Where To Publish

The nice thing about living in the second decade of the 21st century is that it’s ridiculously easy to get your research out to the sabermetric community.

If you prefer something more formal than a website, you can start with “By the Numbers,” SABR’s Statistical Analysis Committee newsletter. The advantage of BTN is that you have a semi-formal citation (publication, date and page number) that might be of some use to you, such as on a resume. Also, you retain full rights to your work, so you can publish it elsewhere any time afterwards.

SABR also publishes the Baseball Research Journal (BRJ) twice a year. Your work will get more exposure there, as the book is sent out to all SABR members in hard copy form. Many authors prefer to be published in a “real” book such as this one, over alternatives such as newsletters or websites. Click here for tips on submitting an article to the BRJ and other SABR publications.

However, the advantage of publishing to a website is that you get instant feedback and discussion. Articles that are particularly interesting or controversial will attract tens or hundreds of comments, be linked to on other websites, and can very quickly attract the attention of many, many active researchers.

One of the most significant findings in sabermetrics, Voros McCracken’s DIPS theory, was published online in 2001 at Baseball Prospectus (where it still lives today.) The fact that it didn’t appear in a formal paper publication didn’t stop it and its author from becoming legendary.

If you’re interested in online publication, many of the independent sabermetric websites are happy to consider worthy submissions. As a bonus, both BTN and BRJ are willing to accept research that has been published on the web — so if you go that route, you can have the best of both worlds.