User talk:DGG/Archive 0.1

WP:LOMJ
Hi, in regards to your interest in creating articles for journals, we are already working towards that goal over at List of missing journals and WP:LOMJ/Queue. In light of your su

The category sggestion on Template talk:Infobox_Journal to "reward" the true OA journals, I would like to create a WP:LOMJ/OA that lists everything in DOAJ, in order that we can create articles for those first. It looks easy to screen scrape the DOAJ listings, but if there is another way to access their db, that would be better. John Vandenberg 20:06, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

initial decisions
There are basically 2 ways of doing this. big, and small.
 * You (and the other editors doing it) have obviously chosen big. Between your list and DOAJ, I estimate there will be 13,000 titles.--that is currently published titles--if you add the changed and ceased titles, it will more than double. Harvard gets about 100,000 current journals.

In my view, it would be a much more useful thing  to make good articles with accurate information for important journals, OA or not, than doing all the journals major and minor. Among the significant ones I would start with OA ones, which is what I suggested.
 * I like to start small.


 * In addition to your lists, we have Category:Open_access_journals  at the moment a pitiful and incomplete list, and so is a previously started page List_of_journals_available_free_online. We also have the various subject lists in WP, some lists mostly black links, many mostly red.

$ISSN: 	1631-0691 (Print)
 * There are now several information sources t hat were not there six months ago. One is CrossRef I just updated that article yesterday. Another is ISI, which has an openly available master journal list. There is also the journal list in PubMed  which gives the following
 * 1) Title: 	Comptes rendus biologies
 * 1) Title Abbreviation: 	C R Biol
 * 2) ISO Abbreviation: 	C. R. Biol.
 * 3) Publication Start Year: 	2002
 * 4) Publisher: 	Elsevier
 * 5) Continuation Notes: 	Continues: Comptes rendus de l'Académie des sciences. Série III, Sciences de la vie.
 * 6) Language: 	English, French
 * 7) Country: 	France
 * 8) Subject Term(s): 	Biology
 * 9) NLM ID: 	101140040


 * We obvious have slightly different things in mind, but it would make sense to merge the project ideas. With a project, it could, like most large projects, have several tracks.
 * Do you have a project name? I could not find one in the project list yesterday. but maybe I missed. it. It would make more sense to use an existing setup.
 * What I would propose starting with on one track, is to take that OA category, and make sure that all of other OA journals that have articles in WP are listed in it. and see that they are also in the list of OA journals. We need the list and the category because most of the titles will be in the list for a very long times. .as of Dec 15   there are 3200 journals in DOAJ. I frankly do not see a point of making a list of all of them, however minor--DOAJ does it fine (or more exactly, reasonable well). WP is not a list of links or a web directory, or so Im told. Google does very well in finding scientific journal titles.


 * What I most want to avoid is duplicate work.
 * Before writing any more journal pages, I suggest we continue the discussion of the journal infobox -- where was that beng discussed--I already lost track. :)

(see my user page for some idea of my background. I think some of the people doing this have similar? I know it doesn't matter in terms of whose word goes, but I will do what I can to help with what I know. I've already started in on Comptes rendus. DGG 22:19, 17 December 2006 (UTC)


 * The WP:LOMJ was intended to be a list where each entry is crossed off, however DOAJ, WorldCat and other lists will always far exceed what we can achieve here at Wikipedia, at least in my lifetime, so I started the WP:LOMJ/Queue to bring some order and discussion to the process of prioritising which articles should be created. As you may have seen I have created a new list WP:LOMJ/DOAJ so we can see which open access journals already have articles created, so that we can add or augment an infobox on the article.  This list currently contains false positives, because the journal name may already be used as a general topic name, but I intend to improve my scripts to fix that.  I'll also take on board your suggestion of finding these articles and making sure they are in the OA category.  I'll continue to automate this script with any suggestions people have.

btw, thanks for pointing me towards ; I've been looking for such a raw data dump for about a month now! John Vandenberg 23:29, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Merging journals list
I left a message here which may be of interest to you. EPM 18:58, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Re: usage of full journal names
Wondering if you had gotten a chance to look at some of the responses from science editors to your suggestion on the the FAC nomination for proteasome. In particular, it would be helpful to know how and where you are searching for articles or journals that the use of abbreviations is an impediment to successfully locating a reference. If you really think this is something that's worth pursuing as a proposed style standard for scientific articles, I believe a larger venue than an obscure FAC nomination is needed, as this would affect a large number of editors and articles; I'd suggest starting a thread on Wikipedia talk:Citing sources or Wikipedia talk:Scientific citation guidelines for wider visibility. Since the suggestion of using full journal names does not currently have the consensus of editors in the sciences, I'm going to leave it alone for now, and will make the changes later if it's agreed that this is a useful proposal. Opabinia regalis 01:20, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * (Speaking only about journals in the sciences), I think that full journal names are essential for WP users, particularly for older material. The abbreviations are enough for experts. WP articles are not written for experts. WP is written for a range of users, ranging from the beginner to the near expert; judging from user pages and user comments, this may correspond from junior high school students to graduate students in allied fields. Journal references serve several roles: even without looking them up, they give some idea of the nature of the evidence--and this is probably as far as many users get. To serve this function for new or for old, the title must be understood, and all users not graduate students in the field are more likely to make sense of the full title.

Or they serve as a route to further information. For material that is open access, the link (which should always be given in a WP article if there is an OA version) gives the access directly. For online material that is not, the link (which should be given even though not OA) will normally lead to at least the abstract of the article, which can be sufficient information in many cases.

For material that is not available online, all users must go through a library. Experts will recognize the journal, will usually have access to a research library, and will get the aticle if owned or ask for it if not, and any university library ILL department can deal with standard abbreviations. For all other users, they must look for the material in an online catalog. It is unfortunately not the practice in standard cataloging to make added entries for abbreviations as a routine practice, although they are sometimes made if they appear on the cover of a journal. It is not possible in many cases to guess the right title, especially if one is unfamiliar with the sort of titles that exist. The less experienced user will be much more likely to find the material by full title. If the user must go through an ILL service in a school or public library, the librarian there will probably be much more comfortable with the full title as well.

I say this on the basis of my experience. First, as a biology librarian at a major university. I know the mistakes that get made. They depend on subject;  in biology--there are many standards, especially with older material, especially ewith UK and other European material. After 20 years of doing this, I know how to figure out anything in a latin or cyrillic alphabet, from 1800 on, and I know the places to check for anything older; as a beginner, with only a MLS and a molecular biology doctorate, I relied on persistence and study of journal lists, especially for anything out of the way to a molecular biologist. Second, as a teacher of librarianship. The ability of present-day incoming librarians, even science specialists, to find printed material is deplorable. For newer material, they can acquire the patience to keep trying things on Google until they find something. For print material, it will soon be a specialty, like manuscrip[t librarianship is now. Third, I have been responsible for organizing lists of print and then online journals; the peak was a computer-assisted but manually input list of 10,000 print titles. I and others always did these lists by full title. Although it startled some of the catalog librarians, we did add some abbreviations to help those who did know them.

There are 3 ways of doing this. One is to always use the full title. WP is not paper, but it does make for longer reference lists. The other is to have an abbreviation matching database and do a link. The third is to use ISSN's, the 8 digit serial code. This isn't as simple as it was last year, because there are now two codes for each journal, one for print and one for online--all the vendors are still rewriting their systems--I've advised some of them about it. The ISSN works in all online catalogs, but only if the user knows enough to enter it, which they don't until you teach them.

The simplest way to start is with full titles. The matching database is also underway, as something call the Missing Journals Wikiproject, aiming at entering all 12 or so titles into a WP article, complete with all codes. I'm in touch with the people doing it. They estimate 10 years, but if everyone listened to my instructions I think it could be done in a shorter time (smile). Using the entrez database would help in biomedicine, but not elsewhere.
 * EdJohnston's experience with entrez is useful, but it doesn't work outside biomedicine. In biomed, a mass conversion could be done, but getting it entered from some of the nonstandard references people have used will require some work. If I had to sustitute full titles throughout the WP database by myself, I'd do them one at a time with a bot, and then look for non-matches. But it could be done more ambitiously, and if we ever want to undertake such a transformation I would help as well. There are some interface problems in the conversion--the length of articles and tables especially would be affected. I think we would want to try a number of careful trials and we would want help from some of the WP programmers.

For a particular article with say 100 or so refs, i would do them by hand. Since in any one article the journal titles will repeat, I'd copy and paste. I suppose if I had to do more than one article I'd copy the lists into BBEdit and use a grep search and replace, and then paste them back, for all the common titles. I am a great believer in patient manual entry.

Other comments
 * I notice that O.r. has said she recognizes the abbreviations better, and so do I. But we are not the average users.
 * &There's another problem, which is the use of full article titles. This really helps the beginner. In biomed, they could be linked through PubMed IDs, and some WP editors already use them. DGG 06:15, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Opabinia, where do you stand on that Object? If you need help converting them in order to address the Object, I can help. Am I missing something, or would we actually have to do every one by hand? I can't find a database that can be used to automate it - if you feel it has to be done, we can divide up the work. I still resist the idea, since it would take a lot of manual work, and the PMID should suffice, but if you need help, I'll dig in. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:14, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

In the short term, my plan is to do nothing, since Circeus hasn't responded to the subsequent comments on his suggestion. I left him a note about opening this for wider discussion; a substantial change in style recommendations affecting as many articles as this one would deserves a wider discussion than a thread in an obscure FAC nomination. IMO it would be a bad precedent for future science-related FACs to make that change in response to one user's opinion without collecting some wider input. I don't know of an intelligent automated way to get this information, other than clicking through PubMed's journals link and screen-scraping the equivalents of pages like http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=Journals&term=%22Dev+Cell%22[Title+Abbreviation] sorry, can't get the link with brackets to parse right. If there's a larger discussion I'll certainly oppose this on practicality and text-clutter grounds, unless someone finds a common way of searching for references that requires the full names. FAC doesn't need more shrubberies. Opabinia regalis 01:30, 9 January 2007 (UTC) Without raising the long-term policy question, I don't think it would be that hard to convert the journal names in Proteasome. Assuming the reference uses a journal in the NLM list, you should be able to look up its journal name at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=Journals. This screen has a search box, where you can type in the standard journal abbreviation, and hit 'Search'. You then get back the full name of the journal. I also managed to download (by ftp) a plain text file called J_Entrez.txt (4 megabytes in size) that has both the abbreviation and the full name for every journal I checked. You could do a 'Find' on the abbreviation, and get the answer. So if you need help converting those references, I'd be available. EdJohnston 02:26, 9 January 2007 (UTC) Don't you think our readers would put up with the 'clutter' that would be caused by spelling out these not totally self-explanatory abbreviations? EMBO J, Cell Death Differ (my favorite), Mol Cell, FEBS Lett, PLoS Biol. I know that 'J Biol Chem' looks easy but not all of them are. EdJohnston 02:50, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the offer. I doubt it would take long to convert this article - anybody who's done biology work probably knows 80% of them anyway - but I'm strongly inclined not to set that as a standard for future articles, not least because there are screen-scraper scripts for importing PubMed references that would need to be extensively modified. I realize they're not all intuitive (my personal favorite official "abbreviation" is J Phys Chem B Condens Matter Mater Surf Interfaces Biophys) but as far as I've ever known, it's actually better for searching to have the abbreviation than the full name, because almost every database uses the abbreviations. Do you know of any common databases or search methods where that's not the case? I asked Circeus on the FAC page to elaborate why/where he had had trouble, but he hasn't responded yet. Opabinia regalis 03:49, 9 January 2007 (UTC) Right - the problem is not *this* article (which I'll help do, if that what it takes to get rid of the object) rather the sheer volume of manual work that would be required across all Wiki articles, with little benefit. I would also strenuously object to the change in policy, since it requires manual intervention for every journal, to replace the info PubMed provides. Just wanted you to know I could help if needed, but agree it should not be needed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:16, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Also: how about making the standard ISBN link produce a latent OpenURL like this: ? Users with suitable browser plugins could then bypass the Wikipedia ISBN page and be directed to their home library's link resolver. --Helperzoom 17:23, 26 May 2005 (UTC).

Wikipedia:Book sources already has a latent OpenURL in the form of an ISBN COinS tag, right under the Notes heading. I've just added them to, as well, so you can use OpenURL tools on the references section of articles. I'll expand it to other citation templates if it goes over well, and add it to the "Cite this article" page, too, as soon as they figure out which format would be appropriate for Wikipedia articles... — Omegatron 01:23, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Scientific Journal
Thanks for informing me. I had just finished adding a comment to an article about a completely non-notable (and no longer existent) website. I was patrollying the new pages list, which tends to be filled with non-notable articles. I came across the article in question, and saw it as non-notable(as it asserted NO notability), and possibly considered "little or no context", these categories being CSD:A7 and CSD A1,(as seen here). I tend to be a little on the deletionist side, mostly because I value the overall quality of Wikipedia. Thus I marked it for deletion, but it did not qualify for deletion after you merged it into an article worth saving.(have to leave now, on a schedule,

Journals & Academic journals
Hi. I see you started Category:Academic journals, which seems to cover much the same ground as Category:Journals. Do you agree they should be merged? Dsp13 12:35, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
 * You have found a real problem, where the terminology reflects the lack of consensus.
 * The basic problem is the confusion between the two uses of journal--a general meaning, including almost any periodical publication, used to distinguish journals from books,in which such publications as Scientific American are journals, and the use in the academic world to contrast peer-reviewed journals from (non peer-revieweed) magazines, with Scientific American being an example of the latter. Both meaning are in simultaneous use, and people are not usually clear about which they have in mind. :So if you look at the items in category journals, there are many which do indeed fall into the category of academic journals, but there are also some which don't. The actual terminology used in WP articles is similarly confusing--people have called the publications almost any of the various possibilities.
 * Furthermore, the general category for the group is Category:Serials, periodicals and journals, omitting magazines altogether. Journal, at present, is a redirect to Magazine.
 * Don't understand what you mean by saying journal redirects to magazine. Dsp13 12:13, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I've been a science librarian for over 20 years, and this has continually been a source of confusion If you look at what libraries actually call things, quite a variety of terms are used. I've taught the subject as well, and there is no real agreement in the textbooks, and the key term "serial" has never been really defined, and has now been abandoned in the cataloging rules in favor of "continuing publication".
 * so which way would you like to merge? In my personal opinion, "Academic journal" is a made-up term -- and i gather that is your opinion also--, but some of the other WP library science people disagree and want to keep using it, as they think "journal" non-specific. I added the cat to prevent people putting things in "Journal" which were clearly not academic journals. I think we would not get consensus on either, or for that matter on using both--it would by 1/3 1/3 1/3. When I came to WP I though it could be straightened out, but if you check the page history of the various terms, you will see that basically I and everyone else who has tried, all gave up.
 * Thanks for filling me in. I do recognise the distinction between peer-reviewed / not, and as you say there are distinct article pages for Journal and Academic journal at present. I've much less experience in thinking about these things than you, & no firm view on how to label the categories. I don't personally mind the made-up term Academic journals as long as it is consistently applied. What bothers me is the present haphazard duplication, which is a mess! As far as consensus having proved difficult to achieve, which page histories should I check out? Perhaps this is a discussion which should happen on Category talk:Journals or Category talk:Academic journals? Dsp13 12:13, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
 * In any case, I think the first step is to rename the broadest category, Category:Serials, periodicals and journals to Category:Serials, periodicals, journals, and magazines, and I am going to propose it. DGG 01:21, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Sounds sensible to me. Dsp13 12:13, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Journals from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
As a librarian, could you take a look at this deletion debate: Articles for deletion/International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management. Several peer-reviewed journals from Emerald, which as far as I can tell is a reputable publisher (my university subscribes to it), have been nominated for deletion. The articles look a bit spammy, but I guess that this could be fixed. (It seems that an article on Emerald has already been speedily deleted as advertising.) Pharamond 06:46, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks as the nom for taking time to comment and take action on this. I'm always keen to see better content arise from an AfD and editors like yourself make this happen!  --Steve (Stephen)talk 01:44, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
 * And I found one more from the same publisher, if you have time to investigate... Thanks again --Steve (Stephen)talk 01:53, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Don't worry, I wasn't going to dump 50 articles into your to do list! That last one was the only other one I found and it was an oversight that I didn't co-nom it at the time of the others. Thanks --Steve (Stephen)talk 02:29, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

here's your emerald
Spammy, but workable(?) User:DGG/Emerald Group Publishing Limited. When you've got it in a state worth keeping, do a regular page move to Emerald Group Publishing Limited (or, perhaps, Emerald Group Publishing); that'll keep the page history intact. — coe l acan — 03:57, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Reed Business
As I'm sure you already know, I've been working on the Reed Business Information articles. I had a quick question for you, even though I'm sure I already know the answer. Would it be out of line to add a link on the each magazine article to a free subscription website? It seems silly to ask but before I do anything "bold" I want admin approval. Thanks again. Sean Montgomery 14:56, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your input, I thought a subscription link would be out of line, I noticed one on Industrial Distribution and removed it. I will remove any others I see. I came to you because another admin and user recommended you. As for adding so many small articles, I was trying to get many started and see if I couldn't get more help from the Wikiproject editors. Working by myself would be difficult, and I also feel control over these articles should not be left to one person, especially me (ha ha kidding). I'll try to build existing articles more, but my resources are limited. Thank you again for your help. Sean Montgomery 19:44, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

MRC article/Chemistry journals
Hi, is it OK if I start amending the Wiley Chemistry journals with the information you gave me for MRC now, the manager is starting to nag. I know it's not 100% perfect yet but I don't think there's any controversial information on there any more that would cause the pages to be taken down. Dchambers101 12:00, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Input needed
Hi, DGG. Great to be able to call upon the expertise of a librarian. Someone added PLoS to WP:EXRS. I thought maybe it was a worthy addition, but tried to reword it so that it better suited the instructive nature of this guideline. It would be great if you could determine whether this statement is an acceptable addition to this guideline and whether PLoS is a good example. See. Thanks. TimidGuy 16:32, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Impact factors
Hopefully you're not going by our article on impact factors, since this article is being edited by the Elsevier socks.

They should have been deleted to discourage the practice of creating sock puppet accounts to create and complexly link articles on Wikipedia, as has been going on since 2004 (the earliest ones I found).

I suggested just making them redirects initially, but the adminstrator was hell bent on attacking me, rather than doing anything useful for Wikipedia, so I gladly followed suit--I've found taking the high road to be entirely useless on Wikipedia.

Not all of the journals are as high impact factor as others, but Trends in Plant Sciences is a leading journal in the field, as is Current Opinion in Immunology, I believe. Both of these journals could have their own articles, as they're certainly more notable than the average Pokeman card--as could quite a number of other science journals that aren't even mentioned on Wikipedia.

But unsourced, single purpose COI sock accounts need to stop creating articles on Wikipedia for commercial puproses, and if their articles are not simply deleted, but debated and kept, this is an incentive to Elsevier to continue producing crappy clone articles all over Wikipedia. No one blocked the socks, or even cared about them, it was all about me.

And, the more crappy clone articles, the more articles put up on AfD to be deleted because they're unsourced, and don't state their notability--these articles about perfectly notable journals are just crying out to be AfDed by anyone with the time. And this is more time I personally waste defending keeping articles about things that have been discussed for longer than cartoon trading cards existed. The deletion then creates an edit page that is a disincentive to recreating a good article, because it comes with the notice that the article has been deleted as non-notable or some other such thing.

There's no way to win at this--particularly when my reasonable suggestions are ignored, in fact, I'm ignored unless I go overboard. And the sock puppets are given carte blanche to continue, and it becomes about some administrator getting her feelings hurt rather than about what's really going on. I simply can't deal with it. Nothing I do is ever of any value, no matter how obvious is seems to me, and I have to assume I am simply out of step with Wiki reality. Sock puppetry is welcomed, commercial COI accounts are fine, all is as it should be, apparently, until I wasted everyone's time saying anything. I feel like an idiot in comparison, that I spend time reading and translating technical papers and picking and choosing and searching for references, when people are willing to fight tooth and nail to keep sock puppet generated crap.

And I've had it up to here with administrators calling me a troll because I question their actions--enough.

KP Botany 19:39, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

PS I did once offer to rewrite an article by the author of a book, and have been mercilessly hounded for it since then. The article is still a worthless piece of crap, but its author and owner is fine with that. Good luck. Here's the active sock account for communication User talk:222.67.188.123.


 * Frankly, I consider a subject notable no matter who writes it. Much of the important content of WP is from people with a very close relationship to the subject.  The problem with COI is that they dont write very good articles, they write lousy undescriptive articles like these. My attitude to PR people is different from yours. I think they ought to be taught to write good articles, and then we ought to edit them carefully. I have worked with PR guys from several publishers, including this publisher, and gotten decent articles out of them.  I've had them withdraw the articles, and get an ok from me off wiki before reinserting them. It can generally be made clear to someone what is needed, if the person is reasonable. I've rarely had trouble with guys from major companies--they know the importance of getting the material written so it stays, even if it means learning a completely different style. Where I have trouble with is amateurs, or sometimes guys who own the business or run the journal or the society, who have so much emotionally invested in it that they can;t see past the self-interest. And also PR guys from academic departments--I've succeeded with one, and failed with several.  One of them refused to rewrite his series of articles after multiple appeals from various people, and they got deleted. Can't figure out why. I was tempted to email his boss. I'll give a try with your anon.

