Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Academic Journals/Collaboration

Collaboration of the week
When I set up the project page, I selected Journal of the Royal Statistical Society as the example CotW, because the investigation on WP:LOMJQ indicates that it is the red link with the highest number of uses. Does anyone have any objections to it being our first, and/or suggestions on what day of the week we have the CotW start? John Vandenberg 07:53, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society
Journal information from WP:LOMJQ:
 * : Used 104 times on Wikipedia
 * Identifier:
 * Publisher: Royal Statistical Society
 * History:
 * Journal of the Statistical Society of London (1838-1886)
 * Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (1887-1947)
 * Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A (General) (1948-1987)
 * Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A (Statistics in Society) (1997 - current):
 * Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B (Statistical Methodology) (1997 - current):
 * Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series C (1997 - current):
 * Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series D (1997 - 2003):

No problem with Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, though I don't think that number of uses on Wikipedia (which is presumably counting instances of wikilinked full titles, rather than unlinked abbreviations?) is necessarily the most informative metric. I'm not sure what I'd suggest, as raw impact factor would clearly bias towards review journals such as the Annual Reviews series.

However, I do wonder whether it's useful having a collaboration to start individual journal pages? I'd imagined such collaborations would be used for general pages (such as impact factor, though that looks in reasonable shape) or in an attempt to create a set of high-quality articles that might be suitable for submitting for Featured Articles review. In terms of new articles, it might be more useful to make a hitlist of the top 500 missing journals (by some metric or other) and encourage project members to create short articles on those journals in their subject areas, ie a drive format rather than a collaboration. Espresso Addict 15:24, 15 September 2007 (UTC)


 * We have a list at List_of_missing_journals/Queue, and the simplest thing is for people to take those in their subject area. Another good way to collaborate might be to concentrate on the journals of a single society. The major nonprofit journals are the ones we need most. DGG (talk) 23:45, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm guessing that we're all already doing the former -- the question is how to motivate everyone to even greater efforts! Espresso Addict 00:45, 16 September 2007 (UTC)


 * No there hasnt been any activity behind WP:LOMJQ for a long time. Before doing drives, it would be good to find or write a good article.  Then we can use that to illustrate what a good article looks like.  The "104" is from the number of google hits of the phrase "Journal of the Royal Statistical Society" (over six months ago). John Vandenberg 09:27, 16 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, I cobbled together a history and put up a stub based off information on Jstor -- add it to your watch lists and let's start improving! If we can find anything interesting about these journals, we should aim to submit our CotW's to DYK.  Also, as mentioned above, I'd really like to get Nature (journal) up to featured status and input from everyone here (let's do it at talk:Nature (journal) though) would be greatly appreciated! --JayHenry 16:22, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * It would be useful to discuss (probably on the talk page rather than here) how to handle journals with complex histories, and multiple journals in a single article. I have no idea what should go in the infobox for a start! I agree we should submit it to DYK if an interesting fact can be uncovered -- it would get a lot more visibility for this project. Does anyone know about the history of mathematics or statistics publishing? At 1838, it seems to stand a good chance of being the oldest of something... Espresso Addict 23:50, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I submitted a hook at the last minute and we made it. Hooray! --JayHenry 20:39, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Excellent! John Vandenberg 21:13, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Week Two

