Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Academic Journals

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[edit] Other stuff

While looking around, I found Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Infobox Journal Update Bot and Template:Infobox nursing journal. Just noting them here. Carcharoth 23:43, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

The template seems to be used on only one nursing journal article. Others listed in List of nursing journals seem to use the general template for journals, although the list is mostly redlinks. I suggest we put the nursing template up for deletion as redundant. --Bduke 23:56, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
I agree. Who wants to do the honours? Carcharoth 00:11, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
Done. John Vandenberg 06:01, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

I also found {{Journal-stub}}, which got moved to {{Sci-journal-stub}}. Which is unfortunate, as many humanities journals have the stub template on them. Around 210 article use the journal-stub template, and around 660 use either journal-stub or sci-journal-stub. I will list these below as well. Carcharoth 00:40, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Found the discussion here, from about two years ago. I think a separate stub for non-scientific journals is definitely needed. Anyone here know enough about stubs? I'm going to drop a note to the people involved in that old discussion. Carcharoth 00:45, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
Looks to me as if a separate journal-stub would be very sensible, and indeed envisaged in that very discussion. Perhaps "upmerged" (i.e. feeding into a more general stub category) pro temps if there's still concerns about this being rather small for a full-fledged stub type. (60 or more articles is "traditional".) You might want to list this at WP:WSS/P given the prior deletion, just to avoid any confusion. Alai 00:58, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
Indeed so. When the stub type was changed, almost all the journals with stub articles were scientific - the few arts/humanities journals there were very probably got moved to magazine-stub, which isn't really appropriate. By normal stub sorting practice, x-journal-stub would imply that a parent journal-stub would exist, so it's surprising that we haven't got one, considering we have sci-journal-stub. A proposal at WP:WSS/P would very probably get quickly approved with no fuss, if there are indeed as many as you suggest (the usual guideline - as Alai points out - is 60 stubs, but that's reduced somewhat if it's the main stub type of a wikiproject, which it would be in this case). Grutness...wha? 01:22, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
D'oh, WPJ, I managed not to notice that. That, plus the existing subcat-to-be, essentially reduces the requisite number to the proverbial reasonable smattering. Alai 03:02, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
As someone who has recently shoveled out the Cat:Magazine stubs (and found many a journal), I guarantee you at least 30+ if not 60. Cheers, Her Pegship (tis herself) 04:16, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Previous discussions

Rather than re-inventing the wheel, can those who engaged in previous discussions list them here? The best places I've found so far have been Template talk:Infobox Journal, Wikipedia talk:List of missing journals and Wikipedia:List of missing journals/Queue and Wikipedia talk:List of missing journals/Queue. Could someone add notes to those places so people watching those pages become aware of this project? Carcharoth 00:18, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lists of pages and recent changes links

I've just taken a snapshot of the pages transcluding Template:Infobox Journal, and a more imprecise snapshot of the articles in Category:Journals. This latter list is not in good condition, as the category structure needs a little tidying first. I've now also added a snapshot for the sci-journal stub template, which has some amount of overlap with the other lists.

All need to be updated regularly in order for the related changes link to cover new articles. Carcharoth 00:24, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

I've created a list of Google Search results on the word "journal" and filtered out all that I can find that are not journals. GoogleSearch-Journal (850 entries) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jayvdb (talk • contribs) 15:20, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] bug 3663

Could I have some thoughts on bugzilla:3663, in regards to Template talk:Infobox Journal#Link to NLM and Wikipedia_talk:Book_sources#ISSN request (moved from ToDo). IIRC there are browser extensions that we can feed microformats to as a simple/initial solution to handle this. John Vandenberg 13:24, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Microformats and other glue

[edit] Firefox extensions

[edit] German ISSN's

On de:Astronomische Nachrichten the ISSN is placed where the GEO coords are normally placed. This is done with de:Template:ISSN-Link. John Vandenberg 04:00, 7 October 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Deletion subpage

I've created a subpage for listing articles within the project scope that are up for deletion: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Academic_Journals/Deletion. There's a new item under the PROD section. Espresso Addict 00:23, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Good thinking. Perhaps it would be helpful if we attempted to expand Wikipedia:Notability (academics) to explain when journals should and should not be included. Perhaps there is already guidance on this issue somewhere in Wikipedia space, but it seems to me that we should strive to have some basic information about most any peer-reviewed academic journal that's used frequently -- whenever the journal is cited it can link to the article on the journal, and the serious researcher can determine the worthiness of the citation. The issue seems more about Reliable Sources than about notability really. We want to make sure that serious academic journals don't get deleted, but we also want to make sure that the criteria don't allow JayHenry's Journal of Hot 18-Year-Old Actresses to pass. --JayHenry 03:06, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
We should definitely try to come up with some basic criteria for academic journals (I think I suggested this earlier, but possibly in the wrong place). I'm not aware of existing guidance on this point; Wikipedia:Notability (books) explicitly excludes magazines and there's no mention of academic journals under Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Common_outcomes#Literature. Personally, I'd suggest developing them here, as a separate set of guidelines from WP:PROF, as the criteria for books would seem equally relevant. Espresso Addict 03:26, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
I'd suggest not tinkering at WP:PROF, because its contentious enough at this point. It would be better as a part of books,as an extension to the paragraph on academic books. (I'm not happy with the book guideline, by the way, because interpreted literally it would allow an article on any serious non fiction, as they all get reviews.) We don't have enough results yet to be fair about adding to common outcomes, and the closest part now reads "Books are notable if well-known," which is not much of a help to anyone.DGG (talk) 03:52, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
I'd forgotten the bit about academic books. "In that case, notability should rely on the reputation of the academic press publishing it,[8] how widely the book is cited by other academic publications or in the media,[9] how influential the book is considered to be in its specialty area and whether it is taught or required reading in a number of reputable educational institutions." sounds fairly easy to adapt to journals.
Publisher reputation, influence and citation aka impact factor all apply to journals. Also important might be length of establishment, indexing, number of libraries holding the journal, and possibly total number of subscribers, if an accurate source is available (I don't know how Ulrich's get their figures, but many published figures originate in people ringing up the journal to ask, and editorial secretaries are routinely asked to inflate the figures; the multiplier for the number of people who read each copy is also often based on a tiny, deliberately unrepresentative sample). It might also be worth taking into account prestige of the Editor in Chief -- often new journals succeed or fail by that one. Espresso Addict 04:18, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
Would it be reasonable to move it or put a redirect to it under Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion Sorting? That way the "deletions" link in the navbox at the top of the project page could be fixed. Additionally, if it used the same format as the other delsort pages, it seems likely that The wubbot (talk · contribs) could clean it up along with the other such pages. —David Eppstein 06:34, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Adding a new delsort list needs to be discussed on WT:DS; typically requests for a new delsort lists are rejected unless they are be accompanied with justification that the list will see enough traffic (i.e actual xfds are often). John Vandenberg 08:06, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
One of the points of maintaining the current page is to see whether or not there's sufficient traffic to make it worthwhile applying for inclusion at delsort. Espresso Addict 22:13, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Related to deletion debates and notability, does the magazine whose article is being discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pensée (Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered), count as an 'academic' journal? Carcharoth 13:55, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Without looking too closely, probably yes. Either it appeared before I started trawling through the AfD lists, or I must have missed it, sorry. Espresso Addict 22:13, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

About the notability of journals, I think that the length of time it has been around should be a consideration. Kind of like the 100-year test, but not quite as stringent. As for multiple names, have a look at Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, which started as a single journal, but is now split up under several names. Similarly for MNRAS. (Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society). Carcharoth 13:55, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Hello good people. This is valuable discussion you are having, thanks for this contribution to the Wiki process, I look forward to seeing its fruit. Anyway, I'm not sure I'm contributing anything new by saying this, but I've got to start getting up to speed with the discussion sometime. Some issues that cross my mind, that I hope are on topic:
  • Original research is being peer-reviewed and published constantly.
  • The whole point of original research is expanding human knowledge.
  • The whole point of publishing it is making it available to illuminate issues considered important.
  • By definition, original research is not well known.
  • By definition, peer review means it is as reliable as feasibly possible.

