Talk:Nova Science Publishers/Archive 1

French Wikipedia editor
This article on Nova Publishers was listed on French wikipedia as needing a translation. Although the French article strikes me as being speculative (particularly the last sentence about links between Nova and think tanks) and not terribly well researched, I decided to translate it anyways so that the anglophone community can comment and edit it.Vrac 20:20, 8 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Thank you, Vrac, for a very nice job. There are some English-wiki articles which have impressive-sounding references to Nova Publications books (try "What links here"), which may be confusing to readers who don't realize that the books may be essentially self-published, i.e. unedited and unreviewed.  I researched this publisher and found a few things about him myself, but the best information seemed to be already present in the French article, which is why I asked for the translation.  Thanks for the nuanced text &mdash; I also hope that other editors will add more information, about what seems to be a scandalous situation. Eleuther 20:10, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I think that the authors and translators of the French Wikipedia article did a great disservice to the scientific community. In the light of all the evidence that you find in the international journals, in the international press, and in the light of all these articles and books written by authors from the world's top universities for Nova, the French language article is nothing more than a very very biased picture, to say the least. I allowed myself, in the name of science and in the name of honesty, to re-write the article in a way so that quantified and quantifiable scientometric evidence has its voice. Unfortunately, my efforts were to no avail. Below I present an article how it should or could look like. resuming a lengthy argument presented in earlier versions of the discussion page, I feel that WIKIPEDIA should improve the quality of its articles on OTHER major publishers as well, like the WIKI articles on Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Palgrave Macmillan, Yale University Press, and it should also present articles on major publishers up to now NOT covered by WIKI articles. WIKI articles on major publishers should not be the room for publisher-bashing or copy and past procedures from the Website of the publisher. The present form of the WIKI article (September 12, 2007, 11.40 hours Central European Summer time) is as unacceptable as the versions, based on the French entry.

Signed: Arno Tausch, Adjunct Professor of Political Science, Innsbruck University, Austria, and regular contributor to over 40 journals and/or publishing institutions, among them Dutch University Press, Palgrave Macmillan, and Saint Martin's Press, N.Y., in 24 countries around the globe.


 * Arno Tausch, thank you for your contributions; however please realize that all articles must be neutral, which means that claims like "top scholarly authors" must be backed up with references. In addition, simple counts in databases, like saying that "Google scholar makes 9610 references" to Nova Science Journals, besides being original research doesn't actually mean anything or prove that it's a prestigious journal. If you can add anything to the information about Nova, such as what they publish, where their journals are indexed, etc., please do so. -- phoebe/ (talk) 23:15, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
 * In addition: per your note about submitting a "counter-article" -- we don't have counter-articles on Wikipedia; we all work together on the same version & work out consensus via the discussion page. -- phoebe/ (talk) 23:37, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

reversions
I reverted changes made by User:Arno.tausch to an older version as you can see here. Good material from that old revision should be incorporated in the new article; however, let's try and keep it neutral and well-referenced. Original research such as database and catalog searches (especially to support press-release sounding claims) are not helpful. -- phoebe/ (talk) 23:11, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Arno Tausch responds

''I "neutralized" and updated my article, and submitted now this total revision of the entire material. ''

''Leaving aside the complex legal issues of the negative statements, voiced under the earlier entries by people who wrote negative statements about Nova, it's simply scientometrically refutable what these statements said. Nova is an established science publishing house, and good scientists published for them and will continue to do so.''


 * reply: There are many problems with your version, however.
 * WE DO NOT INCLUDE ORIGINAL RESEARCH. This means that any searching of any database to get scientometric data, if you do it yourself and it's unpublished elsewhere, is not acceptable for the article. See WP:NOR.
 * Citations in databases do NOT mean that the publisher is well accepted. Even terrible publishers are indexed! The numbers you cite are actually extremely low for most publishers; and are basically meaningless -- they simply mean that an article or a citation by Nova Science was picked up by a database. Good data for the article could include, for instance, where the Nova journals are indexed; anything else does not help the reader of an encyclopedia article who is trying to find out what Nova is, which is the purpose of this page. This is NOT a platform for discussing whether they are a good or bad publisher. All the scientometric data in the world does not refute concerns about their publishing and submission practices, which was what was in the article.
 * We do not include contact information for companies in articles, nor instructions for authors, etc. This is not a press page; it's an encyclopedia article.
 * You cannot simply cut out concerns in the article because you don't like them, as you did here.
 * this is not YOUR article. See WP:OWN. This is a Wikipedia article, and it must be neutral. Let's work together.
 * best,
 * phoebe/ (talk) 16:41, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Arno Tausch: deficits in other WIKI articles on major other publishers - for your records
Other world publishers also seem to get their "share" in terms of unacceptable polemics or extremely short coverage at WIKI

Palgrave Macmillan (article speaking about Mr. Maxwell as a "controversial tycoon")

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palgrave_Macmillan

Oxford UP (article considered to be in need of improvement by Wikis themselves, stated on the front of the article)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_University_Press

Cambridge UP (article dedicating almost 20 % of the article to only one single controversial book - "Alms for Jihad")

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_University_Press

Harvard University Press (article extremely short)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_University_Press

Random House (article marked as: To comply with Wikipedia's lead section guidelines, one should be written.Please discuss this issue on the talk page and read the lead section guide to make sure the introduction summarizes the article)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_House

