- Please explain how Humanities and Social Sciences journals don't get treated correctly under this guideline so that we can improve it if necessary. And I fail to see how journals older than 3 years would automatically qualify. --Crusio (talk) 01:46, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
- I fail to see where this idea of 3-year-old journals being notable comes from and why humanities journals are disadvantaged. Fences&Windows 01:57, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
- HASS involves dense literary work. Any journal in HASS older than 3 years will necessarily meet criteria 1 and 2, as 3 years is enough time for those to cycle into the citation of literature. If all journals are notable, then this isn't a notability criteria. Note 6 is, in particular, less than useful. Ulrichs, the key journal (as opposed to article) indexation is mentioned nowhere. Fifelfoo (talk) 02:10, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
- It is certainly not the case that any HASS journal established more than 3 years will necessarily meet 1 and 2. There are tens of thousands of journals that are almost never cited, and that no scholar would take for authority. To see this, consider the very large number of journals held by almost no library. It's my estimate that under the proposed criteria, most of the journals published in the world would definitely not qualify. DGG ( talk ) 02:09, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
- Criteria 1 and 2 don't say something like "occasionally cited", but "frequently cited". There's a difference here. What, exactly, is wrong with note 6? And according to our own WP article on Ulrich's: "Ulrich's Periodicals Directory is the standard library directory and database providing information about popular and academic magazines, scientific journals, newspapers and other serial publications." That hardly seems to be a source to derive notability from, as it includes many non-academic publications, too. --Crusio (talk) 02:17, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
- And back into the HASS problem. Show me the citation indices or impact factors? Additionally, as all referee'd journals are RS, this is beginning to sound incestuous for HASS notability. Ulrich's is an authority for three key data fields: Referee'd status, intended audience (academic / non-academic), and circulation figures. Being indexed by Ulrich's isn't useful data, but Ulrich's description of a text is useful. Fifelfoo (talk) 02:26, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
- I'm sorry to appear dense, but I still don't understand your reasons to oppose. Nobody has said that Ulrich's is not a useful resource, but being listed in lrich's is not necessarily a sign of notability as an academic journal, so I see no reason to include this in this proposed notability guideline. We could link to it on the Wikiproject Academic Journals page, though. As impact factors are rare in "HASS", they cannot be used there, which is why we have other criteria that can lead to notability. I'd appreciate if you could indicate how we can improve the guideline to address your concerns. --Crusio (talk) 11:40, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
- There's no issue with density, its a genuine HASS problem given the turn to research "metrics". The DUCK test works well in American fields, but peters out elsewhere. A much higher bar is required than 1 or 2 because RS cite works in journals all the time. Any other tests are going to be some kind of old boys (and girls these days) test. We all know Past & Present is notable, due to EP Thompson. We all known New Left Review is notable for its cultural impact. A journal which contains a paper establishing a sub-discipline ("social history"), or publishing a paper which starts a long running controversy ("structuralism" in history), or a journal which is the publication medium for a national disciplinary practice. Would Labour History be notable, should it be? What about Labour / Le Travail? If these are "notable" why not start articles on the edited collections in the humanities? Fifelfoo (talk) 11:53, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
- the journals you are mentioning as criteria are more than notable, they are famous. Yes, journals like Labour History would be notable. As for edited collections, these are much less often notable, being one-time publications and not likely to have the long-term significance of journals. Some of them however are indeed notable. DGG ( talk ) 02:09, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
- I would think it self-evident that RS are needed to back up any argument relating to the third criterion, but that can easily be rectified. As for your other argument: "merely RS" leads to the situation where readers can find information in WP backed up by some RS, but then are unable to find even the slightest indication what that RS is. This guideline would lead to coverage of at least the most notable among them (many peer-reviewed journals would qualify as RS but not under this guideline, for instance a journal in medicine that is not covered by the SCI or PubMed). --Crusio (talk) 11:51, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
- Crusio, a journal in medicine published in the english language not in Index Medicus would have great trouble being accepted here as a RS for mainstream medicine. We've routinely used non-coverage there as a criterion for which ones are fringe. DGG ( talk ) 02:09, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
- Yes indeed, so they are notable. You';re thinking at famous, not notable. Most journals are not in SCI. The journals that would be laughed out of the room are the ones that are not notable (in the fields SCI covers adequately). That's exactly the intention. Now tell me why this is wrong. DGG ( talk ) 02:09, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
- Oppose Not every indexed journal is notable. Some are very obscure. However, I can't think of a constructive alternative that doesn't break WP:OR. So I'm unfortunately unconstructively opposing :(. Awickert (talk) 09:34, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
- the standard is in being in major indexes covering the field--we are not proposing that every indexed journal is notable. DGG ( talk ) 17:15, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
- There are tens of thousands of academic journals in the world (I think current estimates are way over 50,000). The SCI index only lists 6 or 7 thousand, the Social Sciences and the Arts and Humanities indexes cover an additional 2500-3000, which makes for a total of less than 10,000 (not counting any overlap, some journals are listed in more than one of these three indexes). That seems pretty selective too me. --Crusio (talk) 11:51, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
- Support, per the arguments presented in my essay at WP:SJ.—S Marshall Talk/Cont 17:02, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
