Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Academic Journals/Writing guide

Suggestion
I suggest we include the following, which is  current advice to contributors who have problems:

An article about a journal should if possible contain
 * 1) Full name, & dates of start
 * 2) print and online ISSNs
 * 3) earlier & other titles, with dates
 * 4) Standard abbreviations used--make redirects from them.
 * 5) publishing & sponsoring body, as well as earlier publishers & sponsors
 * 6) availability on line
 * 7) availability open access, if relevant, with any limitations.
 * 8) frequency of publication
 * 9) no. of articles published a year
 * 10) circulation (sourced somewhere--default place to get it is Ulrichs)
 * 11) Name of the editors-in-chief, (but only the eds. in chief) with their institutional affiliations -- include earlier ones also.
 * 12) A list of the major indexing services that cover it -- in particular Web of Science and Scopus
 * 13) latest year's impact factor if available
 * 14) any actual references providing substantial coverage from  3rd party independent published reliable sources, print or online, but not blogs or press releases, or material derived from press releases.
 * 15) a list of the 3 or 4 most influential articles similarly, getting citation figures from Web of Science if possible.

It should not contain
 * 1) A list of everyone on the editorial board
 * 2) names of the staff, except editor in chief
 * 3) vague promotional statements about how useful it is for people in the relevant profession
 * 4) a list of all the possible subjects covered, unless it is not reasonably obvious from the title
 * 5) adjectives of praise
 * and, most important, it must contain no text from the web page description of the journal. This is a copyright violation, and needs to be rewritten. Even if you are prepared to donate copyright according to WP:DCM, it is likely to be unsuitably promotional. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DGG (talk • contribs) 06:15, 27 September 2009

Should we include indexing?
Seems like relevant information to me (see example in Synthetic Metals). Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 18:16, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Italics
Naming conventions (technical restrictions) doesn't say to not italicize titles, it simply describes the current practice. It could probably be updated to reflect the practice of italicizing the title of periodicals, (and possibly also music albums, since I see them italicized from time to time). Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 23:28, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Technical Problem? - Italicizing Titles
Three article about academic journals to which I added the " " template to the top, did not alter the display of the title. The articles are: Did I not do something right? Justin W Smith talk/stalk 00:18, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
 * IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence
 * International Journal of Computational Geometry and Applications
 * Management Science: A Journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences
 * Not as far as I can see. I have noticed before that longer titles do not italicize, but I have no clue why or whom to ask to correct this. Works fine for shorter titles, but somewhere above 30 or so characters it goes wrong. --Crusio (talk) 00:22, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I fixed the problem using the "DISPLAYTITLE magic word" that was discussed here: Template talk:Italic title. I'm sure this issue will come up again. Justin W Smith talk/stalk 01:07, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Good job, thanks! --Crusio (talk) 01:11, 19 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Good, indeed. To spell out the fix a little more, here is an example of how to italicize a long article title tab.  Insert at the top of the article, for example International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, the following:  where ...  (NOT the usual pair of double quotation  marks:  " ... " ) encloses (and thus italicizes) the article name. --Thomasmeeks (talk) 23:28, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Impact factor only the most recent?
Impact factor is usually listed in the infobox only once (for the lacking of space). Is there any reason why there have to be the impact factor for the only one year mentioned in the article? Impact factor of every certain journal is changing (decreasing or increasing) during the history. Are there any (negative or positive) examples when there are more than one impact factors mentioned in one article? Is there more reliable source indicating prestige of the journal? I think, that historical values are also important. When impact factor of the most recent year has the criteria for Notability then certainly impact factor of every year gains criteria for notability and can be included in the article. For example impact factor can be known (or easily detectable) for last two years for some journals, then both of them can be included in the article in one sentence to provide information for readers from more than one limited perspective. --Snek01 (talk) 10:30, 27 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Well you can certainly add the impact factor over time if you have access to that information. The infobox should always be the most recent however. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 23:41, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I disagree. Almost always, this information will not be very interesting, as IFs evolve gradually over time, going from 4.3 to 3.8 to 3.9 etc. Also, very few people have access to all IFs ever published (they have been around for 30-something years or more now), so we get a problem with verifiability. There are exceptions, if something unusual is going on (say, a journal goes from 0.1 to 15 in one single year -unless it was a new journal of course), but in that case there will certainly be sources commenting upon this unusual movement. Behavioural Brain Research, for example (a journal that has been important to me throughout my career, so I have followed it a bit) has for at least 20 years had an IF that varied in a narrow range between 2 and 3.3. Would a table of the last 30-years with this info really be informative? We might as well add a table with number of pages published per year... That is also existing (and still easily verifiable) information, but not all available info is important/interesting enough to include in an article. --Crusio (talk) 07:00, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you for this example. Every information is informative. Focusing on the only most recent information and strictly deleting every older information is a nonsense. We are not newspaper, but an encyclopedia. It would be certainly more informative "IF of Behavioural Brain Research ranged between 2 and 3.3 in 1990-2010." than "2009 impact factor is 3.220". This is similar for example to population in cities; in the infobox is the most recent information, but there are not deleted historical records of population of the city in the text of the article. For example if you will add IF for the last 3 years, a reader will for example see that the IF is not changing rapidly, which is normal useful information. Let's look at all B-class articles (there are not better ones for journals):


