Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/European Journal for Philosophy of Religion


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete‎__EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__. The discussion about the quality of the journal is beside the point because that is not relevant to the inclusion of the article. The issue here is notability, and in this regard, rough consensus agrees that there are insufficient sources to establish WP:GNG. The two "keep" opinions include the arguments "I don't know how the article can be properly sourced" and "We need to stop with the idea that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia", which indicates that their "keep" recommendations are not in line with applicable policies.  Sandstein  08:44, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

European Journal for Philosophy of Religion

 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

This does not pass WP:GNG, the relevant notability guideline. The only source is a link to the journal's own web site, which doesn't say much and should no longer be considered reliable. The article states that it has been sold to a Chinese company, turned into a predatory journal, and will be replaced by a new legitimate journal with a similar name, but no sources are given for any of this, nor could I find any elsewhere. We cannot include this material without a source nor should we cut this back to a stub that includes only what can be sourced but fails to warn readers about the current state of the journal. Therefore, deletion seems like the appropriate outcome.

My prod saying all this was removed by User:Randykitty with a rationale implicitly referring to essay WP:NJournals: "indexed by Arts and Humanities Citation Index, Scopus, and ATLA Religion Database among others, deserves more dscussion". So here is the more discussion. My position: if it were a run-of-the-mill legitimate journal, as it seems to have been in the past, that might be a valid argument, but now that its recent legitimacy has been called into serious question, we can no longer rely on mere indexing as sourcing; we need in-depth sourcing of its fallen state, and I was unable to find such sourcing.

See also Articles for deletion/Journal of Commercial Biotechnology (2nd nomination), which appears to have some of the same cast of (possibly fictional) characters on its new editorial board and some of the same issues of being formerly legitimate but now potentially predatory. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:57, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academic journals-related deletion discussions. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:58, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Philosophy, Religion,  and Europe.  WC  Quidditch   ☎   ✎  00:29, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
 * delete I'm not finding any sources that meet the GNG. Issues with the board are very concerning but not, per se, a reason to delete.  Hobit (talk) 09:05, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Comment There is definitely something odd going on, although I cannot find sources that could be used to support an article. If you look at the archives' tables of contents for the journal, up until 4th Q 2022 the names and the themes read as decidedly European. Abruptly with the first issue of 2023 there is a change to mainly Chinese names and themes, with a few outliers that are probably middle-eastern. It is not unheard of for journals to move from one institution to another, although this one seems to be attempting to hide the fact. This is a change that would be good to note, but given that it doesn't seem to be documented (e.g. in the journal's own "about" page) I don't know how the article can be properly sourced, and if it cannot be then I !vote delete Weak keep but keep an eye on it as this change is very recent. Lamona (talk) 03:55, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ritchie333 (talk) (cont)  11:58, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Delete. No longer a legitimate journal and seems to have become predatory. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 09:33, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * This is tricky because it means that we lose the information about the original, "legitimate", journal. In theory, if a journal makes a major change it should change its name and get a new ISSN. If we can find any reliable source talking about this change, we can keep the article and note that the journal became something else in 2024. Eliminating the entire journal, the good with the bad, doesn't seem "encyclopedic". I'll keep looking for discussion, etc. Also, if it is dropped by the indexing services (which may take a while) then that would be something to add to the article. Lamona (talk) 15:44, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
 * While I do agree with most of that, my largest concern is that we aren't meeting WP:N. Or at least I'm unaware of any non-trivial coverage by reliable independent sources. Hobit (talk) 19:37, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Keep - It is important for WP to keep a scorecard on journals with as good information as possible — because people will be using journals at WP to source articles. If you want to call this an IAR argument, that's fine with me. We need to stop with the idea that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and start rethinking things: this is an information database for Siri and AI. Carrite (talk) 22:28, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I sort of get the argument, but we really don't have any meaningful information since we lack any real sources. AI is going to find what we have--what I think Wikipedia brings to AI is some idea of what's important about a given topic. The problem is that we don't know either because we lack meaningful sources. And, frankly, it's pretty reasonable to doubt some of the information we do have. And if our coverage gives people evidence that this is a real journal, when in fact we're not sure, that could result in real harm to folks (publishing in the wrong place, letting someone be conned out of $1K, etc.) Hobit (talk) 01:14, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Delete. I'm extremely sympathetic to the keep arguments that have been advanced here, but we have a major problem: the issue isn't that this fails WP:GNG, in which case we could say "in this particular case, we have good reasons to ignore GNG", the issue is that it also fails WP:V. Per nom, we'd have to stub this back to what we can verify, which would then be misleading, since we wouldn't have the information about its change of ownership. -- asilvering (talk) 06:01, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