As for the impact factor article, thanks for the hint. I'll take a look. since i wrote a good deal of it in the first place, I should take another look. But if I know Elsevier, they're trying to explain why impact factors aren't that important (since their journals by & large don't do well by that measure). I've answered them on the professional lists, I can deal with them here. DGG (talk) 02:31, 27 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I rewrite a lot of small biographies, some of physicians, and recently took a completely different tactic with a COI writer. I showed him an article before User:Acalamari and I got to it, and I showed him the article after we were done with it.  His response was, wow, cool, you'd do that for my uncle's article?  Yup, because his uncle, although poorly referenced on the web, is obviously an important and notable physician.  I'll have to research him next time I go to UCSF, but the editor is fine with us taking whatever time we need to give the article a professional appearance.  I think if you prepare a couple of before and afters it might be equally as effective with other COI editors.
 * Yes, Elsevier's journals are hit and miss, more miss largely since their prices went through the stratosphere; however, for some obscure areas and journals they have higher impact factors than for others, so it's not safe to assume all of their journals are anything. Every botanist I know reads their Trends in Plant Sciences, alongside only Taxon and American Journal of Botany--although I don't know why.  (Oh, I see, it's a journal on biochemical plant genetics, kinda the area I work in.  So, maybe my idea that it is a more important journal than the other Trends journals is skewed.)
 * I don't know enough about impact factors to edit that article at all, but there has been a lot of funky editing going on over there. You'll catch them if you go to the edit histories and run through the diffs of most of the red-linked editors, not the ips.  Here's one of Thomson Scientific's editors. This guy has a PageRank agenda.  This guy's pushing Seymour Melman and Economic Reconstruction.  Anyway, it was an interesting article to run through the red-linked authors on--they all seem to have agendas.  There were also a couple of Springer clones doing the same thing the Elsevier socks are doing, but I don't know if I marked them.  I will be glad to send them all your way, though, in the future. KP Botany 04:35, 27 August 2007 (UTC)


 * not only are some of their most outrageously priced journals the most notable, they're by far the easiest to document, since people have been loudly complaining for years. I'd expect on balance I'd want to keep 80-90% of the ES titles, but the subject people can decide. The Thomson guy isn't necessarily following company line--they don't like Page Rank particularly, except to the extent that its based on the citation index principle. And if he's been doing Economic Reconstruction, it's a personal hobby. Not every who edits out of a company office is doing it primarily for the company. But by all means, add to my collection as you see them.  U Chicago Press is another problem, by the way. The priority for adding of course is the scientific societies, not the commercial publishers--would you like to do some botany journals? DGG (talk) 04:53, 27 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I've never looked up botany journals on Wikipedia. What are we missing?  You can toss them my way, I'm skewed towards the biochemistry, genetics and ecology, but I read 2 or 3 plant journal articles  a day for my research which is mostly about systematics.  I'm going to just start writing short bios of major scientists who are missing on Wikipedia, but not really using references--it's too much work, and not the least bit rewarding.  I can't believe we didn't have a word about Daniel Axelrod on Wikipedia.  At least let me know what's missing in botany journals.  Oh, I see we have the American Journal of Botany but not the Botanical Society of America which is currently thickly in the midst of a scientific revolution--and the AJB is a crappy stub.  No Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden which is in the same place.  Oh, I found the list.  But we have a pretty article for Curtis's Botanical Magazine, at least.  KP Botany 05:05, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Wow, this is a great discussion! Some of the COI stuff you are uncovering is really good, KP. Please do keep an eye on that sort of things, and don't let the reaction to the Current Opinion epsiode put you off. DGG, you say "add to my collection as you see them. U Chicago Press is another problem, by the way" - would you be able to expand on that? Is this collection of stuff (COI stuff, or just 'journal contacts'?) online or something you maintain offline? And how are U Chicago Press a problem? More of the same? You'll notice that the Category:Journals by publisher category structure I started included three of the bigger companies I know of: Elsevier, Nature Publishing Group and University of Chicago Press. I don't know enough about journal publishing to say whether that list of three misses out any big publishing companies. My vision for that category structure would be to have the big ones having their own categories, and with the ones published by "the scientific societies" grouped in another category. Some, of course, appear in both, so before I go ahead with that, would you and KP be able to provide any guidance? Royal Society publications would be a good place to start. See Royal Society. Also Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society used to be published in-house, but is now done by Blackwell. I'm also wondering if we should have a more specific category for things like JSTOR and Astrophysics Data System. They are currently collected in Category:Digital libraries, but maybe the ones containing journals should be grouped apart from the ones containing books (and the ones containing both would go in both, obviously). Would that work, do you think? There are definitely enough digital libraries in that category now to justify subcategorising based on topic (arts and humanities, vs scientific, for example). Carcharoth 19:24, 27 August 2007 (UTC)


 * 1) . Categories. dont go too fast--they are a real nuisance to change. Please first consider the problem already present with just journal publishers and scientific journal publishers. There's some discussion of this at the top of the page. Publisher names change. Most but not all Elsevier titles in WP are from what used to be Elsevier Science, and is now Elsevier Science+Business. A good many articles and links need fixing. I think the two KP mentioned below are good to add, though as a start.
 * 2) . digital libraries. Dividing by subject is possible, though there are many multi-disciplinary ones that it might be necessary to list in more than one article. Dividing by type is more of a problem. Almost every one of the major ones is constructed differently: ADS is a complex multi-type information system: an free index, a set of links to outside articles at publishers and elsewhere, many of them toll access, a free  preprint data base, and a few other parts also. JSTOR is a subscription-access database of scanned journal article backfiles licensed from various journal  publishers, together with a freely-accessible OCR-based index, which is what one sees at google Scholar. Muse is a aggregator for current journal articles from several major non-profit publishers. Pubmed is a index, with online abstracts, but part of a remarkably complex system, & there's a whole wikiproject devoted to the various parts.  and so on. There have been some serious disagreements about what to call the various types, and digital Libraries is nicely nonspecific. Similarly, what most university libraries do nowadays is just list everything as "Digital resources" or "electronic resources", without attempting to distinguish the journals from the indexes from the reference works.
 * 3) What i think is needed more than organization is simply more articles, about as many journals and database systems as  possible, done in groups if convenient. I think a good deal of Royal society is already in, but sure, add the others--there is the advantage of a long history to write about and many published sources. DGG (talk) 04:10, 28 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, you're missing quite a few, Springer, and Wiley for starters. It would be good of you to organize these, as you did a great job starting, and the stubs you wrote would be adequate for all jouranls for now.  If you have the time could you possibly improve the American Journal of Botany article?  I don't have much time for editing and research right now, but it, along with the Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden have been the leading publishers of information that has radically changed Angiosperm systematics since 1993, and they both should have articles that reflect the importance of the major articles.  Also, the Linnean Society journals, now that I think of it.  (I know I spell his name wrong.)  KP Botany 03:30, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

what journal articles should have as content
My suggestion about suitable content in general, is: and optional if convenient, People sometimes want to see 3rd party references. i usually list JCR and Ulrichs. DGG (talk) 04:38, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
 * of course the infobox stuff: title, and publisher, and starting date, and frequency,
 * An explicit statement that it's peer-reviewed, and whether its a review journal or an abstract journal or what. Publishers like to list all the sections. i don't think that's encyclopedic. Every scientific journal typically has articles and editorials and letters to the editor and occasional reviews.
 * The subject field only if it isnt obvious. Publishers often try to say something like X journal of chemistry covers organic chemistry and inorganic chemistry and analytical chemistry and biochemistry, and will be of interest to research and development chemists in industry and the academic world, as well as related specialists.  I think that's pure PR gibberish.
 * and a thumbnail of the cover for identification purposes,
 * availability of online version and coverage of backfiles
 * changes in title and dates.
 * The name & institution of the editor in chief, but usually just the editor in chief. Some publications with extremely notable past editors in chief should list them, but it's usually excessive. This information is used to establish the notability of the scientists concerned--any ed. in chief of a major journal will generally get a WP article. Not the whole board.
 * Major indexing services.like ChemAbs, Web of Science, Scopus, Inspec, Compendex, Medline/PubMed, Biosis, Psych Info, or the analogous ones in other fields. This is a major factor in establishing notability for a journal.
 * You can and should give the impact factor. The current ones are 06.  It can also give the JCR rank, but best as  as 4th out of the 80 journals in ___. It means more than just 4th, because 4th could be 4th out of 8. s.
 * Use the category for the publisher and the subject-journal categories--the higher level ones are filled automatically. Do not link to other journals the categories will do it.
 * The circulation, from Ulrich's if available, or from the USPO statement if there is one.
 * the two or three most notable or highest citation papers ever published
 * Whether its included in major 3rd party online services such as ebsco or proquest & if there is an embargo, as there usually is for journals like these, how long it is.
 * sometimes, the number of libraries holding from WorldCat--that is basically the number of US+Canada libraries.
 * Thanks for that. I'll try and try my hand at expanding a few stubs and see how it goes. A similar conversation is taking place at User talk:Geogre, more focused on humanities journals. I'm going to cross-link the two threads. As for the categories, I will make some lists and play around with various groupings and run them past you and others before creating the categories. Carcharoth 13:01, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah, looks good. In this sciences, I would like the major articles to be listed closer to the front of the article than much of the other stuff.  There are a couple of major scientific revolutions going on, one in angiosperm systematics, in which papers of astronomical importance have been published, this should be discuss early on, and linked to the primary article that discusses something from the paper.  (APG II for example.)  Does the infobox include language of the journal?  There are some Japanese geological journals and still German journals on physics and some other oddballs in languages other than English, with extensive abstract distributions in English.  KP Botany 04:01, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Sure, language. I think there's provision for it. For the many journals that were once multilingual or German and now are English, that would best be said in the article. No reason not to put major papers at the start, either. Or really major authors, sometimes. Or the authors first and then the papers. I think there's room for a good deal of variation and experimentation in this. Main job is to get the articles, and put them into the appropriate subject categories.,
 * Categories-- The basic one is the subject category, as Category:Botany journals, etc. Usually they get added also to a category like Category:Chemical literature, if there is one for the subject. Often they also get added to the category for the broad subject or sometimes the narrow one or both--I am not 100% sure it's a good idea, but it's usual. and the appropriate publisher category, as Category: Elsevier journals. (I just found out from the publisher that the name to use is now in fact Elsevier, not Elsevier Science or Elsevier Science+Business.
 * And another thing--if the journal is an Open access journal, add Category:Open access journals; if its one of those with open access after an embargo period, use instead Category:Delayed open access journals. There exists also the category Hybrid open access journals, for those titles where an author can optionally pay for open access for a particular article, but I think it is now useless, since all the journals from most major publishers now allow it, and an increasing number of societies--every Springer journal, for example, and most or all of Wiley and a lot of Elsevier.  These pages need some updating.
 * And there is also a working party at Wikipedia:List of missing journals, which we need to coordinate with.

DGG (talk) 06:39, 29 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Regarding categories, the naming is sometimes inconsistent. eg. Category:Botany journals and Category:Botanical journals. The former is correct, the lattter needs changing. Carcharoth 17:21, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
 * And it's Category:Chemistry literature. That all needs sorting out. I might also try and find books and essays and magazines to expand the "literature" categories, but that is outside the scsope of the journals wikiproject, now at WikiProject Academic Journals (I dropped a note off to John Vandenberg. Carcharoth 17:32, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

August 2007 (UTC)

Journals
I see from the above that there is more history to the Elsevier stuff than I had realised. I'm a bit puzzled by your reference to a "speedy" though. Are you referring to the Current Opinion stuff, or the Category:Journals by publisher (and related categories) that I created recently? Carcharoth 00:46, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
 * the Current opinion stuff, and the DRV this morning . The categories of journal by publisher are the obvious way to go, though there are some questions about overlap. I don;'t see any attempt to delete them. As you said at the AfD on current Opinion in Immunology,, the job is to get in articles for all the other important journals. I'll help as I can, especially if my knowledge of the publishers can be of any use.DGG (talk) 00:59, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Conflict of Interest
Hi, we had spoken before about creating articles for Physics journals. You had said you would be able to help to make sure there is no conflict of interest. I have a few articles I would like to post and would like you to look them over before I post them and run the risk of a COI. Thank you and I hope to hear from you soon. Journals88 15:20, 29 August 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Journals88 (talk • contribs) 14:50, August 29, 2007 (UTC)
 * sure. I have made a page for you to use for this purpose, User talk:Journals88/sandbox. Just add one there as a start, and let me know. We have an expanded help pages that you may want to read, Wikipedia:Business FAQ DGG (talk) 17:15, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

I added an article to the page you setup and enabled my email. Thank you so much for your help! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Journals88 (talk • contribs) 20:44, August 29, 2007 (UTC)

Academic Journals project
Hi DGG, I've moved my "Journals" project proposal to WikiProject Academic Journals (the name you recently proposed at User_talk:Geogre) in order to centralise discussions in this area. Cheers, John Vandenberg 15:35, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
 * good. I will put up some links to stuff, or make some summarizing statements--over this weekend, not just this minute :) DGG (talk) 20:11, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Journal categories
I've replied on my talk page. Please feel free to review my edits in this area and discuss them with me. I'm always happy to be corrected on things. Carcharoth 10:59, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
 * As an example of an uncontroversial change, I'm going to nominate Category:Botanical journals at CfD to be renamed to Category:Botany journals to fit the naming of the other categories. Carcharoth 11:04, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
 * And looking further, the only categories that have adjectival names are Category:Scientific journals; Category:Academic journals; Category:Medical journals. But all these are based on actual articles: scientific journal, academic journal and medical journal. I wonder how botany should be treated? I'm copying this to the CfD discussion. Carcharoth 11:26, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
 * That Botany change was suggest long ago, but never done. It's a good start. DGG (talk) 02:43, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

For you
Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate list of all journals related to a subject--I'm on break. KP Botany 06:16, 3 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Actually, it's about 1% of the total and 10% of the ones in JCR. things could get a good deal worse. We normally do this as a separate list when possible, e.g. List of scientific journals in chemistry, or List of botany journals but we sometimes have included such a short section in a subject article. I do not think the number is excessive.  The logical first step is to try to write articles for the journals.   I will advise accordingly. DGG (talk) 08:46, 3 September 2007 (UTC)


 * No, the first step is for the editors of the article to decide which journals and sources are the most important that should be named in the article. This user is only adding Elsevier and Springer links, to at least one article where the leading journal, unmentioned, is a Wiley publication.  The logical first step is to delete the spam, explain again that this requires talk page discussion, and expect that this be done.  KP Botany 17:43, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

The journals that were added in the first instance were only about 20 titles in a number of fields, from a range of publishers including the leading scientific society in the subject, and not unreasonable. I advised the person adding them, reminding him he had to show notability for the journals, and how to go about it. I see he is continuing in a less useful manner and i will deal with it a little differently now. DGG (talk) 03:33, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Here's another one
KP Botany 18:43, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Another one.
These users should have been blocked and severely warned, as I'm tired of this. I don't have time for this one, as I'm writing a report right now. KP Botany 00:56, 11 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Same user, back again. Has been blocked & I will clean up. I too have now lost whatever patience I have. If you see any additional ip addresses, let me know. DGG (talk) 02:14, 11 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I got inspired to track things down further, found several additional ip addresses going back to Sept 1, blocked them all, removed links (& a good deal of misc. spam from others), & figured out some other ways to find them. Will follow up on COI page. Yes, you are right that my initial AGF was not correct. Kept going till my mouse stopped working from overuse. Literally. DGG (talk) 14:32, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Yup, pretty bad. Thanks.  KP Botany 01:09, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Example clean-up for WikiProject?
Current Opinion in Immunology got kept. At the moment, the article has no more information than is found in Current Opinion. Do you want to perform a clean-up that can be used as an example at the WikiProject of how to do this sort of thing? Carcharoth 11:59, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
 * you mean, do I want to fill in as extensive an article as possible. I will improve the article, but its would not be the best model for others, because of the complications of being part of a series of which only some is shown, a situation I hope we will soon change.  But we already have a number of other good examples. For instance, though I cannot think of any that are ideal. But look at Journal of Chemical Physics, which I did a little while back to save it from deletion, or Annals of Mathematics, for a different type of article.DGG (talk) 17:34, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the links. How did J. Chem. Phys. ever get put up for deletion?? Carcharoth 23:43, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Here's another one
KP Botany 18:43, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

The spammer
He's not a publisher, but he works for a company that somehow represents both publishers commercially. I don't have time to refind it. He somehow represents more than one journal, and it's the company he works for that represents more than one journal in some way or another, or more than one publisher, and I saw it somewhere, it was a PR firm or a marketing firm or something, in Chicago, maybe, and I had come across it a couple of times in some of the earlier ones. They have a very small Wikipedia article, and I twice cross referenced same day accounts with minimal contributions to adding journals, but who were editing in between the journal socks, and made single edits to this company. I'm sorry, let me see if I can retrace my steps. No, I'm not having any more luck. But you realize there appear to be hundreds of these one day sock puppets for the publishers? This appears to be industry wide. I don't think this is one, though: KP Botany 04:09, 4 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I really can't think of it. But when I saw the first edit, I looked it up, then when I saw the second one, it vaguely dawned, and then it hit me what he was doing and why he's posting more than one publisher, and why an earlier one I dismissed for the same reason was doing the same, it's was a US firm, but they were all European publishers represented.  There was an additional international connection with an ASEAN publisher, maybe Singapore? Sorry.  I'll be off for a few weeks, in the mountains. It will probably hit me, or maybe you'll find it. KP Botany 04:21, 4 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I was thinking along those lines also. In this particular case, I think I can find out the names through another channel. I also know just how to spread the word more generally & will do so quietly & without names on the appropriate list. Personally, I regard the inclusion of one ACS journal probably just a clever attempt to look impartial. On the longer run, the way to prevent this is to add the major journals ourselves, or with carefully controlled assistance. But most of the ones added in this batch do deserve to be in  WP eventually, but of course not preferentially. The scientific societies remain the priority.
 * i do not like to block without really strong reason. But I will do it to get attention when needed.
 * technical details I like to do: In some cases, I like to comment out sections than to revert the addition--it's easer to re-add the key ones. I do not think it wise to insist upon the use of "cite" templates, especially as there is no actual requirement--I rarely use them myself except if an article has them already or if things are complicated. I think they make the code hard to read and edit. -- I use.
 * But have a good time--I assume you will be coming back with some more pictures. DGG (talk) 04:28, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Example clean-up for WikiProject?
Current Opinion in Immunology got kept. At the moment, the article has no more information than is found in Current Opinion. Do you want to perform a clean-up that can be used as an example at the WikiProject of how to do this sort of thing? Carcharoth 11:59, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
 * you mean, do I want to fill in as extensive an article as possible. I will improve the article, but its would not be the best model for others, because of the complications of being part of a series of which only some is shown, a situation I hope we will soon change.  But we already have a number of other good examples. For instance, though I cannot think of any that are ideal. But look at Journal of Chemical Physics, which I did a little while back to save it from deletion, or Annals of Mathematics, for a different type of article.DGG (talk) 17:34, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the links. How did J. Chem. Phys. ever get put up for deletion?? Carcharoth 23:43, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Another one.
These users should have been blocked and severely warned, as I'm tired of this. I don't have time for this one, as I'm writing a report right now. KP Botany 00:56, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Same user, back again. Has been blocked & I will clean up. I too have now lost whatever patience I have. If you see any additional ip addresses, let me know. DGG (talk) 02:14, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I got inspired to track things down further, found several additional ip addresses going back to Sept 1, blocked them all, removed links (& a good deal of misc. spam from others), & figured out some other ways to find them. Will follow up on COI page. Yes, you are right that my initial AGF was not correct. Kept going till my mouse stopped working from overuse. Literally. DGG (talk) 14:32, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Yup, pretty bad. Thanks.  KP Botany 01:09, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Physica B
Thanks for looking after the deficiencies in this article. As you saw I did not write it, just inserted it from articles for creation. I appreciated when the articles are improved. It's the first time I heard that there was an academic journals project! Graeme Bartlett 21:05, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

The Spammer - Elsevier etc.
He's not a publisher, but he works for a company that somehow represents both publishers commercially. I don't have time to refind it. He somehow represents more than one journal, and it's the company he works for that represents more than one journal in some way or another, or more than one publisher, and I saw it somewhere, it was a PR firm or a marketing firm or something, in Chicago, maybe, and I had come across it a couple of times in some of the earlier ones. They have a very small Wikipedia article, and I twice cross referenced same day accounts with minimal contributions to adding journals, but who were editing in between the journal socks, and made single edits to this company. I'm sorry, let me see if I can retrace my steps. No, I'm not having any more luck. But you realize there appear to be hundreds of these one day sock puppets for the publishers? This appears to be industry wide. I don't think this is one, though: KP Botany 04:09, 4 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I really can't think of it. But when I saw the first edit, I looked it up, then when I saw the second one, it vaguely dawned, and then it hit me what he was doing and why he's posting more than one publisher, and why an earlier one I dismissed for the same reason was doing the same, it's was a US firm, but they were all European publishers represented.  There was an additional international connection with an ASEAN publisher, maybe Singapore? Sorry.  I'll be off for a few weeks, in the mountains. It will probably hit me, or maybe you'll find it. KP Botany 04:21, 4 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I was thinking along those lines also. In this particular case, I think I can find out the names through another channel. I also know just how to spread the word more generally & will do so quietly & without names on the appropriate list. Personally, I regard the inclusion of one ACS journal probably just a clever attempt to look impartial. On the longer run, the way to prevent this is to add the major journals ourselves, or with carefully controlled assistance. But most of the ones added in this batch do deserve to be in  WP eventually, but of course not preferentially. The scientific societies remain the priority.
 * i do not like to block without really strong reason. But I will do it to get attention when needed.
 * technical details I like to do: In some cases, I like to comment out sections than to revert the addition--it's easer to re-add the key ones. I do not think it wise to insist upon the use of "cite" templates, especially as there is no actual requirement--I rarely use them myself except if an article has them already or if things are complicated. I think they make the code hard to read and edit. -- I use.
 * But have a good time--I assume you will be coming back with some more pictures. DGG (talk) 04:28, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Journals added
I added another article to the sandbox page, User talk:Journals88/sandbox, using your advice from the previous article. Would you be able to critique and make sure it is not a COI? Thank you for your help and sorry I have been taking so long to get back to you.Journals88 17:18, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * try them now. DGG (talk) 18:53, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

creation of journal pages
Hello DGG. Thank you for the messages regarding the pages I have created for a number of UC Press-published journals. I am an employee of the Press, and was asked to create these pages. I was not aware that doing so was in violation of WP standards (let alone copyright standards), and it was not my intent to add content that does not warrant inclusion. Nor was it my intent to create additional work for WP to clean up the pages I created. I will do my best to bring the pages up to snuff, and I apologize for any inconvenience. Thanks. -Joe. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Joseph.tobin (talk • contribs) 18:20, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks and a query (magazines)
Thank you for the 'excellent work' message on my talk page. Did you mean extending that particular list and changing its name to reflect the greater coverage, or creating/working on a series of lists for diferent countries/periods?? I am game for either, on the understanding that my time for Wikipedia is limited, so I tend to have 'bursts' when nothing more demanding is happening in the 'real' world - like earning a living... ;~) -- Abbeybufo ( talk  •  contribs ) 11:51, 7 October 2007 (UTC).
 * either way--Unless considerably more information can be added about the individual childrens' magazines themselves, I think a wider coverage would be better, either geographically or chronologically. The article will be strong if more extensive in any direction DGG (talk) 19:29, 7 October 2007 (UTC)


 * OK. I did a  link to the History of British Comics, so my first thoughts are to keep this list as a British one, even if it gets extended beyond the early C20 period...happy to do some work on that. But my knowledge of other countries' magazine lit is limited - though as an ex-librarian myself (can one ever be an ex-librarian, I wonder?) I could probably find out quite a bit. Whether that would be enough to be more than a stub for each country, though?? - Maybe we should try and keep them all on the same page after all and have headings for different countries within the list, which could be extended by people with greater knowledge (one would hope) - what d'you reckon? -- Abbeybufo ( talk  •  contribs ) 20:09, 7 October 2007 (UTC)


 * I consider most of what I do here to be working as a librarian, if that's an answer. Advising people about information (& for that matter, about navigating bureaucracies. ) As for these magazines, did you see them as comics primarily? --I'm thinking of the nearest thing I know well, which is Wodehouse's school stories. and in an earlier period--Edgeworth--you might want to make the acquaintance of User:Awadewit. DGG (talk) 07:56, 8 October 2007 (UTC)


 * No I dont see them as primarily comics, but the History of British Comics page does include Boy's (& Girl's) Own Paper fairly early within the article, so I think that article does reckon to cover the magazines. This is why I added in some that are shown on that page (on which, BTW, there is quite a long list) and added the 'main article' link. Are we agreed that the page should be extended as far as poss to include all countries and periods, with country or area subheads [the link for History of British Comics can then go under the UK heading] and hope this will encourage others to contribute about the mags for countries they know about?? If so at what stage should the page title be changed and the 'move' [if that's what it is] get done? And does a move take links already made with it, or act as a redirect for them...or does that have to be done by fixing them separately via 'what links here'? - I'm new enough not to have got involved in too much of that sort of rearrangement yet. :)
 * I don't think one ever really stops being a librarian; once you've worked on an enquiry desk for 20+ years it is second [or possibly first!] nature to try to guide people to the right place for the information they're looking for - which I suppose is why I've felt compelled to keep coming back to WP and tweak here and there as my own expertise/interest allows. I will look at User:Awadewit's pages and maybe leave a message, thanks for the suggestion. Abbeybufo  ( talk  •  contribs ) 13:46, 8 October 2007 (UTC)


 * I'll answer the easy part--if you want to make it more general, now is the time. List of childrens magazines and annuals is presumably what you're after. in that case. A move takes care of the links if it's a straight move. A merge is harder, but I can do both for you as needed. what would mainly need cleaning up is categories, and you should think about that as well. But here is the real problem: in general, lists are supposed to include only notable things, normally defined as those with a Wikipedia article. So the "red links' will be a problem. How much of an article  will be needed to support notability is not clear. There's a project Wikipedia:WikiProject Academic Journals‎ which can probably be of some help, though the orientation is a little different. DGG (talk) 23:14, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

pick a journal ... any journal
I have spammed everyone else on the project so, ... could you pick an old journal in a field that you are familiar with for a future collaboration project; enter it under "Nominations for future CotW:" in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Academic_Journals. Thanks, John Vandenberg 02:36, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Also, the notability discussion is picking up again. Nurg has done a draft based on the books guideline. I think you had some developed ideas on this, so if you have time to contribute, that would be great. Discussion is spread between the WikiProject talk page and User talk:Nurg/Notability (periodicals). Carcharoth 12:45, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

JITP
You prod' Journal of Information Technology & Politics however, the article describes that this is the renamed Journal of E-Government, which has been published and is probably notable. Would it be worth renaming it to the Journal fo E-Government until the name Journal of Information Technology & Politics takes on as the main usage? Mbisanz (talk) 19:53, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, certainly add the history of the journal! Start by adding the information to this new page, under the new title. But see the various factors affecting journal notability at Wikiproject Academic Journals. In particular, where is it indexed, who is the editor, what are the most notable papers it has published, what is its rank in Journal citation Reports. I'll take a look and remove the prod if I think its ok, or comment further on its talk page. . DGG (talk) 20:00, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I was unaware of previous history ; if there is one, I'd suggest keeping it. PS. Not a good sign. The prod, added to this, seems to have been the proverbial insult to the injury :( --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 23:18, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


 * It is not in WOS, but is in Scopus. Only 3 years have been published altogether. Of the 30 or so articles, only 2 have been cited, and that only once, & by their respective authors. But it's early times for that, in the social sciences. At the moment only 19 libraries in WorldCat. I'd classify it as trying to become notable. Borderline. I've commented on the COI noticeboard.DGG (talk) 23:59, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

American Journal Experts
Hi, I'm trying to figure out what exactly happened with the addition of this page to Wikipedia and it's deletion and all. Would you be able to provide me with a copy of the (now deleted) page and the (deleted) talk page, if you don't mind? Thank you. Please note that I am not the same as BlueDevil1 who was the creator of the article. -Blue1 (talk) 17:53, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
 * sorry for the delayed response. I see that at the last minute the article was upgraded to include recommendations from a number of respectable journals of service that their authors might use, including this one. This is the sort of thing that might prove notability. Unfortunately the mention in and  look like they were written by the company, the one at  and at  lists 4 or 5 companies without comment, and at  it does both: lists 12 companies, with the ad for each of them. PNAS, an unimpeachable non-profit journal & one of the first journals to advise the use of such services, has a list at  that does not include the company among the 11 listed.  This collection of testimonials does not inspire confidence. I think you need some actual third party references, such as from academic departments, or a discussion of these services somewhere. What I think we really need is an article about these services in general. DGG (talk) 04:42, 30 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree that there needs to be an article about these services in general, citing adequate sources. But that is not for me since I work for the company in question so it is difficult for me to create an impartial article unplagued by conflict of interest. The problem with the earlier iteration of this article was exactly that-- it was created by a person with a conflict of interest who was just making up some of the information on the article. However, I'm not trying to recreate the article; I just wanted to know what the talk page contained since I couldn't find that information in Google's cache. Thank you for your time. -Blue1 (talk) 16:01, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
 * sorry I did not understand fully; I have emailed you talk page. DGG (talk) 05:13, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

magazines...
''...and creative works in general cannot be deleted under speedy A7, per WP:CSD In any case, I think Railfan and Railroad might be one of the two leading magazines in its subject. did you check that? Please do not use speedy when not strictly within the specifications.'''