Wiki is in the business of making reliable knowledge accessible. Isn't that what motivates us to contribute? We don't have the resources to provide the same level of peer review with respect to content that journals have. But it would seem to be wise to benefit from what they provide for us — qualified assesment of content.

A fundamental dilemma:

  • Peer-review in journals works for the communities that use them, because the reviewers are merely typical of members of that community. In other words, the reviewers provide a means of anticipating response to a thesis or set of results, that the readers would supply themselves were the paper read and discussed in a large real-time forum. Within an academic community, readers are able to evaluate the quality of articles, and of journals and their editors and reviewers by the articles they publish. Main point: journal articles are written for a specific audience. They assume common specialist knowledge, while presenting something new.
  • When Wiki presents the results published in a journal, the audience and issues are quite different. I do not think we should be saying that Wiki endorses this journal and/or the particular article or results. Rather, what Wiki should be saying is that the results have been made publically accountable within a community of experts on the subject, which is pretty much the best anyone can ever do on any topic. In other words, we are not claiming truth for the results, but reporting a responsibly, accountably published POV from our NPOV.

Another dilemma:

  • Many disciplines make progress by adopting a theory and testing it over a period of time. Quite often such theories eventually strike counter-examples or better explanations and are modified. Some disciplines are particularly "fluid", consider the different traditions of psychotherapy, for example. Should we exclude reporting of results that are not universal within a broader discipline? Where do we draw the lines? We don't want to be reproducing the rantings of cranks, even if they've set up their own legal entities, registered an ISSN, and review one-another. However, who are we to judge a crank outside our own area of expertise. Wouldn't it be more NPOV to allow editors to quote journals that represent experts that debunk the cranks. It would be nice to short-cut this step and have a "proscribed list of crank journals", or alternatively, a list of "gold standard" journals, but really, aren't we claiming a bit much for ourselves. There are professionals who debunk the cranks, why not quote them? Viewed one way, this is just good old fashioned literature review. Let the cranks be quoted, reading an explanation from a professional regarding why they are cranks is very educational. It's a bit lazy and dogmatic to short-cut such a step.
  • I think quoting from crank journals is an excellent thing. What it means we get is the genuine, "official" crank view. All the better if we have some crank editors who are motivated to report that view as fairly as possible. Just as they are permitted to write up their views though, they need to understand that counter-arguments to their positions have equal claim to publication at Wiki. It is the readers, not the editors who should be the judges. A good Wiki article is one that gives the readers as many of the facts as possible, as clearly as possible; not one that leads them to a conclusion that a consensus would find reasonable. Wiki articles are different to journal articles.

Yet another:

  • Newton was good enough for more than 100 years before being refined. Many disciplines (including Physics) move much faster than this now. What on Earth do we do when areas like genetics are producing significant results and overturning previous understanding almost monthly? Impose a quarantine on reporting immunology research, until they have all the facts! There are many topics that are uncontentious, however, until we know everything, there will be many that involve debate. In fact, many of these topics will be precisely the ones readers will want to consult. I'm sure it's much more challenging for Wiki to develop a culture of handling contentious topics well than it is the others, but that's what we're working on here I think.

Sorry this is not very systematically presented. I guess it's an attempt to put something of a case for, if it has an ISSN, it is objectively researchable, and can assist readers, so let's do it! Naturally, this is a huge task, but the nature of Wiki will mean that, by and large, the best-known and most important journals will be written up first. Frankly, if you ask me, I'd be begging for people to write up the other ones, 'cause I can't imagine many wanting to do it.

Conclusions:

  • 1. Wiki policy: include any journal with an ISSN
  • 2. This project: prioritize journal projects and motivate contributions without censorship

Now educate me about all the things I'm missing. Alastair Haines 01:48, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

One point that worries me is that your post above seems to be implying that this project is designed to summarise and quote the contents of journals. I don't see it that way at all. I see it more as a project to write article about the journals, rather than the contents of the journals (though the contents would still be mentioned in the article). ie. Research the history of a journal, its first publication date, famous editors, famous articles, and so on. The process where an editor of another article reads a journal and adds something to an article using the journal as a source, is a completely different process. Carcharoth 14:51, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

On the topic of deletion, User:Jayvdb/Ulam Quarterly is a good straw man to use for assessment purposes. I honestly dont think it is notable (see also Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Piotr Blass (third nomination)), even in spite of it being mentioned on Wikipedia and elsewhere. It has an ISSN. John Vandenberg 03:48, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the example John. Ulam is probably an excellent example of a genuine journal that did not turn out to serve a long term need. Personally, I find it fascinating simply as an example of market forces in academic publishing.
There are journals in my area that existed for specific purposes over a period of time. Sometimes publication of ancient texts is done as a series, probably as a result of fund-raising issues. Eventually all the documents are deciphered and the series is ended. A classic example is Discoveries in the Judean Desert. This is a hard back book series, not a complete set of journal serials, however, its notability (in the sense of wide application and interest across many disciplines) allowed for that.
I guess my point is that the sort of journal we all imagine is one that started sometime and will stay in print indefinitely. However, I suspect there are several disciplines with notable serial titles that are widely cited, even foundational to the discipline, but are discontinued due to having covered what they intended to cover. Ulam is a different sort of example, it's just a common or garden maths journal that was not ultimately needed to "share the load" of publishing the findings of mathematicians.
Were it up to me, I'd accept Ulam as a Wiki article, but then you know I argue for accepting all. I'd be much more selective in what I'd defend against deletion though. I can't imagine anyone really missing the Ulam article, so I'd not fight for it, despite my own preference.
Enough said, I'll plug away at theological journals for the time being. I'll aim to put more substantial stubs in place, rather than reference more titles from now on though. I'll base the bare-minimum info for stubs on recommendations this project has provided above. Cheers. Alastair Haines 06:45, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
I'd tend to apply an arbitrary cut-off of 5 years of continuous publication for notability of any serial publication, unless there was some reason why this was inappropriate (eg as Alastair Haines mentions, an intentionally limited series, or a short-lived journal where more than one or two papers it published were highly cited, or a new journal that is showing all the signs of becoming established). I might be showing my age here, but there also seems reason to expect higher standards in general for purely e-published serials, if only because the overheads are far lower, and therefore there are a greater number of start ups, some of which are likely to be shortlived. Espresso Addict 21:50, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
I wouldn't want to say this as an absolute. Even ISI requires only 3 years for Journal Citation Reports. And sometimes a new journal like Nature Chemical Science will obviously be important from day 1 (& in this case there's even some controversy to report). In the past, journals in new fields, like Cell or J Mol Bio were obviously important immediately. I'm hard put to think of any titles with a short life span in molecular biology that actually were important, --it may be different in the humanities. DGG (talk) 08:59, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
Oh, sure -- a journal below 5 years could easily be notable. In my area, Nature Medicine was among the best journals in its field within 3 months. What I was trying to express was that I'd personally consider a peer-reviewed academic journal that has published for 5 years to be inherently notable, without needing further supporting information. Espresso Addict 16:23, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
OK, sorry I misunderstood--I see we agree on that part. But in the other direction I would certainly say that not even 5 years, or 50 , would make a very insignificant journal significant. In this as in any field there are some at the bottom end. Thousands of journals limp along, sometimes publishing an occasional issue, without ever publishing anything of substance. Among the considerations are whether the journal has ever published an article that was even reasonably cited; whether it is found in more than a handful of libraries; where it ranks among others in the field. I would certainly agree with you that a very specialized journals that is the only one in its subject might be significant even though very small and irregular and rarely held. But in a subject where its among the least significant with many dozens of important journals--no. I [perhaps have a bias here--I conscientiously spent some time each year figuring out which biology journals were of no possible use to even a major library. (There was in fact a time when we simply bought everything published, but eventually at even the best-financed library money proved more finite than publishers' dreams.) I'll get out my lists next week, and we can look at some examples. DGG (talk) 04:33, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
It's probably my ignorance of the truly insignificant journals. A journal that's never published articles cited in reviews, doesn't make it to Medline &c, and isn't held in decent specialist libraries would generally tend to pass the non-librarian by. Espresso Addict 04:58, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WP:N

