Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History


 * 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. The "keep" opinions are weaker. They are based on the supposed academic importance of the journal as per WP:NJOURNAL, a page that has essay status - that is, it does not reflect Wikipedia community consensus. The "delete" opinions, on the other hand, stress the lack of reliable independent sources that cover this journal. This is a very strong (and unrebutted) argument, because it reflects WP:V, a core policy.  Sandstein  13:48, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History

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

The coverage (references, external links, etc.) does not seem sufficient to justify this article passing General notability guideline nor the more detailed Notability (journals) requirement. WP:BEFORE did not reveal any significant coverage on Gnews, Gbooks or Gscholar. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 08:43, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academic journals-related deletion discussions. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here  08:43, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here  08:43, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here  08:43, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete. MIAR does not indicate coverage by any selective database, making this a fail of WP:NJournals. As the nom indicates, no in-depth sources, so this also fails WP:NJournals. --Randykitty (talk) 09:13, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment without taking a position on the discussion, this more properly belongs in Society, rather than Science and Technology. Moving. PianoDan (talk) 17:24, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep. I can see 3580 hits in Google Scholar, and plenty of the articles in this journal are cited by other articles- this means it qualifies under Criterion 2 of WP:NJournals. It's peer reviewed. The authors I can who have written articles in it are clearly legitimate noted academics. According to my University library catalogue I can see it's available via Project Muse and Proquest central, and as mentioned it's indexed in Google Scholar. Its held by a number of institutions, according to worldcat Deathlibrarian (talk) 12:44, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment: None of the indexing services mentioned are selective in the sense of NJournals, being held in some libraries is trivial, being peer-reviewed or not is irrelevant to notability, and concerning authors being notable WP:NOTINHERITED applies. That leaves the number of GScholar citations, which looks like a decent amount at first sight, but over 1000 of those citations are for a single article. If these citations mean anything, why has, say, Scopus not yet picked it up? --Randykitty (talk) 13:33, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
 * In addition to what Randy said, we have to remember that NJ is subordinate to GNG. Did you find any WP:SIGCOV of this journal? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 09:54, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I just ran this search an advanced search in Google scholar, on publication title. That gives me 977 articles from "Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History" in Google scholar. I looked through just the first six pages, and all of the individual articles from the journal were cited... by between 6 and 40 other articles. I then ran an additional search on JSTOR - and found 311 article/books that had cited work from it. This definitely would appear to meet WP:NJournals "Criterion 2: The journal is frequently cited by other reliable sources". criteria 2. 2 (c) allows for using worldcat as a measure to see if the journal is listed in a number of libraries, which it appears to be.Deathlibrarian (talk) 12:34, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment: If those citations are really that substantive, then why has not a single selective citation database picked up this journal (GScholar includes everything, so being included in there is as significant as being indexed by Google)? And I disagree with #2(c) as WorldCat is notoriously unreliable. --Randykitty (talk) 13:19, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Criteria 2 of WP:NJournals simply refers to a journal being regularly cited, which there is ample evidence of in Google Scholar. Your question about selective citation database indexing refers to a different criteria (Criteria 1b), which it doesn't meet - however it does meet criteria 2, so it does meet the requirements for WP:NJournals. As for Worldcat, it is specifically mentioned as a valid measure by WP:NJournals."For journals in humanities, the existing citation indices and Google Scholar often provide inadequate and incomplete information. In these cases, one can also look at how frequently the journal is held in various academic libraries when evaluating whether C2 is satisfied. This information is often available in Worldcat" Deathlibrarian (talk) 21:47, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, NJournals does not give any indication how many citations suffice for #2. You think it's enough, I disagree. As for WorldCat, in my experience it is all too often unreliable. It may list a certain library to have a journal, but if one then checks the catalogue of that library itself, that turns out to be incorrect. Also very often journal-related info (such as publisher) is incorrect, too. NJournals should be adapted, but even though it's just an essay and not a guideline, that's almost impossible to do. (Look at its history, many editors find it too lenient, but equally many find it too restrictive). Unless something clearly meets #1 (which can be verified by independent sources, I prefer to go with WP:GNG, which this journal fails by a mile. --Randykitty (talk) 22:24, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I think at this point, it's probably best we agree to disagree, but thank you very much for the discussion -cheers buddy. Deathlibrarian (talk) 22:37, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree, let's see what other editors think. Cheers! --Randykitty (talk) 11:48, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus. Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   15:43, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep -- A journal, published by a university press, will almost inevitably consist of peer-reviewed articles, which are likely to be regularly cited. Unfortunately, history is rather less well-covered by various citation indices and abstraction services, whose focus tends to be scientific.  Peterkingiron (talk) 14:01, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment: being peer-reviewed does not mean that a journal is notable. And if you look at Scopus, for example, you'll find dozens of history journals (and journals in other academic fields). Of course, even if you were correct that such journals are not or less well covered, that would just reinforce the case for deletion: if a subject is not covered by reliable sources, we cannot have an article on it. --Randykitty (talk) 16:18, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment: I would tend to agree with Peterkingiron on scopus - I'm a University Librarian, and while scopus does cover the arts, its rep is more around science. You can see on their documentation their coverage of history is a lot less than science Deathlibrarian (talk) 23:05, 17 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Comment: "History" is a much smaller field than "science", so of course there are fewer history journals in Scopus. From the link that you gave, I don't see that history is covered less extensively than science (there's one table that might suggest that, but that table is an example analyzing research output in Australia only). In fact, most of that document reports on how well they are actually covering the humanities and social sciences. --Randykitty (talk) 16:55, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus. Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   09:24, 25 December 2021 (UTC)
 * AfD reviewer comment - I am recusing myself from reviewing this due to a conflict of interest. Missvain (talk) 02:21, 25 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep. Deathlibrarian's analysis is persuasive. Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:39, 25 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete we go by sources not our own research, and no sources cover this journal. It is not indexed in any selective databases, and does not have any coverage that would meet WP:GNG. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:49, 25 December 2021 (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.