Annals of Statistics

About Annals of Statistics

Overview

The Annals of Statistics is a peer-reviewed statistics journal published by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS), the main international society for researchers in probability and statistics (sources: Wikipedia; Crossref journal record). Founded in 1973, it is the IMS's flagship statistics journal and one of the most cited journals in the mathematical sciences — its pages have carried foundational papers on the bootstrap, Bayesian nonparametrics, multiple testing, boosting, the lasso, and many other pillars of modern statistics (sources: Wikipedia; Crossref cited-by data).

The journal is ranked in the first quartile (Q1) in both "Statistics and Probability" and "Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty" in Scopus-based rankings, and routinely appears among the top ten statistics journals in Journal Citation Reports rankings of the "Statistics & Probability" category (sources: journal metrics listings; OOIR journal rankings). Its standard ISO 4 abbreviation is Ann. Stat. (MathSciNet: Ann. Statist.)

Depth-verification marker: AOS-DEPTH-110-OCT2026

History

The Annals of Statistics began publication in 1973 as a continuation in part of the Annals of Mathematical Statistics (1930), which was split into two successor journals: the Annals of Statistics and the Annals of Probability (source: Wikipedia, citing JSTOR). The split reflected the explosive growth of both fields — statistics had outgrown the single-journal container that had served it since 1930, and probability had become a major discipline in its own right. Crossref records show continuous DOI deposits for the Annals of Statistics from 1973 to the present, with roughly 6,400 DOIs registered, confirming an unbroken run of more than fifty volumes (source: Crossref journal record for ISSN 0090-5364).

The journal's editorial lineage reads like a hall of fame of twentieth- and twenty-first-century statistics. Editors have included Ingram Olkin (1972–1973), I. Richard Savage (1974–1976), David V. Hinkley (1980–1982), Willem van Zwet (1986–1988), Michael Woodroofe (1992–1994), Larry Brown and John Rice (1995–1997), James O. Berger with Hans-Rudolf Künsch (1998–2000), Jianqing Fan with Morris Eaton (2004–2006), Susan Murphy and Bernard Silverman (2007–2009), Peter Bühlmann and T. Tony Cai (2010–2012), Richard J. Samworth and Ming Yuan (2019–2021), and Enno Mammen and Lan Wang (2022–2024) (source: Wikipedia, citing the IMS past-editors list).

Since its earliest volumes, the journal has been the venue of choice for landmark methodological contributions: Bradley Efron's bootstrap paper (1979), Gideon Schwarz's "Estimating the Dimension of a Model" introducing the Bayesian information criterion (1978), Thomas Ferguson's foundational paper on Bayesian nonparametrics (1973), and Charles Stein's shrinkage estimation paper (1981) all appeared in the Annals of Statistics (source: Crossref journal works data).

Aims and Scope

According to the IMS, the Annals of Statistics aims to publish research papers of the highest quality reflecting the many facets of contemporary statistics, with primary emphasis on importance and originality rather than on formalism (paraphrased from the imstat.org editorial policy page for the journal). The journal covers all areas of statistics, with particular attention to mathematical statistics and to applied and interdisciplinary statistics — and the editors note that the strongest papers often touch on more than one of these areas, since statistics is rooted both in mathematics and in substantive scientific fields (paraphrased from imstat.org).

On the mathematical statistics side, the journal seeks to remain the special home of research at the forefront of statistical theory, especially theoretical advances likely to have significant impact on statistical methodology, computation, or understanding — mathematics being described as the language in which models, method properties, and algorithms are formulated (paraphrased from imstat.org). On the applied and interdisciplinary side, the journal welcomes papers on the role of statistics in investigations across the natural, medical, technical, and social sciences, which the editors describe as essential for the discipline's vitality (paraphrased from imstat.org).

The incoming co-editors for 2025–2027, Hans-Georg Müller and Harrison Zhou, have stated their intention to broaden the journal's scope further and sharpen its focus on statistical innovation: while maintaining the emphasis on mathematical statistics, they aim to publish outstanding papers across all areas of statistics and encourage authors to submit their best work, welcoming forward-looking papers with genuinely new ideas whose demonstrated impact on theory, methodology, computing, or applications is paramount (paraphrased from the IMS Bulletin, Vol. 54, Issue 2, March 2025).

Editorial Leadership

The journal is led by two co-editors serving three-year terms. The current co-editors for 2025–2027 are Hans-Georg Müller (University of California, Davis) and Harrison Zhou (Yale University) (sources: Wikipedia; IMS Bulletin, March 2025). Their immediate predecessors were Enno Mammen and Lan Wang (2022–2024) (source: Wikipedia, citing the IMS announcement of new journal editors).

The journal maintains a large international board of associate editors covering its full topical range, coordinated through the IMS editorial office. As with other IMS journals, editorships rotate on a regular cycle, and the IMS publishes the full historical list of past editors on its website (source: imstat.org past-editors page, via Wikipedia citations).

Key Facts

ISSN figures are from the Crossref journal record for the title (source: Crossref). Founding history and editor lineage are from Wikipedia, citing JSTOR and the IMS (source: Wikipedia). Frequency is not stated here because no official figure was verified in the sources consulted.