Most contributors to discussion of notability here seem to be disregarding the Notability guideline which specifies, in a nutshell, "has received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject". Do you really think academic journals should be an exception? If so, why? Nurg 01:00, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Short answer: notability is a criterion for being encyclopedic, but so is reliability, Wiki articles on journals are justified at a "metaWiki" level because they are part of making "transparent" the verification process.
The others here seem to have thought this through better than me. But the case I'd put is this:
  1. Journal articles are considered primary sources of original research because they are peer-reviewed by experts in a subject area. If a new QUASAR is discovered, we can report that at Wiki on the basis of the journal article that records the observation, and the method used so it can be repeated. A Time magazine report, on the other hand, would not be the basis reliability, but would be a basis for notability. Such notability is required for the new QUASAR to actually deserve a namespace, however reliable the source.
  2. Wiki articles about academic journals themselves, however, should not be justified, imo, as encyclopedic on the basis of notability or independence (I think the others disagree with me). The justification for inclusion of articles on academic journals is a matter of improving the reliability and verifiability of Wiki, not its notability. Such articles can provide basic information regarding journals that allows readers and editors to evaluate just what kind of expertise or systematic bias might be associated with an organization that publishes a journal. Ideally they'd be in categories that also serve as a bibliography for various subjects. I for one would like to know if a theological journal is published by Catholics, Mormons, Evangelicals or Linguistic Academics -- I'd rather an article by Catholics about Catholicism in some cases, not in others. Freudian and Behavioural schools of Psychology are similar, some professionals are expert representatives of schools of thought within a broader disciipline.
  3. Finally, most academic journal are widely cited by people within those fields, who are sometimes the only ones who can reliabily assess the content. Sometimes those are very broad communities. Mathematics academics and theoretical linguists are very specialized and very numerous. The New York Times will not always publish results in such fields, because they are incomprehensible to the general public, while sometimes being revolutionary within academic communities.
The question Wiki needs to address, imo, is do we let topics like Goedel's Theorem remain in the domain of mathematical experts and not be recorded at Wiki until published in the NYT; or do we allow non-expert editors to have some trace of the peer review involved in publishing journal articles, by having articles on those journals? Alastair Haines 03:53, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
My watchlist has had International Journal of Educational Technology appear a few times today as Nurg tagged it with {{fact}} and then {{notability}} before raising the concern here. In case an Afd is imminent, I have left some notes on that articles talk page. From a quick investigation, an Afd on that article could end in delete, even if it were improved, due to different peoples opinions on the Wikipedia notability criteria.
My personal opinion on Wikipedia notability of journals is that they are implicitly notable if the journal is kept in hard copies at a number of independent research libraries. In 1000 years, any journal articles that are still assessible will be analysed in order to better understand the scientific and academic community of our era. They will not care whether the journal was discussed in depth by independent people.
Also, as a journal is merely a collection of papers, each time a journal article is used as a reference somewhere else, it has been noted. Sometimes these are not independent (e.g. self-references, editoral staff taking liberties, etc), but when a journal's articles are referred to in the academic output of another person, real world notability is implicitly given to the journal at the same time. Measuring these micropayments of notability is the fun job of calculating impact factor. As a result, it would take an extremely low impact factor (or decent hand-waving to that effect) for me to consider a journal as not notable.
The "meta" importance of academic journals is foremost in my opinion, and meta:Wikicat is evidence of the importance of building a knowledge base about the sources that are used on any of the Wikimedia projects. It is important to keep in mind that WP:N is only a guideline, and is not one of the pillars of Wikipedia. WP:NOR and WP:RS are the policies here, and citing verifiable, authoritative sources is possible, even if journals of minor notability have to be written using only library catalogs and other journals as the independent sources. John Vandenberg 05:39, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
The meta argument would be stronger for a journal that is cited internally within other Wikipedia articles; that doesn't seem to be the case for IJET. —David Eppstein 05:59, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Agreed. The meta argument for journals not currently used on Wikimedia projects shifts from informing our readers to informing editors of Wikipedia. Having information about journals like IJET will give editors an idea of the editorial process used by a journal when considering the reliability and importance of a journal article that they may be considering adding to Wikipedia or other projects. Information that is primarily of value to editors is typically kept in the Wikipedia: namespace; perhaps we should be considering setting up a "directory" where articles about journals of lesser notability can be placed. As this could become quite large, perhaps Wikibooks would be the best place for it. John Vandenberg 06:37, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Sounds smart to me, but there's a lot about all the meta-space I don't know. My only concern is Wiki retain content as much as possible. I am sympathetic to removing from the main space articles that would not appear in a print Encyclopedia, so long as they are retained somewhere. I'm sure you guys will make the best things happen. Alastair Haines 08:07, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
I am totally opposed to this--here and in all subjects. WP is not print. We can include articles on everything important to any significant subject field. That we should be a free online version of a print encyclopedia is not the general purpose of the entire project. Even Citizendium has a much broader goal. We're not emulated the EB, we're transcending it. DGG (talk) 14:18, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Nurg asks above: "Do you really think academic journals should be an exception? If so, why?" - now that attempts have been made to answer this question, I wuld invite Nurg to propose what makes a journal non-notable. I agree that there are notable journals and non-notable journals, but the question is where the line is drawn. I think "independent coverage" is a poor criterion to use here, due to the specialised nature of such journals. Carcharoth 12:41, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Coming to this discussion late, many of my points have already been discussed, but it seems for journals "has received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject" would seem to include indexing of its content in the various subject-specific indexing services. Espresso Addict 09:49, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the importance of journals for verifiability. The inclusion of non-notable journals somewhere in meta-space is ok. John's idea of a directory in meta-space is fine. Alistair's "removing from the main space articles that would not appear in a print encyclopedia" is on the button.
As to where to draw the line between notable and non-notable journals, it should be similar to the existing notability guidelines. It may be useful to have a guideline such as Wikipedia:Notability (academic journals). However, such a guideline should be drawn as broad as possible to avoid a multiplicity of very similar guidelines. So perhaps Wikipedia:Notability (journals) or Wikipedia:Notability (periodicals) would be better. I have drafted this Notability (periodicals). I have based it largely on Wikipedia:Notability (books). Feel free to copy or move it to a permanent address and to discuss refinements. Nurg 08:41, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for that, Nurg. Could I also ask that you give some examples? Take the last three collaborations: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, and Astronomische Nachrichten. Could you discuss why they are notable, and maybe provide three examples of non-notable ones that currently have articles, so the comparisons can be made? Thanks. Carcharoth 11:00, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
I have made a rather long comment on User talk:Nurg/Notability (periodicals), on the proposed standard, a standard that would rely upon primarily or exclusively awards and being discussed in other publications--the basic N criteria. I think they are important when they exist, but are orders of magnitude too restrictive for notability. They might well be relevant for A class, especially the references. I'll copy it here in modified form after I see comments there. In general, to be frank, I think Nurg's proposal would be a denial of coverage to most of the important journals, and the wrong approach entirely. It would be in strong contradiction to any attempt to improve the coverage of academic subjects generally. The general N standards are inadequate anywhere in this area, usually by being too restrictive, and what i want to do is make it clear that we use others as well. We can twist the conventional standards to apply, as suggested above, but we don;t have to. DGG (talk) 14:04, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
I can't see your comment on the page you link? Espresso Addict 14:55, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