Greenwood Publishers

No article at all

Yale UP very short article, practically only quoting from the website:

Article states:

According to their official website,

''By publishing serious works that contribute to a global understanding of human affairs, Yale University Press aids in the discovery and dissemination of light and truth, lux et veritas, which is a central purpose of Yale University. The publications of the Press are books and other materials that further scholarly investigation, advance interdisciplinary inquiry, stimulate public debate, educate both within and outside the classroom, and enhance cultural life. Through the distribution of works that combine excellence in scholarship with skillful editing, design, production, and marketing, the Press demonstrates its commitment to increasing the range and vigor of intellectual pursuits within the university and elsewhere. With an innovative and entrepreneurial spirit, Yale University Press continually extends its horizons to embody university press publishing at its best!''

My consequence: WIKI NEEDS EDITORS!

What a real NOVA SCIENCE PUBLISHERS article should look like (Arno Tausch)

{{Hidden|titlestyle = background-color: #f2dfce;|contentstyle = background-color: white; border:2px #f2dfce solid;|header=Lengthy alternative article|content= Although Nova started in the field of science, the company expanded into other disciplines as well and has become one of the major scientific book publishing companies in the US. When the company started its publishing activities by 1987, such titles as „Issues in intense-field quantum electrodynamics“; „The theory of target compression by longwave laser emission“; „Laser applications in precision measurement“; „The Physical effects in the gravitational field of black holes“; „The nonlinear optics of semiconductor lasers“; „The Quantum electrodynamics of a high-intensity field“; „Industrial measurement of electrical and electronic components and equipment“ predominated. Today, the catalogue still lists 502 titles, containing the word "physics", and 585 titles containing the word "medicine", but already 255 titles with the term "economics", 281 titles with the word "psychology", 77 titles with the word "political science", 50 titles with the word "sociology", 52 titles with the term "religion", etc. The current editor-in-chief is Mr. Frank Columbus.

General remarks: Nova in international science - data from international press archives and scientometric evidence
International news and reference archives yield the following evidence: International bibliographical content and reference services refer to scientific works published by Nova Science Publishers in the following fashion: In addition, other free internet bibliographies mention Nova titles as well. Only some are listed here: "LEXIS/NEXIS literature search", freely available via the German University internet site "Lalisio", mentions the following specific references in the international, peer-reviewed journals to Nova publications: ''28 search results from Marketing & Advertising Reference (LNE) 129 search results from ABI/Inform Select (LNE) 367 search results from Law Reviews, Combined (LNE)'' "Questia", a free international internet bibliography, with relevance to the social sciences, covering bibliographical references from books and journals in the English speaking world, reports the following results for the search for: "Nova science publishers": Found 155 results: Books: 90, Journal Articles: 62, Magazine Articles: 3 * "Infoconnex Political Science", a freely available political science data search engine, organized by the German Science Ministry and other scientific organizations in Germany, yielded 113 references for Nova Science Publishers titles (Infoconnex Political Science is partly based on Cambridge Scientific Abstracts PAIS) "Blackwell Synergy", combining full-text access to the scholarly journals of that publishing company, carries 81 references to articles, mentioning "Nova Science Publishers"; "Inforetrieve article finder", a free on-line scientific bibliography, mentions 47 articles, which directly refer to "Nova" titles "Elsevier Science Direct", a website, which claims to present access to 1/4 of the world's medical, technical and science information, refers to 27 titles, which are explicitly referring to "Nova Science Publishers; "JSTOR Arts and Sciences II", a collection of the leading 125 journals in the fields of arts and humanities, mentions 22 articles with references or reviews of Nova titles; "Central and Eastern European Library Online", a new full-text bibliographical service, covering over 190 journals published in the new Eastern Europe, mentions 14 Nova titles etc. etc. "Project Muse", a free international internet bibliography, refers to 31 Nova Science publications * "Virtuelle Fachbibliothek Politikwissenschaft", a freely available German on-line reference service for world-wide political science, initiated at Hamburg University, mentions the following references to Nova Science Publishing titles: "WWW-Suchraum Politikwissenschaft" • 134 "WWW-Suche [Seekport]" • 94 "SSG-OPAC Politikwissenschaft. Friedensforschung" • 25 "World Affairs Online [FIV IBLK]" • 30 "Internationale Bibliographie der Sozialwissenschaften [IBSS]" • 197 "GBV - Gemeinsamer Bibliotheksverbund" • 634 "KOBV Digitale Bibliothek Berlin-Brandenburg" • 9 "hbz-Verbundkatalog [NRW]" • 1 "HeBIS - Hessisches BibliotheksInformationsSystem" • 8 "SWB - Südwestdeutscher Bibliotheksverbund" • 168 The current catalogue contains the following references to authors from the following major Universities around the world:
 * "Lexis Nexis University "International Press"", run by a Consortium of Swiss Universities, which combines in its archives such sources as La Stampa, The New York Times, The Age (Melbourne, Australia), The Japan Times, Milano Finanza, South China Morning Post, and Times Educational Supplement already mentions 308 articles to date, explicitly dealing with materials, published by "Nova Science Publishers"
 * "Dialog Select Open Access", which combines complete texts of hundreds of magazines and journals from leading publishers, documented in sources such as Business Dateline, Business & Industry®, CMP Computer Fulltext, Computer News Fulltext, General Science Abstracts/Fulltext, Harvard Business Review, Gale Group Computer Database, Gale Group Health & Wellness, Gale Group Magazine Database, Gale Group Trade & Industry Database, The McGraw-Hill Companies Publications Online, and Periodical Abstracts PlusText™, carries to date already 146 articles referring explicitly to "Nova Science Publishers"
 * "EBSCO Scientific abstracts", combining the most important scholarly journals in the social sciences, documented in Academic Search Premier, Academic Search Elite, Business Source Elite, EconLit, Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection, Regional Business News, SocINDEX, already makes 1024 explicit references to titles published by "Nova Science Publishers"
 * "Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (CSA)" makes 181 references to Nova Science Publishers titles in the field of social sciences; in addition it lists 295 world class scholars in the system, who already published with that publisher
 *  "Bibliography of Asian Studies" makes reference to 247 Nova titles