 * Astronomy & Geophysics - IF for 2 last year mentioned.
 * BMJ - IF for 2009 only
 * Genes, Brain and Behavior - IF for 2009 only
 * International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology - IF for 2009 only
 * Journal of Cell Science - IF for 2009 only
 * The Lancet - IF for 2009 only
 * Nature (journal) - IF for 2009 only
 * Pflügers Archiv: European Journal of Physiology - IF for 2009 only
 * Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - IF for 2009 only

It should be noted, that number of those articles above had also previous IF included and they were updated to the last one only. Some of them had information for 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 continuously included and subsequently deleted (in a good faith). I am sure that information value has decreased this way. --Snek01 (talk) 12:29, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, it's clear I don't agree. in addition, the farther back you go, the more difficult it will be to verify these things. For Behav. Brain Res. I know that the IF varied between 2 and 3.3 and I agree that this would be useful info (but not a table of all IFs from the last 30 years). But "I know" is not an acceptable source and it is not verifiable, so we cannot add this info to the article. Only if there is somewhere a source that lists the IFs of a certain journal over a certain period (and a few of those do exist), could we add this to an article. However, that will be the rare exception (and even then, all the foregoing objects about verifiability and such still apply to all IFs that journal gets after that particular source has been published) and the rule will be that we have no specific info. As for your remark that "every information is informative", do you propose also to include information about the number of pages published per year (or per issue)? And, mind you, some editors do include that sort of info to an article... --Crusio (talk) 14:56, 28 April 2011 (UTC)


 * When the information is attributed to a reliable, published source, then it can be normally included in the Wikipedia. We do not distinguish if the information is easily verifiable or more difficult verifiable. Very difficult verified informations are not excluded from Wikipedia. - When we have, for example Impact Factor for the last 4 years for Genes, Brain and Behavior available, is there any reason why we should not include them all? We can normally write something like this (with proper references):


 * Impact factor of Genes, Brain and Behavior is stable for the last few years: 4.385 (2006); 3.533 (2007); 3.890 (2008); 3.795 (2009).

Imagine the situation when the IF is dropping down (or growing up) for few years, every year -0.5. Why we should remove these trends from wikipedia, especially when we can have this this information included already. There is not possible systematically ignore informations that are older than 365 days. --Snek01 (talk) 15:32, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Old IFs are still available for anyone making the effort to go to a library and pull out old printed versions of the Journal Citation reports. However, any conclusions from these "IF trends" would be inadmissible original research, unless a reliable source would have remarked about that. In your above example, the conclusion that "the IF of GBB isstable", is not supported by any reliable source, even though the different IFs can still be verified online in the JCR. As for older IFs, I could write down anything for 20-year-old IFs, and hardly anybody would be able to verify this. I think that is a problem. Just listing IFs over a number of years goes against WP:NOTADIRECTORY. Only if there is a reliable source discussing the IF of a journal over a number of years and drawing conclusions from that, could this be admissible and even then it would depend on what was being said whether it might still be questioned whether this info is interesting enough to merit inclusion. --Crusio (talk) 16:30, 28 April 2011 (UTC)


 * OK, thanks for notifying that. That my extrapolation could be really incorrect. (Although my personal opinion is that it is absolutely correct.) A reader can make his/her own opinion about the theme. Reformulating is very easy:


 * Impact factor of Genes, Brain and Behavior has been for the last few years like this: 4.385 (2006); 3.533 (2007); 3.890 (2008); 3.795 (2009).

I will accept (for this discussion) your theory that including four numbers into text is against WP:NOTADIRECTORY. What number will you choose then? Unfortunately there is no evidence that more recent data are better that older ones. Preferring any data against other ones is against WP:NPOV. I hope that you will not find a referenced sentence that some number of certain impact factor is more important than other one and that you will not lead this discussion ad absurdum. - Every policy is always contradicting some other one to keep the final results in balance (WP:OR × Make technical articles understandable; WP:NOTADIRECTORY × writing every table; and so on). Is there possible any balance between forcing a reader to get the only one impact factor number, avoiding a large amount of numbers and avoiding speculations? I hope so. --Snek01 (talk) 22:26, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Listen, if you write an article about some city, you list the most recent figure for the number of inhabitants. If there has been a large change, you might add that "in 1913, only 12 people lived here" (if you have a source for that). You're not, though, going to give a list of inhabitants for every year since the city was founded, are you? I don't see how that is different here. Same with the page numbers, you're not going to list how many pages a journal has published in each and every year that it has been around (event though that is more easy to verify than IFs older than 5 years). --Crusio (talk) 09:09, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
 * We already do this for US cities, although population data is limited to 10-year intervals by the frequency of the US census; see Template:US Census population. There's also a template for other countries: Template:Historical populations. Honestly, I don't see why we shouldn't include past impact factors in a similar way, providing they are verifiable. mgiganteus1 (talk) 12:24, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Bad example, I guess. The IF was established in 1961. Are you seriously propose to include 50-something IFs to journal articles? In that case, why not add number of pages (or the physical size of a journal, which you have, indeed, added to some journal articles)? --Crusio (talk) 12:45, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I have never been proposing this, but I can share my personal opinion. It is certainly better (for a reader and for an editor also) to have more values (that also apply to 50 IFs) than the only one until somebody will modify it to more readable way. Is there possibility to improve the article according to bare 50 values? If so (and I hope so), you can store them either as invisible text in the article or on the talk page or on some project page (of this project). --Snek01 (talk) 20:24, 2 May 2011 (UTC)