Indexing and Abstracting

The Annals of Statistics is indexed in Scopus, the Web of Science (Science Citation Index Expanded), MathSciNet / Mathematical Reviews, JSTOR, and MIAR, and is assigned a CODEN entry (sources: Wikipedia; indexing listings). It is also covered by the NLM catalog systems. The journal's long backfile — including the predecessor Annals of Mathematical Statistics — is preserved on JSTOR and Project Euclid.

Citation Metrics

The following metrics are reported with their sources and reference years:

• Journal Impact Factor: 4.904 (2021) — the most recent officially attributed JIF figure verified for this profile, from the Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate), as cited on Wikipedia. A university library guide (HKU LibGuides) lists the JCR 2022 JIF as 4.5; recent secondary aggregators report figures in the 3.2–3.7 range, but those aggregations vary in year and attribution, so they are noted here only as aggregator estimates, not official figures.
• SCImago Journal Rank (SJR): 3.697 — SCImago-based figure reported by JournalSearches; an older (2020) SJR of 5.877 is reported on Wikipedia citing Scopus.
• CiteScore: 5.8 (2020) — Scopus-based figure, as reported on Wikipedia.
• H-index: 202 — Scopus-based figure reported by Resurchify (aggregator values for h-index vary by calculation window).
• Category rank: 7th of ~140+ journals in the "Statistics & Probability" JCR category ranking for the 2024 edition, per the OOIR journal rankings compilation.

The IMS does not publish an official acceptance rate, median review time, or article processing charge for the Annals of Statistics in the sources consulted; such figures were not found in any official source and are therefore not stated. Readers should treat third-party claims about these numbers as estimates.

Landmark Papers

The Annals of Statistics has published an extraordinary concentration of the most-cited papers in the history of statistics. Below is a selection ranked by Crossref cited-by counts retrieved October 2026 — every DOI was verified in the Crossref journal record for the Annals of Statistics. Citation counts are Crossref cited-by counts and change over time; DOI links are permanent.

• Schwarz (1978) — "Estimating the Dimension of a Model." DOI: 10.1214/aos/1176344136 (35,904 Crossref citations). Introduced the Bayesian information criterion (BIC), the most widely used model-selection criterion in statistics and machine learning.
• Friedman (2001) — "Greedy function approximation: A gradient boosting machine." DOI: 10.1214/aos/1013203451 (23,395 citations). The foundational paper on gradient boosting, the engine behind many of the most successful machine-learning systems of the past two decades.
• Efron (1979) — "Bootstrap Methods: Another Look at the Jackknife." DOI: 10.1214/aos/1176344552 (13,043 citations). Introduced the bootstrap, one of the most influential statistical ideas of the twentieth century.
• Benjamini & Yekutieli (2001) — "The control of the false discovery rate in multiple testing under dependency." DOI: 10.1214/aos/1013699998 (8,482 citations). Extended the landmark Benjamini–Hochberg false discovery rate framework to dependent tests, essential for genomics and large-scale inference.
• Efron, Hastie, Johnstone & Tibshirani (2004) — "Least angle regression." DOI: 10.1214/009053604000000067 (6,748 citations). Introduced the LARS algorithm, unifying forward selection with the lasso and opening the modern era of high-dimensional sparse modeling.
• Friedman, Hastie & Tibshirani (2000) — "Additive logistic regression: a statistical view of boosting." DOI: 10.1214/aos/1016218223 (5,370 citations). Provided the statistical explanation of boosting as additive modeling, connecting machine learning to classical statistics.
• Ferguson (1973) — "A Bayesian Analysis of Some Nonparametric Problems." DOI: 10.1214/aos/1176342360 (4,277 citations). Published in the journal's very first volume, this paper founded Bayesian nonparametrics via the Dirichlet process.
• Andersen & Gill (1982) — "Cox's Regression Model for Counting Processes: A Large Sample Study." DOI: 10.1214/aos/1176345976 (3,349 citations). Put survival analysis on rigorous martingale foundations, shaping modern biostatistics.
• Stein (1981) — "Estimation of the Mean of a Multivariate Normal Distribution." DOI: 10.1214/aos/1176345632 (1,859 citations). The definitive treatment of Stein shrinkage and the James–Stein estimator, overturning the optimality of the sample mean in dimensions three and above.
• Rubin (1978) — "Bayesian Inference for Causal Effects: The Role of Randomization." DOI: 10.1214/aos/1176344064 (1,639 citations). A cornerstone of the modern potential-outcomes framework for causal inference.

Access and Open Access Policy

The Annals of Statistics is hosted electronically on Project Euclid (source: Wikipedia; imstat.org). According to the IMS's official Electronic Access page, electronic access to IMS journals is gratis for all IMS individual members through Project Euclid, and institutions can subscribe for electronic access (source: imstat.org Electronic Access page).

The journal is notably open in practice: articles older than three years are available on JSTOR, and all articles published since 2004 are freely available on the arXiv (source: Wikipedia). In addition, content on Euclid Prime older than five years is made freely available (source: Project Euclid materials). So while current issues sit behind the IMS membership/subscription model rather than full gold open access, the overwhelming majority of the journal's fifty-year archive — including nearly all of its landmark papers — is freely readable.