In reply to Carcharoth, PNAS and Astronomische Nachrichten appear to have multiple, independent references. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society seems to have one so it's 50% of the way there on that basis alone. Look, I'm not an expert on journals or on WP's notability guidelines. Nor have I expressed an opinion on the notability guidelines per se or their restrictiveness. The guidelines have been decided by better minds (presumably) than me. My question is why academic journals should be an exception to the notability guidelines that apply to everything else. So far I see no reason they should be an exception.

The other thing to avoid with any literary or published or screen media subject is original research. It is all too easy to take info from the subject itself, so the requirement for independent sources is far more important than it is for most subjects. It is easy for us to avoid writing original research on physics but when writing about a book or periodical or website, it is very tempting to use the subject as a source - and that is original research. I can't be sure, but I suspect that everything in the International Journal of Educational Technology article is original research. Nurg 05:08, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Still a great question, imo, Nurg.
Journals are a medium for publishing reliable original research.
If original research is absolutely prohibited, a body of knowledge cannot expand.
What Wiki precludes is editors providing their own original research.
Also, original research that has not been peer-reviewed is insufficient citation to establish a claim in a Wiki article.
If The Journal of Talking-Dogs prints a mission statement "to raise awareness of the contribution of talking-dogs to society." Is quoting that at Wiki original research? In what sense? If so, why does the policy preclude it?
As far as I can tell, Wiki is in favour of OR! So long as it is peer reviewed and outside Wiki. Who does that kind of thing? ... Academic Journals! :D
Alastair Haines 05:28, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
Alastair, we need to clearly distinguish here between referencing an article in a journal to support a claim in a Wikipedia article (this is a standard process, no different to referencing a webpage or book), and writing an article about the journal itself. Writing the articles about the journals will help people assess the references used in Wikipedia articles (well, once people get into the habit of linking the journal names and abbreviations), but writing about the journals is still clearly distinct from using the journals to write other articles. Carcharoth 05:36, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
Nurg, You talk about references. These are important to verify notability claims, but it is perfectly possible to have unverified notability claims that mean an article passes notability criteria. Often, an expert or someone with moderate knowledge of the field, will look at an article with unreferenced notability claims, will agree with them, and move on without adding references. Lazy I know, but it is what happens. Then someone who doesn't know the area comes along and instead of tagging the notability claims for a citation, tags it as non-notable because they have never heard of it. I agree that notability guidelines probably are needed for journals, but they need to be tailored to fit journals by those who know the subject area. There probably are a few experts, or at least well-informed people, reading and editing this page, who know more about journals than we ever will, so I'm happy to leave it to them to establish guidelines. The original research questions are interesting, but maybe we should leave that discussion for another day. Primary sources are sometimes the best sources of information about a subject. It is opinion that needs to be cited to independent, secondary sources. Carcharoth 05:36, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Re Nurg's supposition that everything in IJET is OR: I don't want to defend IJET as an example of a good journal article. It lacks any evaluation of the quality of the journal, or third-party sources from which such an evaluation could be drawn, and doesn't tell much of a story about the journal or why anyone would care about it. It includes only facts that could be found in most university library catalogs. I think we want to set the bar higher than that. But everything the IJET article seems likely to have been collated from sources on the internet; if even that much is OR, then everything in Wikipedia that has multiple sources is OR, and the term becomes meaningless. What is disallowed as OR is material that does not come from external sources, or that synthesizes new conclusions by putting together information from multiple external sources (a process qualitatively different from merely gathering information from multiple sources). As everything in the IJET article seems purely factual, it is hard to see what new synthesis it might contain that would qualify as OR in that sense. —David Eppstein 05:53, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Basically agreed. What a source says about itself is important. Mission statements are most reliable from a primary source. Circulation figures may also be audited and accountable by being published. There's a third party involved that we don't have access to. Qualitative assessments, however, are clearly inadmissible, except with caveats when other information is lacking. "Our leading journal ..." needs to be Wikified to "XYZ claim to be a leading journal". Much better "The UN Committee on ABC cited XYZ as a leading journal." Anyway, I think we think alike. Alastair Haines 06:04, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

PS re IJET: it now seems to have merged with another journal, Australasian Journal of Educational Technology. I've proposed a merge on the International Journal of Educational Technology page; discussion at Talk:Australasian Journal of Educational Technology. —David Eppstein 06:11, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

My comment referred to above seems to have gotten misplaced--dont know why--I will rewrite it tomorrow. But a special point: mission statements are a example of a sort of content I have the gravest doubts about , whether in journal articles or elsewhere., They usually say the obvious, and in terms of pure PR-talk. The mission of X journal is to publish peer-reviewed research on X, including the complete list of subfields of X1 through X100, and maintain the greatest possible quality and the highest standards of publication. The mission of Y society is to promote research and education in Y, and provide a forum for publishing research and discussion the problems of the profession. and so one, usually at much greater length. sometimes it isnt obvious, and then it needs to be said--and here again I would make a distinction between its stated mission, and what it actually intends to accomplish. I'm somewhat cynical about professional societies, universities, and publishers, which tend to have the same faults as other organized bodies, and whose articles can show similar degrees of self-serving rhetoric and COI. Durova's splendid essay WP:BFAQ is applicable to more than businesses. DGG (talk) 08:01, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Journal Info & FRIDA

