Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Academic Journals

WikiProject Academic Journals (talk) Resources (talk) Writing guide (talk) Assessment (talk) Notability guide (talk) Journals cited by Wikipedia (talk)

---

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-08-01/In focus

A heads up for an upcoming piece focusing on the history of JCW. Anything I missed or should highlight? Any feedback welcome. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:02, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Now live! Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:40, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm going to ping @JLaTondre, ThaddeusB, AManWithNoPlan, Fgnievinski, Galobtter, IntoThinAir, John Vandenberg, Johnuniq, Mark viking, Markworthen, Randykitty, Rjwilmsi, Smith609, Steve Quinn, TheSandDoctor, Tokenzero, and Trappist the monk:. This piece may interest you. You've certainly helped along the way. If you have comments, please make them on the piece's talk page! Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:12, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Great job! fgnievinski (talk) 04:13, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

@Headbomb: Not sure what I would add to it. It was a great read! Thank you for the shoutout. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 04:53, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

@TheSandDoctor: You operated Sandbot 5 for a bit, hence the shout out. It's published, so too late to add anything now! Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:55, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Sensational work, congratulations! Johnuniq (talk) 05:03, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Great read and you're way too modest in attributing this to "we", as this is 99% your work! --Randykitty (talk) 07:37, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Excellent article. It's good to let people know what's going on. Also, I appreciate all the work Headbomb has contributed to WikiProject Academic Journals over the years (and WikiProject Physics). This goes under the category of Unflagging efforts. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 14:39, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

The article is well written and think adding the history and development sections will be instructional for others. Thank you for all your work on this! A little more work and we could create our own Wikipedia Impact Factor (WIF) for these journals. --{{u|Mark viking}} {Talk} 17:15, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Superb article! I learned a ton reading it. Your history led me to visit WP:CITEWATCH for the umpteenth time. I was reminded of your sterling introduction ("Disclaimer/Warning") for its erudite yet readily comprehensible explanation of the bot's strengths and limitations, and the importance of contextual decision-making. Thank you for all your hard work, especially in identifying pseudo-academic publishers who cause actual, significant harm with their misleading and erroneous "facts". All the very best - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/him] 00:11, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Talk:MDPI#Corrections published in Oviedo-García's Research Evaluation article

A discussion about how to cover the proliferation of special issues in MDPI journals is ongoing. If others could chime in, that would be nice. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:35, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

See also Talk:MDPI#Proliferation of Special Issue section might not be appropriately placed. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 08:13, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

Credibility bot

As this is a highly active WikiProject, I would like to introduce you to Credibility bot. This is a bot that makes it easier to track source usage across articles through automated reports and alerts. We piloted this approach at Wikipedia:Vaccine safety and we want to offer it to any subject area or domain. We need your support to demonstrate demand for this toolkit. If you have a desire for this functionality, or would like to leave other feedback, please endorse the tool or comment at WP:CREDBOT. Thanks! Harej (talk) 17:50, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Notability (academic journals)#RfC on notability criteria

Please participate. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:31, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Pinging all AJ editors...

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:03, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 August 24#Various Comptes Rendus redirects

This has been relisted twice. Participation would be welcomed. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:30, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

European Digital Mathematics Library

In writing Lexell's theorem, I found several of the 19th century sources I used had pages at the European Digital Mathematics Library, https://eudml.org, so I added a template {{EuDML}} to be used to make e.g. EuDML 183090 for use in citation templates. But notice the red link: Wikipedia doesn't currently have any article about this repository. I don't really have time/interest to research or write an article about it right now, but perhaps someone here at the Academic Journals wikiproject would be willing to make one? It seems like a pretty useful source of metadata and links about at least 19th century math journals. (All of the ones I have seen so far were open access with a link to a scan provided, but it's possible there are some non-open-access papers described there as well.) –jacobolus (t) 20:30, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#Journal_of_Astrobiology

This concerns an edit war at Journal of Cosmology. Please comment. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:33, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Note that Headbomb seems to be of a mind that he should be allowed to WP:PROFRINGE edit in favor of the insipid Journal of Cosmology. It's not an academic journal, so it doesn't really concern this project. jps (talk) 17:38, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

It claims to be a scientific journal, so it falls within the remit of this project. That it publishes pseudoscientific crap is irrelevant. --Randykitty (talk) 18:03, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

To call my edits WP:PROFRINGE is completely disingenuous. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:41, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

It passes the WP:DUCK test, guy. jps (talk) 17:43, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Your duck test is wildly miscalibrated then. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:46, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

You are reinstating verbiage in the article which WP:COATracks for the website's own self-important claims. It's embarrassing. Do you take all fringe sources at their word or only those that claim to be journals? jps (talk) 17:48, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