Nova Science Publisher titles and contributions from the world’s top 20 Universities
Sources: http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2007/ARWU2007.xls https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/advanced_search.php 1	Harvard Univ	62 2	Stanford Univ	28 3	Univ California - Berkeley	27 4	Univ Cambridge	47 5	Massachusetts Inst Tech (MIT)	20 6	California Inst Tech	38 7	Columbia Univ	94 8	Princeton Univ	13 9	Univ Chicago	33 10	Univ Oxford	28 11	Yale Univ	33 12	Cornell Univ	35 13	Univ California - Los Angeles	21 14	Univ California - San Diego	19 15	Univ Pennsylvania	50 16	Univ Washington - Seattle	7 17	Univ Wisconsin - Madison	10 18	Univ California - San Francisco	13 19	Johns Hopkins Univ	24 20	Tokyo Univ	90 Also, researchers from some of America's leading government research institutions published with Nova: US Military Academy 11 US Air Force Academy 7 Defense Intelligence College 6 titles Rand Corporation 5 titles Hudson Institute 3 titles US Naval War College 1 US Army War College 1 Over recent years, Nova increasingly also published authors from Asian Universities

Nova Science Publishers titles and contributions from the 10 leading Asian Universities
1	Tokyo Univ	20 2	Kyoto Univ	22 3	Australian National University	57 4	Hebrew Univ Jerusalem	64 5	Osaka Univ	67 6	Tohoku Univ	18 7	Univ Melbourne	35 8	Nagoya Univ	25 9	Tokyo Inst Tech	53 10	Hokkaido Univ	18 In addition, Nova also publishes a great number works by European researchers:

Nova Science Publishers titles and contributions from the 10 leading European Universities
1	Univ Cambridge	47 2	Univ Oxford	28 3	Imperial Coll London	19 4	Univ Coll London	64 5	Swiss Fed Inst Tech - Zurich	9 6	Univ Paris 06	12 7	Univ Utrecht	27 8	Univ Copenhagen	16 9	Univ Manchester	23 10	Univ Paris 11	56

Estimated geographical distribution of titles and contributions outside the US
(Method: catalogue catchwords [product description] "University" + "country name". The following table contains just a sample of countries) 307	Australia 302	Germany 280	China 261	Russia 223	India 205	Canada 140	Poland 129	Turkey 109	Israel 107	Brazil 102	Sweden 79	Finland 76	South Africa 65	New Zealand 63	Argentina 54	Iran 47	Norway 34	Ireland 17	Pakistan 14	Saudi Arabia

Some characteristics of the global publishing program (Library of Congress: 2536 titles)
The Library of Congress currently lists 2536 Nova Science Publishers titles (search August 11, 2007).

Top 10 titles
Their 10 most widely read titles - in terms of academic library presence around the globe OCLC World Catalogue) - are: 1. Arctic National Wildlife Refuge / Author: Cogwell, Mathew T. Publication: New York : Nova Science Publishers, 2002 2. Smoking : the story behind the haze / Author: Koven, Edward L. Publication: New York : Nova Science Publishers, 1996 3. Affirmative action : catalyst or albatross? / Author: Colamery, S. N. Publication: Commack, N.Y. : Nova Science Publishers, 1998 4. The history of weather / Author: Williams, James Thaxter. Publication: Commack, N.Y. : Nova Science Publishers, 1999 5. The Black male in white America / Author: Gordon, Jacob U. Publication: Hauppauge, N.Y. : Nova Science Publishers, 2002 6. Lethal mists : an introduction to the natural and military sciences of chemical, biological warfare, and terrorism / Author: Taylor, Eric R. Publication: Commack, N.Y. : Nova Science Publishers, 1998 7. Can't live without it : the story of hemoglobin in sickness and in health / Author: Hazelwood, Loren F. Publication: Huntington, NY : Nova Science Publishers, 2001 8. Adult guide to children's team sports / Author: Humphrey, James Harry, 1911-; Yow, Deborah A. Publication: New York : Nova Science Publishers, 2002 9. Agriculture and the environment / Author: Uri, Noel D. Publication: Commack, N.Y. : Nova Science Publishers, 1999 10. Global climate change / Author: Karling, Horace M. Publication: Huntington, N.Y. : Nova Science Publishers, 2001

Social Sciences
In the social sciences, Nova published articles and books by authors in the field of world system research.