Magazines are businesses, not creative works, and therefore fall squarely under db-corp guidelines -- which also explicitly refer to articles which make no assertion of notability, which this article doesn't. Your vague recollection doesn't qualify either as an assertion of notability nor a reliable source. Please do not wikilawyer about obvious failures of speedy standards and specifications. --Calton | Talk 16:10, 28 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree it will quite possibly be deleted at afd, unless I or someone finds more material. Relative rank is capable of objective determination via Ulrich's. But as for  speedy, WP:CSD: "A7 applies only to articles about web content or articles on people and organizations themselves, not articles on their books, albums, software and so on. " if you want to change the rules, discuss it there. I think you will find the consensus is clear about magazines.  A book publisher is a company. A book is not.   A record distributor is a company. A recording is not. A series of recordings is not. A boxed set of recordings is not. A magazine publisher is a company. A magazine is not.  Speedy is not stretchable. What you call wikilawering I call following the rules. " There is no consensus to speedily delete articles of types not specifically listed in A7 under that criterion." DGG (talk) 16:24, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

journalreview draft
Hi DGG When time allows, please take a look at my talk page for a draft that I started. Let me know what you think. Thanks EBMdoc (talk) 20:09, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I've moved it to User_talk:EBMdoc/JournalReview.org--Hu12 (talk) 20:16, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks again for your help. I was trying to edit the article and add references that you recommended... but can not add refs to journalreview.org now because of the spam block of the site.  How should I handle this? EBMdoc (talk) 16:42, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
 * When time permits, I look forward to your feedback on the revised draft. EBMdoc (talk) 00:46, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Journal Review Draft
I'd be thankful for your review of my talk page. Let me know if you think it is ready to go. If you have comments, feel free to leave them on the article page or here. Once again, Many Thanks, EBMdoc (talk) 16:26, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

magazines...and speedy
''...and creative works in general cannot be deleted under speedy A7, per WP:CSD In any case, I think Railfan and Railroad might be one of the two leading magazines in its subject. did you check that? Please do not use speedy when not strictly within the specifications.'''

Magazines are businesses, not creative works, and therefore fall squarely under db-corp guidelines -- which also explicitly refer to articles which make no assertion of notability, which this article doesn't. Your vague recollection doesn't qualify either as an assertion of notability nor a reliable source. Please do not wikilawyer about obvious failures of speedy standards and specifications. --Calton | Talk 16:10, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree it will quite possibly be deleted at afd, unless I or someone finds more material. Relative rank is capable of objective determination via Ulrich's. But as for  speedy, WP:CSD: "A7 applies only to articles about web content or articles on people and organizations themselves, not articles on their books, albums, software and so on. " if you want to change the rules, discuss it there. I think you will find the consensus is clear about magazines.  A book publisher is a company. A book is not.   A record distributor is a company. A recording is not. A series of recordings is not. A boxed set of recordings is not. A magazine publisher is a company. A magazine is not.  Speedy is not stretchable. What you call wikilawering I call following the rules. " There is no consensus to speedily delete articles of types not specifically listed in A7 under that criterion." DGG (talk) 16:24, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Academic Journals
thanks for that. Espresso Addict also linked me to part of the discussion that stemmed from my comment to him. As I said to him, I accept that they're inherently notable but I still think there's more to notability than circulation. I'm actually surprised that there's relatively little independent coverage of the journals themselves. I'm sure the discussion exists somewhere, it's just a question of where. I've seen an article in my field on the ranking of academic journals, I think that for the fields probably exists as well, but the latest round that I pulled from the backlog and tagged for refs is one I'm entirely unfamiliar with. TRAVELLINGCARI My storyTell me yours 01:38, 9 March 2008 (UTC)


 * there are a 100s of such studies--in particular fields, and in science in general, with varying methodology. The methodology used in that article, ranking by reputation, is probably the least reliable of any. For the fields covered by Journal Citation Reports, its the defacto standard, though that has been recently challenged also. Actually, I knew about that article you mention, because there's a specialised mailing list, where among other things Eugene Garfield posts a link or an abstract for every article or conference presentation related to the subject. There is no recent comprehensive survey. But it's not just rank in such lists that makes for importance or WP notability. Substantial coverage of a journal as distinct from such listings is very rare, except for historical titles. The main places where such things are discussed are on the mailing list Liblicense, and various subject mailing lists, such as Chminf. I've been meaning to do articles on those lists, to get them established as sources. Articles on the top few journals in your subject would be useful contributions. among the most relevant content is the historical listing of editors-in-chief, because thats an accepted criterion for notability of the individuals. (not editorial boards--that counts as spam the way most look at it.) DGG (talk) 05:02, 9 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I didn't necessarily mean that the ranking made them notable, but rather that they were covered in an external and independent source, leading to reliable source coverage. Even without mentioning the rank, it could work along the lines of "JOurnal X was discussed in an article about the prominent journals in Field Y". I think academic journals in general are breaking my brain at the moment simply from my thesis -- I take a school break to play on Wiki and end up discussing journals. Sanity down 10%! I'm actually not sure whether any in my field are covered as I've never looked for them here. Just checked the top three (as in top three in my sources pile next to me) off the top of my head: Annals of Tourism Research, Journal of Travel Research and Information Technology and Tourism don't have articles. Will look further into the others. I think my reasoning is along the lines of while most journals are not the New England Journal of Medicine, that article is a good 'barometer' for what an article on an academic journal could look like. Of course some are not likely to grow beyond stubs due to their youth but others probably have more discussion. Somewhere. Articles on Liblicense and Chminf would probably be useful in helping others to learn more about the context of academic journals. TRAVELLINGCARI My storyTell me yours 05:43, 9 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Normally I'd regard the listing of something in a rankings list, especially by a source that intends to rank everything in a field, as trivial coverage, and that seems to be the case with that article. If there were significant actual discussion of the journal, that might be relevant, but usually there is not in such list--just a tabulation of the numerical factors.  The high placement of somethings within a rankings list, by an authoritative source, is however evidence of outside notability. For example, a list of all the schools in New York,, aranged in order of rank, does not make any of them notable. Being in the top rank might well. NEJM is the  very rare exception of where there is much discussion, in their case because people keep saying its the gold standard for publications in the subject. I forgot to mention the list Garfield posts on --it's SIGMETRICS,  the Metrics special interest group of the the ACM. It and the other two Ive mentioned are mailing lists, not journals.  DGG (talk) 10:36, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Editorial boards of journals
Thank you for your comment about including only the chief editors instead of the full editorial board at the page Algebra & Number Theory. If this is the standard, then that's fine, but I notice that several other high-quality mathematics journals do list the full editorial board: e.g., American Journal of Mathematics, Inventiones Mathematicae, Journal of the American Mathematical Society, Pacific Journal of Mathematics, Publications Mathematiques de l'IHES.BjornPoonen (talk) 05:19, 6 April 2008 (UTC) Thanks. we'll get to them. and I will discuss it the appropriate place here also. The math people may want to try to make a case for the exception. One basis for this distinction is that service on an editorial board is not considered  by itself sufficient to make someone notable, while being an ed. in chief of a major journal has usually been considered a very major factor and enough to determine the issue if in doubt. We usually in fact try to list all the successive editors in chief. DGG (talk) 05:28, 6 April 2008 (UTC) Perhaps for balance I should have mentioned that there are also many math journals that do not list the full editorial board. I don't have a strong opinion for the standard being either way, but it should be applied uniformly.BjornPoonen (talk) 18:14, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

JSTOR
"I need to interject a comment on this. JSTOR contains 1100 journals total, including about 5% of the available academic titles in the humanities ; more important in this connection, it is almost totally limited to journals published in English. Very little French, no Japanese. A negative result in JSTOR is in my opinion meaningless here."

Is the 5% figure your original research or were you citing it specifically from somewhere? As for Japan Studies, I disagree. It covers all the major journals in English on Japan with the notable exception of one or two. We can quibble about which journals should be included, but even in terms of Japanese academic journals, he doesn't seem to generate any hits. Incidentally, I also checked the 5 major Japanese dailies (Asahi, Nikkei, etc) and there were no articles or hits for Polak (I used various Katakana configurations). The more I look, the less impressed I am by the alleged notability of this gentleman. As for Japanese-language journals, they are limited to essentially "in-house" publications that aren't very useful even for other Japanese academics (but that's according to my old Ph.D. supervisor and not really relevant.) If there was some specific Japanese-language index or French-language index you would recommend, I would be happy to check it. Best regards, J Readings (talk) 08:52, 6 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Arithmetic on the basis of: JSTOR has 1100 journals, about 2/3 of which are humanities. There are at least 50,000 current academic periodicals in the world by usual estimates (my library, Princeton, has over 30,000)--estimating 1/3 in the humanities. If one counts the past ones, probably at least triple. (The total number of periodicals in Ulrich's is 300,000, including non-academic.) Admittedly, the ones not covered in the major indexes are unlikely to be important. But even there, JSTOR is just a selection. Unfortunately, there is no comprehensive single periodical indexing service in the humanities.
 * As for Japanese, I was referring to the Japanese language. Of course JSTOR covers the major Japanese studies journals in English, as it does other area studies. The standard French index is "Francis", available at major universities in the US, and presumably generally in France. I'm having trouble getting to it remotely; if I succeed, I'll look at it for you. The indexes to Japanese studies are in Japanese, which I do not read, but since you do, the list of ones available at Princeton is  The page with the list should be available to anyone, tho the databases won't be. But any good Japanese university should have them. I haven't the least idea of relative importance.
 * As for the man, I too have my doubts of importance--what I said was "very weak keep". I was making only a technical comment. DGG (talk) 17:14, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * At the risk of appearing to be a nosey-parker (which I am) I did manage to get access to the Francis database through McGill and even with a search for Polak anywhere at all came up with nothing relevant, I'm afraid.--Slp1 (talk) 18:46, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for doing that--saves me from having to try again. As for the results, I am not at all surprisedDGG (talk) 18:50, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * You should report those findings to the AfD. Thanks, J Readings (talk) 18:51, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:Reliable_sources
Could I invite you to this discussion related to further tweaks to the Scholarship section of WP:RS. I want to try and get this right. Shoemaker&#39;s Holiday (talk) 20:43, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Journal of Forensic Accounting
Thanks for your support in helping see to it that a Wikipedia is, in fact, a community. Jheiv (talk) 01:18, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I have followed many of your guidelines (as many as possible, I think) in updating the article. Thank you for your support. Jheiv (talk) 07:47, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Canadian Young Scientist Journal
David, I am not sure about the notability criteria for journals (can you provide me with a link to a policy perhaps), but Canadian Young Scientist Journal may not meet it (yet). Only 1 issue published with 3 articles, although I very much sympathize with their goals, may not be enough to establish viability (and notability). Wim --Crusio (talk) 09:35, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * It is difficult enough to show the notability of college undergraduate journals; this is a high school journal. However, it seems to be sponsored in some manner by National Research Council of Canada Press, which means a lot, and there is one media reference. I'm going to ask them about the details of the sponsorship. DGG (talk) 16:03, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

The journal now has 3 issues with multiple articles including one by a student who won first at the World Virtual Science and Engineering fair. As well the journal was signed by Roberta Bondar (an achievement for any scientific journal) The journal is not large but I see no need in deleting it simply because of that (people have too much free time on their hands these days anyways). This is the only peer-reviewed student scientific journal in Canada, why shouldn't it have its own article?Mountjudo (talk) 02:18, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Response- peer reviewed journals
I think that you misunderstand the concept of WP:N if you propose that all peer-reviewed publications are notable and whether bald statements like "XYZ exists" is a claim of notabiity worthy of an encyclopedic article - and as I note not all the journals nominated are peer-reviewed and few of the articles of those that are claimed so in their text. I could just as easily fashion an article on myself and point to my webpage as proof I exist - and now with your critiques, I'm peer-reviewed as well, so certainly worthy of note on Wikipedia, n'est pas. We just disagree: an article "He was born in a log cabin." makes you think Abe Lincoln and rush to save it; to me it's no assertion of notability because one of the many he's born in a log cabin is notable - worthy at least of opening a deletion debate. And besides, I thought that you much prefer afd route so that the community can say what's what, rather than prod which 2 pairs of eyes just act on behalf of the community. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 06:20, 11 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I did not say that! I said that in opinion all peer-reviewed publications included in major indexes are notable, but I also mentioned that there were editors I respected who were prepared to extend this to all peer-reviewed publication, but that I was not convinced of that myself. In thisd, as in many othr matters of notability, I consider myself a moderate, not the extreme inclusionist some think me.  For those of the publications nominated that are not peer--reviewed, but rather professional magazines, the standard are less clear, but my own view the major national publication of that sort in each field, if included in the major professional indexes, are certainly notable .It is possible that some of those nominated are not notable--I have not yet analyzed them all--I am looking individually, and say keep when i am satisfied about the individual title. The key standard of notability for a publication of any sort is it being used as a standard reference in its subject, and the indexes and circulation are the main factors--see my fuller explanations at my journal talk archive. Publications in fringe areas used as major publications by those in the fringe  movement are included in this notability.
 * What I further think not a good idea is the  challenging at afd (or prod or speedy)  of newly created incomplete stubs of any sort at all unless seems by a quick search that no demonstration of suitability for Wikipedia is at all likely. Articles need a chance to develop. I agree that the person writing the article should have done a fuller job at first, and have said that also. I can fix only one or two of such articles a day, but i see others are helping also. Deletion is the last resort.  Of course you needed to use afd if you challenge them-- someone would surely remove the prod.  I suggest that for those where notability is being shown that you withdraw the nominations, and continue only with the more dubious. I have !voted delete for peer-reviewed journals before, and also for professional magazines, and if I am not satisfied for any of these I shall do that this time as well. DGG (talk) 08:16, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Re: Computers & Math Journal
Thank you DGG for salvaging that entry. First & foremost, I'm totally un-connected to the journal or business. I had found useful articles there, and am impressed by their international cast of editors. I'll work on improving that per your guidance. EJohn59 (talk) 06:16, 9 January 2009 (UTC)EJohn59

Dear DGG,

I now agree that the page should be deleted. After I looked at the Elsevier page, I see all kinds of controversies, incl. whole editorial Bd resigning in protest, and also boycotts by renowned libs at places like Harvard, Stanford & Duke. Until Elsevier cleans up its act, all their journals are tainted. So please go ahead and delete. Thanks. EJohn59 (talk) 00:44, 12 January 2009 (UTC)EJohn59


 * I am sorry, but I do not accept that. If their journals have problems, then we discuss the problems in the articles. If this particular journal as problems, cited references to them should get added to the article. Any journal in the top half of JCR in the subject is certainly notable; by my standards, any JCR title is, and according to some, all peer reviewed journals with any real publication history, though I personally do not go that far. WP is the encyclopedia of the good and the bad alike. Elsevier publishes some junk, has has done quite a number of stupid things, and so have most publishers. It also publishes some of the very best journals in the world, such as Journal of financial economics, and Cell. DGG (talk) 01:01, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Articles for deletion/Journal of Black Psychology
Discussion about a journal, contributors have mentioned library use, made me think your knowledge/opinion could be valuable. Regards, Guest9999 (talk) 23:30, 21 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Regardless of the actual AFD, I find it frankly bonkers that people are citing Notability_(media). Leaving aside the fact that it's an essay, it seems to based on journal as in "periodical you'd find in the supermarket" not "Peer Reviewed journal". --Cameron Scott (talk) 00:52, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
 * actually, factors 3 and 4 are probably the main considerations for academic journals. And in some cases 2, and perhaps 5, suitably interpreted to mean the citations involved in factor 4 are to be interpreted according to their niche.. What do you think is wrong with this?DGG (talk) 01:06, 22 January 2009 (UTC)


 * That's it's an essay on mass media not scholarly discourse - some of the criteria might fit by accident but that seems to be luck not intent. Do we not have an explicit notability criteria for PR material? --Cameron Scott (talk) 01:10, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I would then advocate saying that those are the basic conditions for all journals, with an explanation that they can be shown by impact factor, wide holdings in appropriate libraries, and presence in major indexes-- and making it a guideline--at least for that part -- I have not looked at the rest. DGG (talk) 01:20, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Journal of Public Affairs Education
Could you perhaps have a look at this journal? It's not in my field, so I don't know whether it is notable. I added a link to the homepage of the journal, and the info there is sparse regarding possible notability (indexing, etc). As far as I can see, the journal is not listed in the Journal Citation Reports (both the Science and the Social Sciences editions). Thanks; --Crusio (talk) 17:37, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
 * JCR gives poor coverage for the applied soft social sciences--as you realised, and which is why you asked. As for this journal, it's the official journal for The National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration. All  fields with university teaching have a journal of this nature, which are read almost exclusively by professors of the subject. They are not that often found in libraries, because almost everyone who is likely to be interested is a member of the relevant association and gets its journal. (this is in 73 WorldCat libraries). The  test is whether it's of interest to others: some such journals are, e.g. Journal of Chemical Education, which carries review articles suitable for student assignment. In this case, checking Google Scholar, I find a very small number of articles cited by general journals in public administration, but most of the articles in GS are only there because they are indexed in ERIC.  The  alternative is redirecting to the article on the society, and there's already  a paragraph on it there. The history of the article is not encouraging, so I boldly did just that. DGG (talk) 18:43, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

International Journal of General Systems
Hi DGG,

I have always kept my doubts about your removal of to the journal related scientists on the International Journal of General Systems article. Now I have raised a question about this on the articles talk page (here) and at the WikiProject Academic Journals (here). I would appreciate if your could comment there. Thank you.

Canadian Young Scientist Journal
I am taking this opportunity to find out why our journal's page has become candidate for deletion. I believe we do not violate anybody's copyrights or advertise. In addition to Fences and windows finding there was another publication about our journal in the Ontario College of Teachers' magazine http://www.oct.ca/publications/professionally_speaking/june_2008/publishing_science.asp Yes we have started only one year ago but we are already receiving submissions from all over the country. As a public educator myself I thought that one of the main goals of Wikipedia is to bring objective information including the fact of existence of the journal like this directly to people. When we were putting our journal page together we tried to make it as short as possible, avoiding any pedagogical or science paper writing sentiments. May be we have not got something in the mechanism of Wikipedia and did not do it right. Please advise on the matter. Thank you CYSJ —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cysj (talk • contribs) 03:09, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Hello DGG,


 * place to discuss it as at the afd. You have so far published only 2 issues, and no academic or public library holds the publication that I could find . It amounts to promotion of something that may well deserve to be notable, but is not yet. DGG (talk) 03:14, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Notability guideline for News Organizations/Publications
Hi, DGG, could you comment here about the proposal of a new notability guideline for news organizations and publications by OlYeller21? Thanks, Cunard (talk) 22:00, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Genes, Brain and Behavior
Hi, could you have a look again at Genes, Brain and Behavior? Any suggestions for further improvement would be welcome. Thanks! --Crusio (talk) 17:25, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
 * you might add the journals it cites most and those who cite it most. this is  relevant towards the question of linked groups of journals that cite primarily each other. DGG (talk) 00:29, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Done, thanks for the suggestion! We don't have many journal articles that have reached good article status (just one, I think). What would it take to get this article up to that level? --Crusio (talk) 17:10, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Elsevier
You might be interested in this -- surely as a librarian even if editing the wikipedia page itself doesn't seem necessary. regards, Nomoskedasticity (talk) 09:23, 11 May 2009 (UTC)


 * the actual problem is more complicated, more pervasive, and more dangerous--it's not just Elsevier--it was routine for many years for even the best journals to carry supplements sponsored by drug manufacturers. This is a particularly extreme example, not a unique occurrence. The problem of research sponsor control over what gets published affects even the best journals from the best publishers. It's not even just a matter of publishing. The research sponsor controls what research gets done.
 * There's a related problem: when a publisher publishers a journal on behalf of even a real society, the society, not the publisher, usually controls what gets published. Even if the publisher is careful whom it signs contracts with, the nature of a society can change with time. The reputation of a commercial publisher is thus no guarantee. (The reputation of a non-commercial publisher, of course, is immedately and directly that of the society which sponsors the publications.) DGG (talk) 10:06, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Notability guideline for News Organizations/Publications
Hi, DGG, could you comment here about the proposal of a new notability guideline for news organizations and publications by OlYeller21? Thanks, Cunard (talk) 22:00, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you
Thank you Once again, thanks for your insightful words DGG. I have to admit that I had to read what you wrote twice to fully grasp what you were saying, because your posting tend to be a little bit deeper and more thoughtful than the average editor.

