistical methods are needed to infer networks when these are not known, to describe their properties or to model processes happening on networks. The aim of this special issue is to highlight recent developments in the field, to discuss gaps in the literature and to draw possible bridges between the different methods used in the different areas and how these benefit society. The broad scope of this special issue includes, but is not limited to, exper- imental design for network modelling, statistical modelling and inference of networks, dynamic modelling of processes on networks, statistical methods for network validation and visualization.
As usual with Series A, the focus is on the development and/or evaluation of methodology that is directly motivated by, and substantially increases our understanding of, real data. The statistical methodology used should be of interest to a broader statistical audience. Both innovative methodology and/or applications which shed new light on the use of particular methodologies, or which require unusual combinations of methods, are welcome. However, note that, in line with the remit of Series A, contributions of a principally technical nature will not be acceptable and the emphasis on the applied question and its impact on society should be dominant to the paper.
The deadline for manuscript submissions is 23 December 2021. Submissions—which should clearly indicate JRSS-A Network and Society Special Issue in the cover letter—should be made in the usual way, online at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jrssa, where further guidance about the structure, length and format of manuscripts may be found. All manuscripts will be peer reviewed in line with the journal’s standard policy. Authors of the accepted papers will be invited to a satellite meeting to present their paper. The meeting will be organised as part of the Committee on Statistical Network Science of the Bernoulli Society and is planned for September 2022. As the editors for this special issue, we will manage peer review carefully and in a timely manner. With your support and collaboration, we are confident that this special issue will make a serious impact on this very important area of statistics.
Veronica Vinciotti (veronica.vinciotti@unitn.it), University of Trento
Luigi Augugliaro (luigi.augugliaro@unipa.it), University of Palermo
Ernst Wit (ernst.jan.camiel.wit@usi.ch), Universita della Svizzera Italiana