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''Biometrika'' is a
peer-reviewed Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work ( peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer revie ...
scientific journal published by
Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print book ...
for th
Biometrika Trust
The
editor-in-chief An editor-in-chief (EIC), also known as lead editor or chief editor, is a publication's editorial leader who has final responsibility for its operations and policies. The highest-ranking editor of a publication may also be titled editor, managing ...
is Paul Fearnhead ( Lancaster University). The principal focus of this journal is theoretical statistics. It was established in 1901 and originally appeared quarterly. It changed to three issues per year in 1977 but returned to quarterly publication in 1992.


History

''Biometrika'' was established in 1901 by
Francis Galton Sir Francis Galton, FRS FRAI (; 16 February 1822 – 17 January 1911), was an English Victorian era polymath: a statistician, sociologist, psychologist, anthropologist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto- ...
, Karl Pearson, and Raphael Weldon to promote the study of biometrics. The history of ''Biometrika'' is covered by Cox (2001). The name of the journal was chosen by Pearson, but Francis Edgeworth insisted that it be spelt with a "k" and not a "c". Since the 1930s, it has been a journal for statistical theory and methodology. Galton's role in the journal was essentially that of a patron and the journal was run by Pearson and Weldon and after Weldon's death in 1906 by Pearson alone until he died in 1936. In the early days, the American biologists Charles Davenport and Raymond Pearl were nominally involved but they dropped out. On Pearson's death his son Egon Pearson became editor and remained in this position until 1966. David Cox was editor for the next 25 years. So, in its first 65 years ''Biometrika'' had effectively a total of just three editors, and in its first 90 years only four. Other people who were deeply involved in the journal included William Palin Elderton, an associate of Pearson's who published several articles in the early days and in 1935 became chairman of the Biometrika Trust. In the very first issue, the editors presented a clear statement of purpose:
''It is intended that ''Biometrika'' shall serve as a means not only of collecting or publishing under one title biological data of a kind not systematically collected or published elsewhere in any other periodical, but also of spreading a knowledge of such statistical theory as may be requisite for their scientific treatment.''
Its contents were to include: *memoirs on
variation Variation or Variations may refer to: Science and mathematics * Variation (astronomy), any perturbation of the mean motion or orbit of a planet or satellite, particularly of the moon * Genetic variation, the difference in DNA among individual ...
, inheritance, and selection in
animal Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the Kingdom (biology), biological kingdom Animalia. With few exceptions, animals Heterotroph, consume organic material, Cellular respiration#Aerobic respiration, breathe oxygen, are Motilit ...
s and
plant Plants are predominantly Photosynthesis, photosynthetic eukaryotes of the Kingdom (biology), kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all curr ...
s, based upon the examination of statistically large numbers of specimens *those developments of statistical theory which are applicable to biological problems *numerical tables and graphical solutions tending to reduce the labour of statistical arithmetic *abstracts of memoirs, dealing with these subjects, which are published elsewhere *notes on current biometric work and unsolved problems Early volumes contained many reports on biological topics, but over the twentieth century, ''Biometrika'' became a "journal of statistics in which emphasis is placed on papers containing original theoretical contributions of direct or potential value in applications." Thus, of the five types of contents envisaged by its founders, only the second and to a lesser extent the third remain, largely shorn of their biological roots. In his centenary tribute to Karl Pearson, J. B. S. Haldane likened him to Columbus who "set out for China, and discovered America." The same might be said of Pearson's journal.


Historical reference

To mark the centenary of "one of the world's leading academic journals in statistical theory and methodology" a commemorative volume was produced, containing articles that had appeared in a special issue of the journal and a selection of classic papers published in the journal in the years 1939–1971.


Abstracting and indexing

The journal is abstracted and indexed in: According to the ''
Journal Citation Reports ''Journal Citation Reports'' (''JCR'') is an annual publicationby Clarivate Analytics (previously the intellectual property of Thomson Reuters). It has been integrated with the Web of Science and is accessed from the Web of Science-Core Colle ...
'', the journal has a 2020
impact factor The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a scientometric index calculated by Clarivate that reflects the yearly mean number of citations of articles published in the last two years in a given journal, as ...
of 2.445.


References


External links

*
Biometrika (1901)
on the
Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music ...
. 2011. {{Statistics journals, state=collapsed Statistics journals Publications established in 1901 Quarterly journals Oxford University Press academic journals English-language journals