- Strong support First, about selectivity--In the pure sciences, WoS is probably overselective with respect to some subjects, and with regard to non English language publications in all subjects, and accepting it as one proof of notability is in my opinion a partial measure only--it's like saying that members of the National Academy of Sciences are surely notable--and a great many other scientists are also. The selectivity varies: there are a great many descriptive biology journals--even in English--that are notable and not included, but I would be hard-pressed to name an English language journal in chemistry or mathematics not on the list that is securely notable. 'The basic criterion they use is pretty much like the one we use elsewhere about academics and other things--that the journal is significantly cited. Second Ulrich's is just a minimum criterion--nobody is claiming that Ulrich's is proof of notability. the absence of a Western-language journal from there, except in unusual circumstances, would be proof of insignificance--It's just a preliminary screen, like having an ISSN is for recent titles. I do consider it reliable for more than existence, publisher information, and circulation--it also serves as a good source for the indexing services that cover a journal, and a preliminary though not fully detailed source for earlier title history. Third this proposal is a compromise--there are some people who would consider all peer-reviewed journals as notable for Wikipedia purposes, and all journals that have been cited in Wikipedia articles. I consider both views excessive, akin to considering all published books from academic publishers to be notable. fourth it is very much a shortcut to say that all peer-reviewed journals are RSs--they are of various degrees of reliability, depending on their reputation for quality of the peer review. They are all worth considering for reliability, but when we evaluate a scientist for notability, we here--just like the more respectable part of the academic world--consider what journals they have published in. A university department accepting just any peer-reviewed journal for tenure purposes proves itself to be second-rate. fifth all professions, including the academic, are intrinsically circular, as are: a lawyer is certified to be a lawyer by other lawyers; an editor or reviewer for a journal on the basis of what they have published in similar journals. finally, this criteria are not invented by Crusio (and me) --they represent the experience of what has and has not been considered notable at Wikipedia in the last two years. they;'re abstracting a prescriptive rule from descriptive information. DGG ( talk ) 17:15, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
- example of a non-notable journal: Diabetic Hypoglycemia (journal) -- prod'd by Crusio. Not in Ulrich's though its been published 2 vols. already. Has ISSN, but anyone can get then for anything they even hope to publish, Publisher is extremely marginal. And most convincing: not in Medline, not cataloged by the NLM. May become notable, since notable ed. in chief. DGG ( talk ) 18:16, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
- Strong support per all of my above comments. --Crusio (talk) 19:16, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
- Oppose Too permissive, per Short Brigade Harvester Boris and Awickert. I'm not sure why we can't stick with the GNG here, journals which receive significant coverage in reliable, third-party sources are notable and those that don't are not. It's that simple. I don't really see this as a compromise because the situation that DGG is presenting, that some consider all journals to be notable, rides completely against the idea that notability is not inherited, which is shared by a large majority of Wikipedians. This guideline should move closer to the standards of the GNG, if it needs to be separate from it at all ThemFromSpace 22:09, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
- A large part of the problem is: people write articles to be published in these journals, but hardly anybody writes articles about these journals. Take the two most reputable journals around, Science and Nature, and have a look at their WP articles. Look at the references. Is there any article/book written about these journals?? No, there is not. When other sources refer to these journals, they don't talk about these particular journals either. They talk about particular articles published by these journals. Does that then mean that Science and Nature are not notable in the Wikipedia sense? Should we AfD and delete these articles? I think not. If we stick with the GNG here, we can count the number of articles on journals that we can keep on the fingers of our two hands, I fear. The question here is not that notability should be inherited. The question is whether we are going to decide that a journal can be used as a reliable source but apart from that is, in fact, not notable. --Crusio (talk) 22:49, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
- almost the only time someone writes a substantial article about a journal is when there is some major scandal or controversy. I'm afraid that's more than 10, but it would very much overemphasise the less important journals--many of which would not be notable for any other reason. It rarely happens to the good ones. By the way, the same problem occurs with other media, including newspapers, unless they run into legal or financial difficulties. DGG ( talk ) 03:44, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
- Support A reasonable description of how we decide notability for journals. Using the GNG naively leads to peculiar results. Better coverage of journals will be a real improvement to Wikipedia for both users and editors.John Z (talk) 00:58, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
- whazzat "GNG"? Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 03:47, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
- WP:GNG Pete.Hurd (talk) 04:39, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
- support per Crusio (especially rebuttal of Short Brigade Harvester Boris's point in Crusio's response to Awickert) and DGG + John Z (in response to ThemFromSpace's point). Pete.Hurd (talk) 04:45, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
- Oppose, nothing above convinces me that anything beyond the GNG is needed. I support the notion that journals of above-average scientific significance are presumed to be notable. But the only way to reliably measure this is the GNG. Otherwise we need to do original research about the scientific merits of a journal, and I would prefer that we do not do that. The proposed guideline is also badly worded. How can an journal be authoritative? I understand authority to be a characteristic of a particular scholar or book, not of a journal that features writing from a wide range of contributors. And what does "has served some sort of historic purpose" mean? That's vague to the point of meaninglessness. I might support an approach based only on objective standards, such as the inclusion in some widely-accepted and selective list, but that would need to be discussed field by field. Sandstein 09:41, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
- But, the vast majority of "journals of above-average scientific significance" will fail the GNG. Either we try to craft a guideline like this to put some vague definition on "above-average scientific significance", or we use the GNG and abandon the idea that "journals of above-average scientific significance are presumed to be notable". Pete.Hurd (talk) 03:29, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
- Strong Support: Having edited several articles on journals, this, combined with WP:COMMONSENSE, is a sound guideline and a much needed improvement over WP:GNG which simply isn't adapted to academic journals. Tweaks are probably possible, but nothing that warrants withholding support.
- The journal is considered by reliable sources to be authoritative in its subject area.
- The journal is frequently cited by other reliable sources.