See also Talk:Journal_of_Cosmology#Infobox. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:41, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Now at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#jps_and_their_shutting_down_of_discussion_at_Talk:Journal_of_Cosmology Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:00, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Journal of Cosmology

There's many discussions ongoing at Talk:Journal of Cosmology, many that have to do with basic description of basic things that should be non-controversial, but because it's a shit journal, it's becoming a brouhaha. More opinions would be welcomed. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:51, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Inclusion of doi prefix for journal-publisher articles

An issue has been raised at MDPI over whether an article about a journal publisher should list the publisher's DOI prefix, with an eye towards making that inclusion a standard part of publisher articles. Therefore, this is a widespread issue, not one-off for that article, and I don't see anything in this wikiproject's guidelines about it, so I'm starting this centralized discussion. Seems like three options:

1. Exclude
2. Include in article body
3. Include in {{Infobox publisher}}

I oppose #2, since it seems like it's not very useful to general readers and for those who actually want this key data value it might be hard to find it in the article, but instead would support #3 so it's easy to find and analogous to ISSN and similar fields in individual journals' articles. This value is already in wikidata, so it would be easy to automate this site-wide (or flag articles where wikidata needs to be updated) without having to hand-edit any of the articles.

Pinging Walter Tau and Headbomb, who were involved in this content at MDPI. DMacks (talk) 05:25, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Should note that I'm not strongly in favor of inclusion, but if so then definitely infobox not article. DMacks (talk) 12:51, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

We don't seem to include the ISBN prefix in our articles on book publishers, so it would seem inconsistent to include this but not that. Perhaps the discussion should be broadened? PamD 07:10, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

• Support #1. A doi prefix is a completely boring factoid. No reason whatsoever to include this in articles on publishers or journals. --Randykitty (talk) 08:39, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Let's say we want to do this for Elsevier. We would have to list

• 10.1006, 10.1016, 10.1053, 10.1054, 10.1067, 10.1078, 10.1157, 10.1197, 10.1205, 10.1240, 10.1331, 10.1367, 10.1378, 10.1383, 10.1529, 10.1533, 10.1580, 10.1602, 10.2111, 10.2353, 10.3129, 10.3182, 10.3816, 10.3921, 10.4065, 10.7399, 10.7424, 10.7811, 10.14219, 10.21967, 10.25013

For MDPI, we would have to list

• 10.1989, 10.3390, 10.20944 (for Preprints.org), 10.32545, 10.35995 (for Journal of Controversial Ideas, published on a platform owned by MDPI)

I don't see what's to be gained by listing those anywhere. TBH. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 09:27, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

I agree, that (3) displaying doi prefixes in {{infobox publisher}} is the most appropriate place. I also understand, that this may result in having too-many-to-list prefixes for some publishers. For this reason, I withdraw my proposal. Walter Tau (talk) 12:12, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Project MUSE#Requested move 6 September 2023

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Project MUSE#Requested move 6 September 2023 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. HouseBlaster^talk 21:30, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

AFDs

The following two AfD discussions could benefit from the input of knowledgeable editors here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Al-ʿArabiyya (journal) and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kansas History. Thanks. --Randykitty (talk) 06:57, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

• The first one has closed, but the second one still needs more input from editors that know academic journals. --Randykitty (talk) 06:08, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

NJournals

With the latest brouhaha, I fear that the days of WP:NJournals may be counted. We have tried in the past to get it to guideline status, but that ended in "no consensus", just like the current discussions. Look at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kansas History, that article missed GNG by a mile, as well as NJournals, but still there were several "keep" !votes with arguments like "it's a peer-reviewed academic journal". Compare that to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, which passes NJournals brilliantly, and see how many people still !vote delete because "NJournals is an essay and this misses GNG". I'm baffled that these two crowds don't intermingle, but also sceptical about the future of our journals project. Many (most?) of the "must meet GNG crowd" apparently see no problem with deleting our thousands of journal articles.

How to proceed? I think it is essential that some semblance of NJournals be accepted as a guideline, accepting that journal articles (like articles on academics) may meet notability requirements even if they don't meet GNG. Simply putting up the current NJournals will not work. I think we should go about this with baby steps. I propose to start with an RfC at the Village Pump with a question like (rough draft):

Most articles on academic journals do not meet WP:GNG. Should we delete all those articles (several thousand) or is it more desirable to formulate a SNG that defines under which conditions such articles should be kept, even if they miss GNG?