 * The easiest solution is to find secondary sources that analyse any notable rise or decline in a journal's impact factor. Otherwise it is best to not to mention or list such information, since it is boring, it is in violation of WP:SYNTHESIS, and in violation of WP:NOT. Abductive  (reasoning) 18:50, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
 * If a reader will be looking for informations, some "boring" informations may be useful for them while some other ones can easily skip them to not be bored. --Snek01 (talk) 20:24, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Imagine that you have all existing informations available. How will you organize them, if unfortunately no analysis was written? What informations about impact factor will be included in the Featured article about a scientific journal? Featured article is the state that we should try to reach. Will there be for example graph of the impact factor? WP:NOT does not automatically mean, that no more than one number may be included in the article. Will there be impact factor mentioned at least one for every 10 years (as in population data for cities, that is certainly not against WP:NOT)? Or more often or less often? Writing a guide is never a rule. We should try to have such guides, that can allow all articles to reach its Featured status and that allow this rather more effectively than less effectively. It would be very unfortunate if guides or long term actions of some project members would be proven to be wrong. I think, that this practice of deleting (among some other practices) disallow articles in their developing. --Snek01 (talk) 20:24, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

List articles
I'm thinking seriously about creating List of primatological journals, allowing readers to sort the journals alphabetically, by impact factor, and possibly other fields. I'm looking for suggestions on what to include in the lead (including sources for references) as well as all the fields for the table. Any thoughts. –  VisionHolder « talk » 07:40, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Frequency of publication
Instead of


 * The Journal of Foo (abbreviated J Foo) is a Dutch peer reviewed academic journal which focuses on codfish reproduction and migration. It was founded in 1924 by the Austrian biologist John Doe, and is published by Acme on a weekly basis.

I often write


 * The Journal of Foo (abbreviated J Foo) is a weekly Dutch peer reviewed academic journal which focuses on codfish reproduction and migration. It was founded in 1924 by the Austrian biologist John Doe and is published by Acme.

because of the flow (and it is shorter). In addition, I do not include the abbreviation here, as it is in the infobox (unless there is a common non-ISO abbreviation - such as Bluebook abbreviations for law reviews). If others agree, this can perhaps be integrated in the guide. (Detail: I don't think there should be a comma after "John Doe"). --Crusio (talk) 09:15, 14 July 2011 (UTC)


 * It's just an example. "is a weekly ... journal" in the first sentence, or "is published on a weekly basis" say the exact same thing. Personally I prefer the later since I consider frequency of publication to be not particularly interesting compared to nationality or the journal's scope.


 * As for the abbreviations, it's hit and miss. I wouldn't usually mention "abbreviated J. Phys. A" for Journal of Physics A, but I don't know if i'd remove it from the article if it was already there. I'd probably mention "abbreviated Z. Anorg. Allg. Chem., or sometimes ZAAC" for Zeitschrift für anorganische und allgemeine Chemie since it's a German title. At the very least I'd mention ZAAC in a more substantial version of the article, since it probably would be re-used in the article. I don't really have a good guideline for this other than "go with my gut feeling" however. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:31, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Social media links
Should we make it explicit that social media for the journal should *not* be included (e.g. LinkedIn Groups, Twitter accounts, and the like)? Jodi.a.schneider (talk) 12:38, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
 * We could. It is already covered in WP:ELNO, but the people that this guide is intended for are likely not familiar with that. I'll add a line, let me know if you think it is OK. --Randykitty (talk) 12:47, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks Randykitty, that's exactly why I was suggesting it! Looks good! :) Jodi.a.schneider (talk) 16:52, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