- The journal has served some sort of historic purpose or has a significant history.
is really all you need to go by. The first one ensure that we can have articles on the journal cited by wikipedia, these are our WP:RS. If we can't write an article on them, it's probably that we shouldn't use them as sources in the first place. The second one is the obvious "duh". If you are cited, you're obviously worthy of inclusion. And the third one covers journals with historic impact on their respective fields. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 14:14, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
- Support idea, unsure about wording - IMO, the GNG are a very poor indication of notability for source materials. It is quite rare for one reliable source to write about another. That doesn't mean they aren't notable though. In all reality, source materials are considerably more notable than their level of coverage indicates.
Now, I am unsure about the wording. Of course any wording for a guideline like this (see WP:PROF which is perhaps our best specific notability guideline) is going to be subjective. The "notes" go a long way towards explaining what is really meant here, but I still am a big iffy on the wording. In particular, I am bother by criteria one: "considered by reliable sources to be authoritative." To me, authoritative means "the final word" or close to it. I doubt more than a handful, if any, journals meet that definition. I would prefer something like "held in high regard by its peers.") Scientists know what journals in their field are truly important and which ones are just for stuff that can't be published elsewhere, but of course WP:IKNOWIT is a pretty weak argument. So, in short I don't have any answer, but I think there is probably one out there. :) --ThaddeusB (talk) 01:09, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
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- Qualified support: criteria 1 and 2 are quite good, but how are we to support 3? With reliable sources, we can show that a journal passes 3, but wouldn't a journal that passes 3 already pass the GNG? I don't have an objection to the idea of 3 per se, but by including it here, we would perhaps lay the way clear to its being interpreted as "I think it has a significant history, so it should be kept". If we would add a statement of "note that journals that pass 3 will generally pass the GNG", I would support it as well. Nyttend (talk) 01:37, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
- Strong Oppose the discussion at the AfD of
Christians in Science Science and Christian Belief shows (at least to me) that this guideline aligns poorly with what editors actually think about the notability of journals. I have seen in the past small groups of editors work on a guidleine and then try to enforce it on the community. I do not at all wish to denigrate the hard work that has gone into it, but we must allow these things time to simmer and try them out IRL with lots of editors before we rush to promote them. Give it 6 months as a prototype and see how helpful it is. We also have far too many guidelines and policies at present, with no sensible way of pruning old ones.NBeale (talk) 19:43, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
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- Yes sorry - I have used a strikeout to correct. (BTW FWIW I created that article when it was a stub, but it seems pretty clear that there is a strong keep consensus and was well before I joined that AFD debate) NBeale (talk) 22:44, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
- Before you joined that debate, as I count it, there were was nom+3 for delete, 3 for delete, and 1 weak keep. I wouldn't call that a "strong keep consensus". Pete.Hurd (talk) 04:04, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
- Must be, I see NBeale is the creator of that article, and seems to be arguing that this proposed guideline is too strict, because it excludes his article. I get the sense that most of the reservations held by opposers here are in the opposite direction, that it is too lax... Pete.Hurd (talk) 22:43, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
- Oppose. I think the desire to have a guideline specifically for journals has a good motive; many journals that academics know in their hearts are notable fail to have any mention in the usual secondary sources found in Google News and Books searches, and searching in Google Scholar is worthless, since it finds too much. But I question the need to have articles on journals at all. What do these articles say? Such-and-so is a journal founded in {year} and published by Springer/Wiley/whoever, and it publishes articles on the following topics.... This sort of article is too directory-like and unhelpful. Who needs to know this information? Grad students? They can ask their advisors/librarians. So I am arguing that creating a guideline based on sound library science principles will have the outcome of turning Wikipedia's coverage of journals into something resembling a library catalog, but it can never be as good as the real databases that this guideline is drawing from. Put another way, the reason we have a General Notability Guideline is because Wikipedia is supposed to be useful and interesting to a general audience. If there are no sources for the journal that can get it past the GNG, that means it is not interesting to the people who create such sources, and therefore is not appropriate for a popular encyclopedia like Wikipedia. I suggest that Lists are a better home for directory-like information, since the GNG is relaxed for Lists. Abductive (reasoning) 20:20, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
- I think that it is genuinely useful to have Wikipedia articles for well-known academic journals that are used as sources in Wikipedia, even if we can't say that much about the journal (the same holds for, e.g., academic conferences in those fields in which conference proceedings are commonly used as sources). The general public can't read fluently lists of references that we have in Wikipedia articles; they don't immediately recognise which sources are books, which are newspaper articles, which are articles in academic journals, etc. However, if we can have a link from the title of the journal to a Wikipedia article about the journal, this helps a lot. Even if the article just states that "X is an academic journal" (with the link!), this already provides useful information to an average reader (who might have never heard of academic journals before). Other technical solutions might exist, but simply creating stubs for academic journals sounds most convenient to me; and in those rare cases where something non-trivial can be said about a journal, those stubs are easy to expand. Therefore I support the general idea of this guideline, which I might phrase as follows: To create a Wikipedia article about a journal, we do need reliable sources that are independent of the subject; however, it's ok to base an article on "trivial" mentions (e.g., the journal being listed in journal rankings). I think this is the only real difference between this proposed guideline and WP:GNG: dropping the requirement of "significant coverage". — Miym (talk) 21:18, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
- Journal rankings are secondary sources. If the third paragraph of the article on University of California, Berkeley can talk about its rankings from the various services that rank colleges, then articles on journals can mention if they are ranked by impact factor or some other metric. It is the journals that aren't ranked and/or don't have other secondary sources that this proposed guideline is addressing. Abductive (reasoning) 01:55, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
- But they constitute a directory. There is a reason we want more information than is available in a directory before we write an article. Without that, we are left with only the existence of the subject (from the directory) and information from the subject in crafting the article itself. Protonk (talk) 21:56, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
