Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Modern phytomorphology


 * 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. clear consensus it does not meet the established standard  DGG ( talk ) 01:13, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Modern phytomorphology

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

Article PRODded with reason "Non-notable journal. Not indexed in any selective databases, no independent sources. Does not meet WP:NJournals or WP:GNG." PROD removed by article creator with reason "I believe that there no strict background or any reason to consider Modern Phytomorphology as non-notable, and because I added links and list of databases". None of the databases listed are selective in the sense of NJournals, so PROD reason still stands. Hence: Delete. Randykitty (talk) 12:31, 6 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment The article creator just copied the contents of a long discussion from their talk page to here, which I have reverted. The discussion can be seen here. --Randykitty (talk) 15:12, 6 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep Dear Randykitty, please do not delete my posts, they are not only for you. "None of the databases listed are selective in the sense of NJournals"? There no clear criterion which databases are selective and which not. Moreover, User:Randykitty in talk before agreed that such databases as DOAJ, Index Copernicus and some others in which journal is indexed/abstractred are "less selective" than such giants as Scopus or TR. However, where is limit between "less" and "more"? I did not find any criteria for such delimitation of databases in WP:NJournals. So, I belive that this journal is enough notable to stay in WP. Our discussion with Randykitty from out talk (here) with more arguments from my side. Thanks all for help and taking a part in this discussion. Artmarichka (talk) 15:48, 6 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment Artmarichka, you cannot just copy a discussion from someplace else and dump it here (and I've reformatted your link, which is not a reference. The correct procedure is to link to it. I don't think that Index Copernicus is selective at all, it's a highly suspect database. DOAJ is selective only in that it only includes a certain type of journals (OA, peer-reviewed), but then tries to include each and every journal that falls in that class. It does not select from among all the journals in that particular class. As for what is selective enough, I have directed you before and do it again to the explanations given at WP:NJournals and to the archive of previous journal-related AfD discussions. --Randykitty (talk) 16:10, 6 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Actually, editors can "just copy a discussion from someplace else" if they properly identify the material and give proper attribution for the source of the comments. As stated above the "Save Page" button, "By clicking the 'Save page' button, you agree to the Terms of Use and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL with the understanding that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient for CC BY-SA 3.0 attribution."  Unscintillating (talk) 23:24, 6 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Please have a look at the history. The fact that it is compatible with the terms of use does not mean that it is proper procedure to copy a large discussion from one's talk page, including signatures and time stamps, and dropping it here as if that discussion took place here. A simple link does the job, too. --Randykitty (talk) 05:22, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment I would like to hear oppinion of other community members. Your oppinion,Randykitty, I already understood and not agree with it. Artmarichka (talk) 16:22, 6 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. North America1000 20:46, 6 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Journalism-related deletion discussions. North America1000 20:46, 6 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of News media-related deletion discussions. North America1000 20:46, 6 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Organisms-related deletion discussions. North America1000 20:46, 6 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep As per the article, "Modern Phytomorphology is indexed and/or abstracted in several databases, including...: Index Copernicus,[2] Polish Scholarly Bibliography,[3] POL-Index,[4] Directory of Open Access Journals,[5] EBSCO Host,[6] CAB Abstracts,[7] and CNKI.[8] It is also included in such taxonomical databases as AlgaeBase [9] and The International Plant Names Index.[10]"  In addition, this source states that it is indexed in "Genamics, Google Scholar, and ICI Journals Master List".  Google Scholar probably needs some extra mention, as it is cited as part of the WP:BEFORE process, yet WP:NJOURNALS discounts Google Scholar because "Google Scholar includes many sources that are not peer-reviewed", which is not the case here.  The primary source,  has a yet longer list, "Indexed/abstracted in algaeBASE, CABI, CiteFactor, CNKI Scholar, CORE, DOAJ, DRJI, EBSCO, E-journals, EZB, Genamics JournalSeek, Global Impact Factor, Google Scholar, Index Copernicus, IPNI, JIFactor, JournalRate, OAlib, PBN, POL-index, PubAg (Agricola), Ulrichsweb, Vifabio, WorldCat, WorldWideScience."  Unscintillating (talk) 23:24, 6 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Questions If a subject is included in Google, does that mean that it meets GNG? If not, then why does being included in GScholar convey notability? (Note that NJournals explicitly states that GScholar is not selective enough to indicate notability). Would you mind telling us which one of the databases that you mention you consider selective in the sense of NJournals? Please note that GScholar and several of the other databases (JournalSeek and WorldCat, for example) listed above strive for complete coverage, meaning that they are not selective at all. Please also note that some of the databases listed (like CiteFactor, Global Impact Factor, Journal Impact Factor) are known bogus indexing services (see here and here). Thanks. --Randykitty (talk) 05:22, 7 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Comment We can't decide prominent indexing databases for journal(s). Some of the indexing databases popular in respective subjects. I hope based on the popularity we can include or exclude. Jessie1979 (talk) 13:31, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