DGG isn't god
I've reverted this revert. I don't agree one bit with the logic that just because DGG said something, we must follow it. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:02, 7 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I guess that I'm his prophet then.. :-) Originally, I also occasionally added this kind of information (i.e., what kind of papers a journal publishes). There are some cases where this info must be present, for example if a journal only publishes reviews or only short letter papers. However, apart from these exceptions, all journals publish different types of papers, with a plethora of different names for similar items (Viewpoint, Journal Club, Perspective, etc). For the run-of-the mill journal, it is really not noteworthy to state that they publish "research papers, short communications, reviews, and letters to the editor". It's kind of the same that we don't mention explicitly (except in the infobox by default) that a journal is published in English, but do mention it if it is published (partly or whole) in another language. So I think that god DGG has a point here and that is why I changed the guide in this sense several months ago. When patrolling new articles, I have routinely removed this kind of stuff. Types of papers published is, of course, verifiable info (can be sourced as non-controversial to the journal's own website), but not everything that is verifiable is also encyclopedic (cf the language example). --Randykitty (talk) 11:05, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree that "Viewpoint, Journal Club, Perspective, etc" should be left out, but in general specifying the main article type seems fine to me at least in some cases. I'm not sure how I feel about it in Physical Review E, but I know I wouldn't remove it from MNRAS. I agree that some guidance could be developed here, maybe after building a list of cases. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 12:05, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, the guide now recommends that it be added in all cases... --Randykitty (talk) 12:40, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Where? I've just reread the whole thing and I don't see a recommendation either way. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 14:32, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
 * You're right, I should know by now that I cannot trust my memory... It doesn't give a recommendation either way, I can live with that! :-) --Randykitty (talk) 14:37, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Re:Cove Pic for Journal
Does the copyright violation is applicaple when I use the cover pic, which is available in official site of journal?Sulthan (talk) 07:20, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
 * This would fall under fair use provision. If you click on 'Upload File' in the toolbar on the left, you can start the Upload wizard which will guide you through the process. Most of the fields are self-explanatory. In Step 3, choose "This is a copyrighted, non-free work, but I believe it is Fair Use." followed by "This is the official cover art of a work." Then you'll have some more forms to file, again pretty self-explanatory stuff. When it asks to explain how the use is minimal, just put something like "Small low-resolution version of the cover." Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:15, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I understand and will follow the steps. Sulthan (talk) 07:50, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Possible clarification on disambiguation
The current guidelines read


 * Disambiguation: If the journal title is already used for a more important subject, add the suffix "(journal)", as in Injury (journal). If two journals have exactly the same title, the publisher's name should be added as a suffix – in addition to the word "journal" –, as in Open Medicine (De Gruyter Open journal) and Open Medicine (John Willinsky journal).

I wrote that with journals of the same field in mind, given that's usually where the conflicts arise [e.g Open Medicine (De Gruyter Open journal) vs Open Medicine (John Willinsky journal)]. However, in the case of journals of different fields, it can lead to some absurdities, like Historia (Franz Steiner Verlag journal) vs Historia (Pontifical Catholic University of Chile journal). I think we might be better off specifying the field rather than the publisher. We'd end up with something like Historia (Greco-Roman history journal) and Historia (Chilean history journal). I've proposed and update below, which everyone is free to tweak and edit. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 15:07, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

--- START PROPOSED UPDATE


 * Disambiguation:
 * If the journal title is already used for a more important subject, add the word 'journal' in parentheses after the title, as in Injury (journal).
 * If two journals of different fields share the same title, the journal's field should be added before 'journal' in the parentheses, as in Historia (Greco-Roman history journal) and Historia (Chilean history journal). However, avoid being overly specific in your description. Use [hypothetical examples] Pedagogica (education journal) over Pedagogica (early education journal), and Truth (philosophy journal) over Truth (epistemology journal).
 * If two journals of similar fields share the same title, the publisher's name should be added before 'journal' in the parentheses, as in Open Medicine (De Gruyter Open journal) and Open Medicine (John Willinsky journal).

END PROPOSED UPDATE ---


 * Comment: why do you call the first pair below absurd but the second pair acceptable?
 * Historia (Franz Steiner Verlag journal) and Historia (Pontifical Catholic University of Chile journal)
 * Open Medicine (De Gruyter Open journal) and Open Medicine (John Willinsky journal)
 * Is it because it's too long? If so, it's always possible to abbreviate the title, as in Historia (PUC Chile journal). Please clarify. fgnievinski (talk) 20:19, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree with Headbomb that same name-same subject cases are not what most cases are about. I am mostly concerned about lenght and clarity. I would prefer to sacrifice consistency in naming to provide optimum length and clarity. Publisher names does not add neither short length nor clarity. The subject area proposal is better than "the current" apparently non-consensus publisher method of differentiation. I do however insist, from a user viewpoint clarity and conciseness are key. Dentren  | T a l k 21:07, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
 * PUC Chile is unacceptable, because that's unclear as hell, and no one calls it PUC Chile. If we go with publisher, we go with the publisher's actual name, so that would be Historia (Pontifical Catholic University of Chile journal). That being said, publisher is the worst option because I can't tell you off the top of my head who publishes Apeiron and Apeiron, but if I'm reading an astronomy article, I know I'm likely being refereed to  (cosmology journal) and not  (philosophy journal). Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 22:24, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Alright, let's go with dab by field/subject, then. Although I also liked Apeiron (ISSN 0843-6061)/Apeiron (ISSN 2156-7093) and Historia (1961- journal)/Historia (1962- journal) -- just kidding. fgnievinski (talk) 22:45, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Just noted that newspapers disambiguate by location, i.e., Daily Record (city name), see also Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, Daily News, etc. I do not think location is to be preferred for journals though, as academic publishing is dominated by Category:Multinational publishing companies. fgnievinski (talk) 00:09, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Going to ping to get more feedback on this just in case we overlooked something. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 23:31, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

I think the guideline is OK, using subject where possible, except I would abbreviate publishers names when it's clear, eg. I'd say Franz Steiner not Franz Steiner Verlag (Verlag is equivalent of using Inc. in a title name, and we avoid that). And I'd use De Gruyter, not De Gruyter Open--there is no need to specify a particular imprint of a publisher. Brevity is important.