World systems research authors and international political economists, publishing with Nova
Scholars with a high ISI Web of Science impact factor, such as Samir Amin, Patrick Bond, Christopher Chase Dunn, Andre Gunder Frank, Johan Galtung, Almas Heshmati, Kimmo Kiljunen, Syed Mansoob Murshed, Gordon Laxer, Kunibert Raffer, Robert J. S. Ross, Bruce Russett, David Skidmore, Frank Stilwell, Immanuel Wallerstein, Ted Wheelwright, and many others published with Nova.

Referenced Scholarly Journals
Nova's top 5 scholarly journals in terms of library presence around the globe are: 1. Advances in psychology research. 2. Progress in education. 3. Studies of high temperature superconductors : advances in research and applications. 4. European economic and political issues. 5. Current politics and economics of Russia. }}

The above comments were added by User:Arno.tausch at 09:54 on 12 September 2007. I have put his lengthy alternative article in a collapsible template so that it will not distract so much from other conversations on this page. --BlueMoonlet (t/c) 18:10, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Hope everybody agrees to the changes
Hope you will agree that the article is now more informative and less polemic now —Preceding unsigned comment added by Franz weber (talk • contribs) 21:08, 30 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Um, actually you turned the article into an uncritical commercial filled with unencyclopedic lists. If the information you have is well-sourced, you can put in a much condensed version of it.  --BlueMoonlet (t/c) 02:10, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Well-sourced
Am I dealing with people who never attended Library Usage 100 at your undergraduate courses? Go to the OCLC and find the results; go to Lexis Nexis and you find the results. The contribution which I forewarded yesterday WAS well researched and documented; and now the miserable earlier contribution, full of errors again, is on the net. The contribition states the publisher has an emphasis in geopolitics, the fact is that they publish in many areas you state they publish 78 journals, while the true number is over 80, and on and on and on. This publisher bashing cannot go on foreever, for reasons well established under the law.

A blue-colored footnote states "which authors" - in my delted contribution I have shown that people like Samir Amin, Christopher Chase Dunn, Andre Gunder Frank and Immanuel Wallerstein have published for them. Another question mark asks at which libraries. Well go to the OCLC and you will discover that Nova published well over 1000 volumes, which are available each at more than 50 major research libraries around the globe; and that their volumes - as Lexis Nexis University International Press well shows - are well received in the global press; consult Cambridge Scientific Abstracts or EBSCO abstracts and you will see that their books were well reviewed in the major journals of world science.

I have thus undone the changes that you made to my article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Franz weber (talk • contribs) 07:56, 1 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I have included a statement reflecting the number of titles in more than 50 research libraries, and also your statement about Amin, Dunn, Gunder Frank, and Wallerstein. If you want to say something about published reviews, you need to cite the reviews.  It's not the reader's job to go to Lexis Nexis; it's your job to find reliable sources and cite them.  Long lists are not encyclopedic, and the numerical results of online searches are original research.  --BlueMoonlet (t/c) 10:53, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