I admit, I was a little flustered today with your first typically neautral posting on ARS. But then I thought about what you said, and I realized this is exactly what I had been saying all along, that anyone should be welcome to post on any wikiproject (as long as they are not disruptive), you just said it in a more neutral, diplomatic way. Ikip (talk) 01:59, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

MIT Journal for consideration
Hi, me again. I understand that one of your specialties is on scientific journal. Please take a look at this one http://www.wiley.com/bw/journal.asp?ref=0022-2526, which ranks very high, and is sponsored by MIT, thus with solid backing. See if you may want to include it in WP. --EJohn59 (talk) 03:18, 25 June 2009 (UTC)EJohn
 * Sure, just write the article after the pattern of the other journal articles. I'll take a look that you get it right. Let me know when ready. DGG (talk) 03:43, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Please see draft on my talk page. I saw somewhere about the name change, but cannot find the ref now. Maybe you can help, or I'll write to the editor.--EJohn59 (talk) 18:23, 25 June 2009 (UTC)EJohn
 * It's enough to show notability, because of the ISI rank. If you can find the previous editors, add them all. See if they have WP articles yet, and link. DGG (talk) 18:31, 25 June 2009 (UTC)


 * OK, David, I put it up. See Studies in Applied Mathematics. It turns out there has been only one Editor since 1969, when the Journal adopted the new name, as confirmed on the MIT Math Dept web site. My friend wrote to them and is still waiting for their response on the Founding Editor in its previous incarnation, ie, MIT J. of Math & Phys.--EJohn59 (talk) 22:55, 26 June 2009 (UTC)EJohn
 * now do the proper journal infobox--copy the format from another journal. The journal cover is an acceptable illustration, but add it with the same copyright justification as used for other journal covers. DGG (talk) 23:05, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
 * infobox added but sorry I don't know how to add image.--EJohn59 (talk) 20:27, 27 June 2009 (UTC)EJohn

DSB project
Hi DGG! Thanks so much for everything this past weekend -- I got home intact, if a couple hours delayed from the storms.

Here's my subpage on my DSB project -- the citations are formatted to link to the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, so if you check the "what links here" from that article you can see the ones I or others have done already. The redlinks on my page are bios that weren't already written that are in the DSB; the bluelinks are bios that have been written since I started the project. There's also a dump of bios in the print version that Ruud Koot did. I haven't been writing down my progress, but I'm somewhere in the middle of the print "B" volume at the moment, so anything starting later than that would be helpful -- we could start keeping track of how many bios we've covered. Best, -- phoebe / (talk to me) 02:18, 30 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Pity the picnic never actually happened.
 * --the links seem to go to the print version only, not the online also. Additionally, at least some show the part in the main vol, not the added parts for those who have them in the supplementary New Dictionary of Scientific Biography I think it might be better to   add the online links & complete the ones for the supplement first, before continuing alphabetically, so we know that at least some part is complete.  (I recall you said the online version wasn't available to you at the beginning of the project). That the New Dictionary did not include a complete list of scientists with main entries in the entire work is one of the principal defects in that reference work--and one of the   defects in our reference work is that the listing in "what links here" is not sorted alphabetically. DGG (talk) 03:57, 30 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Our online version is through a (subscription) Gale interface, so there aren't easy links to the articles (I get something like |CX2830900012 this), and even if there were it wouldn't be helpful to nonsubscribers. But what they are providing seems to be an HTML version, but additionally a straight pdf scan of the original print -- so actually providing the print page #s & reference is still helpful no matter what version it came from. The new DSB volumes are just tacked onto the end of the original set, from what I can tell (they start over with the alphabetization) and the "complete dsb" is just a scan of the whole thing. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 22:37, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

So-called apamming by learned societies etc
Thanks for your thoughtful comments on this issue. Ultimately, of course, we non-admins just have to do as we are told (whether we agree or not) as it's you guys who have the power to delete us and block us. So I guess there's not much point arguing about it.

It would certainly help though if the "tone" and "approach" were to be a bit less overbearing and autocratic when pointing out "spam" to editors. Of course, I understand the point about the dangers of attracting purely promotional activity but it's often perfectly well intentioned and stems from a desire to provide the fullest information possible. I also find this idea of COI in wikipedia bizarre. If you work for an organization, you are likely to have a fair bit of expertise on how it works and therefore pretty well qualified to edit on it. That's not a COI, surely? PointOfPresence (talk) 08:50, 30 July 2009 (UTC)


 * You are right, but the problems are not easy to fix.


 * 1) There is an inherent conflict between writing about what you know and not writing about what you are involved in. This does not affect people who write about hobbies--it does not affect me when I work on English history, or about things we're only generally connected with, as when I do the bio of some geologist or chemist. In theory, you are supposed to wait until such an incidentally interested person happens to come along. In practice, we often do more than that. The bio of my graduate advisor was missing. He was clearly qualified as a member of the NAS; as nobody did it, I eventually did & in fact won one of our internal awards for filling the gap. It helps to have an established reputation when one starts. or to go slowly and check with people who are well known here.
 * 2) But there are problem. for example, I could have written that bio to omit the fact that his best known book is so well-known because it made a prediction about the future of biological science that turned out to be as totally wrong as a prediction can be. If you write about your organization, you might implicitly pretend it accomplishes all of its goals. You might assume all of its publications are equally well-received. You can place excessive links for our customary practice, and be annoyed when they are removed. You might exaggerate the importance of some of its features or events.
 * 3) It's inevitable that any human organizations--especially a very large one--even that tries to be egalitarian-- develops at least informal power structures. If you want a guide to our ethos, I recommend the free online version of How Wikipedia Works by Phoebe Ayers, Charles Matthews, and Ben Yates (also available in print).
 * 4) Our impoliteness to beginners is a well-known disgrace--see WP:BITE for an essay on this. Many  admins try to ameliorate this, but the prevailing tone is that of a convention of 19-year old science fiction fans, with some irascible elders of the previous two generations mixed in. We even have a rule that says, in effect, if you want to change something, don't be reluctant to start a fight about it, WP:BOLD
 * 5) This is a unique medium. There are no real precedents for something this size without top down control that actually produces a widely useful product. Even to people who have been here many years, things can seem peculiar, and often are. The only practical thing to do is to learn to work the way it works, and gradually try to affect things as you learn how . DGG (talk) 16:38, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith
Hi, the discussion on the talk page of this article is getting unpleasant. Some useful info on the journal was actually added to a section from another article and it is now proposed to merge this article there. I think that the current article, plus the info in American Scientific Affiliation would make for a rather nice journal article. I do however see a problem in showing the notability of this journal, as all sources currently (especially those in the ASA article) are from the journal itself or rather weak otherwise. All we have at this point is the library coverage data that you provided. Your input will be appreciated. Thanks. --Crusio (talk) 19:39, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * commented there--it's the indexing that does it. But I would not think it a major error if it gets merged.  DGG (talk) 04:38, 23 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Things seem to be getting out of hand there, with two users redirecting the article against a clear majority of opposed votes on the talk page. The bullying behavior goes as far as putting a 3RR warning on my talk page, although I reverted just 2 times, as much as the person warning me. Your input might be helpful. --Crusio (talk) 12:20, 5 August 2009 (UTC)


 * "Perspectives", again


 * This edit ahcllenges the inclusion of indexing info for a scientific journal based on WP:NOTDIRECTORY... --Crusio (talk) 14:37, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Where a journal is indexed is in fact not only relevant content, but one of the key factors in its notability, to show that others consider it notable enough to include in authoritative indexes. We're usually a little selective about what we include, and include only major indexes -- as was done there--the one listed is the major index in its field.    DGG ( talk ) 14:44, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Notability for academic journals
Actually, I could do with your input, I've just realised. Is there any agreement on thresholds of notability for academic journals? There's a discussion happening at Modern Theology about whether or not it is notable. I suspect so, and the other user suspects not, but I don't think either of us is sure. :-) Cheers, Ben Aveling 09:57, 9 August 2009 (UTC)


 * We generally go by number of libraries and coverage in the standard indexes for the subject. In general, a journal by a major publisher is notable. And there is an project to make an article in Wikipedia for every journal cited here. DGG (talk) 15:45, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
 * incidentally, my comment from a current discussion elsewhere in Wikipedia, in response to a claim that WoS is the standard for journal significance:
 * I completely disagree with this as a general statement, and I doubt many information scientists or research librarians or scholars in the humanities would agree either.  WoS includes only a very select list of current journals in the humanities, and similarly Scopus--exactly because of the many possible journals--so many not because they are insignificant but because they are most of them very small in contrast to science journals.  Even in the   social sciences coverage varies, and education gets very minor coverage in WoS, and only a little better in Scopus. Indeed, that's true even the the sciences: it is perfectly true that in molecular biology and physics a journal not in ISI is unlikely to be important, this is not the least true in descriptive biology. As a recent paper, by a well known information scientist, Howard White et al, in Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, the best journal in my subject,  "Libcitation: A measure for comparative assessment of book publications in the humanities and social sciences" doi 10.1002/asi.21045 (v. 60, no.6,pp.1083-1096, 2009) says in its introduction
 * Thomson's Arts and Humanities Citation Index and Social Science Citation Index fail to cover many journals in book-oriented fields. Particularly likely not to be covered, because of economic constraints on Thomson or any similar publisher, are journals from the smaller anglophone countries of in languages other than English. ...[and ]Scopus is of no help to people in the humanities.
 * The purpose of the authors is to propose counting the no. of books in libraries as an alternative measure--something I have long advocated here and for which am glad to have such authoritative support. I'll be discussing the article further, as I think it's of general relevance to how we evaluate in these fields.DGG (talk) 00:41, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Scientific journal notanility standards

 * I have created a first draft of a notability guideline for academic journals, so that we may have a better chance in future to avoid things like this. Please feel free to comment/correct/complete, etc. I would appreciate your comments either on the draft's talk page or here. Thanks. --Crusio (talk) 13:06, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
 * basically OK, if it's accepted. I'll look at details later.   DGG ( talk ) 19:09, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Dear David, your talk page is so busy, that I am taking it off my watchlist, so when you find a moment to respond, please do so on the talk page of the draft guidelines. Thanks! Wim --Crusio (talk) 15:47, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

grey literature subjects
All of these are currently listed, and are close to expiring, at Proposed Deletion. Please review for copyright violations and to see whether multiple non-trivial published works exist. All that I've done is cleanup, to make the articles legible. Uncle G (talk) 13:56, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Grey Literature International Steering Committee (GLISC)
 * European Association for Grey Literature Exploitation (EAGLE)
 * Grey Literature Network Service (GreyNet)
 * OpenSIGLE
 * System for Information on Grey Literature in Europe (SIGLE)
 * I was sort of hiding from this. merges suggested, but I am not sure which ones to merge into which. Possibly SIGLE into System, and GLISC and Eagle into GreyNet. Some do have refs already I may rewrite & condense enough so that copyvio won't be a problem, but I've asked the author to try first.    DGG ( talk ) 16:21, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * You can't hide from us. &#9786;  Anything that you can do to solve the now-identified copyright violation problem is a good thing and would be most welcome. Uncle G (talk) 23:53, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Librarian's assistance requested
Hi DGG

I have come across a ton of advertisements written for Informa publications. However, as far as I know, they're all journals that should be covered here. I've taken out some of the obvious advertising and not further tagged them. Can you please review a smattering of them (to be found at links to Informa plc and links to Informa) and see if this is the right approach? If you could look at some of my edits to these articles to see if that looks sufficient for a first-pass at despamification, that would be great.

Thank you, Bongo  matic  05:24, 16 October 2009 (UTC)


 * thanks for letting me know. This is going to take a while, but I;ve seen even worse. Unfortunately, it was back in June, but I will try to get in touch with them also, as I have with other companies.  Take a look at the message I left them at User talk:Lexicater] with what I usually tell people about what we want and do not want in a journal article. The main thing that needs removal from many of them at this point is the repetitive description of the company. I did a cleanup of Critical Reviews in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Drug Metabolism Reviews as examples, but there's lots that need to be added. If you could clean up the others & check that the thumbnails have a correct fair use rationale, it would be very helpful. I'll check the main article on the company. There's a secondary  benefit of getting these articles--it gives us a start on articles for  the editors in chief, who are almost always notable.    DGG ( talk ) 20:28, 16 October 2009 (UTC)


 * In my numerous edits to these articles, I removed some information about the availability and manner of such of archives, thinking it was too product-description-y&mdash;would like your thoughts. I've just tweaked two of your edits to handle them differently than I had in mine of yesterday. Your thoughts on appropriate level of detail would be welcome. Bongo  matic  06:02, 17 October 2009 (UTC)


 * The availability of electronic archives is I think important information, though it can be expressed very briefly, without details. It's as important as the number of issues published a year, though not as important as the year publication began. The key factor is the year from which they are available; a secondary one is whether they are at the publishers site (the usual case) or elsewhere. The details of how one has to pay or subscribe to get them usually are not--except that for some major journals (not these ones), there has in fact been considerable published or reliably posted controversy about it, as when previously freely available information is withdrawn--when there is, the information can usually be given best in the article for the publisher. The way you did it for Drug Metabolism Reviews was just right, better than my rough pass at it. Ditto for Critical Reviews in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology -- except that since it is a long established journal, I would put the editor in a separate section unless he is the only editor, because we also need to include earlier ones, with the dates. That particular title has a somewhat complex publication history, and needs to have it expanded to show earlier publishers and titles. That articles are continuously published online rather than as convention  issues is I think important, and also if they are available in some manner before formal publication. Interestingly, every biomedical journal that accepts work published by the NIH & some other agencies is now at least partially a deferred open access journal, because the manuscript versions at least of those articles need to be made available open access 6 or 12 months after publication. I'm not sure we should state it every time--It's very important but is universally applicable.    DGG ( talk ) 06:27, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Adamantius (journal)
Dear DGG,

I have just, belatedly, managed to locate the deletion review for this article. Your comments are excellent. It is beyond my expertise to evaluate Excellence for Research in Australia or their methods, but I do trust yours on such matters. I'd love to know just a little more about the clues that have shaped your opinion if ever you have a few minutes.

Some quote from you that get my hearty "aye aye":
 * "consensus of reasonable opinion" -- that's the standard! :)
 * "Whether something is technically peer-reviewed is not always the determining factor" -- so true! There's psuedo-review and great professional editing, just as you say.

Personally, I'm not entirely sure about an article on the journal myself, all I've been concerned about is the way a speedy got rid of it because I wasn't around, then a hopelessly inadequate discussion was closed as though it were adequate. That's lip-service to what is not an unreasonable procedure in theory. It's a serious matter if people, with good intentions no doubt, still undermine a procedure by making it too easy. No big deal regarding Adamatius, but it can be done regarding more serious articles also. That's an issue we should all care about.

My thoughts on Adamantius:
 * I'm working on the Song of Songs. The earliest Christian commentary (a huge one) on SoS is due to Origen. So I find myself in need of secondary sources on Origen. Adamantius came to my attention very quickly as a published forum for Origen research. For me it is an index, and a review journal, and so it is for other academics. That need not make it so for Wiki. Wiki can only accept what can be pretty easily defended against all comers on grounds that need to be fairly intuitive.
 * I'm afraid the only major theological index I have access to is ATLA (impecunious old me). Their three criteria for incorporation of serials (rather like your own) are broad enough to accept "strong professional editing". Can't remember where I read it now, but Adamantius accepts only papers by it members (all professional academics, all published in the journal). I believe they do accept some outside papers, but only from equivalently qualified experts. One prominent academic, at least, lists his contribution to Adamantius on his CV. I noticed an Adamantius review quoted at Amazon or on the fly-leaf of a book somewhere.
 * The thing is, baby researchers like me are hungry for bibliographies, we can spend ages groping around to find out basics concerning a journal and its affiliations; or, if we're lucky, we find a kind academic whose listed such stuff on her staff bio page, or, better still we find a Wiki page with a bunch of links (including other Wiki users interested in the subject area): bingo!

Ultimately, I don't particularly care too much about Adamantius, but I do care very much about regular editors expanding their understanding of what Wiki can achieve and why processes were originally set up the way they were. Second generationism is a real phenomenon.

Anyway, that'll do for now. Very, very best regards to you. I've seen your excellent work all over Wiki. Please, please, please keep it up! We all have so much to learn from you. Cheerio, Alastair Haines (talk) 14:43, 1 December 2009 (UTC)


 * It's not the Adamantius may not be an excellent thing. (I read one of the article myself while I was examining it, as I too find the field of some avocational interest.) But it really partakes a little too much of an informal professional newsletter. Many newsletters do serve the purposes of current awareness for new articles in specialized fields  I'm perfectly willing to reconsider how we deal with them--I know of a number in various fields that might justify Wikipedia articles if we worked at establishing it.  I've  used a few of them myself--online and even print-- at various times--in at least one case the only reason I stopped was that it ceased. This sort of publication is obviously going to be even more common in the web than it was previously. It is also going to be even easier to have totally unimportant ones, as with any web publication. But even in print there are an amazing number of them, not just from academic groups, formal and informal, but essentially every organization in the world, from block associations on up. they have the same function for current awareness and news. They have been a very difficult type of publication for libraries to deal with in print--librarians tended to be very reluctant to treat them seriously because of the work entailed.  I went to considerable trouble to try to maintain files of some specialized ones in ornithology, a specialty of my department. So I do understand.
 * the problem is NOT DIRECTORY. The AfD came at a rather bad time, where we are trying hard & over some objections to establish the notability of at least all the journals that are in major indexes). I am going to admit that strategic considerations were a part of it: I thought it advisable to very clearly show that i thought some journals non-notable. I know we really shouldn't use such strategic factors in AfD, but in practice we do, both pro and con. I do have a solution to the Directory problem-- a part of Wikipedia called something like WIKIPEDIA TWO for such borderline items in all subjects: it would hold the sort of local and special-interest material that we currently do not accept in Wikipedia, and thus satisfy the inclusionists, and also take the borderline material of the same sort that we do include, satisfying the deletionists. It would differ from Wikia in holding to WP:V, and being free from advertisements and promotionalism. the world does need a good Directory  and perhaps the sport of people who work here are well situated to make one as a natural by-product of the work on the encyclopedia.    DGG ( talk ) 20:08, 1 December 2009 (UTC)


 * If you want to know about deletion, follow David around. Whenever I come across his opinions, and they differ from mine, It still annoys me a little, and makes me wonder if I'm not really the one who is wrong. (usualy, I still stand by my opinion, but his judgement and experience strongly influenced me as a devoloping editor). Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 15:29, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Please be aware of the discussion at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. As usual, your contributions would be valuable. -- Orange Mike  &#x007C;   Talk  18:58, 1 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Sorry DGG, I've been very slow to return and digest your thought-provoking reply.
 * Strategy is my concern here too, I will admit also. My strategy concerns people overestimating the reliability (and hence finality) of various processes, like deletion, but not just that one. But, like you, it's not just strategy here for me either.
 * I'm very committed to the WP:Academic journals project (at least in my heart), I create stubs regularly, and they seem to last. 90% of what people can regularly use regarding a journal can go into the info box, but producing that is only 5% of the work. If I knew that dumping Adamantius would directly lead to accepting 50 other journals, I might consider some other course of action, but I'm not sure that's how things would actually work.
 * For your enjoyment, if you've not read this already, I was somewhat relieved to find the Australian Research Council methodology was layed out clearly and not so very bad as I feared. In fact, there are a number of things I like about it. Here's their report on the journal ranking process.
 * Unless I'm mistaken, there are four tiers of review: the ARC expert staff, professional academies, select professional research experts (and I doubt that means a mere handful of easily available or not-too-busy academics), and--in some ways most impressively to my thinking--they had a public review phase also.
 * Contrast: ARC methodology gives Adamantius top 15% (after a year-long process) v. Wiki methodology gives SALT (in less than 24 hours).
 * Conclusion: I'm not sure best strategy is appeasement, instead of peace in our time, we might lose Poland. ;)
 * PS I had a little something published in the Review of Biblical Literature, which I note the ARC system rated at C (Journal of Biblical Literature is A*). If I had something published in Adamantius, that would help my chances of government support: it would be a step up.
 * Something seems right about that. Those Italians are somebodies, I'm nobody. Cheers friend. Alastair Haines (talk) 15:21, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Nobody thinks deletion is really reliable. I estimate that about 5-10% of the keeps are for articles that probably should not be kept, and about 10-20% of the deletions for articles that could be kept or merged. Those much less willing to preserve content than I    might  put it at 10% in both directions: I do not think anyone would claim better than a 10% error  rate. It should be under 5%, which is typically the best one can get for open processes like this.  When people ask me if an article will survive deletion  I will usually say at most, "this article will almost certainly pass AfD,   but AfD is to some extent unpredictable and a matter of chance about who appears for the discussion and who closes it."  There have been various suggestions for improving it, and  I think the most effective approach is increasing the number of people without strong feelings on a particular article or topic who appear. We've done one modest improvement I & others have advocated for years: increasing the time from 5 to 7 days. And there's a few others: the increased frequency of  relists, the frequent arguments for WP:BEFORE.


 * I am aware of the details of the Australian ranking system, and in fact know some of the people involved in it. I consider it highly susceptible to a strong feeling from any one prominent academic, regardless of the amount of bureaucracy that surrounds it. As you say, the purpose, identical to that of most such schemes, is to decide on the allotment of government funds to universities by seeing whether the journals in which they publish are good or not.  This gives a conceivable motive for doing that, which I think makes it invalid for even that purpose, let alone other use. I know nothing in the literature--even the unpublished report literature on bibliometrics found at SIGMETRICS--to support its validity.


 * The reason it was salted was because of the altogether improper way you tried to re-introduce it under variant names. Doing this made dealing with the fundamental merits impossible. I have however found data that would support inclusion--In addition to WorldCat, I looked at Zeitschriftendatenbank (ZDB),  and found 16 libraries in Germany-- Germany is noted for good library coverage of theology. Suggestion: wait a bit, rewrite emphasizing all the library holdings using not this but the other libraries, such as the a similar number in Italy and France. The place to start is the marvelous federated search engine  at  Karlsruhe Virtual Catalogue,  . Hints for using it: select libraries by small groups--it times out otherwise without doing them all; select the longest timeout available--your time zone shouldn't be a period of overload there; do not use the All Fields search box--some of the catalogs included here do not support it. Do it in user space & let me know--in January.    DGG ( talk ) 18:35, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Death of a source
Did you see the latest on Kirkus Reviews? A pity. Bongo  matic  22:58, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Nova Science
Dear Dr. Goodman!

I ask you to fix the Nova article; I tried my best today to bring it into a more objective and better shape.

Wikipedia is not the place for the gymnastics of publisher downgrading, if people have a grudge concerning a publisher, they should sort it directly with them in a civilised way.

Franz Weber —Preceding unsigned comment added by Franz weber (talk • contribs) 18:12, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Trust the process: Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth
I note that you deprodded Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth. I don't think this journal passes the GNG and I don't think it even passes your proposed WP:Notability (academic journals). According to Ulrich's Periodicals Directory, there are 300,000 journals active today. What proportion of them are indexed by services other than Ulrich's? I'd say most of them. I put it to you that Wikipedia cannot be a wiki version of these indexing services. For example, at Articles for deletion/E-Century Publishing Corporation, why would a new single purpose account come in to vote for the company? Because these guys are just as desperate as any spammer to promote their product.

Now, I've been combing through the articles on journals and found that only a tiny percentage of them are deletion-worthy. Why is that? Because the system works. First, people only create articles on Wikipedia for three reasons; they feel that the topic is important, they are trying to win the WikiCup, or they are spammers. Then editors work on the articles, or work on getting them deleted, following the GNG. The ideal end result is a set of articles that are on important topics. Any topic that is too obscure to have secondary sources is also too obscure to have the average Wikipedia user looking it up. Think about it; why would anybody be looking up a scientific journal by name if they hadn't already gotten the name from somewhere?