The library practice is consistently to add the dates of publication as the distinguishing elements, and to use others only if necessary. (An older library practice is to add place of publication) I don't think that's appropriate in most situations  for anyone else, except when its basically the same journal being revived, or the like. And newspapers very obviously should go by place.  DGG ( talk ) 05:20, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Another case
Another interesting pair triplet: Animal Science Journal and Animal Science (journal) and Journal of Animal Science. fgnievinski (talk) 00:04, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Maybe in this case nothing needs to be done as the titles are not exactly the same. fgnievinski (talk) 00:24, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Multi-part journals
Hello! I have been editing the page Acta Crystallographica as these are important journals in the area of science I am active in and it would be useful to others if there were some information about them on Wikipedia (previously there were only title headings with no content on the page). I am aiming to eventually bring the page to a similar level of detail as that for journals such as Zeitschrift für Kristallographie that cover similar areas. My question is: would these six journals be better served by individual pages for each journal linked to from the Acta Crystallographica page, where the historical and general information would remain? Should one page contain information on more than one journal? The journals are very much independent entities; they share related names for historical reasons. The six infoboxes on the present page make it look rather a mess as they make the page so deep, especially at present when the page contains so little text. Please let me know your thoughts on this. I intend to do some more work on this shortly (once I have resolved some rather trying issues re: copyrighted material). TheBigPikachu (talk) 18:02, 25 March 2017 (UTC)


 * The short answer is that we don't have very well developed examples of these situations, so it's a bit of a "well, whatever works best I guess?". The closet example I can thing of is Physical Review which summarizes the series, and individual journals have their own pages Physical Review A, Physical Review B, Physical Review E. However, Physical Review C, Physical Review D are redirects.


 * This is likely the situation of people just never having bothered to create individual entries, and let the redirect stand for now. I can't see any real reason to not split the page up when the infoboxes get so unwieldy, especially in the case of individually notable journal sections. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:22, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I think we've historically done it different ways rather than aiming for any consistency. Journal of Combinatorial Theory is an example of two now-different but closely related journals with a single entry. Indagationes Mathematicae is an example of an article on a single journal that was formerly part of Proceedings of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen; we don't have an article under the proceedings title, but others do, e.g. es:Proceedings of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen which talks only about part C (Indag.Math. was part A). —David Eppstein (talk) 19:30, 27 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Many thanks for your responses and advice. I will probably go ahead and create new pages for the individual journals at some point, as this would seem to make sense. And when someone invariably comes along and disagrees with this decision at least I can say that I did ask first! Thanks again! TheBigPikachu (talk) 20:17, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Talk:PhiloSOPHIA
Please comment. This will possibly affect our writing guide. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:39, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Landmark papers
I've added WikiProject Academic Journals/Writing guide. Feel free to refine the language. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:09, 7 June 2017 (UTC)


 * Going to ping for some feedback on this. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:08, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Looks fine. The fact that the Lancet published Wakefield is definitely notable. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 18:17, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
 * I think this is consistent with the selection of papers that I've occasionally added to journal articles (e.g. Tohoku Mathematical Journal). The only thing I might add is that, if selected papers are added at all (not every journal article needs them) the list should be small and not WP:INDISCRIMINATE. It's easier to choose selected papers for obscure journals than for the big ones like Science or Nature where there is too much of an embarrassment of riches to select anything. We should only list papers that actually stand out from the other papers in the same journal, not just ones that are reasonably highly cited in general. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:20, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
 * I think this is the right balance also.  DGG ( talk ) 00:50, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
 * , thanks for the ping. I agree with the remarks of the users above, and it makes me wonder whether we may one day want to think about notability guidelines for notable journal articles. In any event, thank you for adding this to the writing guide. Best, -- Notecardforfree (talk) 05:24, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
 * , Looks good to me. I think it is just saying in the writing guide what has been understood by the project. Thanks for your work at Wikiproject Academic journals. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Steve Quinn (talk • contribs)

Journal conflicts of interest
While journal articles conventionally contain conflict-of-interest statements for authors, journals themselves rarely state their COIs. Some journals have pretty substantial COIs, like being funded by an industry and publishing articles evaluating the same industry's health effects.

For example, the Journal of Nutrition is run by the American Society for Nutrition. Their website lists a some familiar large companies in the food industry, which list I have wikified at Talk:American Society for Nutrition. An editorial board that consists mostly of industry employees would be a similar conflict of interest for a journal.