I've casually run into an impact factor measurement that I havent seen before: FRIDA[1] described here. This site Journal Info has caught a few peoples attention[2][3][4]. Anyone know more about FRIDA? John Vandenberg 08:51, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Wasn't she with ABBA?
But that was Sweden. :(
Nice find John, btw the ATLA Religion Database mentioned on the record your first link points to is my main tool of work. PubMed seems to be the medical analogy. Perhaps we need a list of these databases. Surely they would be notable enough for the main namespace, under any definition of notability. Alastair Haines 08:25, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
This is your red link; there are many like it but this one is yours! :-)
You may be interested in recently started Dumbarton Oaks Papers and Oriens Christianus. John Vandenberg 09:27, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Ha, ha, good on you John, yes indeed, it is mine. :D Alastair Haines 09:48, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
LOLOL John, I got a speedy deletion nom within 1 second of creating the page!
It is very funny, but I do smell a rat here. Alastair Haines 10:06, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
And I was naughty <blush>, I just deleted the tag! Alastair Haines 10:32, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
All is well that ends well. I've added a few categories, but maybe we need a new category for these databases. John Vandenberg 11:17, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
[[Category:Bibliographic databases]]? Should this be a subcat of [[Category:Academic publishing]]?
Another question, do you have any relation to javdbg by any chance?
There seemed a family likeness of hard working editorship, but maybe only the family sock-puppet? ;) Alastair Haines 14:18, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] International Symposium on Graph Drawing

I would like to establish additional articles on conference series. this seems to have some real 3rd party documentation, so lets see how it goes. DGG (talk) 06:32, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Sometimes society newsletters print reports from attendees of recent conferences; I just saw one on the latest ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing in the most recent issue of SIGACT News, for instance. I think we could use those as 3rd party sources. In this case, STOC and SIGACT News are both sponsored by the same organization, but the editorial structures of the two are independent from each other, and in many cases they wouldn't even be that closely related. —David Eppstein 07:00, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps we should stick to the really big & long-established international conference series to start with, and see what the community thinks? I've been asked to remove red links to conferences from society/publisher articles in the past. I suspect independent, non-trivial sources might be hard to find for most conferences, and sources based in the sponsoring organisation would not usually be considered independent. Espresso Addict 07:11, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

On Graph Drawing? Is this, like, how to draw the graphs we were taught about in school? :-) I'm guessing some mathematical graph definition here... (later, I see that the article exists! I assumed you were proposing to create it, as you hadn't linked to it!)

If anyone is interested in the articles we already have on conferences (well, those that have been categorised), then see Category:Conferences and Category:Academic conferences. Lots of non-notable ones there, but it gives people an idea of what already exists. Some of the really, really notable ones are ones such as Solvay Conference, Volta Conference, and Shelter Island Conference. An existing stub that looks like it deserves to be expanded is Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. An interesting approach can be seen at Ranking of computer science conferences. I'm sure some of the really big conferences in the biological sciences are under-represented here. Carcharoth 15:37, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I've not seen any of the well-known biomedical conferences and there must be hundreds. A list approach might be a good way to start. Espresso Addict 19:39, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
You guys are great! I hadn't thought of conferences. Hmmm, neutrality, I think that can end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater — responsible organizations can be so specialized as not to attract much 3rd party attention, but whatever. Anyway, listing bigger conferences sounds like an awesome idea, makes another part of the process more transparent. This is a massive project and ultimately so helpful. Alastair Haines 14:01, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Note, Ranking of computer science conferences has recently been prodded. Espresso Addict 21:48, 16 October 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Scope of the project (awards)

Would awards from scientific and other academic societies be within the scope of this project? The awards pages are fairly easy to maintain, as they are usually just lists, and can also provide ideas for stubs of scientists and other academics that can be created. Have a look at Category:Awards, Category:Awards by subject, and Category:Science and engineering awards. The awards articles I've worked on include Royal Medal, Willard Gibbs Award and (most recently) Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine. The same sort of questions of notability seem to arise, with pretty much the same answer. Someone receiving awards, or publishing in a journal, seem to be ways of measuring notability. Gauging the notability of said journals or awards, and the societies that publish/award them seems to be a bit harder, but I think it would be good to include societies, awards, journals, and journal publishers all in one area. Not sure if there is an umbrella term to cover all this, but maybe "Academic publishing and administration"? Is it worth setting up a 'shell' parent wikiproject to make all this clearer, or would that confuse things? Carcharoth 12:18, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

The trick, as you note, is determining which awards to include and which not. My own resume in real life includes a number of awards. But I can't think of an easy way to determine which awards have merit, and which do not. I mean, obviously the Nobel Prize does; the "Best Freshman of the Year of Transylvania University" does not. But where's the line in between? Obviously the Rhodes Scholars should have a page, but should the individual Rhodes Scholars be listed? Should the Rhodes Scholarship be a factor in notability? Maybe we need a workshop page to hammer out all these issues of inclusion? For prizes, journals, conferences and societies. We start conversations here but they keep getting lost in the flow of new threads. --JayHenry 20:24, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Academic-type stuff in ANI thread

Some weird stuff at an ANI thread concerning something called the Institute for Human Thermodynamics, with an associated journal. Have a look at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#User:Sadi Carnot, and in particular at the http://www.humanthermodynamics.com/index.html website , http://www.humanthermodynamics.com/About-IOHT.html institute and http://www.humanthermodynamics.com/Journal.html journal . If those here who know how to tell a genuine journal from bogus one could add comments both here and over there, that would be great. Carcharoth 13:17, 20 October 2007 (UTC) the website above is on the spam blacklist, so the links have been converted to text) DGG (talk) 03:59, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Jacob Jaygbay, Jr.

Jacob Jaygbay, Jr. is up for AfD. I'm not sure whether it belongs in this project's deletion page, Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Academics and educators, or what (so I have defaulted to adding it to neither) but he seems to have some involvement with African scholarly publishing, and has some scholarly papers of his own on that subject. —David Eppstein 23:55, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

this is a really tricky one. I commented there that he is one of the leading authors in a very very narrow subject. His few papers represents a good fraction of the literature on african scholarly journals. DGG (talk) 03:59, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
I've added it to the project deletion subpage. As long as the volume of items doesn't become unmanageable, monitoring those with only a minor connection to the project seems no problem. Espresso Addict 15:39, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] MDPI and its journals

Could someone here review the MDPI article and the articles on the MDPI journals? I have some concerns about some of these articles, but I don't want to say any more unless I prejudice the response. Carcharoth 15:14, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Different journal, same area, Molecular Diversity. Carcharoth 15:24, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
My impression is that it's the same people as the ones behind the recent Sadi Carnot kerfuffle. I can't find any reliable sources on this group. —David Eppstein 16:14, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
It's frustrating, because it all seems to hang together, but things never quite click and it seems to hover in some limbo state. Is it a small, new, respectable organisation, or something altogther less reliable? I just can't tell. Lots of names and qualifications, but what do they really mean? Carcharoth 16:19, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

BTW, the "open access" status of these journals has been disputed. —David Eppstein 17:57, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

the comment is that only part of the content is Open access, which makes them what is called hybrid open access journals-- and that this applies only to some titles--and the posting is 2 years ago. I'll check current status. As liblicense-l is the main information source in its area, referred to very widely, and moderated responsibly (by Ann Okerson of Yale), it might well be considered a Reliable source (& the author of this comment is a well known & responsible European librarian)--which would, ironically, count towards the notability of the publisher. At present, 3 are in Web of Science, International Journal of Molecular Sciences IF 0.69 80 out of 124 in Chemistry (Multidisciplinary) , , Molecules IF 0.84 (37/56) in Organic chemistry, and Sensors IF 1.37 (37/68) in Analytical Chemistry, are indexed in Web of Science. This is not great, but not negligible. I'll check on the others. Sadi sometimes also did some edits for respectable science, or at least used it as a screen. So that is no reason to delete necessarily DGG (talk) 16:28, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
This stuff wasn't added by Sadi/Thims, it was Shu-Kun Lin, another member of the same circle. If nothing else, his work on these articles raises WP:COI concerns. —David Eppstein 16:50, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] American Review: A Whig Journal

