Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Group Facilitation: A Research and Applications Journal


 * 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   no consensus. King of &hearts;   &diams;   &clubs;  &spades; 01:19, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Group Facilitation: A Research and Applications Journal

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Non-notable journal. No independent sources, not indexed in any selective major databases. Does not meet WP:NJournals or WP:GNG. Prod was contested by the journal's editor. VQuakr (talk) 08:42, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete as the original PRODder. This is the first time that I get an edit conflict when taking an article to AfD with Twinkle... :-) --Randykitty (talk) 08:46, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I wrote a small novel in response that hasn't appeared unfortunately - or was it deleted? Will attempt again tomorrow with links. The journal is listed on ProQuest, ABI Inform, PubMed, EBESCO Host and HealthPremier. Alternatively how many reader requests would qualify as notable? Stephenthorpe (talk) 08:59, 17 December 2012 (UTC)Stephen
 * Comment PubMed lists exactly 1 (one) article from this journal (see here. This one seems to have been included because it was uploaded into PubMed Central, which is a major database, but not a selective one. The other databases that you mention are not major and/or selective either. I'm not sure what you mean with "reader requests", but if you mean with that something like page views or article views, as you can see from WP:NJournals and WP:GNG, those do not contribute to establishing notability at all (for rather obvious reasons, I'd say). --Randykitty (talk) 09:10, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Here is the link to the EBSCO Business Source Complete listing: http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?sid=dbaff0ab-7a27-4937-9109-83e546307020%40sessionmgr110&vid=1&hid=106&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=bth&jid=2ZJI ProQuest ABI/Inform Complete: http://search.proquest.com/publication/43244# JSTOR: citations are common for the short name of the journal as well: "Group+Facilitation": http://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicResults?hp=25&la=&so=rel&wc=on&fc=off&acc=off&acc=off&bk=off&pm=off&jo=off&ar=off&re=off&ms=off&gw=jtx&Query=%22Group+Facilitation%22&sbq=%22Group+Facilitation%22&prq=%22Group+Facilitation+A+Research+and+applications+journal%22&mxpg=11&aori=off&vf=jo
 * Yes the reason for the 1 listing on the PubMed is due to the closed access nature of the journal. Copyright is shared with authors who are allowed to publish and submit their own articles for hosting.

I'm not sure what is meant by 'not major' and 'not selective', but when Proquest approached us for listing in 2006 and EBESCO in 2007 they were two of the major indices around. I do appreciate things have changed in such a long period of time since. They did select our journal for listing, not the other way around. I know you won't necessarily appreciate Google Scholar as a valuable third party source however, here are the citations on what is predominantly a closed access journal: http://scholar.google.co.nz/scholar?as_q=&as_publication=group+facilitation The journal has been submitted to Scopus, which can take up to 6 months for review I believe. One key challenge we have faced as an Editorial Board in listing on the Web of Science is the requirement for access to the password protected members-only section of the iaf-world.org website. The IAF Board were not so keen on access to the members-only section going to an unnamed individual for the purposes of an index listing. By "Reader Requests" I mean here's one example from Belgrade in Serbia:

--- On Fri, 8/10/12,  <@gmail.com> wrote: From:  <@gmail.com> Subject: Wikipedia pages To: "Stephen Thorpe" Date: Friday, August 10, 2012, 9:35 PM   Hi Stephen. Hope you are well - sure you are busy :)   I recently discovered that there wasn't a page about IAF on Wikipedia and so I just created one - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Association_of_Facilitators    I checked to see if there was an entry for the journal on Wikipedia and see that there isn't, so I wondered if you might want to create one.    There are quite a few guidelines about creating Wikipedia pages but most of them seem to boil down to making it informational and neutral rather than promotional and partial.    I wondered if you might want to create a page for the Journal.    Best regards,        --         MA Human Security & Peacebuilding, Certified Professional Facilitator    Share in building hope at http://hopebuilding.pbworks.com and http://hopebuilding.wordpress.com    View my pictures:     Visit http://hopebuilding.wordpress.com/

Can you please advise: I don't want to waste anyone's time - should I just wait until it's listed in Scopus and then come back as it will then meet the notoriety requirement? I can address the need for adding independent references to and possibly from the article if allowed. Stephenthorpe (talk) 19:12, 17 December 2012 (UTC)Stephen
 * I collapsed the email you posted above; it is not the sort of verifiable source that will influence this discussion. If you are aware of independent sources that discuss the subject in depth, this discussion is an excellent place to list them. VQuakr (talk) 04:43, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Would references in other books qualify? facilitator blogs? review articles on academic journals? It's a reasonably niche arena for academic journals on groupwork and GFJ is the only international one and it's published by the global association in this emerging professional arena with 1,300+ members in over 70 countries. If Scopus or Web of Science is all that counts and EBSCo and ProQuest, Google scholar have issues then I'm not sure there is any opening for possibility made available here?222.154.11.12 (talk) 09:14, 18 December 2012 (UTC)Stephen
 * Thanks. That's neat that you can hide it and unhide it.
 * Now to clarify briefly - the email message inserted wasn't an attempt to provide a verifiable source, but to respond to the request above by --Randykitty to explain what I meant in my statement about "reader requests". I've provided an exemplar that I hope demonstrates what i meant. I have a number of others, but that one was concise.
 * Now academic journals aren't typically a hot topic in the local media (particularly if they have required an association membership to access). People don't typically write reviews about them like they do with books. It's also not one from the natural sciences - who are all metric focused. So do you possibly have a list of independent sources for academic journals that would satisfy the requirement or is it just the two open bibilometric indices of Scopus or Web of Science that are considered independent and verifiable? If all that can be considered is those two I guess I'll simply need to come back in 6 months and try again once the journal's listed in Scopus and it can be considered as independently verifiable by your team? What is published here outlines some of the challenges in this arena: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_journal.
 * Under Caveat 2 in WP:NJournals "...however, most journals nowadays have home pages which may be used as sources for uncontroversial information. Often, this will be sufficient to create a stub on a particular journal, even in the absence of other sources." Why can this caveat not simply be applied in this case? 222.154.11.12 (talk) 09:38, 18 December 2012 (UTC)Stephen
 * That caveat has to do with verifiability, not notability. Even if a journal satisfies the notability criteria, it also has to satisfy WP:V. It offers relaxed criteria for verifiability, but notability has to be independently established. RockMagnetist (talk) 17:10, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Bibliographies-related deletion discussions. — Frankie (talk) 17:16, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Management-related deletion discussions. — Frankie (talk) 17:16, 18 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep - I believe that the journal meets WP:GNG and WP:NJournals. This is a well established journal that is indexed in major databases that focus on the scholarly study of business (EBSCO's Business Source series, ABI/INFORM, and several ProQuest databases).  Additionally, a quick web search shows that articles in the journal have been cited repeatedly across both books on facilitation and scholarly articles on facilitation that appear in other journals.  However, the article definitely needs to be fleshed out to help illustrate that fact (which I'm happy to help in accomplishing).  Thanks! Phoenixred (talk) 14:22, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Comments - Judging by the discussion around the creation of WP:NJournals, one of the primary motivations for creating this guideline was that it is often difficult to establish general notability for journals that are used as reliable sources in Wikipedia. So far, only one article from this journal is cited in Wikipedia (in Nonviolent communication). Also, it would be easier to judge notability of the journal if the article on its publisher, International Association of Facilitators, did a better job of establishing notability. RockMagnetist (talk) 17:02, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Dennis Brown - 2&cent;    &copy;  Join WER 17:07, 24 December 2012 (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.