- I agree in part. Just having a journal ranking does not give us much to write about. But I don't think this is a simple directory: because it is a ranking it contains more information than the bare fact that a journal exists. Which is why I think we can use it as evidence of notability. Of course, more reliable sources are needed to write anything beyond that. --Crusio (talk) 23:02, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
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- I can't help but feel that this "oppose because most journal articles are stubs at the moment". Wikipedia is a work in progress. Right now the journal project is focused on creating missing stubs. Then I suspect we'll expand the most cited ones (history, editors, etc...) There's no problem with this guideline as of now, and if we discover one in the future, then we can change the guideline accordingly. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 17:16, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
- Oppose for now, at least. I agree with NBeale that we should let the guideline work its way into discussions for a bit longer and see how it is used, its strengths and weaknesses in practice, etc. This went "live" only a little more than a month ago. The fact that it has been cited in AfDs that resulted in both keep and delete doesn't seem like enough of a test drive. RJC TalkContribs 20:44, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
- Weak oppose. Conditions 1 and 3 are reasonable markers of when a journal would have coverage in reliable sources, not at all criterion 2. I'm floored that a group of wikipedians even vaguely familiar with the process of citation would conclude that criterion 2 was a good idea. Further, the first "note" eviscerates criterion 1 by conflating indexing with authority. I see indexing as a necessary condition to consider a journal like that reliable, not authoritative. Protonk (talk) 21:56, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
- Being indexed by selective indexes is a sign of authority. WoS does not index junk, and neither does Scopus. Journals try very bery hard to get into these indexes. Indexes such as Index Medicus will sometimes index very minor journals, and need to be used in connection with other criteria. DGG ( talk ) 01:55, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
- Not being junk is a much lower standard than "authoritative in the field". Please tell me I don't have to go find easy examples of indexed journals which are far from authoritative in their respective fields (much less in broader categories). Protonk (talk) 02:20, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
- Oppose per Crusio. This guideline is either wrong or superfluous.
On Wikipedia, "notable" generally equates with "warrants an article." But see Crusio's comment to DGG here, where he suggests the journal passes this guideline and yet still doesn't warrant an article because "there is hardly anything that can be said about" it. In other words, according to Crusio, the journal (1) fails the GNG, (2) passes this guideline, and (3) is not notable. So the sum of Crusio's statements entails support for the GNG and opposition to this guideline. This guideline is, then, wrong. Now suppose on the other hand that Crusio idiosyncratically considers notability to mean not "warrants an article" but instead only "worthy of mention somewhere on Wikipedia, possibly in a merger target." Indeed, merging is precisely what Crusio suggested in the same comment. Then this proposed guideline would seem to add nothing to wp:n, which already advises merging articles that fail the GNG. This guideline is, then, superfluous. 160.39.213.97 (talk) 04:05, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
- There's nothing contradictory in my position at that particular AfD. WP:ACADEMICS, for example, states; "It is possible for an academic to be notable according to this standard, and yet not be an appropriate topic for an article in Wikipedia because of a lack of reliable, independent sources on the subject. Every topic on Wikipedia must be one for which sources exist; see Wikipedia:Verifiability." Do you know want to do away with that (accepted) guideline, too? --Crusio (talk) 04:29, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
Arbitrary break
- Comment: "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject" is the General Notability Guideline for good reason -- it is the level of coverage required for an adequate article (and particularly one that does not fall afoul of WP:NOT). For Wikipedia to forego this requirement, I would suggest that it requires an exceptional justification. WP:ACADEMIC supports this view, as it requires a standard considerably above mere tenure (which could be considered as being 'worthy' rather than 'exceptional' -- though I'm sure we could all find a few examples of tenured professors we personally consider 'unworthy'). To me at least, simply being indexed represents the same level of worthiness as tenure -- enough merit to avoid being dismissed out-of-hand, but not sufficient to warrant an exception to WP:GNG. If somebody can articulate a credible and not-too-wildly-subjective standard of exceptionality for journals, I'd certainly be interested in hearing it. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 05:03, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
- Comment I agree completely with what you say about [WP:ACADEMIC]]. Living in the academic world myself I do indeed know of some tenured professors and certainly several that are unremarkable. However, I suggest that for a journal to be indexed by ISI is akin to getting a named chair for an academic. ISI is highly selective in selecting journals to include in its database. Scopus is already a bit less selective (as it tries to be more inclusive), PubMed less than that, and so on. I think that in the Sciences, there is nothing wrong with using inclusion ISI as a standard for notability. The problem is more in HASS, where ISI has a much lower level of coverage (although that implies that what I said for science journals goes doubly for those HASS journals that are included). I could live with a modification of this guideline to limit "indexing" to ISI, if that would get more people on board that currently are opposed. --Crusio (talk) 09:11, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
- I don't know that I'd go so far as demand locking it down to only ISI -- but I'd certainly be far happier with some sort of restriction to indexes that aim to be discriminating rather than comprehensive, rather than "major indexing services" as a whole. Also, I get the impression that at least some indexes pick on the basis of individual articles, rather than the journal-as-a-whole. Is this a wide practice? If so, it might let generally-lacklustre journals in, on the basis of one or two good articles that got picked. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 09:49, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
- It's still a directory service. ISI's job is to index journals for researchers and students (or pump more money to Thompson). I'm not comfortable with building notability criteria based on a directory service. Protonk (talk) 18:25, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
- I disagree, it's much more than a simple directory. Ulrich's is a directory, it lists journals and some relevant information about the journal, much like Peterson's Guide lists faculty at US institutions. ISI does much more than that, they actually analyze data (namely, citation patterns), resulting in quantitative rankings of journals. So whatever one may think of the impact factor, I don't think one can say that ISI's databases are simple directories. --Crusio (talk) 18:55, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