Edgar Allan Poe never worked on the staff of the American Review. In 1844, he was hired byN. P. Willis for the New York Mirror. The comment in the article is in error. Outis —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.111.90.36 (talk) 21:37, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Judging from comments at Talk:American Review: A Whig Journal this problem has already been corrected. EdJohnston 16:48, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] articles by size

Betacommand has generated a list of articles tagged with {{WPJournals}} ordered by size: Wikipedia:WikiProject Academic Journals/Articles by size. Note that discussion about assessment of these should ideally follow up on the new Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Academic Journals/Assessment. John Vandenberg 08:54, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] List of scientific journals in Serbia

This article has been at AfD here and the closure was unusually userfy. It is now at User:Nikola Smolenski/List of scientific journals in Serbia. The closing admin surprisingly asked "is there a WikiProject?". Should we link to that user page somewhere, so it does not get lost? --Bduke 00:31, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Publication series?

Not sure if this is the kind of thing your project may be interested in, but I saw two articles on User:AlexNewArtBot/SwedenSearchResult that deal with a series of publications in Law, and the institute that publishes the series:

Personally, I know nothing about Law and publications in that field. At the very least, these pages should probably be combined in a single article, but I don't want to put any work into articles in which I lack interest if they are just going to be removed from Wikipedia eventually. Olaus 07:33, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

these are in the nature of Monographs in series, and we probably should include them in the project, as quasi-journals. the odds of their being eliminated from WP will be greatly reduced if you put enough work into the articles to show they are widely referred to. DGG (talk) 03:56, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
I combined the series with the institute. The institute seems to be mainly set up for publishing the series and having two articles just looked silly. I know enough about Swedish society in general to recognize some of the names of people and institutions involved, but I don't know if that is enough to prove "notability" in a Wikipedia sense to foreigners. I would be completely incapable of proving the importance of the publications, as I have no idea where to look. I could go to the library and find some legal journals that review some of these volumes, but it is not really my idea of fun... Olaus (talk) 14:12, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
One can check on library holdings via Worldcat. Butt heres no problem merging, if there is a redirect for the series. DGG (talk) 01:51, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, I made the merge and redirected the series title. User:Carcharoth later added a category ("Category:Monographs" - although I'm not sure all of these are monographs, many seem to be) to the redirect, which is a smart feature. (One could include multiple publications from the same institution or publisher in the same article and still locate them in a category).
Law is very much a "national" field, and I don't know how much international interest one can expect, but according to Worldcat "Scandinavian Studies in Law" is held by 146 libraries in the US[5] and six in the UK[6]. It is to be expected that every significant Swedish library would have this series, and the Swedish Royal Library LIBRIS catalogue locates it in 28 libraries in Sweden and some odd locations in the rest of Scandinavia[7]. (Only the major Swedish libraries and very few Scandinavian academic libraries outside Sweden are included in that search, the real number is likely to be higher). As a comparison, there are six Swedish universities (Gothenburg, Lund, Stockholm, Umeå, Uppsala and Örebro) with the right to offer first professional degrees (juris kandidat) in Law.[8] Do you think this is enough? Olaus (talk) 08:28, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] relevant general discussion of guidelines

Wikipedia talk:Notability (media) on the proposed guideline Wikipedia:Notability (media) -- was originally proposed to deal with problems involving the notability of radio stations, but has general applicability. DGG (talk) 03:58, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A question

When I was at medical school my university's library came up with the most amazing tool: it installed a proxy server on its library systems, so people could access online journals from the comfort of their own home, even if they were only using institutional subscriptions.

I have been dreaming for some time of Wikipedia running a similar facility, or at least acquiring access to a similar facility. I am aware that the logistics and cost are substantial, but I also feel that it would be a collossal boost to academically-oriented subjects (sciences and humanities). Personally, I have to be selective with my sources because I have limited access to journals at most hospitals; I therefore may select a lower-quality reference because I can get hold of it, or rarely pay the library to order it from the British Library.

I'm simply curious about community support for such an endeavour, and I will cross-post this item on the Village pump to see what people's views are here. JFW | T@lk 13:13, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Institutions establish proxy servers to permit access from home because access is otherwise restricted. Access to wikipedia is not restricted, so there is no need for a proxy server set up to access it. ... Oh wait, you're suggesting that wikipedia purchase database access for its editors, so they could better cite references? That would be ... a lot of money. It would be awesome but I think it highly unlikely. --Lquilter (talk) 16:12, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Research studies

What should be done with articles on clinical trials and other research projects. The most notable one I can think of is Human Genome Project. But then at the other end of the scale you have stuff like GISSI. Do we want to cover this sort of thing or not? Are other WikiProjects better set-up to handle these? Carcharoth (talk) 12:05, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

I would strongly support the deletion of articles on research studies in progress unless they have been discussed in a substantial way in the general science media, such as Nature or New Scientist--or the public media. In the case of GISSI, there's an article in Lancet, but it just presents the results. I mean some more prominent discussion than that. I am quite concerned that any research paper at all or named project could otherwise generate a separate article. I can think of a number of others here, which i will nom for AfD once we get rid of this one. DGG (talk) 13:01, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
Few people would argue against having an article on the Framingham Heart Study, which is also a research study in progress, but I believe that it meets your standard of general notice in science media. I'd support an eventual AfD of GISSI if no independent third-party sources can be added to the article. There is no problem at all with Human Genome Project. EdJohnston (talk) 17:43, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
Yes there is no problem at all with it -- I neglected to say so because it seemed so very obviously notable--as are many others. The major muti-center studies with general public health implications are generally notable at least after the results are published--we should in fact look around to see which ones may be missing here. DGG (talk) 01:40, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
But this may be systematic bias. The Framingham study is in the US, 60 years and involved 5,209 people at the start, into the third generation and a longitudinal study. GISSI is in Italy, over 20 years, and more than 60,000 patients. They may well be comparable in notability, but US news sources are more likely to cover the US one. Medical literature should be a better guide here. What we really need is someone who knows enough about cardiology and heart studies over the past 50 years to tell us which ones are notable. As for being in progress, it seems GISSI is really four separate trials which are finished, and one happening at the moment. More like a series of trials than a single one. Having said that, there are a lot of heart studies out there. Would be nice to have an article on heart studies in general. See also this. Carcharoth (talk) 06:17, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
You may well be right that it was unfamiliarity, but the article did not clarify it for me. Maybe this does need a further review--and we will probably then need to deal with the probably variation in results between different nations. DGG (talk) 08:01, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
I was just coming across this issue too.
  1. We have Category:Research projects and I began (yesterday!) adding this to relevant articles with the note-to-self to go investigate this as a category tree.
  2. I think it would also be helpful to have them organized by time, as well, but I'm not sure how to do the multiple-years issues.
  3. As for determining notability of research projects, there does have to be some useful standards -- we certainly don't want every graduate proposal with a wikipedia article. Nor do we want published research to be redundantly categorized as research projects. Some criteria that occur to me are (a) productive of multiple papers/research; (b) long-term longitudinal; (c) large-scale - e.g., the Iceland genomic project, by encompassing an entire nation, might have been notable not just because of widespread media coverage but also because of its breadth and novelty; (d) significant publicity. Obvious significant publicity will demonstrate notability always, but could some productive, long-term, large-scale survey that did not demonstrate significant publicity still be notable? It seems to me it could but I can't think of one of the top of my head.
--Lquilter (talk) 16:09, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Category:Research projects is interesting. Thanks for that. That should be brought in scope as well... (one day, this little WikiProject will rule the wiki!!) - ahem! :-) Carcharoth (talk) 17:38, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
The usual academic criterion will do: sufficient references from other research groups to it to show that it is used at a standard in further work. This is not the 2 RS criterion, which is absurdly weak for cases like this. DGG (talk) 04:37, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] journal database?