 * Time for a new collaboration of the week. Or perhaps we should change to collaboration of the fortnight?  Since there's not very many of us, it'd probably be good to just have somebody pick the COTW and notify everyone here.  I personally don't think we need much discussion.  In addition to COTW (COTF?), I think it'd be really great to focus on one of the WT:WPAJ, and have an ongoing FA drive, but we don't want to over-extend ourselves.  Also, would it be worthwhile notifying more people of this project?  A mini-recruitment drive?  I think more people would be interested in this project if they knew about it. --JayHenry 21:22, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Just rolling out the project template on relevant article talk pages should draw in interested editors. What else did you have in mind? (Well done on the DYK, by the way.) Espresso Addict 22:09, 27 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Of the "High-priority articles", I prefer that we work on the articles that need the most work, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences appears to be the "worst" of them so unless anybody objects in the next few hours, I'll take JayHenry's advice and make it the second CotW.
 * Personally, I would rather we keep running CotW as a weekly burst of energy. To account for the low number of project members, we should pick the CotW a week in advance so that we can "advertise" the upcoming CotW to other Wikipedians who are more focused on the journal we are improving.  We want other projects to be watching the improvements, to hopefully join in, and ideally to carry on the efforts we start.  If we can have one DYK per week, new members shouldn't be hard to find.  Picking a journals in different academic field each week will also help.
 * For collaborations that require a lot of careful work, such as a bringing an article up to GA or FA, I think a CotM would be more appropriate.  We should start the planning for one of those soon.
 * So, can someone else suggest a journal for next week and do some advertising throughout the week ? John Vandenberg 13:33, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Could we do an astronomical journal next week? I mentioned MNRAS before, but any of the old, venerable and major astronomical journals would do. Let's hope we have a Category:Astronomy journals... Carcharoth 15:36, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Two that caught my eye were Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific and Astronomische Nachrichten. That last one has a ready-made DYK hook, as it is "the oldest continuously published astronomical journal". We could ask people at WikiProject History of Science to join in. Carcharoth 15:52, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Could I put a biology/biochemistry journal in the queue? Cell and/or J Biol Chem are both very highly cited journals with only tiny stubs. Agree that we should involve WP History of Science as they are likely to have more access to historical material on journals/learned societies, and advertising the collaboration to the relevant subject WP would seem a great idea.
 * Re DYK, it will be hard to get the required 5-fold text expansion of articles that are longer than very small stubs, and finding catchy hooks about journals is quite tricky. I have given it a go with IJSEM; it'll be interesting to see whether anyone selects it. Espresso Addict 20:38, 28 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Congratulations! :-) Carcharoth 15:22, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Planning ahead
I have selected Astronomische Nachrichten as it has a DYK hook ready to roll; and Journal of Biological Chemistry to follow that. By then we will have done a few different scientific fields, so it would be good to line up a few journals in the social sciences and literary fields, or maybe we could tackle an important topic that is relevant. John Vandenberg 12:36, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I've done some initial stuff at Astronomische Nachrichten, and I hope to track down some important discoveries that it published in its early years. One thing I'm not sure about is the open access thing. If someone could check. It seems to be delayed access, but I'm not sure. The history of publication is also confusing, with the number of issues varying over the years. I hope to be able to add a little bit about that at some point (the publication history should be available all the way through). The exact years when the different companies and organisations published it would be nice as well, but I'm leaving it for today. Carcharoth 19:04, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I have left a note on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomy and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomical objects/Collaboration‎. I am going to work on Astronomische Gesellschaft for a bit to work out their involvement in this journal. John Vandenberg 03:16, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Nominations for future CotW:
 * Molesworth Institute - library science humor. John Vandenberg 03:16, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
 * The American Journal of the Medical Sciences - I created a stub on this covering its 1820s founding and early history, but the only event it mentions between 1827 and the present day is a change in sponsorship in 1984. Surely something else interesting happened in those 180 years, but I don't know what! --Delirium 01:39, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
 * African Affairs (1901-present) - highest ranked African studies journal. John Vandenberg 02:01, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Journal of Biblical Literature — probably highest circulation, most cited and most broadly useful journal for the field of theological research, and responsibly free of many affiliation issues (i.e. Jewish, Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Charismatic academics welcome, even Muslims if they cared to, certainly atheist linguists also welcome.) Alastair Haines 02:20, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Journal of Mathematical Psychology&mdash;The major journal in my own specialty within psychology, which is has been at the forefront of much theoretical development of formal models within psychology and areas of applied and theoretical mathematics concerned with measurement theory.   DDStretch    (talk)  07:35, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Founded in 1964? Was it split off from another earlier journal?  Older journals work better, as they more history and if a few of the early issues are out of copyright, we can freely sprinkle a few images on the article.  John Vandenberg 11:07, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes. 1964. Sadly it was not split off from an earlier journal, as it was founded on the creation of the Society for Mathematical Psychology. Until then, the areas the journal covers were generally sprinkled much more throughout other journals. But there is a British mathematical psychology journal, which is less notable and more statistical in its work (at least, it was when I was a referee for its submissions, and it may well have become even more statistical in nature) British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology, formerly just British Journal of Statistical Psychology and founded in 1947/1948. It has the dubious "honour" of being founded by Cyril Burt, who seems to be at the centre of controversy over fabricating research on twins and inheritance of intelligence. I guess that won't probably do, either. In which case, how about Psychometrika, though that only goes back to 1936?  DDStretch    (talk)  14:11, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Plant Pathology - Just a stub at the moment. It's over 50 years old, and because of that there is an article describing it's history avalible on the BSPP website. Most plant pathology journals do not have articles on wiki, and if they do they are stubs, so it'd be nice to get this one up to speed. Million_Moments 09:56, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Again, are there any earlier journals in your field? Are these of interest: Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek (journal) is 1934 ; Phytopathologische Zeitschrift was started in 1929 .  Im having trouble finding one that is pre 1923. more journals here. John Vandenberg 11:07, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
 * The Eagle (magazine) - university supported magazine. (We probably need to enlist help from someone at St. John's College to do this one. John Vandenberg 11:19, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Are we sure this one is notable? I have seen copies, and I'm not sure what distinguishes it from other university "news/alumni" magazines? Is it the age you are thinking of? Carcharoth 12:37, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I added it here due to recent discussions on this page regarding notability ; it is questionable whether this is notable, but from my memory it would meet WP:N easily, primarily due to literary pieces first published in it, and the items from the Cambridge Archives that were (re)published in it. I would not object to an Afd to gauge the wider communities thoughts on it, but I would spend the five days expanding it to try to sway opinion. John Vandenberg 13:33, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I've been browsing through some of the humanities journals. Not sure, but I think SEL: Studies in English Literature is the major literary journal, though it was only founded in 1956. I'll try and find an older one... Nope, the older ones are all literary magazines, publishing fiction, poetry and reviews. I did find some older journals in other disciplines: American Journal of Archaeology (1906), American Journal of Philology (1880), Classical Philology (journal) (1906), Transactions of the American Philological Association (1869), Journal of Hellenic Studies (1880), The Burlington Magazine (1903), The Art Journal (1839-1912, new journal from 1941), Le Bulletin de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale (1901), a more modern but similarly foreign-language journal is Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur (1973), Revue d'Égyptologie (1923 but dates back further to 1879), and a pre-1923 historical journal is Pacific Northwest Quarterly (1906). Carcharoth 13:06, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
 * The Art Journal looks like it would be a lot of fun for a CotW as there are plenty of image and book results. John Vandenberg 13:38, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Electrical Experimenter - its most famed contributor is one Nikola Tesla. Huzzah! Simões ( talk/contribs ) 13:28, 15 October 2007 (UTC)