So I think that you should trust the GNG and the process by which we winnow out the wheat from the chaff. Abductive (reasoning) 06:27, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

We are not far apart in practical matters, though we may be in respect to the principles for notability in general. I too trust the process--the process of  consensus, and the ways in which it develops. (Actually, what else can I do but accept it?) But I certainly try to affect its application and development to the extent I can convince people, or people realize themselves that my view might meet the situation.)   For this particular title, I think you;ve misjudged the situation. For most of what you want to delete, I think you judged very well.    DGG ( talk ) 21:53, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
 * response
 * 1) What you merely call chaff, I call junk. Of the about 75 to 100,000 peer-reviewed journals in Ulrich's, most of them are junk. This is getting even more true because of the extreme ease of started a new online only open access journal; free off-the-shelf software is available, and if the journal is small enough, there is no direct cost at all, and the indirect costs are small and not very noticeable.  We did not really consider the problem of these minor internet journals when we developed the guideline, & we need to think further. Nobody has ever suggested having articles on everything in Ulrichs. (or in DOAJ).
 * 2) The primary criterion I use personally for a new journal is the publisher, and perhaps that should have gone in the guideline, and will when we try again. Wikipedia covers new projects, sometimes even before they have been released, if the responsible party is sufficiently important. Just as we'd cover a new book by Rowling, or a new Disney film, we should cover a new journal from a publisher if essentially everything the publish is notable. This is the case for some, not all, of the major society and university publishers. It is not the case for even the best commercial publishers. It is certainly not the case for any online publisher I know of, unless one considers PLOS an online publisher.
 * 3) As for Johns Hopkins UP, the publisher of the journal you mention, as in that category-- it is  one of the really first rate American University Presses for academic journals in the humanities. It is also perhaps the most widely known, because of MUSE.
 * 4) A secondary consideration is the editor in chief--I am very skeptical about editorial boards.
 * 5) Another secondary consideration is the nature of its first few articles. A new journal tries to have at least a few strong articles by prominent people to start out with. They 've been publishing almost 2 years, and they do.
 * 6) I have never said I consider all indexes as automatically showing notability, though the presence in the major ones in the field is a major factor. I was the one who insisted on not claiming this for  Medline. In science, I'd certainly say that the consensus of academic opinion is that presence in Web of Science is however a sufficient factor by itself. I am no longer as sure about Scopus as I used to be--they distinguish themselves from   Web of Science by having more journals, which necessarily will cause some doubt.
 * 7) For this journal, the presence in the two major historical indexes is a factor towards notability, but does not determine it; I would regard its absence as an indication of lack of notability
 * 8) As for notability in general, our approaches differ: the longer I work with the GNG, the less I trust it, in either the positive or the negative direction. It lets in so much clearly non-encyclopedic material that we have to qualify it very strongly by the details of what we consider a RS for notability, and by the provisions of NOT. Most contested notability afds are the debates of those two broad and imprecise groups of factors. It also excludes too much in some areas: the web, open source software, publishers, professors, journals, newspapers. In practice if we confine ourselves to the accepted sources, it would yield a criterion of either famous, or infamous. When I came here, I accepted it as a clever device, but I've learned better--and it is getting even less dependable with the increasing availability of minor sources in Google News. Its role is a fall-back when we can't come up with something logical for the subject. I know consensus is not with me yet for my statement here in general, but in practice,  we don't actually judge afds by meeting the GNG, but by additional criteria particularly NOT. (weird that we say we will include everything in human knowledge, except...., when the exceptions include most of human knowledge) Formal guidelines here usually lag behind  actual practice. fortunately, in most cases your approach and mine lead to the same conclusions. When they do not, the community decides, and what it decides seems to vary in an unpredictable fashion.
 * 9) As for why people create articles, most articles are created because someone is interested in the particular topic.--and this includes journals, which have normally been added one at a time. Some are added by publishers, who of course have a tendency to include everything they publish. If they do so, or if they include what amounts to advertising, I stop them. I have even gone off-wiki to stop them. if they can be convinced to add factual matter at a reasonable rate starting with their most important journals and watching carefully the reaction, they can make useful contributions.  Some of what has been added recently is in this class, but a good deal has not been, and will be quickly removed. What will take longer to remove is the promotional material in many articles on even existing journals. Most of it is not due to publishers--other people simply quote or paraphrase what is on the web site.

I am pleased that you think that most of what I want to delete I judge well. What do you think of Articles for deletion/Doon Theological Journal?
 * replies

There is an underlying reason why the GNG and more specific guidelines are generally congruent; the efforts of conscientious editors like you and me who are trying to build an encyclopedia. I think Wikipedia has too many authors and not enough editors at present.

You go offline to remonstrate with publishers? That's really great.

If Ulrich's lists 300,000 journals, and about 1/3 are peer-reviewed, what proportion of those are listed in selective indexing services? I notice that many of the indexing services lack articles on Wikipedia; I would be willing to create articles on them. Have you not done so because you think they are sub-par? Abductive (reasoning) 03:03, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Gene Therapy and Regulation (Journal)
Could you please look at Gene Therapy and Regulation (Journal)? I don't know whether the article ought to be kept. At this point, nobody has tagged it for notability. - Eastmain (talk) 02:14, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I made some necessary additions to the page that will indicate what I think of it.    DGG ( talk ) 05:43, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Journal Info
Hi! I would like to ask, how do you search for information regarding a journal? for example, on it's citations? cheers Nkf31 (talk) 00:50, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

The easiest way, available to anybody, is with Google Scholar
 * 1) Go to Advanced Search, put in the full journal name  and then a year or year range. The articles will display in approximate inverse order by citations to them.
 * 2) The total number of articles included will be at the top, but there is no easy way of getting a simple total of citations.
 * 3) it gives zero results if you get   the wrong abbreviation--full name works better even though it looks like it does not fit in the search box.
 * 4) This is fairly complete for most English language journals, at least for recent years, & in some cases back to the beginning,
 * 5) It will generally include some citations from books; the count is likely to be higher than with the more exact indexes.
 * 6) coverage of G Scholar is changeable and can not be determined except by experiment.
 * 7) There are numerous inconsistencies, especially for earlier years
 * 8) I never know how far to trust it

For accuracy, you need to have access to Scopus or Web of Science or JCR, and the journal has to be one of those included there.
 * 1) For total figures for major journals, the ones that are in JCR, use it.  it doesn't go article by article, but it gives the overall sum very easily, with other useful statistics. For details, the tutorial is at ; anyone can see it, you do not need access to the database itself
 * 2) For totals for the less important but probably  notable journals,  the ones not in JCR but in Scopus, use Scopus Journal Analyzer-- description available at . The information is less detailed than JCR, but very useful. It gives totals, not by individual articles.
 * 3) To analyze article by article, as when I look to see how many citations the most cited article in a journal has, I find Scopus the easier & more reliable. Select  Sources, search by  by ISSN not title. The various years will display. You select each in turn, the articles display, you sort them by no. of times cited. A similar method works in Web of Science. If you want totals, you can add them up manually..
 * 4) In some cases, the same things can be done within individual subject fields using an indexes for the subject field-- if that index support a citation search, as a few do.
 * 5) Remember that in all cases the citing journals in the count are only the ones included in the indexes--citations from other journals are not included.   DGG ( talk ) 03:43, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

List of academic journals
Hi DGG, List of academic journals has been prodded, and the prod warning went to because he created the redirect. A few years ago, IF would have been seen as a reasonably neutral inclusion criteria, but now it would be viewed as a POV. I'm not sure what the solution is, but I worry that there are many similar lists. John Vandenberg (chat) 12:54, 26 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Yeah, it was me who prodded it. Sorry, I did not realize that this was created as a redirect and later converted to an article. I just went to the earliest item in the history log and left a notification at the talk page of the user who made that first edit. About the list itself, in its current form, as it has existed since 2006, the list has no identifiable inclusion criteria specified in it. While it would be useful to have a list of "top ten" journals in each discipline, I really do not see how a reasonable set of inclusion criteria can be devised. The IF changes from year to year and in any event, it is not a particularly accurate indicator of a journal's standing in a given discipline. This is certainly true in my own area of research, mathematics. Vitali Milman has a good article about shortcomings of the IF (from 2006 AMS Notices) where some of the problems with IF are explained. There is no systematic literature covering academic journals as such, which is why Notability (academic journals) has been created (and also why it is proving difficult to promote to an actual guideline). Perhaps the list could be userfied for a while, so that people could experiment with it and try to come up with some viable ideas for what inclusion criteria might be. But as it is, the list has been sitting in mainspace since 2006 essentially as pure WP:OR, and that isn't right. Nsk92 (talk) 13:38, 26 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I appreciate your note and what you did--I have been aware that this list has always been unsatisfactory, and I always meant to get back to it. It takes BOLD action sometimes to get results around here (partly because there's so much that needs improvement, so much that it sometimes gets so discouraging that we do nothing at all) But I think objective criteria can be found, & I intend to do it in the next few weeks, because it will take a while to deal with all the work: For the subjects covered by JCR, for each of the 80 or so JCR subject categories, I intend to include those in the top 5 or 10 as judged by any of 3 criteria: impact factor  (the classic 2-year impact factor), 5=year impact factor (Now available for the first time after people have been asking ISI to do it for over 20 or 30 years now--they have the well-earned  reputation of being a slow moving organization), and number of citable article published. Of course it will change from year to year, but so does everything else. (the ISI fields because that's the only consistent source for the disivisions) We don't not list the Academy Awards because there will be a new set next year. It will be an interesting choice whether to do a new list each year, or update the old one (actually we can have both because if we do update each year, the old ones will still be in the history.  I know the objections to the use of IF as a primary measure, and I consider them either  misunderstandings or attempts to use it beyond its limitations. It was never meant for comparing across subjects; it was never meant for comparing primary and review journals; the 2-yr IF is not as  appropriate as longer periods in many subjects where the cited half life is particularly long, and mathematics  is among them  (the principal argument in the article you cite is that 5 years is better for math-- which nobody has ever disagreed with) , there is a small effect from time of year published, there is a possible effect from self-citation,  and from multiple other causes (Garfield discusses all these himself in detail in his published papers, available on the web at --& the ISIS help discusses them also, which does not prevent people from using them wrongly.) Personal opinion. FWIW: I am perhaps influenced in liking the conventional  IF for its almost exact correspondence with actual use in my own subject of molecular biology--which is not surprising as IFs--& SCI-- were primarily developed for this subject. But in my personal experience, the people who complain most about the use of Impact factor are the people who very unfairly suffer from the improper use of the value to compare across journals in different fields, as in early unsophisticated RAEs--but current RAEs have gotten a little better at this, even if they tend now to rely on unsupported opinion of academics, which correlates nicely with the journals that were important when they were a graduate student.   (There are also complaints from those who publish or edit the lower ranking journals, but that is another matter  from the incorrect I recognize you think differently, & we can discuss it on the talk p. after I work on the article--but it will take a while. I'd appreciate patience with it.
 * And more generally, the intention of that page was also to show the variety of journals; this was not a great idea, probably this is much better done in text, where it can part of an explanation.   DGG ( talk ) 01:26, 29 December 2009 (UTC)


 * OK, thanks. Maybe this discussion should be taken to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Academic Journals to get extra input. It is good news about a 5-year IF, that was sorely needed in my own field, math, where it usually takes more than 2 years from submission of a paper to its publication and where the useful shelf-life of a paper is often about 15-25 years if not longer. My personal opinion is that List of academic journals is still going to be quite problematic and I am more sympathetic to things like List of scientific journals which are somewhat more narrowly focused. For the former the choice of "one and only one key journal each" subject is really quite problematic. E.g. for math it currently lists Journal of the American Mathematical Society. This is a super journal, but I don't believe it is no. 1 in the field in terms of prestige (again, based on my own subjective opinion as a research mathematician). Annals of Mathematics, Acta Mathematica and probably Publications Mathématiques de l'IHÉS and Inventiones Mathematicae are more prestigious, IMO. I think deciding which journal from a given discipline is really no. 1 is going to be problematic, given the absence of systematic literature about academic journals by field. Looking at the mathematics section of List of scientific journals, I also find it quite problematic, although there the problems are probably caused by the inadequacies of the 2-year IF for math journals. E.g. the list now includes Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics, Journal of Algebra and Topology. IMO, none of them belong on a "top ten" list. Bulletin of AMS only publishes surveys and expository papers (but no new research as such); these kinds of papers usually are well-cited but the journal is not considered to be particularly prestigious. Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics is a bit of a mystery to me regarding why its IF is so high; most likely it is because the journal publishes a lot of applied math and math physics papers that tend to be cited not in pure math journals but in experimental sciences and applied math journals. The publication cycle (from submission to publication) in those fields is much shorter than in pure math, which probably accounts for driving the IF higher. But, as far as I know, Communications on Pure and Applied math is not considered to be an especially prestigious journal in pure math. I have no idea how Journal of Algebra got on the list -it is at best in the top 50 in terms of IF and probably around that level in prestige as well. Topology used to be highly regarded (before the revolt of its editorial board who quit on masse a few years ago), but even in its heyday it was not as prestigious as, say, Journal of Differential Geometry  or  Crelle's journal. So figuring out a good set of inclusion criteria for "top ten" lists is going to be tricky. Nsk92 (talk) 02:35, 29 December 2009 (UTC)


 * In practice everyone likely to be interested will see it here also, but I'll link to it. Anyhow, the only real way to express this is going to be to do it, or at least part of it. Those two lists say the same "the  most influential, currently publishing journals in each field," limited in each case to 10. But the intention  was to use academic for the best of the best, which you are saying   think might not be a great idea, & I agree is going to be the harder  part.   There are two basic sorts which need different criteria --the ones in the sciences + hard social sciences, where journals are the primary information source, and where citations are relatively rapid; and the humanities,  where books are, and journals are both secondary and cited very slowly. JCR has persistently & in my opinion correctly refuses to cover the humanities. The advantage of using JCR subfields is it deliberately tries to put journals of similar citation patterns together;  JCR separates math & applied math.  I agree there is no point in giving "number one"--for one thing, it's almost always a review journal, which really need to be separated. I think I'll deal with this by not saying top, but simply the highest of the criteria used, in sortable tables--that at least is an objective measure & a valid statistic. As I said it will take some work. I know math is distinctive. If you can think of a suitable additional measure, we can use it.
 * The reason why there are some unlikely journals is due to either spam, or a deliberate decision to cover all the subfields. I think I stopped trying to keep the spam out about a year ago--I should have persisted.
 * I cannot employ my usual methods with the humanities--especially in fields where there are journals of record, and journals where the action is. There also tends to be more of a national division:. As I understand it, Yale French Studies is the leading English language journal in its subject. but well might not be in France. In this area, we may have to go by reputation.    DGG ( talk ) 05:24, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Writers Exchange E-Publishing
Hi. You de-prodded this article because of a claim that the publisher had won a national award, indicating possible notability. I checked and in fact the award went to an author, not their publisher. IMHO that's on the wrong side of borderline as far as notability goes. Any objections if I restore the prod? andy (talk) 16:57, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
 * In the past, we are in general fairly inclusive of self-publishers and the like, because of the need to have information about them when judging other articles. My error, but publishing a prize winning author might be enough to make the company  notable. Please first check a/c WP:BEFORE that there are no better or additional references, and if you cannot find any, AfD is the place.    DGG ( talk ) 17:02, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

eCPC
Dear DGG, Thank you, once again for your kind help on my recent article contributions...Although feel bit of disappointed to see the e-Century Publishing Corporation has been deleted, I'll respect the decision based on the consensus. To be honest, still I do not think the "consensus" on this deletion is well-informed since some of us may not have time to do the research on what this “company” is doing. As I mentioned in the original discussion of AfD for this article, we cannot judge the notability of e-Century Publishing with the criteria that we are using for a music band, a local Pisa restaurant, etc, and we should not judge it as "un-notable" because of it is too young (2 years old)either. e-CPC is actually publishing five free real professional medical journals, with four of them indexed in the ultimate database, as you know for the medical science---Pubmed and Pubmed Central, the achievements which may take decades to reach for a new publisher like this. In addition, it is indeed well accepted by the medical communities as you can see from the journals published by this publisher. Since I am new to Wikipedia in terms of article contribution, and surely have lots to learn, do you think that it would be appropriate to recreate this article, or take this case to "deletion review" which may take us too much time since most of us are the full time researchers? Your advice will be highly appreciated....Happy New Year!OpenAccessforScience (talk) 19:07, 28 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I think this was not a great decision, because the article could have been used for information about the journals,. which are almost certainly not yet notable. I do not think Deletion Review is the best course at the moment, because the notability of new scientific journals is being seriously questioned here, and an adverse decision there will not be helpful. It should be possible to write the article in such a way that it contains not just a list of journals, but information on them--this makes it a combination article, and as such, it can quite possibly be defended. You are almost certainly not the best person to do it because of conflict of interest. I will try it myself, or perhaps Crusio will, once things on the journal front get a little clearer.  It would naturally help immensely if there were some sources about the company itself written by 3rd parties. If you should see any, let me know here or by email.  But keep in mind that  essentially all the  the people here working on this topic have made a clear decision, that I support, at least for now,  that inclusion in PubMed by itself (or, for that matter, its open access repository, PubMed Central) is not sufficient for notability. In future years, as they get included in Web of Science, and have a sufficient publication record, then, and only then, write the articles. I with that  you would finally understand the basic principle, one that has my full and even enthusiastic support, that we do not exist to give publicity to new but worthy journals, but to include article about them once they are already notable--just as for all topics here    DGG ( talk ) 19:45, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The admin is moving the article into my user space to work on, & I will do so, but not for at least a few days.   DGG ( talk ) 03:25, 29 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your help. Yes, I do support eCPC just like that I have been supporting Wikipedia, although in different ways since I am a srtong believer that the knowledge should be open to every learning head...if I see something supportive, I will surely let you know. A scholar search result can be seen here: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=e-century+publishing+corporation&hl=en&as_sdt=2001&as_sdtp=on. A quick count of the citations indicated that IJCEP has about the "Impact Factor" of 2-3, while IJCEM has an IF of 1-2. Given Google Scholar can only has access to very limited journlas, the actual impactor factor should be higher. Hope this info halpes. Best regards.OpenAccessforScience (talk) 04:16, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Just so you know why it ended
Articles for deletion/Bocconi School of Law Student-Edited Papers --Grasshopper6 (talk) 11:35, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Searching for sources on journals
While creating the article on the American Journal of Physical Anthropology (which I got onto DYK), I discovered something quite interesting. Google Books doesn't reveal all the sources. Take a look at the results from a Google Books search for "American Journal of Physical Anthropology", here. Note that it says there are 2,210 of them. But if you scroll to the next page, it cuts off at 25. So how did I find the sources to demonstrate notability of the AJPA without resorting to the claim that because some indexing service or another lists it, it must be notable? By searching with an additional word; for example "American Journal of Physical Anthropology" founded which ends at 723 results or "American Journal of Physical Anthropology" influential which ends with result number 90, or with the founder's name. This opens up the Google results somehow. I hope this offers some hope that journals can conform to ordinary WP:PSTS policy in future. If you have a journal which you think should have secondary sources but you couldn't find any, let me know so I can look into it. Abductive (reasoning) 22:09, 12 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Brief answer: The actual proof of its importance is the Social Science section of  Journal Citation Reports, where its  impact factor  is 2.353, the third highest in the Anthropology category out of the 61 journals there--that's the conventional  2 year impact factor;   the newly available 5 year impact factor there is 2.690, sixth. I have just added the above sentence to the article. The supplemental proof is its status as one of the first anthropological journals, but I need to find that out more exactly, and will check   Worldcat or Ulrichs for dates. Additional proof is that  it is in 653 worldCat libraries there--and that's primarily the US  & Canada. If you also check the european union catalogs in WP:Book sources, you will probably  find at least a hundred more. To find the sort of secondary references you were looking for requires a search in indexes dealing with the specific subject field, ones prepared well enough that one can search specifically for items about a journal title, rather than items in that journal or making reference to articles in that journal. G Books, as you found, does not do this. G Scholar claims to do some of this, but does not work as it ought to . Proper work requires proper tools, and they are not free on the web. If I did not have these resources available, I would not work on the subject, as I'd merely be guessing.


 * But the real way of doing searches of this sort (or any investigation in the humanities --and publishing counts as one of them for the purpose, even if it's science publishing) does not rely only on indexes. There are two other methods that are necessary.  The easier one  is to use bibliographies--to find books or articles or web sources that are about publishing in general, or publishing in the subject, or how to do research in it, reviews of progress in it, or biographies of workers, or about relevant universities and institutes and museums, and look at the references in them that seems likely--repeat the cycle with the nee sources found until one keeps finding what one has seen already. The harder one is to check systematically every   journal, newsletter, or book having anything to do with the subject not just the index, but page by page as well. Continue for everything relevant in several major research libraries in several countries.
 * Anyone reading this is probably thinking that this is more suitable for a PhD thesis on the subject --or even a career--than for a Wikipedia article, and they're right. This is what we explain to the new graduate students. But anyone can do pieces of it that look like they give a high yield--after a while one gets a feel for that.  I've been meaning to do just this with the New Dictionary of Scientific Biography, where at about a hundred places the importance of particular journals are mentioned.   DGG ( talk ) 20:31, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

another aspect of this tomorrow.  DGG ( talk ) 00:38, 14 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for responding. I'm glad to see you say one should not rely only on indexing services. But I feel that real secondary sources say that the AJPA was selected as one of the 10 most important in the last 100 years, which a two or five year impact factor would never be able to say. Proof of notability is always supplied by secondary sources, not directories. My problem with relying on pure numbers is twofold. First, it will result in unexpandable stubs which just repeat the information in the infobox. Second, such articles don't offer any way to distinguish the important journals from the unimportant ones, and they all start to look the same. People were looking for an article on the American Journal of Physical Anthropology before it existed (page views), more than typically read the average journal's stub. This is why I feel that allowing all these spammy stubs is turning Wikipedia's treatment of journals more and more directory-like. Abductive  (reasoning) 01:48, 14 January 2010 (UTC)


 * OK, this is tomorrow's part:
 * Some preliminaries:
 * first, I do not see wrong with being able to express all the material of an article in an infobox; the amount of information put in infoboxes is continually increasing, and we are not using them to their full potential. In a sense, it's the goal we are moving towards and why we have infoboxes: tagged data like this is the basis of a semantic wiki. I look forward to the development of interfaces that will permit either a tagged or a prose view of the same material--but semantically tagged data has the advantage of being accessible for analysis, indexing, comparison, and rearrangement. It would be great to be able to easily automatically arrange our journal articles, for example, by date of founding, or alphabetically by editor. such devices as categories are inadequate substitutes.
 * Second, of course we can distinguish the lower from the higher quality journals. We give the impact factors, the number of articles published, he length of existence, the sponsoring bodies, a link to the editors, the circulation when available,  where they are indexed, and all sorts of other information.We can give much more if we do the work: the rank on various lists, the number of holding libraries, the notable articles published, and so on.  People can thus use whatever standards of importance they like, for which we can get & include the information.
 * There is an immense lower level of ostensibly peer-reviewed avcademic journals that nobody judging for an objective standpoint really thinks notable. There are also increasingly many new journals, most of which will never become notable. I'm not arguing for including all of them. In general, nobody but their publishers do so argue, and we should and do deal with them like other similar things.
 * A good case can be made for including every journal listed in a WP article, notable or not, as a special exception, so that people have some basis for judging the relative reliability of the sources. This is a somewhat different approach than our usual one, and the implication for the /e are sufficiently far-reaching that I am not going to discuss it here and now, to avoid confusing the issue..