- Its a directory with a ranking system. the word directory wasn't invoked to imply that we are dealing with a mere phone book of academic journals, but to contrast it with a source which might offer criticism and analysis. Third party coverage is nearly mandatory for balanced coverage. Without it we can report the existence of the journal (and its impact factor, if you will) and whatever the journal says about itself. That is insufficient for NPOV. In general a notability guideline should present a decent sketch of when sourcing is likely to exist. So our guideline on professional sports players offers a pretty good threshold above which some coverage will exist, even if we can't find it immediately. Ditto the guidance on academics. What I don't see in this proposed guideline is any good assertion or evidence that journals which meet the criteria are likely to have third party coverage and journals which do not meet the criteria are not likely to have the same. Protonk (talk) 19:04, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
- (Outdent) For the sake of argument, lets take an example. The JCR shows 209 economics journals in their index (I'm just including the ones in the social science database under "Economics", nothing in finance, management, operations research, etc.). You are telling me that all 209 are "considered by reliable sources to be influential in its subject area" (Criterion 1, note 1). I think that's baloney. Just walking down the list (by impact factor), I would say that the first 60 could arguably be considered pretty influential (especially within their respective sub-fields and with some exceptions which probably have to do w/ impact factor calculations). 60-80 (page 4) is getting a little more scattered. 80-100 has about 5 that I would consider very influential, the rest are just run of the mill publications. Same is true from 100-120, though for different reasons (some of them are salient for belonging to specific sub-fields, others because they were previously much stronger journals then now). 120-140 is getting into the reeds. Likewise every one after that. More to the point, among the ~4-5 dozen journals I suggested were influential or salient, I'm not sure that substantive commentary exists on all of them. Protonk (talk) 19:19, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
- Getting into the reeds. I like that. What people should consider is the information conveyed by the lack of an article; it means the topic is not important. Abductive (reasoning) 21:03, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
- Oppose. I feel I should preface my oppose by stating that if under discussion I would also be opposed to - the somewhat related guideline - Wikipedia:Notability (academics), which has obviously been accepted as a guideline by the consensus of the community. Hence my opinions on this subject matter might be on the fringe. I would also note that many of my concerns about this proposal are duplicated in the current - and again presumably community accepted - guideline at Wikipedia:Notability (books)#Academic books. Fundamentally I do not believe that topics in academia should be treated differently from any others. I think coverage by independent sources that deal directly with the topic itself is fundamental to the core policy of neutral point of view. I do not think citation counting or impact should be used to confer notability as they can be misleading and are open to abuse - in my opinion criteria 1 and 2 as they are written are effectively an endorsement of walled gardens. Generally I think the focus of academic coverage on Wikipedia should be the same as the focus of academic coverage outside of Wikipedia - ideas, not people or publications. Guest9999 (talk) 01:03, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
- a walled garden is where articles are written to support each other, such that they appear substantial, but have no outside referent for the entire structure, usually written by proponents of a particular school of though. This is different because the articles on journals are all independent. They rely on a common external criterion: the extent to which they are used by their intended users. Measuring journals by how they cite one another does not support all of them, the way a walled garden-s cross references do--it rather displays an hierarchy, where the top 20% or so of journals contain 80% of the information -- see Pareto principle-- one of the basic findings of information science (in some fields like physics, it's more like the top 10% contain 90%). This gives a hierarchy, and we include that 20%--in some fields a little more, in some, fewer.
- the world is not uniform. information about different things comes in different ways. Some areas, such as media celebrities, are covered to exhaustion by easily findable sources--some of the more esoteric things, quite the opposite. some popular but specific things, like much computer information are covered very well, but not by what we normally regard as conventional sources. We have two choices: we can devise a naive rule, and deal in a Procrustean manner with what it fits and does not fit, regardless of what it does to the balance & function of the encyclopedia, or we can examine each subject, decide how we want to cover it subject, and see what are its standards. (as we use the criterion of charting for popular music). I regard the first choice as game-playing with rules, the second as making an adult-level encyclopedia. DGG ( talk ) 04:39, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
- I'm not saying that the standard for every topic area should be identical but that they should all follow the same underlying principles. As it stands we can have articles on academics which are essentially their CVs taken from their personal or professional websites. I think this guideline would result in an analogous situation with information in articles based entirely on primary sources and directory entries - I do not think such articles meet Wikipedia's core content policies. Using these criteria a journal could effectively establish its own notability by publishing articles which cite previous articles in the journal, a group of obscure journals establish each others notability by regularly publishing papers citing each other. Should a blog be deemed notable if linked from a lot of other blogs? Or a youtube video if it's on a lot of people's favourite lists? What about local organisations which often cooperate and promote each other? If notability were to be established by this guideline and not the general guideline or the specific guideline for books it effectively means that no other encyclopaedia or other reliable secondary or tertiary source has ever written anything substantial about the journal. Is every other encyclopaedic publication available so unbalanced because of this? Take an example of a reliable secondary source - the BBC website, they have sections on Technology, Science and the Environment and Health. All these sections are dominated by coverage of academic work and many articles are good sources which could be used to verify information and establish the notability of topics. Very few of them could be used to establish the notability of journals (or indeed academics) - in my opinion a balanced coverage of the topic area follows the pattern laid out by this and the other reliable sources. Guest9999 (talk) 14:31, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
- Support. Simple and reasonable criteria. Well thought out. Nfitz (talk) 07:24, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
- (I expressed opposition above and add this comment.) (At least) one of Crusio's premises for this guideline is flawed. He suggests above that some obviously prominent journals, such as Science and Nature, which we all think should be considered notable, nonetheless fail the GNG. But it is, of course, false that independent coverage of such journals cannot be found. Only a few minutes of searching turns up some useful independent coverage of Science, for example. See, for example,
- ISBN 041-5-96-950-6 p. 470.
