Call for submissions on composite likelihood methods

STATISTICA SINICA Call for submissions on a special issue in composite likelihood methods

Dear all,

Likelihood-based inference has been highly successful in scientific discovery throughout the years. Recently, the composite likelihood approach has drawn a good deal of attention as a tool for statistical inference especially in dealing with high-dimensional data. Composite likelihoods are constructed as the product of conditional and/or marginal likelihoods, which themselves are just part of the full likelihood specification. (Such objective functions have been described by a variety of names in the literature, such as pseudo- likelihood, pairwise likelihood, and marginal likelihood.) Use of this methodology occurs in a variety of scientific fields including, among others, environmental science, neuro-imaging and micro-array experiments. The statistical challenges that lead one to consider composite likelihood include the computational complexity of the joint likelihood, the need to specify the joint likelihood in the absence of sufficient knowledge regarding the random mechanism, and so forth. This approach, when utilized properly, has the advantages of easing the computational burden and reducing the impacts of nuisance parameters while maintaining high statistical efficiency. A special issue of Statistica Sinica has been planned that will highlight statistical topics under the framework of composite likelihood that are either methodologically- or theoretically- oriented. Submissions preferably will provide either methodological or theoretical advances in the use of composite likelihood for scientific inference. Priority will be given to papers that are assessed to be, statistically and scientifically speaking, the most innovative, comprehensive, and of interest to a wide readership.

Papers submitted to the special issue will be reviewed according to the regular procedure of the journal. Accepted papers will appear in a single issue of Statistica Sinica, scheduled for 2010. Please contact Bruce Lindsay ( snipped-for-privacy@psu.edu ) for questions on the suitability of your paper(s). Submissions must be made online through the journal site at

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Please use the LaTeX article template, also available at the above site, for preparing your manuscript submission. The deadline for submission is September 30, 2009. Authors wishing to receive email alerts as the deadline approaches may contact the editorial assistant, Patty Hubbard ( snipped-for-privacy@jhsph.edu ) or Karen Li ( snipped-for-privacy@stat.sinica.edu.tw ).

Sincerely yours,

Guest Editors:

Bruce Lindsay (Chair), Pennsylvania State University ( snipped-for-privacy@psu.edu) Nancy Reid, University of Toronto ( snipped-for-privacy@utstat.utoronto.edu) Kung-Yee Liang, Johns Hopkins University ( snipped-for-privacy@jhsph.edu)

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