'Concerns' paragraph
In response to an OTRS query regarding this article, I have decided to remove the entire 'Concerns' paragraph. My reason for this is that it was not referenced by any reliable source. In face, the only source was a blog post (!) which contains the ambiguous lead "The article below, by David Bade, was submitted for possible publication in the journal Slavic & East European Information Resources". If this article is published and if it is indeed a notable article, it can be used as a reference for something like "In a recent article it has been alleged that [insert short summary of the criticism]. However, basing a long paragraph on this would be, in my view, attributing undue weight to such criticism. This said, I have also removed the ridiculously long and unreadable footnotes, which are seemingly a result of Original Research to prove a certain point of view. This is, of course, unacceptable as basis for any allegations. --Mbimmler (talk) 13:41, 2 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Hi Mbimmler. I am afraid you have confused material from multiple sources.  The "ridiculously long and unreadable footnotes" were added only three hours before your edit by User:Franz weber, who is a supporter of NP.  They should not be used to make any judgments on the 'Concerns' paragraph, which I have just restored in its form as of my last edit of yesterday.  I have updated the citation of the Bade article.  The source is an e-print archive that does exercise editorial control; thus it should be judged according to the guidelines here.  I hardly think that the section as it currently stands is a "long paragraph".  If you think the language needs to be further softened, we can discuss that.  --BlueMoonlet (t/c) 15:07, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Hi, thanks for commenting! I do not think that I confused the material, I did notice that these footnotes were included to support NP, however, they are still not encyclopedic and do not add any value. I'm afraid I still consider it Original Research if someone copy-pastes a list of what appear to be catalogue results and uses this as a reference. Such an uncommented list requires a lot of manual interpretation from the reader, there is no contextual explanation and due to its form it is, as I said, rather unreadable. Further I disagree with this edit on the following counts:
 * Right at the beginning of the paragraph, it says "Concerns have been raised" going on to describe these concerns at length without attributing them to anyone. Indeed, after reading the paragraph, the reader still does not know whether this David Bade who is the author of the reference is the only one to have raised these concerns or whether there were notable others. I dare say that this is an instance of using weasel words. If this criticism is notable (and this, I admit, I can really not judge, being not an expert), it should be along the lines of "XY, a librarian (or whatever), alleged that etc."
 * Then, in the second para, it says "Emails (...) indicate an emphasis on speed (etc.)". Now, this looks more like an editorial judgment than like a report of an opinion. I think it is highly important here that we report opinions (and I have no problems with reporting critical opinions, as long as they are not mere fringe theories which should not be given undue weight, but again, this is for experts to judge) and be very sure not to state them as facts or, by our wording, imply that we hold these opinions to be true.
 * I hope you see my point... Mind you: I'm absolutely not saying that there may be no criticism. But it needs to be a report of criticism with due attribution and not just a reiteration of the criticism as if it was our own editorial opinion. And, last but not least, I would like some more information on the scientific consensus (or majority opinion) on this criticism. I am, as of now, still not convinced that these are more than the opinions of individuals but I'm ready to discuss this. --Mbimmler (talk) 16:14, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I fully agree with your first paragraph. Those search results were completely inappropriate.  I did not add them, and I was about to remove them myself.
 * Everything in the first paragraph of 'Concerns' comes from the article by David Bade. I had attempted to convey this fact by way of the citations, but I have now explicitly mentioned him and his qualifications in the text.
 * I have removed the editorial judgment from the second paragraph. It will now require a little more for the reader to connect the dots, but I do see the point of sticking to what sources actually say.
 * Overall, as with many aspects of fringe scholarship, this is not a topic that is much discussed by professional scholars, who often ignore rather than confront such things. Let me clarify that I do not believe that everything published by Nova is fringe, but I do think that they use some respectable publications to gain an audience for (get people to buy) other publications that may be less rigorous.  That is my personal opinion, though, and I think that the current article can be judged NPOV.  Do you agree?  Might we remove the tags?  --BlueMoonlet (t/c) 17:15, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for replying, I think we have reached consensus now! I made a (well, admitted, two) minor additions to the article which, I hope, are non-controversial and I will now remove the flags from the article. Nice to see that this could be resolved in such a manner and did not turn into another battleground. Cheers, --Mbimmler (talk) 17:23, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't mind your edits. I would want to hear from User:Franz weber before declaring consensus.  I was in the process of going back and forth with him when you arrived.  I don't know if he is the same person who filed the OTRS, and whether that person would also be satisfied with the current version.  --BlueMoonlet (t/c) 17:29, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh yes, certainly, I should have written "consensus between the two of us", sorry for not being clear. I think I may say that it was not him who filed the OTRS ticket but a 3rd party. Thanks, --Mbimmler (talk) 18:09, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Answer from Franz weber
BlueMoonlet speaks all too easily about "fringe scholarship" in the context of the publisher. With all respect for colleague Bade from Chicago University (perhaps the publisher, at the end of the day, would be well advised, like in any sicnetific enterprise, to take serious criticism seriously) my efforts consisted in showing that INDEED there is a massive review literature ON Nova BOOKS, published in leading scholarly journals around the world, published by the very best publishing houses like Sage, John Wiley's, Oxford etc.

Time ago, critics of NS put up on the WIKI internet site a note that was saying - at which libraries etc. Tone and content of several of these debates were unfortunately polemic and utterly unacceptable.

Science in an open society must be an open system, and criticism must be acceptable. The market sets clear signals - Nova books ARE being read, distributed and reviewed around the globe, just like those of their good and serious contenders on the market. Besides, Nova authors very frequently publish with several of the other leading publishing houses in America or Europe.

The evidence is clear - Nova is a serious and respectable publisher, and perhaps it might commit errors in its journal publishing strategy, but it is certainly NOT deserving the word "fringe scholarship" (which by the way, could be the subject of court action by the publisher or by authors). Modesty is always a good character trait of a true scientist. Just to put matters on record, 7 of the so verehemently critizised Nova Journals are according to the OCLC World Catalogue in bigger global library use (certainly not the only quality criterium) than the mentioned main work by Dr. Bade himself; and 1026 of their books achieved a higher library presence than Dr. Bade's main work "Responsible librarianship: library policies for unreliable systems", Duluth, Minn.: Library Juice Press, 2007. Let the markets speak, let the reviews speak, and thanks to MBimmler for his intervention.

PS a footnote - the often quoted pre-published article by colleague Bade in the aerlier versions of the WIKI Nova article - was the piece then finally published, at the end of the day, in a peer-reviewed journal? Because I read in the "small print" of the journal, where the quoted article now finally was published that:

''The purpose of the E-LIS archive is to make full text LIS documents visible, accessible, harvestable, searchable, and useable by any potential user with access to the Internet. Searching and archiving in E-LIS are totally free for any user. The only requirement is that authors wishing to submit a document need to register in order to obtain a user id in the system. Librarians, libraries, research institutes, organizations, and individual researchers involved in LIS and related fields are encouraged to make use of and contribute to the archive.

''The E-LIS archive accepts any scientific or technical document, published or unpublished, in Librarianship, Information Science and Technology, and related application activities. The criteria for acceptance is that the eprints are relevant to research in LIS fields and that they have the form of a finished document that is ready to be entered into a process of communication. Publications may include: preprints (pre-refereed journal paper), postprints (refereed journal paper), conference papers, conference posters, presentations, books, book chapters, technical reports/departmental working papers, theses, and newspaper and magazine articles.'' ''Submitted documents will be placed into the submission buffer, where they may be approved by the E-LIS Staff, rejected, or returned to the author for modifications in the metadata or if there are problems with the electronic file. Documents in the submission buffer are manually reviewed to confirm they fit our policy before adding them to E-LIS. E-LIS staff controls the metadata quality of the document and are allowed to make changes if the metadata are incorrect. Two business days is the allowable time period between when a paper is deposited to E-LIS and when it becomes accessible to other users.''