*Comment to closer: please allow 1 more hour, I'm preparing my !vote. Thanks! --Randykitty (talk) 17:40, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Keep. Suppose this were a BLP. A SPA and an anonymous IP come by and drop negative comments. What do we do? Exactly: we delete these comments until they get sourced. But this is not a BLP, but a journal, so should we now just believe whatever the SPA and IP say? Personally, I'd say not. But let's look at the accusations and the evidence. The journal is basically accused of having been bought by a Chinese company and having been converted to a predatory journal. Predatory, really? The journal's own website says that it is a subscription journal, which you can buy for the really quite low subscription price of 190 Euros (institutional, the personal rate is 95). Submitting an article is free, no charges. Open access is available for payment of a fee, which is industry standard. (As an aside, this would be the first hybrid OA journal that is also predatory that I have encountered). Doesn't really look like a hijacked journal either. Looking at the most recent articles published, I don't see the usual crap that you'll see in a real predatory journal, but what appear to me to be legitimate articles from legitimate authors. A bank account for payments is given, which is located in Austria, not exactly a hot spot for predatory journals either. Nowhere do I see any evidence of impropriety, nor of the journal having been sold to a Chinese publisher. On the contrary. MIAR indicates that this journal is indexed some of the most selective databases around (Arts and Humanities Citation Index, Scopus, Index Islamicus, ATLA Religion Database, and Philosopher's Index), which normally is taken as a clear pass of WP:NJournals. This would not be the first time that somebody for one reason or another is disgruntled with a journal and tries to insert negative accusations into one of our journal articles. Until we see actual evidence, however, I think we should do what we usually do, which is removing the unsourced negative info until such time that this has been confirmed (or not) by sources instead of hearsay. --Randykitty (talk) 18:12, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Delete. Per Hobit. We don't have SIGCOV in IRS sources of this journal, whether of the original or the hijacked version. This makes it even clearer why we should not have an article on this journal, since if it is predatory that info will not be in the standalone, and if it's not it's then just a pure advertisement for the journal.
 * JoelleJay (talk) 18:48, 4 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Delete: fails GNG. WP:NJournals is an essay, not a notability guideline. Shapeyness (talk) 18:57, 4 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Comment: an essay can be cited because it explains something quite well, so you don't have to repeat the same thing over and over again. But if you want to interpret my !vote as IAR, that's fine with me. Not following NJournals would be a loss to the encyclopedia, so, yes, if necessary: IAR. PS: I have edited the article. --Randykitty (talk) 19:10, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Your edits present it as if it is still a legitimate journal, rather than a predatory one. This is not consistent with its current appearance and I do not think it is a benefit to the encyclopedia or its readers. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:55, 4 February 2024 (UTC)


 * David, please show me your evidence that this is now a predatory journal. I have given the link to its "current appearance", which is legit. What am I missing? --Randykitty (talk) 20:54, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Perhaps you should read the version of the Wikipedia article you removed in your edits which, although unsourced, matches some of the particulars now visible in the journal. It is difficult to check the legitimacy of its newly published individual articles because they are subscriber-only, but they clearly have a different focus, consistent with what was said in that version. And the journal's new editorial advisory board has a difficult-to-explain overlap with the editorial board discussed in Articles for deletion/Journal of Commercial Biotechnology (2nd nomination), including Peter Marra of U. Vienna and Leonie Levin of TU Munich whose existence beyond these editorial boards cannot be verified. Additional (non-reliable) evidence for the existence of the replacement journal described in the version you removed can be found in Janusz Salamon's bio in . Because of these plausible claims that this journal has very recently transformed into a predatory journal, and corroborating (but not definitive) evidence for these claims, I think it would be a mistake to take its past indexing as evidence for its present legitimacy. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:48, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * And more so, the whole point of WP:N is that we shouldn't be writing articles about things we don't have reliable, independent sources for. The fact we're debating if this is even a real journal (and in fact I have doubts it ever was...) is a problem.  Not because it might not be, but because we don't have the sources to establish things one way or the other. Hobit (talk) 02:09, 7 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Comment Taking this as a research problem, I looked up each of the supposed "editors" (the four listed here) and none of them have any reference to this journal on their faculty web pages. That's not definitive evidence that the journal is not legit, but it is a clue. (They all appear to be known scholars in religion.) Then I looked up one of the members of the editorial board (Nopriadi Saputra) who turns out to be a business prof. Looking at the other members of the editorial board, none of them are in faculties of religion. I don't have the patience to check them all, but I did try some of the others listed on the page and not one of them explicitly works in the area of religion, and none mention this journal on their pages. An issue from 2021 on the wayback machine shows an entirely different editorial board (and notably no one seems to be from a business school). The "editor in chief" does list his position at the journal on his web site, which is an indication of prior legitimacy. So I surmise that at least BEFORE 2024 there is evidence that this was a legit journal, and that from 2024 it is less convincing. No, I still do not know what happened. Lamona (talk) 21:02, 11 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Comment: I agree that there are some worrisome signs, but still wonder how a journal that has a really low subscription rate and does not charge authors can be hijacked or predatory. I'm also uncomfortable with WP editors deciding, based on unsourced conjecture/accusations and their own OR/SYNTH, whether a journal is legit or not. For the moment, all evidence we have (inclusion in very selective databases) is that this journal is legit. It's too bad that Cabell's currently not available on the WikiLib as that would be an authoritative source on whether or not this journal is legit. --Randykitty (talk) 22:49, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * How frequently do they reassess journals, do you happen to know? All signs are that the journal was legit until quite recently. (Of course, that would also be true of any journal that still is legit; the difference is that here we have some reason to call it into question, and too little in-depth information to refute that questioning.) —David Eppstein (talk) 22:51, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't know, but their website should mention that, I think. Anyway, if they listed the journal as fake, that would improve our article because then we'd have an RS that this journal has turned to crap. If they'd listed this as legit, I guess we'd still disagree about that be useful or not, depending on how often they update. The same goes for the Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker which for the moment doesn't list this journal. --Randykitty (talk) 23:04, 11 February 2024 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.