Supplements to a journal can have even more substantial COIs. I made a list of the non-paywalled COIs of supplements to the European Journal of Nutrition. For DGG's comments on this, see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine.

Could we add a section to this guideline on what funding and COI information ought to be included in a journal article, and how? HLHJ (talk) 16:45, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not exactly sure how exactly you propose to substantiate claims of such conflicts of interest. You would need reliable sources stating those conflicts of interest exists, because a mere affiliation is not a conflict of interest, despite what certain activist groups want to claim. These sections would be crank magnets / fear mongering magnets, e.g. "Classical and Quantum Gravity has a conflict of interest and wants to suppress the truth about aether theory!" / "European Journal of Nutrition suppresses anti-GMO research because its editors have worked with Monsanto!" / "American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology has a conflict of interest because all of its editors are OB-GYN specialists with anti-doula viewpoints!" Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:14, 26 March 2018 (UTC)


 * You're right, attributing actions to COIs is a judgment call on which people are likely to differ violently. I suggest self-declared conflicts of interest; for authors, whatever the authors state in their paper; for editors and journals, whatever they state on their journal homepage. If they make no COI statement, we state that they made no COI statement. "European Journal of Nutrition editor X received $Y from Monsanto for consulting in 2014" would be the sort of info I was thinking of. HLHJ (talk) 22:08, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
 * That's precisely what we should not be including, unless we have WP:RS making a specific statement/criticisms about COIs in the journal. Authors having conflicts of interest may matter at the paper level (e.g. don't trust say JPL staff for claims that JPL is the best damn company ever and non-JPL designs are the worst ever, but JPL people are certainly authorities on rocket science in general), and it certainly matters as far as WP:IS goes for referencing Wikipedia articles, but this is not something that matters at the journal level for our articles on journals. That The Astrophysical Journal authors and editors have affiliations with NASA, JPL, Mars exploration programs, specific observatories, or have received money/grants from these institutions is both normal and expected, and doesn't require mentioning in our article by default. Likewise, being authors and editors affiliated with Monsanto does not invalidate GMO-related research published in some journal.
 * If, however, we have a WP:IS/WP:RS source that specifically discuss conflicts of interest at a journal, then it's appropriate to mention them. But in the absence of these sources, then our articles simply become WP:COATRACK and magnets for any activists with axes to grind. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:25, 26 March 2018 (UTC)


 * (edit conflict) For a real example, the COIs of the editorial board of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition are declared here. If you look at the Wikipedia page, you will see how I have cited it. I could have gone into more detail. A couple of third-party assessments are also cited; as you say, this could cause more controversy.


 * The COIs are discussed; their consequences are not. So, for a totally unreal example, in the unlikely event that a reliable source said that the editor-in-chief of Classical and Quantum Gravity had been taking payments from the Anti-aether Lobbyist's Conspiratorial Alliance (which just I made up to serve as an example), you could write that. You could not write that said editor wanted to suppress the truth about aether theory, because that is an inference about the causes of the editor's actions, not a statement of a conflict of interest. HLHJ (talk) 22:40, 26 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Sorry about the thread order. If editors of The Astrophysical Journal were to declare their conflicts of interest on their journal homepage, we could add a link to that declaration, possibly in an infobox. No claims about those COIs invalidating their research would be made, because those are inferences from COIs, not COIs. It would need careful phrasing.


 * Declaring COIs is both normal and expected (although more so in medicine than in physics); I would not criticize anyone or any journal for declaring their COIs. A declaration is often "Y declares no conflicts of interest". Nor is there anything innately wrong with an affiliation. An astrophysics journal could declare that it is entirely funded by an observatory. A nutrition journal could declare that it is entirely funded by a candy manufacturer. And readers could draw what conclusions they wished, but they couldn't add them to the article without a reliable source repeating them, same as now. HLHJ (talk) 22:56, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I feel that's what the website is for. Mentioning it, with a sort of "just putting the truth out there" mindset, draws attention to the fact that they have conflicts of interest. This is misleading to readers, because they'll immediately think "HA-HA! See, they're all big corporation shills! Science is fake! You can't trust the establishment, they're all in the pockets of big vaccine/big pharma/big food/big oil/big whatever." Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:00, 26 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Sorry, just noticed that I said something really stupid. Of course we shouldn't have statements about author's COIs on the journal's article. That would be silly, and as you say, it doesn't matter at the journal level. But if editors declare editorial COIs, in a way analogous to the way authors declare COIs in their papers, that declaration would be relevant to the journal's article. Apologies. Brain glitch. HLHJ (talk) 23:04, 26 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Maybe just a link in an infobox, in the case of non-notable COIs? Authors in papers have regularly declared conflicts of interest for the past few decades, and that hasn't noticably lowered trust in (most) scientific papers. In the long run, I think we are best to be honest about conflicts of interest, because it lets the public distinguish between, for instance, a plain climatologist and a person paid by an oil company to communicate with the public about climatology. Or a plain medical doctor and one paid by a manufacturer of junk food to do public outreach. I think this strengthens trust in science, in the long run. When people notice that something is garbage, we don't want that thing to have been successful in looking like science. And if it is garbage, it will eventually be noticed. HLHJ (talk) 23:12, 26 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Since I don't want to be the only voice here, I've posted a notice at WT:JOURNALS. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:45, 26 March 2018 (UTC)