 * More generally:
 * you and I see the entire general question of notability differently. I've given my general views before, but as applied to this subject: I think the GNG and related sourcing criteria for notability criteria are just a rough guide, to be used only when nothing specific can be found. In this case there is something measurable and relevant to be found, which outside of Wikipedia has reasonable correlation with other measures of notability used in the subject, and remains the primary criterion used by scientists and librarians--notability is judged by the standards of the subject field. Numbers are  the only accurate way of evaluating anything. Otherwise we have only mere verbiage, which people necessarily use for things they cannot measure, but should not use for things that they can measure.  I shouldn't say "mere",  because most of the important things in human life are things we cannot measure. A great many of the things in the world, however, we can. Whenever we can measure, we should. Even if we're going to continue the analysis in terms of emotional impact or philosophical concepts, the data are the basis on which we can discuss the values.
 * The GNG is not "proof" of notability and nowhere in the guideline does it say it is. It says it provides the  "presumption" of notability -- "presumes" is a word somewhere in the middle between "guess" and "demonstrate".  The concept behind the guideline, though is sensible, & has considerable merit: for many thing (including scientific journals),  notability can generally be determined by seeing if people have paid attention to something. Sometimes  (including for scientific journals), we can measure the amount of attention they pay by abstract reproducible numerical criteria.  The notability  of an academic  journal is in terms of the function of a journal, which is to provide citable information to other academics, and this can be measured, and is the impact factor (or other related measures).  As Samuel Johnson said (18 April 1783) "'  That, Sir, is the good of counting. It brings every thing to a certainty, which before floated in the mind indefinitely.' "
 * The reason must have inclusion criterion is that they help the reader, by including what might be expected to be in an encyclopedia and excluding the stuff that nobody reasonable would expect to find in one. The difficulty here  is that there has never been an encyclopedia like this one, and it is hard to say what the readers expect. We could justify by this fundamental purpose  covering any degree of triviality--if we could do it while avoiding spam and promotionalism and POV, which are the three really key things a reader does not want to find in a reference work. Within those limits, the reader is best served by knowing what will be found-- thus, we include the biography of every fully professional athlete, every piece of popular music that charts, every fatal general aviation accident, every railroad station, and so on. We've extended it to less obvious situations by general consensus less than a guideline but that nonetheless is a practical working rule: every secondary school, every settlement.  We may include other athletes and other music and other schools,  but this requires special justification, for which public attention plays a very large part.  I wish we could could find such rules for as many classes of articles as possible, to eliminate the need to decide individually whether to include thousands of articles, and instead have the time to write and improve them.  (We decide at AfD on inclusion of 1000 articles a week--think instead if we could use the effort to write that number of articles.)
 * I intend to continue work on this topic along the path of the essay  Notability (academic journals).  It is an essay, not a guideline, because of the ability of a minority view to prevent consensus on  guidelines. Fortunately for our ability to decide anything, that does not prevent actual working consensus  at AfD or elsewhere.   Although you did not support it as a guideline, I still hope  to convince you to agree with me.  I think this a subject I understand, and, although I say at the top of  my user page "I do not attempt to convert my opponents--I aim at converting their audience," I do not think of you as an opponent.   DGG ( talk ) 16:20, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, you have been converted by me in the past on other topics. I do generally agree with you, but the problem is not our differing interpretations, it is the people who add articles that should not be there. Then, you tend to argue for keeping at AfD some journals that really should be deleted, perhaps because you fear setting a precedent. At the same time, you make statements that I wish I could agree with, if they were made part of WP:Notability (academic journals) and enforced. For example, you say that any journal that has an impact factor is notable. I would be willing to say that any journal that has an impact factor greater than 2 is notable, or even greater than 1 if that would get a compromise. You say that listing in Scopus is evidence of notability, then muse that Scopus' standards seem to have declined lately. I view this whole issue as being in flux, and my nominations are of what I consider to be the worst offenders. It would be nice if you could trust me a little bit more on this, as I do not envision the deletion of very many articles on journals. Abductive  (reasoning) 17:09, 14 January 2010 (UTC)


 * As for your work on journals, I agree 90% of the time. Considering we're approaching it so differently, it does imply a considerable measure of practical consensus.


 * I try to argue at AfD in any field for keeping  articles for which there is a reasonable chance of suitability, & I support the Wikipedia policy that if is on the balance, the default is to keep. My emphasis has always been on keeping content first, and improving it as we can.   As for Scopus, they've changed; though Scopus has always tried to cover more journals than WoS, at present, they've overdone it--most conspicuously, with some new open access titles.  It's not that I'm musing about it--I can plainly tell that they've gone wrong. & after I get their full explanation and discuss some examples with them, if I think appropriate I will write in the RW something about it. (I've had many previous talks with their people over the years, & I am starting a new discussions with them about it, for I think they are lowering the quality of the index.) You may have noticed that I no longer argue that Scopus alone shows notability.   Any journal ISI finds worthy of being in JCR is in my view unquestionably notable as a sufficient sole consideration, I very strongly disagree with you that only journals with high impact factors are notable.     -- (incidentally, if you were to think about such a consideration, you should in any case do it as rank within subject--fields differ widely: IF 1 in botany is much more significant than in molecular biology; there;'s an additional complication that in some fields JCR  covers in much greater depth than others--it is lamentably weak in the applied social sciences, and in the area of classical biology as in other diffuse fields there are many journals any specialist would regard as important that they do not cover). It might not be entirely irrational to   say that in some subjects the bottom 10% are not automatically notable, though I think it much more rational to say they all are.  ) As a librarian I was rather selective & ruthlessly cancelled subscriptions  to titles that were not used locally--but $ are finite, unlike  Wikipedia.


 * Now, to speculate: sure, the notability of journals in Wikipedia  is in flux, but I think & hope it's in flux towards being more inclusive.  The questions is how much more inclusive than the current standard to be--as I mentioned way above, I am considering supporting the idea that any journal used as a reference in Wikipedia should have an article, whether or not notable).  Our purpose is to help the reader. To quote Samuel Johnson again, when asked if he would include in his Lives of the Poets any poet the publishers wanted, however much of a dunce he might be, Johnson replied, "Yes,   and say that he was  a dunce."  NPOV is a basic principle. N is not.     DGG ( talk ) 05:53, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Journal of Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry
Hi, I was trying to create a redirect from Journal of Thermal Analysis (a former title) to this article, but that page is for some reason restricted to admins. Could you please do this? Thanks! --Crusio (talk) 07:34, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Unless someone fixed it in the last 3 min, I don't think that was the case&mdash;created the rd. Bongo  matic  07:37, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks, somehow I got a warning message... --Crusio (talk) 07:51, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, never say you weren't warned . . . Bongo  matic  07:53, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Question re: your response about Food and Chemical Toxicology
Hi DGG. Noticed your post at WP:RSN regarding Food and Chemical Toxicology. I'm impressed by the indexing and ranking info you dug up. Is there a search engine somewhere that spits out those statistics, or do you have to go to each of the abstracting services websites individually and see whether they include a journal. This is information that I've looked for in the past, and I even started to compile resources for looking this stuff up here. It would be great to know if there is a one stop shop for this stuff. Yilloslime T C  01:07, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I use Ulrichs -- it's not a free database, but all large libraries should have it. it is very reliable and inclusive for the purpose of getting basic facts about journals, and is librarian's  one stop source. If you do not have access to it, I'll gladly run searches. Note that what I presented is a summary--Ulrichs not only includes every possible service however specialized, but it also includes redundant versions and services which are subsections of larger services

FWIW, the full list of indexing service for this journal in Ulrichs exactly as listed without removing duplicates is :
 * Document Delivery Services
 * British Library Document Supply Centre (3977.026900)
 * C I S T I
 * Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (C N R S), Institut de l'Information Scientifique et Technique (INIST)
 * Chemical Abstracts Service Document Detective Service
 * German National Library of Medicine
 * Information Express
 * Infotrieve
 * IngentaConnect
 * Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering & Technology, Document Delivery Services
 * Thomson Reuters
 * Abstracting & Indexing Sources(active, electronic):
 * Abstracts on Hygiene and Communicable Diseases
 * Academic OneFile (3/2004-)
 * Academic Search Alumni Edition (1/1/2002-)
 * Academic Search Complete (1/1/2002-)
 * Academic Search Premier (1/1/2002-)
 * AgBiotech News and Information
 * AGRICOLA (AGRIcultural OnLine Access) (Dec.1968, v.6, n.6-)
 * Agricultural Engineering Abstracts
 * Agroforestry Abstracts (Online)
 * Aluminum Industry Abstracts (coverage dropped)
 * Analytical Abstracts (coverage dropped)
 * Animal Breeding Abstracts
 * Aqualine Abstracts
 * Aquatic Sciences & Fisheries Abstracts
 * ArticleFirst (vol.28, no.1, 1990-vol.47, no.12, 2009)
 * BIOBASE (vol.34, 1996-)
 * Biocontrol News and Information
 * Biological Abstracts
 * BIOSIS Previews
 * Biotechnology & Bioengineering Abstracts
 * Botanical Pesticides Abstracts
 * C A B Abstracts (Online)
 * C S A Mechanical & Transportation Engineering Abstracts (Cambridge Scientific Abstracts) (coverage dropped)
 * Ceramic Abstracts (coverage dropped)
 * Chemical Abstracts
 * Chemical Hazards in Industry
 * Chemical Safety NewsBase
 * Computer and Information Systems Abstracts Journal (coverage dropped)
 * Corrosion Abstracts (coverage dropped)
 * Crop Physiology Abstracts
 * Current Abstracts (Jan.2002-)
 * Current Awareness in Biological Sciences
 * Current Contents
 * Dairy Science Abstracts
 * Derwent Biotechnology Abstracts
 * EBSCOhost
 * Academic Search Alumni Edition: indexed, 2002-02-01 - present
 * Academic Search Complete: indexed, 2002-02-01 - present
 * Academic Search Premier: indexed, 2002-02-01 - present
 * Academic Search Research & Development: indexed, 2002-02-01 - present
 * Academic Source Complete: indexed, 2002-02-01 - present
 * Academic Source Premier: indexed, 2002-02-01 - present
 * EBSCO Food Science Source: indexed, 2002-02-01 - present
 * EBSCOhost MegaFILE: indexed, 2002-02-01 - present
 * Environment Complete: indexed, 2002-02-01 - present
 * TOC Premier: indexed, 2002-02-01 - present
 * Electronics and Communications Abstracts Journal (coverage dropped)
 * Elsevier
 * SCOPUS: indexed, 1982 - present
 * EMBASE
 * Engineered Materials Abstracts (coverage dropped)
 * Environment Complete (1/1/2002-)
 * Environment Index (6/1/1973-12/1/1981)
 * Environmental Sciences and Pollution Management
 * Excerpta Medica. Abstract Journals
 * Field Crop Abstracts
 * Food Science and Technology Abstracts
 * Forest Products Abstracts
 * Forestry Abstracts
 * Gale Group (Cengage Learning)
 * Academic OneFile: indexed, 2004-03 - present
 * Expanded Academic ASAP (with Ingenta): indexed, 1995-01-01 - present
 * InfoTrac Custom: indexed, 2004-03 - present
 * InfoTrac OneFile (with Ingenta): indexed, 1995-01-01 - present
 * Ingenta: indexed, 1995-01 - present
 * Global Health
 * Grasslands and Forage Abstracts
 * Helminthological Abstracts
 * Horticultural Science Abstracts
 * I B Z - Internationale Bibliographie der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftlichen Zeitschriftenliteratur
 * Index Veterinarius
 * InfoTrac Custom (3/2004-)
 * Internationale Bibliographie der Rezensionen Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftlicher Literatur
 * Laboratory Hazards Bulletin
 * Maize Abstracts (Online)
 * Materials Business File (coverage dropped)
 * MEDLINE
 * METADEX (coverage dropped)
 * Microbiology Abstracts
 * Nematological Abstracts
 * Nutrition Abstracts and Reviews
 * Nutrition Research Newsletter
 * Organic Research Database
 * Ornamental Horticulture
 * Pig News & Information
 * Plant Breeding Abstracts
 * Plant Genetic Resources Abstracts
 * Pollution Abstracts
 * Postharvest News and Information
 * Potato Abstracts
 * Poultry Abstracts
 * Protozoological Abstracts
 * R A P R A Abstracts (Rubber and Plastics Research Association) (1927-)(1982-1984)
 * Reactions Weekly
 * Referativnyi Zhurnal
 * Review of Agricultural Entomology & Review of Medical and Veterinary Entomology
 * Review of Aromatic and Medicinal Plants
 * Review of Medical and Veterinary Mycology
 * Review of Plant Pathology
 * Rice Abstracts
 * Science Citation Index Expanded
 * Scopus (1965-1981)
 * Seed Abstracts
 * Soils and Fertilizers
 * Solid State and Superconductivity Abstracts (coverage dropped)
 * Soybean Abstracts (Online)
 * Sugar Industry Abstracts
 * Swets Information Services
 * SwetsWise All Titles: indexed, 1995 - present (volume:33;issue:1-volume:47;issue:10)
 * TOC Premier (Table of Contents) (1/1/2002-)
 * Toxicology Abstracts
 * Tropical Diseases Bulletin
 * Veterinary Bulletin
 * Veterinary Science Database
 * Vitis - Viticulture and Oenology Abstracts (Online)
 * Weed Abstracts
 * Wheat, Barley and Triticale Abstracts
 * World Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology Abstracts
 * World Surface Coating Abstracts
 * Abstracting & Indexing Sources (active, print-only):	 Abstracts of Mycology
 * Mass Spectrometry Bulletin (coverage dropped)
 * World Ceramics Abstracts (coverage dropped)
 * Abstracting & Indexing Sources(active, other):
 * Index to Scientific Reviews
 * Personal Alert (E-mail)
 * Abstracting & Indexing Sources (ceased):
 * Arbeitsmedizin
 * Bibliography of Agriculture
 * C S A Neurosciences Abstracts (Online) (Cambridge Scientific Abstracts)
 * Chemical Industry Notes
 * Chemical Titles
 * Current Packaging Abstracts
 * Faba Bean Abstracts
 * Health and Safety Science Abstracts (Online)
 * Index Medicus (1982-)
 * Index to Dental Literature
 * Inpharma Weekly (coverage dropped)
 * Packaging Science and Technology Abstracts

Most journals also list all the relevant indexing services somewhere on their promotional material, and that too is reasonably reliable

But there is also a fairly new service from JISC, thr UK academic library cooperative: Academic Database Evaluations Tool which includes a number of databases. The ones it includes (not limited to those listing this journal) It would have given me some of this information (Embase, PubMed, Scopus, WoS). It would not have included the two key indexing services, Chemical Abstracts and Agricola. In other subjects, it omits some of the really basic ones, such as PsychInfo and Lexis--but it';s a convenient starting point.
 * Bibliographic Databases:
 * BIOSIS Previews (1969 - present)	A
 * British Education Index
 * British Humanities Index (BHI)
 * Compendex
 * EconLit
 * Embase
 * GEOBASE
 * International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS)
 * MLA International Bibliography
 * Scopus
 * Sociological Abstracts
 * Web of Science
 * Zetoc (BLL tables of contents)
 * Full Text Databases (what I call aggregators, and the different indexes for each company are different subsets of their total collection)
 * ABI/INFORM	 	(Proquest)
 * Academic Onefile	(Gale)
 * Academic Search Complete	(Ebsco)
 * Academic Search Premier	(Ebsco )
 * Business Source Complete	(Ebsco,)
 * Business Source Premier	(Ebsco)
 * General Onefile	About	(Gale)
 * SocINDEX with Full Text	(Ebsco)
 * Wilson OmniFile Full Text, Mega Edition

I will add some more major freely accessible lists I know about relevant to what you are doing to your page. I appreciate what you are doing there.  DGG ( talk ) 03:56, 2 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the detailed answer. It's too bad it's not a free resource, though I wouldn't really expect that comprehensive to be free. Thanks for your offer to run searches. And please, by all means, contribute to my subpage if you are so inclined. Yilloslime T C  04:41, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Deletion review/Log/2010 January 30
In light of the nominator's words, does International Free and Open Source Software Law Review pass Notability (academic journals)? I'm inclined to vote restore but am not sure that it has established notability. Cunard (talk) 06:54, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
 * can;t imagine how I missed this DR. Commented now., Thanks.   DGG ( talk ) 07:29, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
 * You're welcome. Thanks for finding the source. Cunard (talk) 07:34, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Ariadne (Web magazine)
Hi David, could you have a look at this one? Is it an academic journal or a "professional and trade magazine"? Thanks, Wim --Crusio (talk) 09:11, 9 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Both; it is to some extent a non-commercial European-focus digital-library equivalent of Library Journal, but with   a much greater focus on article content, rather than the mainly news and book review focus of LJ.    They call it a magazine because it has no formal peer review, and librarians try very hard to make the distinction. but it does have very consistent editorial policy about quality and content.  Many of the articles are at least as good as those in the library periodicals, although they usually describe the results of major projects, not formal academic  research studies. They have the authority of the contributor and the editor and to some extent the sponsoring bodies, who are UKOLN,  "a research organisation"  possibly the best such one in the library profession, (that should have an article)  UKOLN is funded by MLA,  the UK Museums, Libraries and Archives Council  &  JISC, the[[ Joint Information Systems Committee  (JISC) of the Higher Education Funding Councils, and is thus a NGO, though I never thought of it that way.   Though published from the University of Bath, it was never even at the start in the least a  local periodical. I take its work very seriously, and would cite its articles just like a journal, as does everyone else I know in the profession. I will expand the article.
 * There is, btw, a rather similar US periodical D-Lib, also technically a magazine but for all practical purposes a journal--D-Lib and the purely research-oriented JASIS are my personal main professional sources.     DGG ( talk ) 20:55, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Two academic journals from India
I noticed articles created by another editor for two journals published in India which may not be notable, Indian Journal of Botanical Research and Indian Journal of Multidisciplinary Research. The articles may have been deleted by the time you see this message. A handful of citations show up at Google Scholar but not the journals themselves. I don't have access to Ulrich's online. If you think they might be notable, please add any evidence for that to the articles. Many thanks. - Eastmain (talk • contribs) 07:14, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
 * as the only way to delete them would be PROD, they'll be here for time enough to look carefully.   DGG ( talk ) 12:01, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Journal of Hypertension
This article was almost entirely wr=itten by someone at the journal's publisher, and although it's likely a reliable source itself I am not sure how to find sources about it. Materialscientist doesn't know where the journal is indexed, so I thought I would see if you have any ideas before this one shows up at AfD.--otherlleft 00:35, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I did some more revising, and left a note for the editor involved. Thanks for calling my attention to this. W&W is the major medical journal publisher in the US, and in general I would expect any journal they publish to be notable . This one at any rate certainly is, as I'd be prepared to defend from the impact factor alone.   DGG ( talk ) 03:39, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks - I figured it was possible that a journal like this isn't notable, but didn't really know how to evaluate it. The account's been blocked, but hopefully someone will be along and see the note you left.  At least I found it instructive!--otherlleft 04:42, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Medical News Today
You removed my PROD on the medical news today because you claims it has notability, because it has a single reference. The single reference is from it's PARENT company's website. How is that notable? Please head back to the talk page and give me some explanation. SeanBrockest (talk) 17:33, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Search for it in Google Scholar. Cited by many first rate academic and professional medical journals,  even BMJ, and PLOS Medicine and some specifically  deal with it as a good or typical or widely used source, for example:   4 " The December 22, 2006, Web journal Medical News Today features on its front page a limited and sensationalistic account1 of a recent research report from the Columbia group on the long-term cognitive effects of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) from a key specialty journal, ,    etc. etc.   DGG ( talk ) 19:21, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

EContent
This was speedily deleted a couple of times, but as far I can tell it's a division of Information Today, Inc. Can you check if that was the article contents, and if so merge it? If not I'll create a redirect. Also, do you have access to the magazine? It has articles on CMS companies that are regularly brought up at AfD, e.g. Ektron. Thanks, Pcap ping  07:52, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Multiple meanings. Yes, It is one of Information today's publications, but that does not seem what the actual article was about. The publication is in my opinion notable, and I will try to write an appropriate article, or section.   Though they used to send it to me, , I do not now have ready access-- but i will check around how I can get to it.,    DGG ( talk ) 08:11, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

International Journal of Computer Processing Of Languages
Hi David, I am confused about the title of this journal. The second "of" is spelled with a capital O, even on the home page of the journal. Does that mean that this should be out title of the journal article, too? Somehow this strikes me as incorrect capitalization, but for the moment I have not moved the article to another cap title yet. What do you think? On another matter, thanks for taking care of the Bioinformatics list. I was getting a bit frustrated, I think, because there are several bad journal lists like that and it's a lot of work to clean them up. A while ago, I did a rather large cleanup of the List of African studies journals (which originally was 3 separate articles). One of the original editors has been unhappy with my intervention (see my talk page), so I would appreciate if you could have a look at that list, too, to see whether I was justified or perhaps a bit too enthusiastic (not to use the word Draconian... :-) Thanks! Wim. --Crusio (talk) 09:22, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
 * PS: I moved this comment down, because it appears you did not see it :-) --Crusio (talk) 16:28, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Cataloging style is not to use capitals at all within a title, so LC doesn't help. Publisher tend to regard the way they present the title as a matter for the design staff, and the variations they make can be annoying. I'd use it as is, and make redirects from the alternates.
 * The African Journal question is a little  complicated. Normally I think we should give some degree of special consideration to publications from such parts of the world, to combat cultural bias.  My impression at the time was that you were being over-demanding there. I'm not quite sure what basis to use, though.     DGG ( talk ) 16:59, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

RSN input request Journal of Genetic Genealogy
DGG, can you comment on the reliability of the publication Journal of Genetic Genealogy at this this RSN thread ? The debate has been active for over two weeks, and input from uninvolved editors essentially drowned by lengthy back and forth between the disputants (User:Andrew Lancaster, rudra and User:DinDraithou). Abecedare (talk) 20:44, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Restore Burn and Wound Research
Hi. Thank you for your help to date. I just wanted to ask how to establish notability and cite sources.The only source I have for the intro is the Restore Annual Report which is available on Restore's website and is a published document lodged at the Charities Commission in the UK. Similarily the Officers are also cited in that document and on the website.I did try to input a reference to teh website but did not succeed. I also presume that I do not need to cite the sources for the Publications since sufficient detail is provided ? I know that you deleted quite a few of the Publications but wonder why as many of them were in well known scientific magazines.

Is there anything else i can do to fix? I am very new to Wiki

Thanks Conman98 (talk) 19:42, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I gave you some additional advice on your user page.   DGG ( talk ) 20:46, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Gutenberg-Jahrbuch
Could you have a look at this one? The publishers website gives IBSN numbers ofr the different annual volumes, so I am not sure this is best described as journal. I am also at a loos how to categorize this one, History journals? Thanks. --Crusio (talk) 21:17, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Not that you asked, but unmistakably notable--the leading publication in the world for the field. How to catalog annuals is one of the variable aspects of library cataloging. The distinctions between journal, periodical, and serial are remarkably complicated, and have changed from time to time, and make frequent use of the words "usually" and "typically" In this case, i consider it essentially a periodical because each issue contains articles on a variety of different topics by different authors.  My tendency would be to simply call  this a periodical in the text, but to categorize it as a journal as the closest category we have.  Many series of all sorts have separate ISBN numbers for each volume, to  deal with the possibility of someone wanting to buy just one volume.  I see it has an ISSN, 0072-9094; I see LC calls it a periodical in the subject heading,  and several hundred libraries classify it that way . At Princeton, there were some annual series held both by the chemistry and biology libraries, which one library dealt with as individual books, and the other as a periodical. (I say "was," because by now such duplicate subscriptions are a thing of the past even there).    DGG ( talk ) 01:14, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the ISSN, I'll add it to the article. I indeed didn't ask about notability, because it looked fine to me. I'll call it a periodical but categorize it as a journal. --Crusio (talk) 08:11, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship
Final question for today :-) What do you think of this journal? Is it notable? The website looks rather amateurish. It is listed in a few databases, but I don't know how significant those are. --Crusio (talk) 21:24, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The question of how to judge e-journals of this sort is going to be a quandry. We cannot go by circulation; since they are free, many libraries simply add them all to their catalogs. This one has been going a number of years, which means it at least is able to get articles. (I checked a few, and they are not really worse than the rather low average quality for the subject field.)   The contributors are from reputable libraries; the ed. in chief holds a significant university position. The publisher sponsors a number of such journals, some of which are a little better, some a good deal worse. there is no house style--most such journals nowadays actually use a web designer--they tried to do it themselves.  (But some of the pioneering e-only journals, even the good ones, were and remain almost as primitive.) There are two major librarianship indexing services, and it's in both of them. Both of them are moderately selective. that puts this one above the  bar. I think the safest course at present is to hold to that principle.  DGG ( talk ) 02:33, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Adamantius
Hi, I got a message from Alastair Haynes on my talk page about possible new evidence for notability for this journal. What do you think of this ARC list? Does the fact that it ranks a journal high establish notability? Thanks. --Crusio (talk) 10:36, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Hi. This journal has been included in the journal list of L'Année Philologique since LXXIII (2002-3). I've not looked into this closely to ascertain the extent of the indexing, as that would require reading an awful lot of paper for very little gain. Someone with access to APh Online may be able to quickly ascertain whether this is systematic indexing or the the journal name being kept on the list as a result of a few interesting articles. More details at User:John Vandenberg/sandbox. John Vandenberg (chat) 12:15, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I consider that sufficient reason to keep the journal. I expect to have a chance to actually look at it tomorrow, during a visit to the Princeton Theological Seminary to give a talk about WP there. I suspect the journal is  much more substantial than the online portion indicates.  DGG ( talk ) 17:24, 5 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I've restored Adamantius (journal). John Vandenberg (chat) 03:24, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

An accident
Hi Dave,

I accidently created a mainspace list at List of ARC religion journals. I'm not sure that's a bad thing, actually, because when I realised it was live, it forced me to put in a brief lead and some external links that verify the material (and answer broader questions too, like the final review committee membership).