Submission Information

Manuscripts are submitted through the IMS editorial system linked from the journal's imstat.org page (source: imstat.org). The editors emphasize importance and originality over formalism and, per their published editorial statement, particularly welcome forward-looking papers with genuinely new ideas whose impact on statistical theory, methodology, computing, or applications is clear (paraphrased from the IMS Bulletin editorial statement, March 2025).

As with the other IMS journals, the IMS does not publish an official acceptance rate, median review time, or article processing charge for the Annals of Statistics in the sources consulted; these figures are not stated here. Publication decisions rest on peer review coordinated by the co-editors and the associate editor board.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who publishes the Annals of Statistics?
The Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS), the main international society for probability and statistics researchers (sources: Wikipedia; Crossref).

When was the journal founded?
1973, as a continuation in part of the Annals of Mathematical Statistics (1930), which was split into the Annals of Statistics and the Annals of Probability (source: Wikipedia, citing JSTOR).

What are the journal's ISSNs?
Print ISSN 0090-5364 and online ISSN 2168-8966 (source: Crossref journal record).

Who are the current editors?
Hans-Georg Müller (UC Davis) and Harrison Zhou (Yale), serving the 2025–2027 term (sources: Wikipedia; IMS Bulletin, March 2025).

What is the journal's impact factor?
The most recent officially attributed figure verified here is 4.904 (2021, Journal Citation Reports, via Wikipedia). The journal's SCImago Journal Rank is 3.697 (SCImago-based) and its 2020 CiteScore was 5.8 (Scopus-based).

Is the journal indexed in Web of Science and Scopus?
Yes — it is indexed in Scopus, the Science Citation Index Expanded, MathSciNet, and JSTOR (source: Wikipedia).

What landmark papers appeared in the journal?
The BIC (Schwarz 1978), the bootstrap (Efron 1979), gradient boosting (Friedman 2001), least angle regression (Efron et al. 2004), Bayesian nonparametrics (Ferguson 1973), and Stein shrinkage (Stein 1981), among many others — see the Landmark Papers section for verified DOIs.

Can I read the articles for free?
Mostly, yes: articles older than three years are on JSTOR and everything since 2004 is on the arXiv (source: Wikipedia). Current issues are available to IMS members and institutional subscribers via Project Euclid (source: imstat.org).

How often is the journal published?
The journal publishes multiple issues per year (six historically); no official current frequency figure was verified in the sources consulted, so none is stated here.

Where do I submit a manuscript?
Through the IMS editorial system linked from the journal's official imstat.org page (source: imstat.org).

The Journal in the IMS Family

The Annals of Statistics is the oldest of the IMS's "Annals" journals and one of five core titles published by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, alongside the Annals of Probability, the Annals of Applied Probability, the Annals of Applied Statistics, and Statistical Science (source: imstat.org Electronic Access page). The division of labor among them is straightforward: the Annals of Statistics is the flagship for statistical theory, methodology, and interdisciplinary statistics; the Annals of Probability covers theoretical probability; the Annals of Applied Probability covers probability with genuine applications; the Annals of Applied Statistics (launched 2007) focuses on applied statistical methodology; and Statistical Science publishes expository and review articles. Authors deciding between the Annals of Statistics and the Annals of Applied Statistics are typically guided by whether their paper's primary contribution is to statistical theory and methods (Annals of Statistics) or to applied statistical practice (Annals of Applied Statistics).

All IMS core journals share the same publishing infrastructure: they are hosted on Project Euclid and their articles carry DOIs under the IMS's registered prefix, 10.1214 — Annals of Statistics articles use the form 10.1214/aos/… (source: Crossref journal records). The IMS also co-sponsors fully open-access electronic journals, including the Electronic Journal of Probability, Electronic Communications in Probability, the Electronic Journal of Statistics, Probability Surveys, and Statistics Surveys, whose content is free to the public with no login (source: imstat.org Electronic Access page).

Frequently Asked Questions (continued)

How do I cite articles from the journal?
Use the journal abbreviation Ann. Stat. (or Ann. Statist. in MathSciNet style) with the article's DOI (form 10.1214/aos/…). All DOIs in the Landmark Papers section above were verified against the Crossref record for ISSN 0090-5364.

What is the difference between the Annals of Statistics and the Annals of Applied Statistics?
The Annals of Statistics emphasizes statistical theory, methodology, and interdisciplinary work with strong methodological content, while the Annals of Applied Statistics (launched 2007) focuses on applied statistical methodology and practice. Both are published by the IMS (source: imstat.org).

Where can I find the journal's complete archive?
The full backfile — including the predecessor Annals of Mathematical Statistics — is preserved on JSTOR and Project Euclid; articles older than three years are on JSTOR and everything since 2004 is on the arXiv (source: Wikipedia).

Are there author fees?
The IMS publishes no official article processing charge schedule for this journal in the sources consulted; author-fee information, if any, would be found on the journal's official submission pages rather than in third-party listings.