 * I'm very much with Headbomb here, we should only include stuff like this if we have independent reliable sources (and most definitely not with inappropriate in-line external links as in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition article). --Randykitty (talk) 07:33, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks to Headbomb for fixing the in-line link. That was my mistake; I added the line after reverting an employee edit that removed the criticism section.
 * I'm getting the impression that I've gone into this rather ill-informed. Subject to correction, you both seem to me to agree that it's appropriate to add information about COIs if there is a WP:IS/WP:RS source that discusses COIs. I propose that I go and add such properly third-party-sourced material to half a dozen or so journal articles, and then come back here and post links to what I've done. I hope you will then look over those articles, and criticise and amend as you see fit. If, inductively, it looks as if a guideline might be needed, we'll then have an idea of what it should say; if it looks unneccessary, we can drop the whole thing. I came here looking for such a guideline, but it's possible I don't need it. Does this seem reasonable to you? HLHJ (talk) 20:41, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
 * , sure, as long as you've got the sources, that sounds like a plan. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:47, 27 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Sorry to be so slow getting back on this. I didn't actually follow the plan above very far; instead, I got diverted into writing Conflicts of interest in academic publishing. Then I did some thinking.


 * I'd now propose that we include a statement on which widely-used ethics guidelines the journal officially supports. These would probably come under "Official affiliations". Many journals pledge to follow the ICMJE recommendations, for instance, and this fact will be documented on the journal's website and on the ICMJE's website (list of journals following the ICMJE recommendations). Since the recommendations include publishing information on the journal's conflicts of interest online, these mandated COI declarations could be linked to.


 * I'd also suggest stating whether the journal has published sponsored supplements or symposia, and what editorial policy it states it uses for such supplements. This would make it far easier to figure out if articles from these supplements are properly peer-reviewed, or are something like a company writing paid content about their own product. This seems in-line with the existing guidelines on including information on the journal's use of peer review.


 * It might also be good to include any information about how the journal is funded (e.g. "In 2018 the Journal of Written Stuff was funded 60% by subscriptions, 30% by advertisements, and 10% by reprints" or "The Australasian Journal of Bone & Joint Medicine was entirely funded by Merck"). In many cases no information on this will be available. HLHJ (talk) 21:49, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Concerning the ethics guidelines and funding, without 3rd party sources, I'm not really sure that's relevant. Sure, that matters in the case of Australasian Journal of Bone & Joint Medicine, because that's a sham journal. But in the case of say Journal of Fluid Mechanics, I really don't know who would care about whether it's funded by subscriptions, by membership via a society, by sponsors, via ads, or whatever.

However, I agree that sponsored supplements/symposia are topical (but that's already in the guide). Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:04, 13 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Thank you, I have no idea how I managed to overlook that section! Could we add guidance to mention the journal's editorial policy of supplements (are supplements peer-reviewed? does the sponsor have editorial control, or does full editorial control remain with the journal's normal editorial staff)?
 * I can't imagine that 3rd-party sources are available for many official affiliations. I think I'd be willing to take the ICMJE's word that a journal has told them it follows their guidelines, as it is not an extraordinary claim for them. Also, if the journal says that it has pledged to follow the guidelines, it has so pledged. It might not follow through, of course... A link to the journal's COI page would be really useful, as they are often hard to find.
 * Funding is a bit different. Where there is information on funding, it will probably have been ultimately provided by the journal, even if it is reported by a third parties (example). I should have used a second real example for funding. "In 2005-6 the BMJ made 16% of its income from display advertising and 3% from the sale of reprints, while the Lancet made 1% from display advertising and 41% from reprints." (citing an academic review which phrases it less well; see also ). HLHJ (talk) 03:08, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Full journal name
Should you start the prose of the article with the full name of the journal? E.g. I'm currently editing Structural Equation Modeling (journal) and I was planning on making the prose below the infobox start w/the journal's (bold and italicized of course) full title, which is Structural Equation Modeling: An International Journal. But that sounds kinda weird, so is there a better way to work in the full name of a journal (incl. subtitles like this) or should it be omitted from the article entirely? I ask because this page doesn't seem to have a clear answer to this question. IntoThinAir (formerly Everymorning) talk  18:55, 15 August 2018 (UTC)