If you happen to drop by that page, you may like to try hitting the final ARC Rank column of the sortable list. Of course that puts top, A-ranked journals at the top of the list (but retains alpha-sort within that).

I would rather like to start from the top of the list by rank, and stub some of these journals. I've had others catch the vision for such work when I've kick-started things before.

Anyway, just thought I'd let you know I'd done this, accident that it is. Of course, the same thing could (or might be prefered not to) be done for other disciplines, and/or other national or international research ranking organizations. I've little preference myself, just so long as there's a list of major theological journals somewhere.

Cheers, Alastair Haines (talk) 08:49, 22 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I've seen the page. I had not gotten around to discussing it with you. We have lists of journals in .... at various places, but we make them ourselves, & they contain journals with articles or obviously qualified for one only.   As you know, I think the list to be prepared by a dubious technique, but it is a widely known one for which references to the list can be found. If they are added, the article is probably supportable.  DGG ( talk ) 13:58, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Several new articles about academic journals
Please see Special:Contributions/Mpmpl_journals for articles created by about a number of academic journals. I cannot judge their notability. Eastmain (talk • contribs) 12:21, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * at least one,Annals of African Medicine ‎is clearly notable, and I think Conservation and Society is also. I am checking the others. The contributor was blocked, as a spam only account, and I do not think he should have been. He just needs to adopt a new name.   DGG ( talk ) 17:43, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

User:Mpmpl journals
The only purpose of this account was to create articles for journals published by its company or employer. I didn't delete any of the articles because I figured somebody with more expertise in this area (I'll be honest, I thought of you immediately) would look them over. Since it is clear that this account was functioning solely to publicize Medknow Publications and Media Pvt Ltd (i.e., MPMPL) journals; it could have been blocked with a spamusername block. Instead, I used a soa-block, which it would have earned even if the username had been "Fred from Poughkeepsie". -- Orange Mike  &#x007C;   Talk  18:15, 13 May 2010 (UTC)


 * we disagree on this. I think that for a publisher to add descriptive information about their notable journals is a good thing, and if he adds improperly promotional material or articles about non notable journals they will be watched and removed. I gave him some advice about what to include on his user page. There is often no clear distinction between what is promotional and what is informative--but it is well established that an article about a product is not necessarily promotional. Blocks like these discourage people from adding valuable information. when people, including publishers, persist in actual spamming (which in a case like this consists customarily of adding links to the journals on every possible subject page), I block them. I certainly do block as only promotional, but not without warning unless the material is flagrantly & outrageously improper.
 * I see there is currently a  discussion on the general issue   at Wikipedia talk:Blocking policy  DGG ( talk ) 18:23, 13 May 2010 (UTC)


 * What, then, is the point of WP:COI and/or WP:AUTO? Every marketing/spammer/public relations account insists that they are not advertising, but providing valuable information that needs to be in Wikipedia!. What happened to referring them to Requests for articles? -- Orange Mike  &#x007C;   Talk  18:44, 13 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I've just gotten the following e-mail from this user, clearly displaying a complete failure to understand WP:COI and WP:AUTO:

I recently saw, you blocked my id that is mpmpl_journals considering spam.

We are the publisher of all these journals (http://www.medknow.com) and would like to add all our journals to WikiPedia.

Could you please unblock our id or suggest a way where in we can add details about our journals on WiKiPedia.

Thanks and Regards Pritesh Sheth Systems Architect Medknow Publications http://www.medknow.com -- Orange Mike  &#x007C;   Talk  12:56, 14 May 2010 (UTC)


 * they might like to add all their journals, but if it were up to me I would hardly allow them to do so; that is different from adding the notable ones.
 * The point is that I can describe anything in several fashions, some of which belong in a neutral information source, and some do not. If I say a restaurant is on Smith Street in Boerum Hill & give their web page, that's one thing, if I give the full street address, phone number, email, & fax, that's another matter. Look on their talk p. at the factors I suggest I suggest including and not including. That's the difference. Yes, the facts of their publication do imply how good it is, And consider a journal which is unequivocally the leading publication in the field, as can be shown by sourced third party objective evidence--saying so and giving the evidence is both informative and unavoidably promotional.

Consider as a more common example the description of an automobile. If accurate, it would be a similar description to that in an advertisement, except for the adjectives and the emphasis on cute minor features they hope will be appealing. But those are significant differences. as for RfArticles, I think the most knowledgeable person around should write the articles. That is overwhelmingly likely to be somebody with some degree of COI. The less need I and the few other eds. interested in the subjects field have to write routine articles on things like these, the more we can watch the people who do write them. These articles need work, and I will work on them. That is, I will work on them if I do not have to write the sort of routine informative article they could write at least as well themselves. The goal is to teach them how to do it, and watch them.  DGG ( talk ) 15:55, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

What journal articles should NOT contain?
David: Back when you wrote DGG's suggestions for what journal articles should contain. Your essay is mentioned on the WikiProject Academic Journals writing guide. With this background, I am wondering about WP articles that contain "Significant articles" section -- like this one:California_Law_Review. The authors of the significant articles do not like notable people and the articles written do not seem to have any impact on notable court cases. Is this an example of what an academic journal article should not contain. I'm looking for guidance in this regard. Thanks so much. --S. Rich (talk) 22:02, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * such sections should use an objective criterion. The one I prefer is very simple: most cited. (In law, I'd include citations from both journals and court decisions). You may be interested in a very recent paper:  Donovan, James M. and Watson, Carol A. "Citation Advantage of Open Access Legal Scholarship" Univ. of Georgia School of Law Research Papers Series, no. 11-07, published March, 2011,   Other criteria are possible: papers that win awards, papers by famous authors.    DGG ( talk ) 23:54, 5 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Thank you so very much!--S. Rich (talk) 00:36, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Open Biology journal
Your edit of August 14 creates a self link within the Royal Society page. I don't recall how this is normally addressed -- maybe unlink the name until a free-standing article is justified? Technically, the journal has begun publication. Its first and only article appeared in September: Glover D, Holt C, Johnson L, Parham P. 2011 Introducing Open Biology. Open Biol 1: 110001. DOI link. More info at Talk:Open Biology. Thanks, EdJohnston (talk) 02:49, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * That isn't exactly an article, just an editorial statement of purpose. The simplest thing to do is to leave it alone a little longer.  This was a compromise: my own opinion remains  that a journal from the RS is notable  the day it's announced--is notable even if it ends up not being published,   I'll check again to see if there are some 3rd party refs yet, to satisfy those who think they are essential.   DGG ( talk ) 05:31, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Open Biology
Hi

Thanks for your support on Open Biology. I have added some comments to the article's talk page and would be grateful if you could take a look and guide me. Thanks PointOfPresence (talk) 09:14, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I  added some information to show it is already  actually publishing articles. What is needed now is published comments from third parties about the journal -- DGG

Wascana Review
David, if you have a moment I  wonder if you could please take a very  quick look  at  this for me? It's only stub I've drafted, but  it's  way  off my  normal  area for referencing and I don't  think  I  can assert it's notability. If I'm  wasting  my  time with  it, don't  hesitate to  let me know and I'll  delete it. Thanks. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:14, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
 * It's not exactly an academic journal, but a literary magazine published from a university. I changed the stub & category to fit, and added some information. There is no special criterion for such magazines, but it is included in JSTOR and that should be sufficient for notability. It's probably indexed in a few places also, but I didn't check. If you can find the earlier editors, they should be added, because all of them are almost certainly notable.  DGG ( talk ) 16:46, 18 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Many thanks. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:12, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Conceptions of Library and Information Science
Ran across this while new page patrolling on the back part of the list. It would be good to have another set of eyes just look at it, and maybe another sentence or two in the intro. I can't think of anyone better for this than you. If you get the time. Dennis Brown (talk) 13:02, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I made some comments about library holdings on the talk p: the only really widely held one was the issue distributed as part of a very well known general series, but, given the small no. of library schools in the world, how much can be expected?   I had heard of the first vol, but never realised it was going to become a series. The problem I have with Wikipedia  articles on subjects like this is not that they're barely notable, but that there are so many much more notable ones we don't have. To some extent it's inevitable in a encyclopedia  where individual interest defines what gets written.    DGG ( talk ) 18:54, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Hindawi Publishing Corporation
Hi, could you perhaps have a look at this section on the Hindawi talk page? Is that blog indeed a reliable source? Thanks! --Guillaume2303 (talk) 21:53, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
 * commented there.  DGG ( talk ) 03:51, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Mechademia
If you have a moment, could you perhaps have a lok at this article? There are a few small problems here. There's a list of issues "sourced" to Amazon.com. There's also an extensive "reception" section with some cherry-picked quotes. And some editors (see talk) vehemently oppose inclusion of links to the journal page at Project MUSE (because that is apparently spam for a paysite, whereas the Amazon links are sources...) Thanks! --Guillaume2303 (talk) 08:26, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I'll comment there. But it's good to see a journal article that does have reviews of the journal.  DGG ( talk ) 01:53, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Mechademia edits
You made some comments about the scholarly journal Mechademia, which deals with manga and anime. The full text and all tables of contents for Mechademia are available for free at http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mechademia/ and all articles can be downloaded for free. I added the link on the talk page, but not in the article itself. Check the link yourself and then, if you want, add it to the article. Timothy Perper (talk) 18:03, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * If you go to the page, you'll find vol 4 of Mechademia is available. That wasn't clear in what I just said -- sorry about that. Hope this is clearer. Timothy Perper (talk) 18:22, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * No, that is not the case. Only sample issues can--at present, vol.4. If you see more than that, you are working within the domain of a college or library that has a subscription. I'll forward you a screen shot if necessary.  DGG ( talk ) 18:27, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I can get the ToCs from the link I gave, not only for Vol. 4 but for the others too. Except for Vol. 4, downloading costs money, but the ToCs are on the link. Let me go back and check them all. I'll be right back. Timothy Perper (talk) 18:33, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, all the ToCs are available -- I just checked. Timothy Perper (talk) 18:36, 5 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, that is what most journals do: the TOCs at least are readable, and there is a sample issue or volume available free. A great many, including all or most of the journal backfiles at JSTOR, have abstracts free also.  A very few don't even let you see the TOC, which is f rather silly--free TOCs and abstracts help sell article access.  Usually we do not give the specifics of this in the article, because it;s fairly standard and subject to change. We certainly don't let any journal doing this imply they have free access.   Now, if we could persuade the publishers to make everything free except the most recent issue or two, it would be a small step forward--though that of course is not open access,  which requires   the final version to be free to read and otherwise use upon publication, which, from the point of view of disseminating ideas, is the only acceptable solution. I sort of know this by heart, having spent the last 10 years of my professional career on negotiating and arranging for e-journal access for a university (and have kept up since then), and been since 1999 an active advocate of true open access.     DGG ( talk ) 18:27, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

True, true... I too have spent many years on the editorial boards of several scholarly journals but have mixed feelings about open access. Until we can find free money to pay the printer, journals will not be free to readers. In an ideal world -- well, in an ideal world, there would be world peace, clean air, no crime -- we don't live in an ideal world. So we have paid subscribers, who provide the cash we need to pay the printer. But I agree that ideally open and free access would be wonderful. Timothy Perper (talk) 19:10, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

JAOA – The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association
Hi, do you think this is the appropriate title for this journal? Or should it be "The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association" or "Journal of the American Osteopathic Association"? --Guillaume2303 (talk) 14:24, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
 * The title is whatever the journal consistently uses to refer to itself. Unfortunately, this, like many journals, use a number of different variants simultaneously. LC uses: "The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association." ; Worldcat shows an equal use of "The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association."" snd "The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association : JAOA". I read the title page as "JAOA : "The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association." This sort of problem is recurrent in libraries, and the way it is solved changes from year to year. But all sources I see  include the word "The" in the title.  DGG ( talk ) 02:49, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I guess I'll leave things as they are and just create redirects for the alternative titles. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 09:26, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Talk:The Cost of Knowledge
Hi, this certainly will interest you. In addition, I'd appreciate your input here. Am I fighting windmills? :-) --Guillaume2303 (talk) 09:24, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Academic journal publishing reform
Could you perhaps have a look at this article? I don't think it adds much to existing coverage and basically is just another POV-fork to promote The Cost of Knowledge boycott. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 12:24, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
 * It's a fork of Open access, but it is in fact a better written and balanced (though much less detailed) article than Open access-- which suffers from having been 90% written by Harnad in his unique style. The first part of the OA article has been improved by others, but sections 4 on still need rewriting, as they were written with the   intention of promoting Harnad's preferred version of OA. It is not easy to integrate material like this. The easiest way might   be to take the new article as the basic summary article.  DGG ( talk ) 16:24, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Hindawi etc.

 * Hi DGG, I was involved in the Hindawi discussion on RS/I. Now user:HandThatGives has closed the discussion even at ANI, just after my delivery speech as a newly appointed TM guru by Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement. My speech lasted for less than three hours.


 * Can I ask you: do you think this is something for ArbCom?


 * Now I feel helpless and that people can do whatever they want on Wikipedia. Granateple (talk) 01:10, 2 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I have never known anybody go to arb com and come out the better for it. .      DGG ( talk ) 01:12, 2 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your opinion. I have now made a RFAR. It can't hurt. When they made me a part of the TM movement, I had a good laughter, but it was also an unpleasant experience. If you are interested in my RFAR, it is called Two strange incidents. Granateple (talk) 05:25, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Courcelles has given you some good advice there; if you didn't want to take mine, perhaps you will take his.  DGG ( talk ) 05:36, 3 February 2012 (UTC)


 * On one user talk page you wrote that the closure statement was much too dogmatic, and “If you consider the subject a matter of arb enforcement, it should be done there.”


 * The Greek philosophers held slaves, and the thought that everyone has the same worth (equal before God) came to Western Civilization with Christianity.


 * I don’t thrive in an environment without Law. I leave now.


 * The mythology of “consensus” and “there is no cabal” impresses me. It reminds me of how your class society manages to keep status quo and prevent redistribution of wealth: the american dream is for everyone. The only difference is that the Wikipedia cause is good. Of cource it is.


 * PS I have nothing against you and you got my last word. Maybe because you were the only who said something. Granateple (talk) 17:07, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Lists of self-publishing companies
Inan effort to improve sourcing in our articles, me and a couple other editors have created two lists of self-publishing companies: It's our hope that by maintaining such lists, it will be easier for editors to identify self-published books. In a discussion at the WikiProject Wikipedia reliability talk page, The Blade of the Northern Lights said that you and another editor know vanity publishers very well. If you can provide any assistance with these two lists, it would be greatly appreciated. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 23:49, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
 * List of self-publishing companies in article space for notable self-publishing houses
 * WP:List of self-publishing companies in Wikipedia space for notable and non-notable self-publishing houses
 * a very useful project--it makes sense to have both lists, & I will add to the WP list as I see them,    I shall check them both;     because  these can be considered  potentially derogatory listings, they must have good references.   It may be necessary to qualify the statements in some cases.  DGG ( talk ) 01:40, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Quest, that is an excellent idea; DGG, that is an excellent caveat. BTW, Cambridge Scholars Publishing wants to publish the proceedings of your last faculty meeting/conference/Jane Austen Book Club. You'll get a letter on really nice looking letterhead in the next week or two. Quest, this goes for you as well. And for everyone, really. Drmies (talk) 04:11, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Self-publishing
Hi, we are still hoping you would make some suggestions on Talk:List_of_self-publishing_companies. Your help will be appreciated. History2007 (talk) 02:32, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
 * haven't forgotten: I will get there tomorrow or this weekend.  DGG ( talk ) 05:19, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Q. E. the journal
Well here it is ]. Originally, I was intereted in the topic. Then I discovered that this journal is an English version of a Russian journal. I think journals like this are very intereting because there is a collaboration between publishers operating in different countries. In this case it is a collaboration between U.S., U.K., and Russian publishers. I'd say it is obviously an effort to disseminate the science available in a given country. In this case of course it is Russian science. But more than that it seems that maybe the science community in Russia is a close-knit community. For example, the editor in chief hails from the Lebedev Physics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The Russian publisher is Turpion, a notable publisher in the science disciplines. In addition, this particular journal was founded by a Russian (Soviet) Nobel Prize laureate about 40 years ago. Also, two authors of the journal Physics Uspekhi (published by Turpion) are 2010 Nobel Prize winners (see web page] Steve Quinn (talk) 03:33, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't think it could really be considered the English edition of the Russian journal, but rather the English translation' of the Russian journal. The entire responsibility for scientific content is in the hands of the Russian editorial board.   Turpion is not a Russian company, but a UK company  formed in order to   provide translated versions of Russian journals, or, more exactly,continue the English translations of Russian journals earlier translated by a number of different enterprises, commercial and non-commercial. These translations mostly began at the end of the 1950s and the early 60s (after Sputnik), when it was realized that Russian-language science in many fields in the physical  sciences was fully competitive with science outside the USSR (and in  some   fields of applied mathematics arguably in advance),  and the Soviet government had a policy of requiring all or most publications to be in Russian.  They were of very great importance in the 60s, and published both by scientific societies, such as the AIP, and specialized branches of commercial publishers such as Consultants Bureau, I think independent at first but later an imprint of Plenum.  Their importance gradually declined, both because it became more acceptable to publish in English and because the collapse of the USSR greatly impaired the financial condition of Russian science , but many are still published and in some fields still quite important.
 * I think the entry must be the Russian title--as with Physics Uspeki which is actually and correctly a redirect to Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk, and the article should cover both the Russian original and the translation.  DGG ( talk ) 20:11, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

International Journal of Arts & Sciences
Hi! I need some help in checking to see the impact factor of International Journal of Arts & Sciences is, and if any selective indexes index this journal. Thank you WhisperToMe (talk) 17:46, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
 * the statement on its home page can be trusted: publishers invariably list every possible index, Therefore, this is not indexed in any selective index. As it is not included in Journal Citation Reports, there is no true impact factor. A rough impact factor can be derived from Google Scholar. They have published 126 citable papers. They all together have 62 references, , giving an impact factor of less than 0.5.  In my opinion, there is no way on earth this can be considered a significant publication. The confusion present on the web site of whether they are a journak or a conference publisher does not help. If the prod fails, AfD is the place for it, `  DGG ( talk ) 07:17, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Google scholar anomality
Hi DGG. In a past deletion debate one year ago which I found mightily suspicious (the submitter and the very last voter turned out to be single purpose-accounts in hindsight) you argued from your professional experience that worldcat holdings of about 100 and 2-3 reviews two years after publication would be normal. I took a look again and Duchesne's 2011 book "The uniqueness of Western civilization" has risen since from 60 to 160 university holdings and, according to his homepage, received 10 reviews by now (leaving out his reply to Elvin and amazon). I noticed Brill has published a paperback version this year, so they seem to consider the book a sales success. However, on Google Scholar the book still is listed as cited by none, even though many of the reviews can be retrieved via its database. Frankly, I cannot make sense of this. Do you have any idea and do you think his WP bio has reached the threshold of notability by now? Gun Powder Ma (talk) 10:26, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
 * GS citations are erratic, and their standards change, and nobody knows what they are. In the humanities, citations of a book are slow to develop as compared to journals. First, the book will only be cited by those at libraries who have the book, while a few of his articles are in widely held journals. Second, there is the time factor:  a 2011 book will show up in a library about 2 - 12 months after publication, a journal shows up immediately after publication. And   in the humanities, if someone reading a work decides to use it in an article, they would typically write the article in the next 2 - 12 months, and it would take in the humanities somewhere from 9 to 24 months before it was published.   If the citation was to be in a book, of course it would take at least double that time at each stage and sometimes much longer.
 * Additionally, his writings are from a definite pov, not widely popular at present in the academic world. A very few people will write using his work to support theirs; more will use it as something to refute. But the key qy. is whether he is well known enough that anyone would want to specifically write to refute him, or whether they will just include him among the other theorists they are refuting the next time they write on the general subject..
 * As for actual notability, you will have noticed that at the AfD I made no keep or delete comment. I limited myself to critiquing the bad arguments,particularly those from BG. I consider it borderline by my own  standard for   notability as an academic:  whether a person is a full professor at a research university or of equivalent quality. The usual requirement for getting there in the humanities is at least two books from major scholarly presses. Brill is in most fields a minor press, except for near eastern studies, religion, and related subjects; and UNB is a good but not superlative university. Of his journal articles, some of them are in important journals--but most are in a few journals of a rather specialized nature. The publications list should have included only peer reviewed journal articles, not book chapters.  What also influenced me is that  the article was written in the typical way to make slightly important subjects look more so: material  on the importance of his student work, on the importance of his advisors, of those  he has debated with, of those who replied to him, What influences me now much more is that too much of the article is a close paraphrase of his web page, which I carelessly did not think to look at during the discussion. if I had, I would said delete.
 * If you want to try it again, rewrite it from scratch. But I do not think there is enough new information; even if BG stays away from WP the result might be the same,  and another delete decision will make it much harder in the future.  What is needed is another book--it would be much safer.   DGG ( talk ) 18:29, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your opinion. Best Gun Powder Ma (talk) 20:02, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge
Could you have a look at the discussion here and tell me what you think the proper title should be? I was pretty much convinced that I was right, until this editor brought up the Microsoft argument. So now I don't know any more... Although, if it's a stone rule that we should put the company name in front of the product name, would that also mean that Nature would have to become Nature Publishing Group Nature? :-) Seriously, your informed opinion is welcome. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 17:44, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Academic Journals are sui generis . I think WP naming conventions tend to lack rationality. I rarely engage in these debates because I disagree with some of the fundamental rules, like never disambiguating names until there is a conflict.  DGG ( talk ) 01:37, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Random Libertas Academic journals
Hi David,

A while back TomHill1980 created pages for journals published by Libertas Academica. Most of them don't appear notable, and I was going to go through and prod a bunch of them, but I noticed you went through them at some point, mentioning a RfD (this one?). Some of them look like they may never have gone to AfD, and I was curious if you thought many of them were notable, or just never got around to it. Cheers, a13ean (talk) 20:00, 24 October 2012 (UTC)


 * That rfd is a little different: the journals  there were highly notable ones from major publishers and needed articles, every one of them. The articles should however have been under the full name of the journals, not the abbreviation, so in that sense, the result was correct.   If articles on each of the journals in the RfD were written, and I think many of them have been, they would certainly pass AFD. I will take this as a reminder to check that they have indeed been written.


 * Libertas journals are very much another matter. Most are not at all notable. But the key standard for notability of a journal is their being listed in a major selective index. I think all the ones that still have pages are so indexed: Scopus counts as such a selective index, though its standards have in the last few years become a little on the weak side. Science citation index certainly counts. We ought to have articles on every journal listed there as a matter of course, though we still have some way to go. Now, you may disagree, but there  is   no point in prodding them, because if they are so indexed I shall certainly remove the prod. If you really disagree with the standard, please send them individually to AfD--I suggest you send one or two first, the ones you consider weakest; I will defend the standard as strongly as I can, & I am confident that any journal listed in Scopus or SCI will be kept, but you are of course entitled to test it.  For any that are not so indexed, Prod them and I shall take another look at them. If I think they will pass AfD for some other reason I will remove the prod, & give an explanation.  But in any case I would not suggest redirecting them to the publisher--we have generally avoided that. I am not at all sure we are right there, but I think it is clear that making such redirects do not have consensus, nor does listing the journals in the publisher article.  DGG ( talk ) 07:16, 25 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the reply. Are there official notability guidelines for academic journals anywhere, or is the major selection index test just something that is commonly used in AfDs and the like?  I'll take a careful look at each one before I AfD anything.  Thanks, a13ean (talk) 14:59, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Current practice is in the essay Notability (academic journals). Essays range from speculative to authoritative depending on the degree they have practical consensus. This one has almost perfect consensus with respect to AFD. It is very difficult to actually promote something to a formal guideline, because in practice one or two  stubborn people can block it, but they cannot block a series of AfDs. The only AfDs on journals that cause difficulty usually involve  questions of whether a particular index is sufficiently selective, or sometimes whether an exception should be made for journals in a esoteric field or poorly-documented country, or whether a particular new journal is sufficiently likely to be notable even before it has a track record. DGG ( talk ) 19:53, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

=Subscript text==Journal of Population Economics and Les Halpin===

UMI Dissertations Abstract
Hi DGG!