- "Why reading Science has been second Nature for over a hundred years." Tony Stankus. Technicalities. Kansas City: May 1999. Vol. 19, Iss. 5; p. 4.
- "A Cloning Scandal Rocks a Pillar of Science Publishing." Gina Kolata. New York Times (Late Edition (East Coast)). New York, N.Y.: Dec 18, 2005. p. 1.28.
- Journals that "everybody knows" are notable will turn out, in fact, to pass the GNG. This guideline is a poor idea because (among other reasons) declaring these journal articles to be "notable per WP:ALPHABETSOUP" is not the same as actually improving them by adding independent sources in accordance with Wikipedia's more fundamental content policies. 160.39.213.97 (talk) 18:47, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
- But as you say they would meet GNG. The concern is that something that really shouldn't be here would meet the criteria; can you give an example of that? That might a better case of why the guideline doesn't work. Nfitz (talk) 04:52, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
- Support - Close enough. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 04:21, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
- Support, looks like a very sensible and well thought-out proposal. I don't find the protestations about this proposal being overly permissive to be convincing. Being indexed in the WebOfScience is in practice reasonably selective. I looked at the list of math and computer science journals arranged by the impact factor and even among those at the bottom of the list most journals are quite decent and respectable. The reality is that applying a traditional WP:N standard would be unrealistic and counterproductive here. Traditional type of newscoverage of academic journals (even of the very best ones) basically does not exist. There are no industry publications about academic journals, no industry awards or prizes for academic journals, and there are virtually no books or scholarly articles about academic journals as such. So one has to look for a different, and preferably objective, test for inclusion of WP articles about academic journals. Moreover, articles about academic journals play a rather unique role and are of particular importance for Wikipedia as a project and I think that role should be taken into account when deciding on inclusion criteria. WP:V and WP:RS list academic journals as the golden standard of reliable sources and most Wikipedia articles cite articles in academic journals as sources. From this prospective it is particularly useful for WP users to be able to see brief information about these journals (publisher, scope, impact factor, editors, etc); having such information is also very useful in talk page discussions where relative weight of various sources cited are discussed. Therefore, where articles about academic journals are concerned, any guideline needs to be tailored to allow inclusion of articles about reputable journals. This proposal does a good job here and it relies on objective criteria while doing that. Seems to me the proposal does exactly what is needed. Kinoq (talk) 00:32, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
- "Traditional type of newscoverage of academic journals (even of the very best ones) basically does not exist....there are virtually no books or scholarly articles about academic journals as such." False. See above. 160.39.213.97 (talk) 15:34, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
- Err, above where exactly? This is a rather long page. Kinoq (talk) 15:38, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
- Ah, I see that you probably refer to the discussion regarding Science and Nature. I don't find these examples convincing. First, even for such obviously prominent journals as Science and Nature the kind of specific and detailed coverage that GNG usually requires is fairly rare and limited. Moreover, both of these journals are, to a significant degree, popular journals and not just technical journals. If you take any more technical field, such as, for example, mathematics, the situation is quickly seen to be different. As a practicing research mathematician (with academic tenure -:), I know that the most prestigious mathematical journals are Annals of Mathematics, Inventiones Mathematicae, Acta Mathematica and Journal of the American Mathematical Society. Most mathematicians would probably be willing to give up half a year salary to have an article published in one of these journals. Yet it is extremely difficult (and I did try) to find any specific and significant coverage of these journals as such. Unlike pop culture or current events topics, ordinary journalists simply do not write articles (with rare, once in a blue moon) exceptions about academic journals. The same is true about academics: they write articles to be published in academic journals, not about academic journals. There are no industry awards or honors for academic journals. If we were to apply the strict GNG standard here, almost all articles about academic journals would have to be deleted. Yet, IMO, that would be clearly counterproductive for the project. I think that a non-ideological ("GNG is sacred") but common sense IAR approach needs to be applied here. Kinoq (talk) 15:58, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
- I found a source for the Annals of Mathematics in seconds; just plug it into Google News and you get a NYT obit for Solomon Lefschetz. "For 25 years, Dr. Lefschetz edited The Annals of Mathematics, a publication he developed into one of the world's foremost mathematical journals...". There is an unsourced line in the Wikipedia article that says this exact thing; the article should be edited to reflect this source. Abductive (reasoning) 16:24, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
- By searching Google Books for prestigious "Inventiones Mathematicae" I found "... academic year (1987-1988) while he was preparing it for publication in the very prestigious mathematics research journal, Inventiones Mathematicae, ..." snipped from The Fermat Diary by Charles J. Mozzochi. Abductive (reasoning) 16:24, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
- Acta Mathematica has a source in the first page of Google News results, in an 1927 obituary for Gösta Mittag-Leffler "He found and edited The Acta Mathematica, a periodical of international reputation. His library is said to contain one of the most valuable and complete ..." Abductive (reasoning) 16:24, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
- Journal of the American Mathematical Society garners a 2005 source; Mathematical Publishing: a Guidebook by Steven George Krantz that mentions the exact four journals you claim are unsourceable, and says "The papers in The Annals of Mathematics and Acta Mathematica and Inventiones Mathematicae and the Journal of the American Mathematical Society have a certain gravitas to them. You can tell instinctively that these are important papers that matter." He then goes on to mention the second tier. This is a very good source. Abductive (reasoning) 16:24, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
- These examples are mostly not the kind of specific and detailed coverage that GNG has in mind. They are passing mentions where something else is being discussed. Did you find any examples of coverage where a journal itself was the subject of the coverage? Kinoq (talk) 16:32, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