 * [Revert as per WP:BLOCKEVASION using strikethrough font. 22:02, 13 November 2016 (UTC)]
 * CommentAbsolutely agree with you! List of databases will clarify "the minimum criterion" for inclusion into WP and will exclude subjective factor, I think. Artmarichka (talk) 19:21, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Question - who exactly publishes this journal? Currently the article lists the publisher as "A. Novikoff, State Natural History Museum NAS of Ukraine" but while that may have been true initially it now looks as though an independent organization named "Modern Phytomorphology" was created to handle publishing the Modern phytomorphology journal in addition to books and hosting scientific events such as the International Conference on Plant Morphology and Ranunculacean International Seminar and hosting a classification system for embryophytes. I ask this because I was initially going to suggest if this were to be deleted that it instead be merged into its publisher's articles, but now since it appears to be its own publisher perhaps that is not an option, although if that is the case then perhaps notability of the organization should be considered in addition to notability from the journal. Here Modern Phytomorphology is described as a "project" that consists of the conferences, journal, society, and laboratory, which the site says they use to fulfill their objectives including organizing Ukrainian botanists, facilitating the distribution of botanical work from Ukrainian scientists to the rest of the world, and work on clarifying taxonomy. M. A. Bruhn (talk) 23:03, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
 * AnswerLet me explain. I am Andrew Novikoff and actually it was me who established this journal and who supervise MP project in general. This journal has been established in 2011 and firstly published in 2012. First issue of the journal was jointly published by Biology Faculty of Ivan Franko Lviv National University and State Natural History Museum of NAS of Ukraine because I worked in both this organizations in 2011-2013. There were also Lviv department of Botanical Society of Ukraine, Institute of Ecology of Carpathians and Chernivtsi National University who also supported the first issues of the journal; however they were not mentioned as publishers. The reason for such complicated publishing scheme was simple - all this organizations also forced the international conference with the same title Modern Phytomorphology (in Ukrainian - Suchasna Fitomorpfologia) which firstly held in early 2012 in Lviv on the base of SNMH and Lviv University. However later it became too complicated to manage the work of all institutions at the same time, and we decided to exclude Chernivtsi University of Yu. Fedkovich. Later Lviv University was also excluded from publishing process because I was not employed yet at these organizations. So, finally, several last issues of the journal are published by me on the base of SNMH, where I am currently employed. Such publishing scheme is not perfect, but it is the only possible way to keep the journal alive because no one of mentioned institutions did not support journal or conference financially and they were only a platform for work. Nevertheless, in the same 2011 there established team of people from all these different institutions who did all the work corresponding with organization of conference and publishing of the journal. We decided to entitle us in the same way - Modern Phytomorphology group, however this group is not constant and all the time people are changed, because they also working as volunteers and have no any benefits from this work. There are only few core members who are working for all this time - me, Prof. Tasenkevich, Dr. Odintsova, Dr. Danyliuk, and MSc. Chervoniy. Once again, even these core members changed the places of work several times, and therefore MP society exists now as closed group with main place at SNMH. There also exists laboratory of plant morphology which I built and established on the base of the same SNMH. So, it is the main reason why MP is mentioned rather as project, because it covers not only publishing of the journal. What’s more, in 2013 me with my colleague from Cracow Pedagogical University Prof. Barabasz-Krasny decided to prepare the new handbook on plant systematic. In this year we started work and in 2015 the book has been published. How we did this under MP, while we publishing only journal? We signed contract with other Lviv publisher Liga-Press and printing house Prostir-M (actually this house is printing all issues of the journal for us) for publishing the book under the MP brand. Next book was also published in the same outsourcing way. The big crisis became to the MP in 2014 after Russian invasion in Ukraine, as a result we lost about 35% of our conference participants and authors. The project was near the death line. As a result, it was decided to freeze the organization of the conference and only journal was published from my own money. Only in 2016 we organized small Ranunculaceae international seminar (RISE) with only 12 participants. The most work during last two years was focused on developing of the journal - we changed platform, website and consulting with TR to be included into Emerging Source CI. However it is really not easy because the only one stable financial source of money for the whole project is me, and I am neither businessman nor reach man, I am just regular PhD with regular salary of about 80 USD per month who makes most of the work by himself and by asking people for volunteer help and searching for any other sources of financial support. In fact, if elucidate some small aspects, MP is