Would you help me with a UMI Dissertations Abstract query, please?

Thanks for your consideration.

Sincerely, Kiefer  .Wolfowitz  15:11, 27 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Ask, here or by email, but it may be a day or two until I can respond to it.  DGG ( talk ) 15:41, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Notability (academic journals)
Hello DGG, I referenced you in this discussion and would be interested to hear your thoughts on the matter  Jebus989 ✰ 15:50, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

IOP_Publishing
Ever since I accidentally got involved in an article being worked on by a WWBTOO employee (I did not realize the editor worked for him) I've been trying to avoid the Request Edit queue, but since nobody else is manning it, I'm going through it.

I came across this one that I thought might be up your alley on getting a second opinion on my merge suggestions: Talk:IOP_Publishing

I don't know enough about academic periodicals to know the best course of action. CorporateM (Talk) 17:12, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I responded.  DGG ( talk ) 20:16, 13 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Muchos grassius. I would prefer not to handle the Request Edit queue, but since nobody else is, I cleared up a good 15 requests that were mostly fairly obvious.
 * BTW - if you care to, I haven't gotten any feedback yet on Talk:YouSendIt. I'm pretty happy that they included content from an analyst report, because this is something volunteers will never have access to otherwise, but I feel we could use feedback on the BLP issues and any anti-promo tips. CorporateM (Talk) 21:29, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Ryan said he would take a look after his Wikibreak, so I'll wait for him! CorporateM (Talk) 16:21, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Nova Publishers
Hi, if you have a moment could you please have a look at this edit of mine and the discussion on the article's talk page. I'd like to hear your opinion especially about this SENSE reference. Thanks! --Randykitty (talk) 09:36, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

List of open-access journals
Hi, could you perhaps have a look at the history of this list? Some time ago someone started to overwrite this list with a "comparison of open access journals" and moved it to a new title. (I also edited around that time, but in retrospect I can't remember whether I noticed the big change or just thought it was a new article). I think that was inappropriate, so yesterday I restored the list article. The "comparison version" had been PRODded and didn't look very promising to me either, but there is a whole edit history to that one that is now kind of hidden. It's kind of a mess and I should have nicked that in the bud back when it started, but as I said, I somehow failed to notice. Thanks in advance for your advice! --Randykitty (talk) 08:42, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
 * The fundamental problem is that a List of OA journals is now meaningless, as most journals in the sciences offers some version of what they call open access, though usually a very weak one. Therefore it is necessary to divide them into types, and that what an editor  well aware of the problems involved did in January. Unfortunately the problems have now gotten considerably more complicated, because there is no longer any real agreement among open access advocates what the qualification for the term may be, and   the leaders in the fields use very different definitions (for one thing, many OA journals are not CC-BY or CC-BY-SA, but put various limits on data mining and commercial reuse; some think anything less than CC-BY unacceptable.)
 * As another problem, the recent successful OA initiatives in the US, UK, and elsewhere, are in the process of making all science and social science journals at least partially open access in some sense for the articles representing work paid for by most UK and US government funding---though the required OA is in some cases very weak indeed, being merely the right to make the author's accepted manuscript publicly accessible after 6 months--what is known as delayed green open access. Everything is in the course of very rapid evolution, and it is very difficult to   keep up at this point.
 * Your comment that the list was incomplete, being limited to a few journals with no defined criteria, is also correct. This had a point once, when the major journals with OA were very few. So we really do need to extend to all of those which WP covers,and even if we were do do this with a category it would require multiple categories. The publishers' statements, which is what the pages of the journals rely on, are not reliable for this, because of the different types. Each individual one requires careful and skeptical analysis by someone expert in the distinctions and the wording, and would require re-analysis every few months. I could probably do it if I worked at nothing else and had two or three full-time assistants; and even so at least some of my OA friends would challenge whatever distinctions I were making.
 * So the version by types is necessary to be meaningful, and a great expansion is also needed, which may be beyond our abilities. This needs discussion. I think that starting the discussion by changes without consensus was not the best idea, though it was meant well, and served as a first step; continuing it by proposing the article for deletion by prod was also not a good idea, though such a step is one way to make sure that there will be discussion. (I did an AfD nomination in another field for the purpose of forcing discussion in a small group with what I thought was unreasonable standards, and have been very strongly and rightly criticized for it. It might have been necessary if disagreement continued, but not as an initial step without notice.)
 * I'm alerting the other ed. to this discussion, and copying most of it   to the article talk p.,  I will also notify the academic journals task force. I think discussion should continue on the article talk p., or some other centralized place, not here
 * I'm having deja vu here--I became active in WP 7 years ago in large part because the leading OA proponent had written all the OA-related articles to represent exclusively his POV, and I wanted to fix that by incorporating the other positions. (A compromise was reached, with help from other editors. )  DGG ( talk ) 15:36, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Predatory journals
Have you seen this NYT article on "predatory" journals? I wonder what should be done about it on Wikipedia? I have begun removing refs that use the journals listed by Jeffrey Beall on the grounds that a journal that will publish anything for money is not a WP:RS, but is that enough? Abductive (reasoning) 02:13, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I would not blindly remove the refs. The quality of the journals varies from poor to horrible, and some of the ones on the list have actually made it to Scopus. A few of his assignments to the list have been validly disputed--I've dealt with a few of the publishers about articles on their journals at WP, some of whom actually have a reasonable case,  and I follow the lists--LIBLICENSE is the most important of them.   Many of these published have started say 50 journals, of which 10 have content, and one or two may actually have decent content--what it actually depends on,as any journal, is the judgement of the editor in chief.   The authors are not usually to blame, nor is their work always of low quality. Some reputable people have used these for quick publication,   many third world people have used them out of necessity, and many novices have used them out of ignorance of the problem--in all these cases, some of the work may actually be OK. The safest test of an article being possibly reliable is whether others have cited it,especially if they have in decent journals. I am not sure the peer-review  of the best of them is actually worse than some of the better known journals. There's a key number almost journals except the very best conceal: the proportion of submitted articles that are accepted.
 * What is actually predatory is the academic tenure system in the lower levels of universities, colleges, and even junior colleges, in requiring published work, but not providing resources for it or even caring where it is published.  DGG ( talk ) 02:24, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Erm... I can tell you that those unfortunate aspects of the tenure system are not limited to the "lower levels" of universities... :I MastCell Talk 17:04, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
 * My definition of the upper levels are those which do provide at least time for research, and do care for promotion about where something gets published. I agree that this is many fewer than those that choose to call themselves research universities.  DGG ( talk ) 19:37, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
 * There's a further question that I think you intend; to what extent ought we have articles on these publishers, and list their titles. The problem here is the possible unfairness of the negative information. It's not exactly BLP, but we'd be publishing strong attacks that could have a devastating effect based essentially on the work of one person, whom everyone in the field applauds, but whose judgements are to some extent just his own well-informed but hardly definitive judgements. Others repeat them, and treat his as   expert judgments, so we can technically use them,  but it's still fundamentally one source. Almost no publisher would be foolish enough to call attention to themselves by too public a protest, but that doesn't mean they might not have something reasonable to say for themselves. In a very few cases, they've said it.  Some publishers have started out with very poor quality, and become considerably better over time. We've had similar problems with book publishers who general run of books has been pretty awful, but where some of the books are worthwhile, and some who publish in several fields, but with very different quality in each.  It is very difficult writing such articles in a responsible way. My own acquaintance & professional friendships are among both librarians and publishers--much of the latter half of my career was   devoted to negotiating between them.
 * I am also a little bothered by the use of "predatory". It's much easier to pick on the little sharks, not the big ones: the major commercial publishers, and to a lesser extent those major non-commercial and society publishers who dominate their subject areas--but their self-protective policies have been the real obstacle to the diffusion of scientific knowledge. And there's a good deal of self-protection in the equally threatened world of academic librarians.  There is one publishing executive I know who advocated a simple policy: fund the academic world at such a high level that despite a relatively low priority for library resources, there would still be so much money that all the publishers could get rich, and the librarians comfortable, and still make the material freely available.  DGG ( talk ) 03:46, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, well, I dismissed the idea of duplicating Beall's list as a Wikipedia article (or even using it as a source to disparage any journal in its article). I was thinking more along the lines of mentioning it (and how to use it) at places such as WP:RS and WP:WikiProject Academic Journals. As for the individual refs I removed, I looked at the text the refs supported. Quite a few are direct quotes, or boosterism, or second refs (strangely) or dubious statements. So I feel pretty confident that any random statement with a ref to one of these journals is going to be problematic. (I mean, think about it, either it is the work of an amateur researcher here on Wikipedia, or maybe a "novice" or third world researcher as you point out.) Abductive  (reasoning) 04:37, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I have at every relevant occasion said at WP:RS that not all journals are equal, having in mind both these and the lowest stratum of conventionally published journals. The view that all "peer-reviewed" journals are of equivalent and high reliability, often said there, is very  naïve. MEDRES made a good start on dealing with this, by emphasising the use of reliable tertiary review sources.   DGG ( talk ) 14:52, 9 April 2013 (UTC)


 * You might both be interested to chime in at the CfD for Category:Predatory open access journals. --Randykitty (talk) 08:36, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Academic journal help
Some time ago, I deleted a prodded article about a new academic journal. I just got a message by someone who wants to recreate it, and he wants my opinion on a draft he's written. I'm not sure what to say; could you respond for me? I've never been clear on how to apply notability standards to things that are reliable publications, and while I'd hope that this would qualify, I'm not sure about the sourcing; it seems somewhat like "Hey, don't forget about us!" rather than a simple "Here's what the journal is". Nyttend (talk) 16:00, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Exactly as you say, the usual notability standards do not apply. The standards that do apply are not a formal guideline, but they are generally accepted by essentially everyone here working on the subject. The key standard is recognition by inclusion in major selective indexes. For those who are under the illusion that the GNG is policy that applies to all subjects, and consequently insist on using the GNG whether or not it makes sense to do so, can consider this as the equivalent of coverage by reliable secondary sources. Thus. since this journal is not listed in these indexes,   if an AfD discussions proceeds along the usual lines, probably the decision would be that it is not notable.  But this is the first academic journal ever from Mizoram--although there the state has several universities and a number of affiliated colleges It is also the first scientific journal ever with some content in the Mizo language. I am a strong supporter of efforts to decrease WP:Systematic bias, and I would accept the notability of subjects in the less well-covered areas of the world according to their own appropriate sources. In particular, the journal is included in Indian Citation Index, though it's inclusion criteria are not clear.
 * More generally, as you know, any prodded article is entitled to be returned to mainspace as a matter of course, and take its chances. We of course discourage people from doing this if the article is sure to be deleted or is otherwise radically unsatisfactory, and I understand you are asking my advice about whether we should discourage the editor here. I'll alert him to my comment.  DGG ( talk ) 02:10, 21 April 2013 (UTC).

Thank you very much for the comments and open discussion.Chhandama (talk) 04:00, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Journal statistics
Hi, this discussion has stalled a bit and could use your input. Thanks! --Randykitty (talk) 16:35, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Selective Law Databases
Hello, what are some selective databases for law that would be the equivalent of MEDLINE? To avoid article deletion, inclusion in which law databases would signify that a journal is notable? 206.174.67.237 (talk) 10:13, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I will inquire. But since any legal journal is likely to be used for citation in a judgment, including a judgement of a supreme court, and since WP considers essentially every modern supreme court case notable,  a case could be made for inclusion of articles on all of them.  Most of the important law journals in the US are published by law schools as projects run by the students--obtaining a place on its editorial board  is considered the highest honor the school can give, and all of these will be notable.  But many schools now publish a variety of additional journals, University of X   Law School  Journal of International Law, ... of Constitutional, ,,, etc.  , which have, I think a much lesser reputation--we have deleted a number of these at AfD. There are then the journals of the StateBar Associations, which could be merged with an article on each of the Bar Associations. Otherwise, I need to consider and ask advice.  DGG ( talk ) 05:15, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Following up on your Predatory Journals discussion
I wonder if there's a definite list of ones to watch out for, as there seem to be a few creeping up at AfC. Instead of doing a thorough search, it would be practical to have a reliable list so we can notify the submitter, don't you think? Regards, (please TB me) FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 15:27, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I may have already said this, but I do not want to compose a list. Who are we to judge?
 * In fact, I do not like to use the term "predatory" at all,, just like I want to avoid "controversy" sections in articles. To the extent I can tell, some journals commonly  considered as such may be fraudulent or hopeless, but I know that some are sincere efforts at alternative publishing. not all of the sincere efforts will prove to be useful, of course, but that's not a reason to condemn them. Publishing is a profession for optimists.  I do not want to rely on Beall's list. I greatly respect him and the work he is doing, but there are objections about a few of the entries on Beall's list from reliable npov people in various listserv discussions, and i rather agree with some of the objections--I think he should possibly be removing from the list the very few that  develop into respectability.
 * As for WP, the basic rule is simple, if they get into any of the ordinary indexes, they might be notable & there is no way to find out without a discussion. I know AfC is supposed to accept only articles which are good enough that not only will they pass AfD, but that no good faith AfD is likely; however, I think this is unrealistic in areas of unsettled notability, & this is one of them. If they're in a index more selective than DOAJ etc, and ifthey've published more than a handful of articles,  I'd accept them, but I would first warn the editor that it will be challenged and that if they do not want what may be a very unsatisfactory discussion from their POV, to withdraw the submission until they have a better case. If you let me know what they are, I'll comment (or accept or decline, depending), but I think we have to go one by one. (If an article is about a publisher, I think it is just common sense that we want it to have at least one notable journal.)  DGG ( talk ) 00:32, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, you've answered my question. My main dilemma was if we should simply go for GNG or should journals be held against stricter rules for those reasons. But you've clarified the issue pretty well. I agree in principle, although a list could be useful for bogus, unscientific claims, not for AfC's purposes. Thanks again! FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 01:22, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
 * As for bogus claims, the problem is not that these journals are used for publishing important but weird work, but that the work they publish --if they actually publish anything -- is almost always thoroly mediocre, because people knowing enough to do good work know enough to publish in better journals. People wanting to spread crank ideas try to publish them conspicuously, and most of the really fraudulent work that makes headlines as such has been published in journals that should know better.  DGG ( talk ) 02:43, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

boundary 2 again...
Dear David, boundary 2 is again under attack by POV pushers who claim that this is an "in-house" journal without peer review. There is a sopurce for the latter (Ulrich's), but it's reliability is doubted because it is behind a paywall. Perhaps you can join the discussion on the talk page. I must add that I find it exceedingly difficult to keep assuming good faith here... Thanks! --Randykitty (talk) 16:30, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
 * There are reasons from recent events at WP for being extremely careful about negative approaches to anything related to contemporary American writers. But Ulrich's is not really an independent source for this--see my comment on the talk p.  DGG ( talk ) 17:15, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
 * So how do you suggest we describe the journal? As "peer-reviewed" or "internally reviewed" (as suggested on the talk page by the SPAs) or otherwise? To me, "peer review" can be either external or internal or both. By the way, PLOS ONE is by now using peer review more or less in the same way as other journals do, as far as I can see (I'm an "academic editor" for them). --Randykitty (talk) 10:35, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Review journal
Hi, there is a discussion here about the definition of what constitutes a "review journal", which is hampered by a lack of good sources. Would you know of any? In any case, please participate in the discussion. Thanks. --Randykitty (talk) 17:11, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
 * commented there.  DGG ( talk ) 02:54, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Canadian Association of HIV Research
Another editor created Articles for creation/Canadian Association of HIV Research, which has been rejected.

This is a national scholarly association, but I can't find reliable sources for it. A google search for Canadian Association of HIV Research conference shows plenty of research presented at its conferences. Could you please take a quick look at the article? Eastmain (talk • contribs) 14:18, 21 July 2013 (UTC)
 * This is not an unusual situation for professional societies. Personally, I'd simply include them all, if they cover a wide enough field & are the leading national societies. This is an area where the GNG is useless. Reliable information about them is typically only found in their own newsletters & websites, and in financial reports of their activities. Anything in a third party source is very apt to be nonsubstantial or derived from there,
 * The afc as submitted should have been deleted immediately before G13 got to it as promotional and mostly copyvio--it's essentially a republication of their objectives and a list of officers. Web sites need to be read carefully: I notice their claim is not to be the largest Canadian organization devoted to AIDS research, which is probably Canadian Federation for AIDS Research, but the largest Canadian association of AIDS research ers . It may in fact be not just the largest but the  only Canadian national organization of AIDS researchers
 * The best way to cover these, as I think you suspect, is to write an article on the series of conferences, or to make the main content of the article the series of conferences. We are so lamentably weak in doing these for many of the most important international conferences that this article is not my highest priority.  DGG ( talk ) 23:34, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Problematic IP
Hello. Would you mind semi-protecting the academic journal Boundary 2 Talk page. An anonymous IP has become problematic, and has violated WP:3RR (not to mention wasting editors' time). Please see most recent edit history. Steve Quinn (talk) 22:26, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Hello. I'm the IP here. I and another editor have made several good-faith edits about how to improve the page. These were censored by Randykitty and Steve Quinn. The journal is not peer-reviewed (common knowledge around the Humanities -- even the journal's webpage and frontmatter no longer use the term "peer-reviewed" to describe itself) and yet wiki editors Steve Quinn and Randykitty insist on using Ulrich database, which is out of date, as the definitive reference. At any rate, that discussion should continue until the matter is resolved with a reference that OAA editors like Quinn and Randykitty won't remove.204.15.145.111 (talk) 22:52, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
 * As I have taken a position in the discussion, I cannot use page protection. My previously expressed view holds, that they use a form of editorial review appropriate for the nature of the material, but not precisely peer-review is the usual sense. Trying to reduce this to a single word is impossible. Ulrich's did the best it could with the situation within their own parameters and limitations, but we can and should give more exact information . DGG ( talk ) 23:45, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I also think the fact that this is listed in selective indexing services says or implies that this journal is peer reviewed. I am thinking that the Ulrich's reference is not even needed to say this is peer reviewed. Steve Quinn (talk) 01:17, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * While we have a good reference that says this is peer-reviewed, we have no reference that says otherwise. So all we can (and should say) is what the source says up until such time that a better source becomes available. The "good faith" edits referred to by the IP are not that at all. They are rants about WP editors and the editors of b2 and have no place on a talk page (see WP:TALK). Meanwhile, I'd like to note that the journal's editors are "peers" too... --Randykitty (talk) 14:23, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * No, they're not. There is no one on staff who is a specialist in Chinese culture, which would be necessary for a "peer" review in this issue: http://boundary2.dukejournals.org/content/38/1.toc - they may be "reviewed" but they're certainly not disciplinary "peers".136.145.122.85 (talk) 22:52, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * And who says that in a case like that, they don't consult with outside specialists? Any proof for that? There is no source anywhere that says that there is no peer review. There is a good source that says there is peer review. End of discussion. --Randykitty (talk) 11:31, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * There is a better source, the journal itself, which does not corroborate that what you claim is true. What the journal states about itself is the definite reference. End of discussion.136.145.122.85 (talk) 13:15, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Actually, it is not the best source. A journal could say about itself "the most important journal in the world", for example. And at WP primary sources should not be used if secondary sources are available. --Randykitty (talk) 13:45, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * There's no POV or notability issue here, or something imaginary that b2 is claiming about itself. We have an outdated secondary source that is being used as a definitive reference. So, no, there's no reliable secondary source, until--as has been noted ad nauseum on the talk page-- Ulrich's database is updated.136.145.122.85 (talk) 13:53, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't think we should infer peer review from listing in selective indices (we don't need to, anyway), in the same way that I've stated on the article talk page that we shouldn't infer a lack of peer review from the fact that the journal's front-matter doesn't mention peer review. Dricherby (talk) 15:54, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Ulrich's says it's peer-reviewed, which is the source I was referring to in my comment above. Most indexes will indeed include almost exclusively peer-reviewed publications, but the important word here is indeed "almost"... --Randykitty (talk) 16:33, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * The way to word it is to say that Ulrich's says it is peer reviewed, and give further explanation citing the journal. I' explained more fully on the talk p. But the attack on the journal is inexplicable--unless it is perhaps connected with the attack by "Quorty" on various US connected literary figures.  DGG ( talk ) 17:24, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Academic journal notability
Do you know of any precedent, guidelines, or essays that talk about standards for whether or not an academic journal is notable? My gut feeling is that it's analogous to WP:PROF, in that we don't actually need sources that talk about the journal, but, rather, we need sources that cite articles in the journal. That is, my assumption is that nobody actually talks about most journals, but that doesn't mean that the journals aren't notable. The question occurred because someone asked on Talk:Azerbaijan International if the journal is notable, and my feeling is that it is, though I doubt that, in a formal sense, it meets WP:GNG. Qwyrxian (talk) 23:17, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
 * See the essay Notability (academic journals). Though technically an essay, I think the standards there are the general consensus of everyone working regularly on the subject, and are followed in almost all decisions.
 * In summary, they say that the basic standard for notability of a journal is being indexed in major selective indexes. Which indexes they may be in a given instance is subject to discussion, but inclusion in WebofScience has always been considered adequate proof of notability, and usually Scopus has also. Difficulties come with 1/ new journals, which we usually do not include unless its obvious that they are going to be included, such as coming from a major society publisher all of whose existing journals are notable. 2/  journals which are in niche areas or from regions which are not adequately represented in such indexes. 3/ journals which are not strictly academic journals in the usual sense, but magazines, for which there is no consistently accepted criterion.
 * The GNG is in my opinion almost always irrelevant for this sort of subject. However,  as in most other cases, if a journal should happen to meet the GNG, we would probably include it. If one wishes to make some sort of interpretation that aligns our usual practice with the GNG, one would say that the coverage by the major selective indexes is the sort of substantial coverage by RSs that applies.
 * That individual articles in a journal are or are not well cited does not determine the notability of the journal; however, it's a relevant factor. In any case, it has to be applied according to the standards of the field in question.
 * I shall look at the article in question.  DGG ( talk ) 02:57, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your input, and I welcome your input on the specific article. It turns out that the "journal" isn't actually refereed, meaning it is somewhat questionable to even call it an "academic journal"; there's some info on the talk page from another editor about how it is indexed. And I agree that WP:GNG is a very bad too to use here; good to know that there's at least essay guidance suggesting some sort of standards. Qwyrxian (talk) 03:42, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Anthropological Literature and Anthropological Index Online
Dear David, are these two databases selective enough to confer notability according to WP:NJournals? Thanks for your advice. --Randykitty (talk) 10:59, 29 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Anthropology is a difficult subject this way, because much of the literature appears in very specific journals devoted to a particular region, published by local museums or universities. SSCI covers it only very scantily. My own view is that we should cover every journal important enough that it is likely to be used as a key source for a WP article--in other words, the principal journal in each possible specialty. (Some people here think we ought to write an article on every journal or other source used in any WP article, to help readers evaluate it, but even if we ought to do this, I think that this is a considerably lower priority.)
 * comparing these two indexes, AIO reflects a European emphasis, AL an American. The two sources complement each other, and are available together from Ebsco as Anthropology Plus; I will add this information to the articles. Including everything in either is a little more on the complete side than the selective. I suggest the purely empirical solution of including all journals that are listed in both, which I think will prove to be about two hundred.  DGG ( talk ) 03:24, 30 October 2013 (UTC)