- The last source is clearly such. Only the most hardline AfD warrior would contest it based on the papers vs journals distinction. If you read the surrounding text in that book, he is clearly talking about journals. Abductive (reasoning) 16:53, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
- Even Krantz does not give the kind of substantial coverage to any of these journals that would give a clear pass of the GNG, naively applied, for a generic topic in an AfD discussion. And this is a rare exception where journals are the actual topic. So I think Kinoq still has a point.John Z (talk) 23:08, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- Exactly. I looked at the Krantz text and in my opinion even for Annals and Inventiones it does not provide specific and detailed coverage of the type GNG requires. A specific and detailed coverage would be something that includes history of the journal, analysis of its impact, composition of the editorial board and some kind of an extended explanation as to how and why the journal came to be prominent in a particular area. Krantz does not do that. In fact, I think that this example rather underscores my point which has to do not just with existence of specific and detailed coverage but also with how widespread (or, this case, how rare) such coverage is. If we take a typical subject, such as, say, movie actors, there is a ton of specific and detailed coverage in regular newsmedia of both the most famous actors as well as less famous and even beginner actors. There are also numerous awards (Oscars, etc), and reviews of films that often contain pretty detailed information about actors. By contrast, if we look at academic journals, say, in mathematics, the situation with available coverage. Even for the most prestigious math journal, Annals of Mathematics, we are not seeing a few dozen (or even 1-2) books and articles written specifically about this journal. The best one can find is a few passing mentions here and there of the type that Abductive found. If even the no. 1 math journal gets such scarce coverage, what can we hope to find for no. 10 and no. 20? Most likely nothing. Like I said, regular journalists do not write, as a matter of course, articles and books specifically about academic journals, since the subject is too technical for general public. Scholars themselves publish in such journals but do not write about them, since they do no see a need to do so (the informal reputation of various journals is usually well-known and spreads by word of mouth). There are no industry awards, prizes and honors for academic journals (unlike, say, movie actors or even academics themselves). Thus the way academic journals are covered differs rather radically from the way pop-culture topics (like movie actors) or even academic topics (such as scientific concepts and discoveries) are covered. One can, of course, take the view that this simply makes essentially all academic journals not notable and we should just not have Wikipedia articles about them. I do not believe that such an approach would be beneficial for the project; in fact I think it will be rather counter-productive. Like I said, academic journals are presumed to be the golden standard of a reliable source by WP:V and WP:RS. It is very useful, both for the general reader, and for the Wikipedia users involved in editing Wikipedia and participating in discussions about Wikipedia articles, to have wikilinks to WP articles about journals that are being cited as sources, with some basic info about such journals. That's why, IMO, a different inclusion standard for articles about academic journals is needed. I believe that the current proposal does quite a good job of this. Kinoq (talk) 17:22, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
- It may be a good idea to create a separate namespace where readers can find out about the credentials and reliability of the references they see at the bottom of articles. But this notability proposal aims to include encyclopedia articles, in the main namespace, about those references. If you take the "golden standard" that you refer to seriously, wouldn't you insist that encyclopedia articles about journals should, themselves, meet a comparable sourcing standard? 160.39.213.97 (talk) 02:24, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
How to improve the proposal
Above it is becoming clear that this proposal enjoys considerable support, but also that a significant number of editors is opposed to it as it stands. Some of these opposing statements are rather general, making it difficult to improve the proposal to address these concerns. I would greatly appreciate if some of you could either propose some improvements in the current wording or give me some examples of notable journals that would not satisfy these criteria or non-notable ones that would pass these criteria. (Obviously I am not addressing those editors who are of the opinion that thsi whole proposed guideline is superfluous... :-). --Crusio (talk) 17:26, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
- The sole reason for my oppose was that I think we need more than a month to kick the tires on the thing before saying that it reflects community consensus. In the course of this discussion, though, I saw some suggestions that this guideline was necessary because some notable journals were failing the GNG. I think some sort of guideline for academic journals would be useful, but if I recall correctly from the general discussion of the relation of SNGs to the GNG some months ago, proposals to permit an SNG to override the GNG universally failed. This page might provide some guidance as to whether a journal passes the GNG, but everything it suggests passes should actually be notable. With this in mind, I am a bit concerned that meeting any one of the criteria is taken as sufficient for notability: a journal that isn't frequently cited (failing #2) but for which some reliable source can be found attesting to its influence (passing #1)? Perhaps a vaguer wording would be appropriate, something acknowledging that these are factors that contribute to evidence of notability, allowing the precise requirement in each case to be determined by consensus on the case in question. If this turns out in practice to be contestable, with some editors insisting that one is enough and others demanding more, then I'd say that there isn't consensus on what makes an academic journal notable and so we can't have a more specific guideline. RJC TalkContribs 18:42, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
- Thanks! I have tweaked "note 1" so that people will not take the in passing mention of a journal as satisfying this criterion. Does this address your concern? --Crusio (talk) 19:20, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
-
- The real problem is using SNGs to delete. In practice, SNGs are used to include. If something passes under any SNG or the GNG it is almost always kept. Deletion because of failing an SNG, while passing the GNG is rare. Whether or not people can agree or not on how to formally say this in the form of a rule, it is what happens. Your idea of making it more vague, saying these are elements rather than criteria of notability may help garner more consensus.John Z (talk) 19:44, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