Hi, do you guys around maintain a kind of database of all journals covered in WP articles, containing the ISSN's (and possibly wikilinks) of the journals? I ask for the following reason: I wrote a database intended to simplify citing journal papers (and books) correctly by storing the information in a central place (http://zeteo.info, see also User:Jakob.scholbach/zeteo). Wikipedia editors can then just copy the information into an article. The database currently contains some 1000 journals (mainly mathematics journals). Most of them miss an ISSN, though. I'd be glad to be able to fill these gaps. Thanks, Jakob.scholbach 18:05, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

The other way round: If you are interested, I could provide a list of the most frequently cited journals (this is based on the WP math articles, more precisely only reference citations created with citation templates are covered). This could provide some impetus to write something about these journals here. Jakob.scholbach 18:08, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Is this db in the public domain or GFDL. I see no copyright statement, so by default its your proprietary database. Besides the search box, it would be useful to have a way of displaying the complete list of journals. Sounds interesting. I was not aware there were 1000 math journals -- the Courant library at NYU only receives 220 [9] and I thought is as comprehensive as any; presumably you have a great many non current titles as well. Fine Library at Princeton has 720, current and non-current. DGG (talk) 05:09, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
I've now included the GFDL statement (see the Contact page). You can now also show the complete list of journals. (The number 1000 may have been slightly exaggerated. There are some 1100 entries, but there are duplicate items (for example "Acta Inf." and "Acta Informatica"). Jakob.scholbach 09:29, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
and that is where the work is in a centralized database--achieving standardization and resolving duplicates. As I am sure you know very well. Good luck with the project. Can you think of any good way for us to adopt such a database by stages? DGG (talk) 04:54, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
I don't know whether it is possible to feed WP with a database like this. If you want I can export the most frequently cited journal which don't have a wikilinik or similar things. Jakob.scholbach 11:05, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
Is that just current journals or historical ones as well? Carcharoth (talk) 13:10, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

A discussion about this tool, and other approaches to improve our bibliographic record keeping, has been raised on the Village pump (technical). I have recommended that we adopt the French solution of a "Reference" namespace, which could also be of particular interest to project members who are familiar with the notability discussions we have had in the past. John Vandenberg (talk) 06:33, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tagging new articles

Where the tag was missing, I tagged the new articles with {{WPJournals}}. I left the conferences mentioned in the "new articles list" alone (International Symposium on Graph Drawing, International Congress on Industrial and Applied Mathematics, European Congress of Radiology, European Society for Engineering Education). Do we want to tag those as well? Carcharoth (talk) 11:51, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Deletion discussions

Is anyone still keeping Wikipedia:WikiProject Academic Journals/Deletion up-to-date? Carcharoth (talk) 12:04, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

User:Espresso Addict is apparently on a lengthy Wikibreak. She used to do a lot of it. --JayHenry (talk) 14:58, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
Her contributions started up again yesterday. I'll drop a note on her talk page. Carcharoth (talk) 15:10, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
I happened to browse through AfD and see one so I added it. I'd be quite interested in a Featured Article project if anybody else is up for it... --JayHenry (talk) 05:15, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
I would be. Not much time right now, but keep asking around and try and get some more people interested. Carcharoth (talk) 03:53, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
I will help, provided it was a journal that extends back into the 19th century. I would be even more keen on a featured list project (perhaps List of eighteenth century journals?). John Vandenberg (talk) 12:11, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
As featured articles I'd suggest Nature which is (relatively) low-hanging fruit. I think we could possibly interest other good editors in this project. User:WillowW and User:TimVickers, both excellent FA contributors, have some interest in such topics. I think another interesting one would be Impact Factor, also potentially useful for assessing notability. I looked into at one point and there's a decent body of literature on impact factor itself. I'd also be happy to work on an FLC project. How would we ever determine if we'd found all the eighteenth century journals though? --JayHenry (talk) 06:36, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
I'd support anything, really. I wonder what the final form of academic journal and scientific journal should be? And I wonder whether we have an article on the history of journals and publishing? The 18th century list would be a good start towards the history, though maybe the history article should come first? Oh, and it wouldn't be us who determines whether a list is complete - the structure and completeness of lists should be deived from the sources. ie. Look at what lists others have already done. Carcharoth (talk) 02:01, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Image rationales

Moved to Wikipedia:WikiProject Academic Journals/Images

[edit] Popular science magazines

Does anyone think that popular science magazines could be covered here as well? I'm thinking that a primary motivation for inmproving articles on the journals was so that people could judge references by reading the article on the journal (or at least link to it). Maybe something similar can be said for magazines like New Scientist, Scientific American (the two main ones, I think) and American Scientist (found a nice article on the online version recently). Those three articles are not tagged in a WikiProject. Would anyone object to tagging those? Several issues of scope have come up over the months since the project started, but as Jay Henry noted above: "We start conversations here but they keep getting lost in the flow of new threads." I've started Wikipedia:WikiProject Academic Journals/Scope I also recently started Wikipedia:WikiProject Academic Journals/Images. I'll add both to the front page. Carcharoth (talk) 14:11, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Project activity

The weekly collaborations (which were nice) seemed to have died out. Shall we restart them as fortnightly or monthly ones? Carcharoth (talk) 14:41, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Ugh. I've been meaning to pick that ball up again, for a while now.
To get this back on track, I've created a table of proposed collaborations, taking us through to June, so that we don't loose traction again. Does it look workable? Feel free to re-arrange, or lock yourself into a collaboration by noting your name at the end. Ideally, different people should take the lead for each of those collabs, so there isn't any burn out. John Vandenberg (talk) 05:46, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
This looks good to me. I will do my best to help out. One tip is that I've found journals often do retrospectives on anniversaries. The 50th volume or 100th volume of a journal can be a good place to look for information about the history of the journal itself. --JayHenry (talk) 05:52, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Archiving talk page

Anyone know how to cleanly archive this talk page but still keep unresolved issues here, or restart unresolved threads? Carcharoth (talk) 14:42, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I created an archive atop the page. You can just manually copy old threads over to the archive. If you wish to revive a thread, I see no reason not to simply move it to the bottom of the page. --JayHenry (talk) 06:32, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WSEAS

I see we have a recent article on WSEAS. I've seen online criticism of this organization as promoting spam and junk conferences; see e.g. [10] [11] [12]. In the interests of balanced coverage, I'd like to add something about this criticism to the article, but only if it can be reliably sourced. Or possibly even add coverage describing how they used to be spammers and junk conference promoters, but got better, as this post suggests. Google is difficult as most of the terms I try run into more webspam from the WSEAS people rather than anything from a secondary source. Anyone have any better ideas where to look for published articles about this group? —David Eppstein (talk) 02:06, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Journal of Medical Sciences Research

This is an online-only journal founded in 2007 that appears to have only two online issues (Oct & Nov 2007). It is web-published by the editor-in-chief, although there is an ed board listed. The wiki article was created by the editor cum publisher. I can't find anything searching on the ISSN except the journal website and apparent Wikipedia mirrors. It claims to be indexed by "Index Cupernicus", which presumably is a typo for "Index Copernicus", but searching there [13] on ISSN doesn't find the journal.