my indie project targeted onto establishing of good practice and contemporary OA scientific publication principles in Ukraine. It is the first such project in my country, and maybe the last, because it is really non-profit and absolutely not commercial. It is also a reason why in some moments it looks strange - we trying different schemes and searching for different ways to develop. It is, in particular, answer on the comment of Randykitty why the journal is listed in some bogus databases - we did not know that they are bogus when agreed to be listed in, we just searched for ways of promotion and developing of the journal. The knowledge became with experience, and, of course, we should fix this. Speaking more, for example, this year I obtained Fulbright scholar for developing of my project and implantation of OA in Ukraine. Under this scholar I will study OA scientific publishing at Emerson College in Boston. I hope that it will help us to develop the journal more and finally we will be included into Scopus and TR. In particular, I hope to transfer the journal on OJS platform and to introduce DOIs. For the last task, we obtained permission from Zenodo and will using their DOIs. To finish, did you thought about how much money you should invest to develop the journal at least to such level as our and how more you need to invest to be included into TR or Scopus? Unfortunately, we have no such money and just trying to do our work as best as possible. So, if our journal will stay in Wikipedia - it will be great honour for us and for me personally, if not - then you really should think about unequal opportunities in different countries and about clear list of databases for inclusion in Wikipedia. Thank you all, who read me and for your opinions and comments! Sincerely, Andrew. Novikoffav (talk) 13:21, 11 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep I do agree with Novikoffav. As I explained in another journal we need not follow commercial indexing sources like scopus, ISI Web of Science, EBSCO etc. The era of these monopoly indexing will go away. Pleas watch for few more years. This is my opinion, experts can decide on keep or delete. Jessie1979 (talk) 06:08, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
 * [Revert as per WP:BLOCKEVASION using strikethrough font. 22:02, 13 November 2016 (UTC)]


 * Keep - Thank you for taking the time Novikoffav to expand on the journal’s history, and for allowing us to catch an interesting glimpse at the processes and context underlying its development. It is a known problem that Wikipedia lacks coverage of many significant subjects outside of the English-speaking world (primarily America) due to language barriers including lack of coverage in English-speaking sources, and lack of editor interest/background in these subjects. I found an article by very well-respected comparative developmental biologist Donald R. Kaplan on plant morphology and it appears to be one such subject which has been overlooked in America due to the difficulty in translation as well as cell and molecular techniques coming to prominence in the biological sciences in general. In some ways the policies here are reflective of the cell and molecular approach to biology, with deletion discussions focused on small, quantifiable markers like presence in selective databases. Looking through the journal I am impressed with the rigorous detailing of plant morphology which I would love to see applied elsewhere such as in tumor morphology. The journal provides, in English, a scholarly look at region-specific botany in a field of study that is known to be under-represented in English sources, and apparently many indexing services can't even operate with Cyrillic. Such considerations should be taken into account. In my opinion WP:NPOV and WP:NOTE are in conflict here, and that the former should in this case be given preference over the latter. M. A. Bruhn (talk) 02:59, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment. I get it that you like this journal, but !votes that are not based in policy are likely to be ignored by the closing admin. --Randykitty (talk) 09:41, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Delete - does not meet WP:NJournals, and I hope that the opinion expressed above that the journal featuring in Google Scholar results means it is notable is given the weight it deserves - that would make pretty much every journal notable. Cordless Larry (talk) 17:19, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   06:37, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete Sorry, this fails WP:JOURNALCRIT. I do not see any evidence that the journal is influential in its subject area or that it has been cited multiple times in reliable sources. Neither do I see anything significant in its brief history. Fails WP:GNG as well. Wikipedia it not a directory of all journals: we do need to have a mechanism for selection. For this we rely on other reputable publishers which have a track record of verifying the influence of journals before indexing them. This journals is possibly a case of WP:TOOSOON and hasn't been indexed in any of them. While I sympathise that the journal is from Ukraine, this is an academic related topic and we cover it only when the community notes that the journal is making an impact. Till that time, delete. --Lemongirl942 (talk) 12:53, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete per Lemongirl1942. I sympathize with several of the justifications for the keep voters above, but I can't find any evidence that this journal meets WP:NJournals which is the current consensus for how we determine which journals to have articles about in the encyclopedia. It sounds like some of the voters above have concerns about that guideline, but perhaps that's a discussion better held at Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(academic_journals). Ajpolino (talk) 20:20, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Just a pedantic point. Although it is treated like a guideline, it is in fact an essay. M. A. Bruhn (talk) 00:06, 20 August 2016 (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.