If the consensus would be that articles should meet GNG, no exception, we're done here and for the few journals that meet GNG (most likely because there's some scandal), we don't really need a separate project. However, should the consensus be that deleting the vast majority of journal articles is undesirable, we could then go through NJournals one line at a time, to avoid that people get too much into details (like one editor arguing that C1 is fine but not C3 or what exactly "selective indexing" means).

Interested to hear what editors here think. Thanks! --Randykitty (talk) 15:55, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree with your general prognosis. In addition to damaging the encyclopedia, deleting thousands of journal articles would entail deleting a great deal of verifiable information without considering alternatives, against our ATD policy.

We might start with what may be considered uncontroversial: selective indices are reliable sources that provide verifiable information about a journal. Selective indices are built by experts in the field of academic journals and their determination of whether a journal is included in their index is an expert opinion about the journal--inclusion confers some degree of notability in the real world. Less uncontroversial: non-predatory peer-reviewed journals have many experts who give freely of their time to review articles for a journal they deem worthy of their efforts. This is a kind of collective expert endorsement.

Trying to connect this with GNG: should we require multiple selective databases to include the journal? What criteria for a selective database entry for a journal would allow it to be considered in depth? Comparing to NPROF, what level of expert endorsement is needed to elevate a journal to a notable status? --{{u|Mark viking}} {Talk} 18:52, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

There is a significant conflict between the attitude of GNG that the only good source is an independent source, and the tendency of academics who write about the history of their journals to publish them as editorials in the same journals. This means that, in those cases when we do have the sort of in-depth and reliably published sources that would normally count towards GNG-notability, they are passed over and often avoided even as source material for the articles on those journals, because they are not independent. For this reason, I tend to think that judging significance by depth of coverage in independent sources works even less well for this subject than it does for many others.

Another issue is that journals are a topic for which it is very difficult to search for sourcing, because most search hits will be articles in the journal or references to them rather than publications about the journal. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:48, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

I was thinking about this last night re journals with a single word title which is the subject area; no amount of searching is ever going to come up with anything useful for those, whether or not it exists. Feeling really depressed about the state of Wikipedia at present. Espresso Addict (talk) 20:31, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

An example of a major and famous journal like this for which one could easily argue that it does not appear to pass GNG: Cell. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:44, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Looks like Cell Press is already a target, but surely there's some indept coverage for them somewhere; I cleaned up a completely pointless unreferenced tag on Immunity (journal) the other day from the same editor. Espresso Addict (talk) 20:58, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

I wouldn't phrase the question that way. "Should everything meet the GNG?" provokes a knee-jerk cry of "yes!" from a lot of people who, if pushed, would admit that the reality is more nuanced. The closing statement of the last RfC (which I'm assuming is accurate even though the closer is very inexperienced) said that the main problem was the reliance on selective indexes in criterion 1. Why not try to workshop that particular issue, then try again with an RfC in a year or so? – Joe (talk) 08:09, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Recent AfDs

Is there any useful information to be gleaned from the stark difference between Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/IEEE Transactions on Green Communications and Networking (unanimously kept) and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications (no consensus on reopening)? Green Communications and Networking is a peer-reviewed journal, has IF of 4.8 and was founded in 2017. Computer Graphics and Applications is characterised as a magazine, doesn't mention peer review, has an IF of 1.8 and was founded in 1981. My back-of-the-envelope is that perhaps we should try to differentiate between non-peer-reviewed publications and peer-reviewed journals. Espresso Addict (talk) 23:44, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Peer review doesn't matter. The only thing that really influence those is if GNG extremists show up, that care more about enforcing their interpretation of GNG, than about making Wikipedia reflect the sum total of human knowledge. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:20, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that the differences here come down to how the AfD was publicized and who participated. IEEE CGA is (to my mind) clearly the more well known of the two publications. Impact factors are meaningless when compared across different disciplines. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:53, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Finding sources for ISO 4 abbreviations?

Is there a reliable place to use as citations for ISO 4 abbreviations of academic journals?

Context for this out-of-the-blue request

My home wiki is Chinese Wikipedia (zhwiki). Recently in zhwiki I am requesting to blacklist a domain (academic-accelerator.com) on grounds of copyright infringement of enwiki (yes, no attribution) and content farming. But an admin argues that this website can be used to generate the ISO 4 abbreviation for journals, therefore it can be used as citations and should not be blocked in its entirety.

I still wish to completely block this site, but I agree that for verifiablility purposes we may need citations for ISO 4 abbreviations. If there is a better site that can fulfill this purpose, I think I can persuade him to deprecate and blacklist it.

MilkyDefer 03:58, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

The LTWA is the authoritative source on this. In practice, TokenZero's site is way quicker.

As for citations, Academic accelerator is a spam site and should be probably be blacklisted if it's not already the case. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:05, 29 November 2023 (UTC)