''All languages are supported. E-LIS is an international open archive. If the document is in a language other than English, it must include an English abstract and keywords in English.

Let me ask then with British humor whether these are the criteria which eventually should be adapted by Nova then? British humor also tells me then to quote here from the announcement at https://www.stanford.edu/group/ic/cgi-bin/drupal/novascience about the article, quoted by the Nova Wikipedia critics:

"Content of Journals Published by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. The article below, by David Bade, was submitted for possible publication in the journal Slavic & East European Information Resources, of which I am editor. I thought it important to get the article out there as soon as possible, so I am posting it here instead, with his permission."

Fairness would then mean that the anonymous reviews which came in at the "Slavic & East European Information Resources" are being published on the Internet.

--Franz weber


 * Mr. Weber, I have never denied that at least some of what NP puts out is legitimate scholarship, found in many good libraries, written by authors at good universities who publish with other good publishers, etc. The article gets this point across, I think, with its summary of your OCLC searches.  If you think more is needed, let's talk about it.  If you want to cite positive reviews of one or two selected titles, even that might be acceptable.  But long indiscriminate lists of reviews are not encyclopedic.  How are we to know that these reviews are even positive?


 * As for Mr. Bade's article, please read the guidelines for preprints as reliable sources. I believe that E-LIS meets the standard.  --BlueMoonlet (t/c) 13:09, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I am quite familiar with E-LIS, and, as a general rule, E-LIS could meet the criterion of being a reliable source only for published material: this includes material actually published elsewhere, material actually accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, and to a certain extent material presented at conferences if the conferences themselves are reliable sources, which not all are. there is no reliability whatsoever in something being on E-LIS--they will accept anything sent to them. arXiv is different--they actually screen the material, and will reject total nonsense, and they put semi-nonsense in a specialised section. But if someone here is  the editor of the journal involved,  have you accepted the article for publication--if you have, it should stay in. Accepted but not yet published material is usable as a formal quotation even within  peer-reviewed journals.
 * as for professional mailing lists in librarianship, there are probably a few which can be used as sources, but even then the material there has primarily the standing of the contributor, and this needs to be specified in the reference. The only ones I am certain about is Liblicense, which is edited and screened by Ann Okerson at Yale, and SPARC Open access Forum, edited by Peter Suber at Earlham. Others sometimes. I am not certain about all of them, but in general postings to a mailing list are unscreened. I know those two are in fact screened.
 * There is additional specific verifiable material to be added which will put Nova in perspective--which is the number of journals they have in JCR and the impact factors. If no one here has access, I will add it over the weekend.
 * I am additionally still not convinced about the material in the first paragraph. To be meaningful, it needs to be divided by subject: their materials in the social sciences are considered of much higher quality than in the sciences. I reworded some of it, to decrease the look of being an advertisement. This is not a place for trying to make the best impression.  DGG (talk) 18:49, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
 * It's good to see you, DGG. As you are a librarian yourself, your opinion is of great value.  I'm not very practiced at looking up impact factors (my field has only a few journals, and I already know what I think of them), and I would be obliged if you can find time to do that.
 * The SEEIR website seems to be having some trouble, and in any case there is no list of accepted manuscripts. It seems to me that even on arXiv, lack of nonsense and author's reputation count for a lot.  Bade's article is clearly not nonsense or semi-nonsense.  The claim about journals having no editors, and so on, can be verified here, and I'm sure his other claims could be verified also.  Do you know of Bade by reputation?  He seems to have at least several publications in the field of library science.  --BlueMoonlet (t/c) 01:00, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I do not know Bade, but my first reaction would be to agree with his conclusions as summarized here. But that's not evidence here, and E-LIS is not publication. Certainly not for negative criticism of a company. DGG (talk) 02:41, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Answer Weber
Blue Moonlet's suggestion just to single out two works would not be fair to anyone concerned, since two works would constitute only around 0.05% of the company's production. Indeed, critics of the company could then maintain that this is really a rediculous.

Let me suggest then the following way - why don't you pick out those 101 references to Nova materials in the Cambridge Scientific Abstracts leading Peer Reviewed Journals in the field of social sciences, for example, and start writing a serious piece (enter the word "Nova Science Publishers" in the search field), concentrating on say 10 or 20 randomly picked articles at least? Or why not run a similar procedure with the access free data base Questia Advanced Search (exact occurence of the content), which only includes very leading journals and books, and which yields you 97 Books, 65 Journal articles, and 3 magazine articles in the data base making explicit reference to NOVA products to start with? Why don't you pick out then, say, at least 10 or 20 of them? As to user DGG and his suggestion about impact factors - ISI Web of Science impact factors are fine, but in a way are more US-centric than the more global Cambridge Scientific Abstracts. It should be also clear that the access-free full text Internet search faccilities of such companies like Sage Journals, John Wiley Journals, Oxford University Press Journals etc. also allow you to search with great precision for REVIEWS and QUOTATIONS of the products of ANY book company, including Nova, and this would make your bibliography more balanced. With all respect to Dr. Bade, science does NOT consist of his article alone, and a balanced bibliography should be the starting point of any good article on the issue. Finally, in google times like these, it would be appropriate to search in "google book search" for the quotations of Nova Science books in the books of OTHER major book companies.

