Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Society for the Academic Study of Magic


 * 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.  Sandstein  20:10, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Society for the Academic Study of Magic

 * – ( View AfD View log )

Lack of notability - apparent absence of independent sources covering this topic; the only coverage appears to be self-published sources, such as the society's webpage. --Smcg8374 05:18, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Organizations-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 14:09, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

To verify journals, usually I use Ulrich's Periodical Directory. http://ulrichsweb.serialssolutions.com (may not be accessible outside of a library). I will check it to see if the journal is listed. WhisperToMe (talk) 14:46, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
 * There is a "Journal for the Academic Study of Magic" listed in the database at http://ulrichsweb.serialssolutions.com/title/1327330062136/505671 - Its ISSN is 1479-0750 and the publisher is Mandrake of Oxford. It is from the United Kingdom, it is published annually, and it began in 2003. The directory says "Refereed	Yes" = it is peer reviewed. WhisperToMe (talk) 14:49, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
 * But to be safe, it is better to have secondary sources, so I'll see what I can find. WhisperToMe (talk) 14:50, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Update: I found something on Google Books:
 * Anthropology News, Volume 45, Issues 1-5. American Anthropological Association, 2004. p. 48. says:
 * "It is connected to the Society for the Academic Study of Magic (SASM), which was established in Bristol, England by Alison Butler and Dave Evans. Both the society and the journal focus on the scholarly study of magic and its history and ..."
 * WhisperToMe (talk) 14:52, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Ulrich's also says that the journal is "Abstracted / Indexed" WhisperToMe (talk) 02:41, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for finding these WhisperToMe. For a journal to be considered notable there must be evidence that it is considered influential in its field by third parties or that it is frequently cited (see Notability (academic journals)). The fact that it is listed in Ulrich's does not show that the journal is considered influential or that it has ever been cited. The article that has been proposed for deletion is about the Society, rather than their journal. A single mention in what appears to be a "current events" notice in Anthropology News does not constitute 'substantial coverage' of this organisation by independent parties and hence does not meet notability guidelines. Oddly enough, even though Google books has a screenshot with a mention of the Society, when I accessed Anthropology News through my university library, I could not find any reference to the Society in this journal. Page 48 of Vol. 45 did not match the Google Books screenshot at all. A search of the journal (via Wiley Online Library) again produced no results for the Society. The Google Books reference does not appear to be a reliable source as it cannot be verified against the original source. --Smcg8374 (talk) 04:29, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the report. That's strange that the book you found didn't seem to have it. Did you check the index to see if it could be on a different page? Also, Ulrichs says that it's indexed by EBSCOHost, H.W. Wilson, and OCLC. I know EBSCOHost is a major academic database. WhisperToMe (talk) 04:48, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Well what do you know, I actually did find it in Volume 45, issue 2 (I had previously looked in issue 1) so the Google Books reference is valid after all. There is a short paragraph (four sentences) under "Section News" mentioning that the Journal and the Society may be of interest to scholars working in the area and providing details of how to contact them. So what we have established is that there is a very brief mention of the Society in a single journal. WP:N requires "significant coverage" over a period of time and "multiple sources are generally expected". The notability guidelines also state that directories and databases, announcements columns, and minor news stories may not actually support notability, even if they are from reliable sources. Unless there are other independent sources that discuss the Society in more detail, the coverage of the topic does not appear to be significant enough to meet notability guidelines for inclusion. --Smcg8374 (talk) 12:35, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I have just done a search of Journal Citation reports for citations of the Journal for the Academic Study of Magic for the years 2003 to 2010. There were no matches. A Journal Citation reports Impact Factor would produce evidence of notability. Since it has no impact factor there is a lack of evidence that their journal has been cited in another journal. --Smcg8374 (talk) 02:05, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
 * If a journal is not listed in JCR, that doesn't mean it doesn't get cited (GScholar and the Web of Science may give some hits). Of course, not being in the JCR most probably means that there will not be many hits. Of course, the journal may be included in other databases. In any case, whether the journal is notable or not does not seem to me to be very important for the discussion at hand, which is about the society. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 12:35, 25 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Stifle (talk) 10:19, 31 January 2012 (UTC)


 * A search of GoogleScholar using the term "Society for the Academic Study of Magic" produced a total of 5 hits. The first four were citations of the Society's Journal. The fifth was for a book on shamanism by Robert Wallis. A view of Dr Wallis' website shows that six of his publications (all of these book reviews) were published in the Society's Journal, so I doubt if he qualifies as an independent source. A search of Web of Science produced one hit that oddly enough is about financial reform and nowhere mentions the Society. --Smcg8374 (talk) 01:55, 1 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   19:06, 9 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete. A fairly extensive search above has found very little to suggest notability, and not for want of trying.  I think the efforts described above are sufficient to show, at the very least, a lack of clear notability.Tyrenon (talk) 21:25, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Very well put Tyrenon!--Smcg8374 (talk) 05:06, 10 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep It's journal is notable: it's in 245 libraries. there are 17 libraries in NYC alone that have it, according to WorldCat. It's in Wilson's Social Science Index, which is highly selective, though not as scholarly oriented as JCR. Web of Science is not the standard for relatively popular-interest oriented semi-academic journals of this sort--if anything, it makes a point out of not covering them. We could write the article focused around the journal, but it makes more sense to have it at this title  DGG ( talk ) 06:10, 13 February 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.