 * "An International Journal" is a subtitle, not the title. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:06, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Right. So should the subtitle of the journal be included when stating the bolded & italicized title of the journal in the lead? I see that, for instance, this is done in the article about Headache (journal), so it appears to be standard practice even if it is not spelled out as such on this page (i.e. JWG). IntoThinAir (formerly Everymorning) talk  23:50, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Personally, I'd include it if it clarifies some aspect of the journal. The scope of Journal of Physics A isn't immediately obvious, "Mathematical and Theoretical" adds something. "An international journal" adds nothing, so I'd leave it out. That's just me though. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:04, 16 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree with . "An international journal, "An interdisciplinary journal", and stuff like that are just promotional fluff that doesn't add anything. --Randykitty (talk) 09:03, 16 August 2018 (UTC)
 * my recommendation for subtitles is to add those that indicate something specific:usually the scope of the journal or its place of publication or its sponsorship .  DGG ( talk ) 06:57, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Publication license(s)
Apologies if this has already been discussed elsewhere, but the guide lists categories for what license(s) a journal publishes under (CC-BY, CC-BY-NC-SA, copyright the publisher, etc.). WikiCite has included much of this information on WikiData, and it could probably be transcluded automatically, if it is felt to be desirable. Some journals also have more complex licensing, having changed license(s) in a certain year. HLHJ (talk) 22:04, 13 January 2019 (UTC)


 * If it can be automated, great. However, I got no idea how to do that. usually has some insight on infoboxes and WikiData whoever. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:07, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I've looked at a few journals and found an example to test on: PLOS Medicine, which is on Wikidata. Wikidata has the property, so you can use a Lua module to retrieve the licences:
 * The qid isn't needed if it's on the article page, and the : before Category is just to display the result here. You (or I) could add:
 * along with the other 'Auto-categorization' lines near the bottom of an infobox such as Template:Infobox journal – does your project have any other infoboxes that you support? Let me know if that doesn't do the job you want, or if the categories need a different formula for their naming. --RexxS (talk) 23:41, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: the Wikidata Query Service gives 19 different licences in use for scientific journals on Wikidata. --RexxS (talk) 01:33, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * along with the other 'Auto-categorization' lines near the bottom of an infobox such as Template:Infobox journal – does your project have any other infoboxes that you support? Let me know if that doesn't do the job you want, or if the categories need a different formula for their naming. --RexxS (talk) 23:41, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: the Wikidata Query Service gives 19 different licences in use for scientific journals on Wikidata. --RexxS (talk) 01:33, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: the Wikidata Query Service gives 19 different licences in use for scientific journals on Wikidata. --RexxS (talk) 01:33, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: the Wikidata Query Service gives 19 different licences in use for scientific journals on Wikidata. --RexxS (talk) 01:33, 14 January 2019 (UTC)


 * There's only Infobox journal. There's Infobox magazine too, but that's for WP:MAGAZINES, not WP:JOURNALS. And I've got no opinion on how this should be done, if it should be done, and what that implies if it's done. I don't really care, but it if works, I don't see why not. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:14, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

4 February 2019 polish
I overhauled the guide with a better general structure and clearer guidance on redirects and finishing touches. Old version for comparison. Comments welcomed. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:18, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

New shortcuts
You might find the new WP:JWG/COI, WP:JWG/YES, WP:JWG/NO shortcuts to be useful. WP:JWG, WP:JWG, WP:JWG will also work. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:47, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I think these shortcuts are very helpful and probably useful for discussions (when needed). Everybody will know to what everybody else is referring. Kind of like we do in AfD discussions. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 05:58, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Further journal ranking scores
Undoubtedly Impact Factor is the best known journal ranking score, but it is nowadays far from the only one. For instance Scopus publishes annually CiteScore, SCImago Journal Rank, and SNIP. See our journal ranking article for other metrics. These metrics have usually been designed to be superior to Impact Factor in some way (otherwise no one would bother with them), they have the advantage that their values are not usually hidden behind a paywall (e.g. the above ones are available at https://www.scopus.com/sources), and at least some are well enough established that national bodies use them in research assessment. I am also a little disconcerted that Wikipedia is currently supporting one commercial product (Impact Factor) at the expense of rival products. Should we mention the possibility of adding these alternative scores to our articles? What about modifying the infobox template to allow the inclusion of some of them there? Of course each metric requires effort to update each year, but so does the impact factor, and even a somewhat out-of-date figure is of some value. Jmchutchinson (talk) 14:09, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I'd be down to include one Scopus metric since we consider JCR and Scopus to be good enough for WP:NJOURNALS. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:51, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Talk:Maynooth Philosophical Papers
There's a debate on whether or not to include sections that go against the advice of WP:JWG. Please opine. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:38, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Whitespace for alignment in infobox
Hi! Does anyone know if there is a guideline or consensus on whitespace for alignment in infoboxes? (I.e. the whitespace before the equal sign is varied so all equal signs align.) The excellent script infoboxJournal.js (by @Tokenzero) does it, and it is used by some experienced editors (ping @Headbomb) so I assumed it was standard. However, lately I have seen several edits (by less experienced editors) removing the white space so it would be nice to know if there is a policy or not. Cheers! SakurabaJun (talk) 01:37, 8 November 2022 (UTC)


 * There's no policy no. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:16, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks! SakurabaJun (talk) 00:09, 9 November 2022 (UTC)