In our globalized world, bibliographies become more and more area-specific and richer in content; and since NOVA publishes in many fields of so-called "area studies", why don't you search around in bibliographies for reviews of their books or reactions to their journal articles like in

1.	Bibliography of Asian Studies 2.	Blackwell Synergy 3.	C.E.E.O.L. Central and Eastern Europe online 4.	Cambridge Scientific Abstracts 5.	CIBERA Biblioteca Virtual Latinoamericana - Comprehensive bibliography of Latin America 6.	EBSCO 7.	ECONIS 8.	EINIRAS - European Information Network on International Relations and Area Studies 9.	Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Federal Republic of Germany, Infoconnex Science 10.	GBI Content 11.	Google book search 12.	Google scholar 13.	Inforetrieve 14.	Ingenta 15.	IZEP – “Literaturdatenbank LITDOK” 16.	LABORDOC ILO 17.	Lalisio literature search 18.	LITDOK InWEnt German development research bibliography 19.	POLDOK journal literature 20.	Questia 21.	The Karlsruhe bibliography on international relations 22.	UNBIS Net United Nations Bibliographical Resource from the UN's Dag Hammarskjöld Library 23.	Virtual Library Eastern Europe 24.	Virtuelle Fachbibliothek Politikwissenschaft. Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg Carl von Ossietzky 25.	Web of Science® 26.	Worldcat

and see what global articles there are about NOVA materials to arrive at a geographically richer bibliography of materials dealing with Nova content, and not only this single article by colleague Dr. Bade? Over 4000 books, and perhaps the works of thousands of academics around the globe cannot be be disqualified globally by a single Internet Wikipedia article, based on a single source. Any serious student of such fields as European studies, Eastern European studies etc. came across Nova content here and there, and will recall some good books or some books of lesser quality, but at any rate will realize that the materials published there are not fringe science or an academic trashbox. This is my final word, and I will not return to this subject any more —Preceding unsigned comment added by Franz weber (talk • contribs) 22:11, 3 July 2008 (UTC)


 * the point is the ISI is selective in inclusion for JCR, and most of these other bibliographic services are not. worldcat includes every book in a library anywhere. Being in it is one very small step up from being in Amazon. The point of the criticism is that while first rate specialized publishers have a few low quality articles, Sage has a few good ones.  A full demonstration of this would be OR--Bade has done it adequately in the Social Sciences, and as soon as the article is published, the material can be used.   In the sciences, it's reputation is lower.   I'll do the ISI search later and add it to the article, but it means checking each journal. Using Ulrich's, of the first 5 checked, only one was in Web of Science-JCR.   DGG (talk) 02:54, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

A strong post scriptum from weber
Cambridge Scientific Abstracts publishes a 518 person list of scholars in the field of social science, who have published with "NOVA SCIENCE PUBLISHERS" or "NOVA SCIENCE". My apologies to the one who went missing while transferring the CSA data to this site:

The scholars are:

Go to the site of CSA at your campus and search with "advanced search" and find under "scholars" the 518 names Profiles from COS Scholar Universe: Social Science —Preceding unsigned comment added by Franz weber (talk • contribs) 21:32, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

On David Bade, critic of Nova Publishers
I was astonished by the comments about me, my credentials and my publishing history on this talk page. None of those comments have any bearing on the matter under discussion in my paper or in the Wikipedia article. If those editing the Wikipedia article would directly address the issues I brought up we would all benefit; discussing Nova Publishers' sales figures is irrelevant to issues of editorial policies.

David Bade (MLS, not Dr. Bade) is indeed the author of "Responsible Librarianship" (my most recent book but not my main work), published in February 2008. Whether few or many institutions purchase that book is no indication of its value, much less the value of my article on Nova Publishers. My main research interests are focused on error theory for librarianship and Mongolian studies, having published a bibliography on Polish Mongolian relations as part of the "International Bibliography on Mongol Studies" of the International Association for Mongol Studies, the monograph "Khubilai Khan and the Beautiful Princess of Tumapel" (a comparative study of Old Javanese and Chinese historiography on the Mongolian invasion of Java), and "The Theory and Practice of Bibliographic Failure", all published in Mongolia. My other papers in librarianship have been both rejected and published in a number of journals although none were either rejected or published by Nova Publishers.