- I think I'm mainly opposing because this guideline falls in the "arbitrary" portion of the SNG continuum. Some SNGs (for example Wikipedia:Notability (films)) are largely restatements of the GNG with some added caveats explaining where films may be notable even though immediate searches for sourcing turn up nothing. Some SNGs (like this one or PORNBIO or Wikipedia:Notability (academics)) tend to simply assert that characteristics of the subject make it "worthy of note", which is the connotation of "notable" but not our specific usage of it (which closely resembles a "term of art"). Those sorts of guidelines are where we tend to fall down. We include articles whose primary sources are linked inextricably to the subjects themselves and we appear to set an arbitrary benchmark for inclusion. Those two elements combined make for bad policy and worse publicity. I will support a guideline that can offer a rough proxy for "likely to be covered in significant detail by independent sources" because I feel that is the role of SNGs. SNGs which are developed in spite of the GNG are not likely to attract support from me because I fail to see the utility we gain from having an article on a subject which has no external commentary (especially when the guideline implicitly asserts that inclusion is a measure of significance or authority). A good example of the problematic reasoning behind such an adversarial stance is evidences immediately above this section. One editor asserts that the SNG is valuable because obviously important and authoritative journals in a major field (he picked mathematics) aren't likely to have coverage in reliable sources--almost immediately another editor found such coverage. In general I think writing guidelines to correct sourcing imbalances is foolish. It assumes that sourcing doesn't exist for a class of subjects (where it obviously does) and thus generates a false equivalence among the class members. any journal on WoS becomes just as important since we all have articles for them but we can't (or aren't motivated to) find sourcing discussing their relative importance. In making this statement I understand completely that crafting a guideline as a rough proxy for available sourcing is difficult (and may be impossible in many cases). In some sense that is a strong argument for the GNG. It remains the simplest neutral measure for inclusion that we have. Protonk (talk) 21:59, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
I seem to have missed most of what looks to have been a very interesting discussion. Just wanted to add here a bit about finding sources for articles on journals. One of the main sources I have found on the history of long-established journals (I tend to contribute edits about the history of journals established in the 19th century or earlier) is anniversary/history articles published in the journals themselves, or sister publications produced by the organisation that publishes the journal (e.g. an article in the news bulletin of the academic society that produces the journal). I guess that is not the independent third-party sources people normally look for, but it is something I have observed as to where history of a journal or magazine gets published. One of the points raised above was that one of the criteria involves historical impact. As far as I can recall, this is obliquely referring to how old the journal is, especially in cases of journals that were published for tens or hundreds of years, but are no longer published. Of course, finding sources for the very old journals is trivially easy, but I think that is what the "significant history" bit means. I also think examples help when discussing notability. Three examples of articles I created or significantly expanded: Annales de chimie et de physique, Astronomische Nachrichten, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History (hey, that's three countries and three sciences I've covered now). I also filled in the history of the editors for Astronomical Journal and Journal of Biological Chemistry. The latter is a classic example of where I found a history of the journal's first 75 years written by a former editor of the journal. Astronomical Journal also has similar history articles in its own pages. The Astronomische Nachrichten article was largely written from a journal article about the early history of the science. The AMNH Bulletin is an example of an article where the sources are currently only the museum itself (the publishing body), but I have little doubt that more sources can be found. The Annales de chimie et de physique article is a good example where there is a specific source discussing the journal itself in the wider context of the history of science (In the Shadow of Lavoisier: The 'Annales de Chimie' and the Establishment of a New Science. Maurice Crosland. 1994). Finally, Journal of the Chemical Society is an article where I can see potential for expansion from suitable sources that relate the history there, but I have less hope for an article such as Health Economics (which I created to help disambiguate links to health economics) - that one may well remain nothing more than a directory entry-type article. Carcharoth (talk) 03:49, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
- there is of course a wide scope for just such historical articles. There are some journals famous enough over time, or for some unusual reason controversial enough at the present, that there actually is such material. Obviously, as time goes by there will be more of them. They're not the subject here--they meet the GNG and have never had any opposition. I'd love to have time to do some more of this. Among the good sources for this are biographies of editors of famous journals: I have for some time been intending to go through the dictionary of Scientific Biography & its supplement looking for just such references. There tends to be a gap of about 50 years here: the literature on the history of my subject, molecular biology, is enormously greater now than it was 20 years ago. It's just like for scientists, except for the very most famous, where there are not that many secondary sources of the conventional type until they die, or at least retire. Our two most reliable sources for them, the bios of the members of the Royal Society and the NAS, have just that limitation: they have to die first. This shouldn't inhibit us from covering the notable. The criterion is , after all, notable, not famous. Wikipedia is not a directory, if one interprets directory as including everything of a class--there was earlier suggestions to accept all peer-reviewed journals, or any journal referred to in Wikipedia, and I disagree with them. But when directory means a directory of the important representatives of a class, that's encyclopedic. The closest analogy is Olympic athletes for the earlier years--where include them all, under the guise of just assuming there will be material. A;ll objections based on the GNG are irrelevant. We made the GNG, we can decide when it applies and how to interpret it. We made it a guideline, we therefore accepted there will be exceptions to it. The approval of a special guideline is essential the approval of using it--and whether it is in addition to the GNG, requiring both, or in place of it, or as an alternative requiring only either one, is for us to decide. The proposal here is as an alternative, for it is possible that some journals not the least notable in scientific terms may for some reason attract substantial secondary attention. For example, a totally worthless journal may attract attention because of its especially outrageous price, and articles may be written about it. DGG ( talk ) 01:34, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
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