User:Travellingcari has recently removed notability tags placed by User:Shalom, and I've tidied the article, but on reflection I'm not sure this one is actually notable. Would be grateful for second opinions. Espresso Addict (talk) 18:53, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the link, Espresso Addict. I removed the notability tags due to recent AfD discussions which seemed to establish a precedent that journals are inherently notable. I don't necessarily agree, but that's a horse of another color. I'm tackling them as they come up in the backlog, most often in notability issues. When I hit them I try to find any external references, but lately especially in the case of:
which I also ran across, there seems to be frustratingly little. In many cases I think an argument could be raised that the journals ought to be mentioned in the context of their organization, if applicable. I am neither inclusionist nor deletionist but I don't believe in having articles just because we can. I think a valid reason(s) need to be met to have the articles. Thoughts? Hot Chocolate Addict aka TRAVELLINGCARIMy storyTell me yours 20:05, 7 March 2008 (UTC) :)
Journals are not inherently notable, and that should not have been the take away message from the AfDs. All significant peer reviewed journals are notable, and the discussions here give the criteria. Insignificant peer reviewed journals have been deleted before at AfDs, and I've said delete on one or two of them, or at least not fought to hard to save them. As for these ones here, Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs is a very major journal indeed, as can be seen from its precursor journals and the records in Journal Citation Reports. In general the continuation of an notable journal would always be notable, but there may well be reason for merging the articles on them--usually I think to the newest title with redirects to the others.The Journal of Advanced Academics is new to me, as its its precursor, so it needs some checking. Journal of Generalized Lie theory ditto. The Journal of Medical Sciences Research is a new online journal and that's always a little iffy, but it has an impressive board of editors. I note there is no JCR listing possible for a journal until it's in its 3rd year of publication. It's like any other subject: the articles need to be looked at individually and carefully. DGG (talk) 01:40, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

The Lie theory one is listed by, and I assume also indexed by, the American Mathematical Society [14] [15]. Which doesn't mean much (just that it's a seemingly-legitimate math journal), but is at least something. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:51, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

This makes it a bit more clear. No question Alcohol and Drugs is notable, and I agree that the history can (and as I've seen usually is) accounted for in the current name with re-directs if there were other articles. When I cleaned it up, I tried to make the history a bit cleaner because the message was muddled. I think the ones that definitely need some digging are the ones that aren't necessarily wholly covered in English, for example Journal of Generalized Lie Theory and Applications, which is Estonia based. While the journal is in English, there may be some Russian language discussion that could help clarify it. This was also the case with Journal of Applied Ichthyology where someone found a German language source. It's easier with ones like Biometrics (Journal), where JSTOR is involved as somewhat of an arbiter, but I think there has to be some external discussion of the long standing journals. On another note, I noticed New England Journal of Medicine had an infobox, didn't see that when I cleaned up the four I mentioned above. Is that stil in use for new/cleaned articles? TRAVELLINGCARIMy storyTell me yours 03:39, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
{{Infobox Journal}} should be used for academic journals. You don't need to fill in all the fields; discipline, publisher, frequency and issn are perhaps the most important. Espresso Addict (talk) 09:03, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Done for the three that didn't have it :) TRAVELLINGCARIMy storyTell me yours 15:58, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Metropolis Project

I just saved Metropolis Project (an international research/policy collaboration on demography, and sponsor of an academic journal) from an expired prod. I've cleaned it up somewhat and added a couple of references, but more attention would be welcome. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:56, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] AfD: The International Journal of Intelligent Technologies and Applied Statistics

What happened to our deletion sorting page? It seems to have redirected to one on literature, in which I'm sure academic journals will be swamped and lost. In any case, The International Journal of Intelligent Technologies and Applied Statistics is now up for deletion: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The International Journal of Intelligent Technologies and Applied Statistics. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:44, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

The only redirect to the lit. list is Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Publications, which was merged in 2006; is that the one you have found ? I didnt know about it until now. We still have Wikipedia:WikiProject Academic Journals/Deletion , and I dont see it listed as a new list on WP:DS#List changes, and it is still being discussed on the talk page. John Vandenberg (chat) 01:36, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
I was trying to get to Wikipedia:WikiProject Academic Journals/Deletion but forgot the name of the link. Trying to get there from the "Deletion" link at the top of Wikipedia:WikiProject Academic Journals led me to the literature page. I was confused into thinking that somehow our unofficial deletion page had been redirected to the literature one. But I see that's a template that can't easily be changed to point to an unofficial deletion sorting page. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:16, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
Easiest way is to create Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Academic Journals as a redirect to Wikipedia:WikiProject Academic Journals/Deletion, and change the parameter in the template to "Academic Journals". I've gone ahead and done this. Carcharoth (talk) 07:26, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Disease Models & Mechanisms

Started by a new editor, the journal is published by Company of Biologists and appears on their website, but I can find no evidence via ISSN in PubMed or WorldCat that it exists yet. Could someone with better search access than mine check this one out? If it's merely been announced should we retain the article, given that a CoB journal will almost certainly be notable within a few issues of starting? Thanks, Espresso Addict (talk) 15:41, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

it has not yet been published. The subscription price however has been announced, [16]. The online is going to be open access the first year. The price is for 2008, so presumably they intend to publish this year, but they do not say specifically. Normally, as a librarian, I would order a journal such as this as soon as a definite price is available, but I might not if there is no actual publication date announced. I will find out the situation, and update the article accordingly. DGG (talk) 07:34, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Hello all, sorry for any confusion and/or transgressing of the rules on conflicts of interest. As you've guessed, I am a CoB employee, but had tried to avoid any superfluous self-promotion. The journal will launch in late summer/ autumn this year, but we don't yet have a concrete date, so I wasn't sure how to address this. Any suggestions? Neduardo (talk) 12:33, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I'd suggest moving the article to your userspace until there is at least a definite launch date, and preferably until the first issue comes out. At the moment, the only sources for the journal's existence that I could find are from CoB, and that does not meet the Wikipedia verifiability policy, which requires third-party sources. Espresso Addict (talk) 13:09, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion on journal abbreviations (Citing sources)

See Wikipedia talk:Citing sources#We shouldn't abbreviate journal names. Some here have already commented. Those that haven't may still be interested, though the discussion started a few weeks ago. Carcharoth (talk) 07:38, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion about DOI bot

Of likely interest to WP:WPAJ members: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#DOI bot blocked for policy reconsideration. --JayHenry (talk) 21:10, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Userbox

I have created a usere box here: User:Mdebets/Templates/WikiProject Academic Journals. If no-one objects or has improvments for it, I'm going to move it to the template namespace in a few days. --Mdebets (talk) 19:47, 19 May 2008 (UTC)