I am a librarian who is much concerned that opinions about collection development current among librarians is wrongly denying the value of collection development, i.e. evaluation of materials and local selection policies. The article was submitted for publication but the editor of the journal to which I submitted it wrote to me immediately asking if I would distribute it electronically, offering to put it on the Stanford website herself because she felt it was urgent to let other Slavic librarians know about this matter so that they could make their own decisions about subscriptions. I do not see that there are any qualifications required to make the kinds of observations that I made in that paper other than the ability to read and make the effort to check the journals themselves to see the facts. My article on Nova was written as a simple reminder to librarians that someone other than the seller should be involved in making purchasing decisions for libraries. I looked only at the 2 journals available to me at the University of Chicago and the contents of 2 other journals as they were listed on the Nova Publishers website. The fact that the 2 journals available to me and within my area of knowledge (and therefore my ability to evaluate intelligently) both had a long history of editorial practices which would lead me as a bibliographer to decide not to purchase them naturally led me to question what are the editorial practices in other Nova publications and what those might mean for libraries. The answer to that question I left to responsible librarians in other institutions. Dbade (talk) 17:33, 15 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure how helpful it is to have criticism of this sort here, though I certainly see the temptation to counter the wildly exaggerated claims of the publisher. I have my own view about this publisher, in the fields I specialize in, but I'm not going to use it to publish an article about them and then insert a reference to it here. 23:31, 15 July 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by DGG (talk • contribs)


 * DGG, I am surprised at you! Please specify anything that Dbade has said that is inappropriate; I see nothing.  The background about himself and his paper is germane to our discussion, and the criticism in his first paragraph was directed towards statements and not towards people.  Finally, it is simply wrong to insinuate that Dbade inserted the reference to his paper onto WP.  That was done last September in this edit by someone else.  --BlueMoonlet (t/c) 01:41, 16 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Mr. Bade, can you please confirm whether your paper is still on track to be published? If so, when do you expect it to appear?  If it is, then that should put to rest any concerns about the appropriateness of citing it here.  --BlueMoonlet (t/c) 01:42, 16 July 2008 (UTC)


 * My note was my first contribution to Wikipedia, so forgive me if I am not doing this properly (editing rather than creating a new section). The editor of the journal to which I submitted the article and on whose blog the article first appeared wrote the following to me:


 * To: David Bade
 * Subject: Re: journals published by Nova Science Publishers


 * Dear Mr. Bade,


 * What you discovered is disturbing indeed. It is so disturbing, in fact, that I really wonder if it should wait to be published in SEEIR.  (The lag time is 9-12 months.)  Because most librarians don't know the nature of these journals, their libraries are potentially wasting nearly $2000 a year just on the two titles you write about.


 * Would you consider posting the article on a website and writing a message to be sent to the Slavlibs listserv to call attention to it? I think it will deservedly raise a hullabaloo.  And the hullabaloo is likely to continue on other listservs as Slavic librarians call your article to the attention of their colleagues in other disciplines.


 * By suggesting you do this, I do not mean to tell you that the article is not well written or that it is on a topic not appropriate to the journal. It is both appropriate and well written.  I just think that the subject is of such urgency that it should get out faster than it would if it were to be published in SEEIR.  I hope you will consider this suggestion.
 * [she followed this with the suggestion that she put the article on the Stanford Information Center blog--an offer that I accepted--and signed the letter]


 * That was the end of the matter for me, and I am truly surprised that the nature of the article's appearance has been so much debated. Surely as editors of a truly new kind of publication--Wikipedia--you all must be aware that there are different kinds of publication for different kinds of purposes, and that publishing in Wikipedia is not the same as publishing in an Oxford or Nova Publishers encyclopaedia, but evaluation of the value of any contribution to Wikipedia or an Oxford/Nova publication must be based strictly on the contents of the article. It is only those who are incapable of investigating the sources and following the arguments (often librarians responsible for collecting in areas outside their own areas of competence) who must rely on the authority of a reviewer or a publisher's reputation. That is why critical reviews by competent reviewers are important for establishing the reputations--good or bad--upon which librarians must rely for the purchase of any materials whose value they cannot personally evaluate. It is also why I stated clearly in my article that I was not competent to evaluate the contents of the journals on the Caucasus--I had neither access to contents nor competence even if I had full text--and did not attempt to examine or evaluate any other journals by Nova Publishers. As a mongolist and a specialist in east european bibliography for 19 years I was immediately able to see what was being done in the first issue of the journal that I picked up. I should also emphasize that it was editorial policies that caught my attention in these journals, not the quality of the contributions or the reputations of the contributors.


 * I did not and do not feel any need to seek further publication for my article since its sole purpose was to inform other librarians of what I found in order that they might themselves pay attention and make informed decisions based on their own institutional needs. Anyone who looks at the journals discussed in my paper can determine for themselves whether the journals are appropriate for their collections, and as I stressed in my paper, it is that attention and decision that needs to be made--not some anti-Nova campaign. My article can be and ought to be evaluated in that manner and that manner alone.


 * It is perhaps also germane to this talk page to note that most librarians are extremely interested in Wikipedia, and especially in the objectivity and accuracy of its articles. I have found the history of editing of this article and the discussion here very interesting and I am sure many others are paying attention to Wikipedia editing in general since it is precisely editorial practices that are the best indicator of a publisher's reliability. I value the discussion here for what it reveals about debate and contested evaluations. Thank you all. Dbade (talk) 02:54, 16 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Although WP itself is a "new kind of publication," we do try to be careful about citing only WP:Reliable Sources. Someone saying something on the Internet, even if it's true, is generally agreed not to be a RS.  That your article doesn't say anything that anybody can't verify is a point in its favor, since our standard is not truth, but verifiability.  Our standard on preprints is still developing and is less ironclad, but you can read the current guideline here.  It seems to me that maybe we should go back to the Stanford source, where we have the journal editor's testimonial to further bolster its credibility.  What do you think, DGG?  --BlueMoonlet (t/c) 10:47, 16 July 2008 (UTC)