Wikipedia talk:Notability (academic journals)

Let's mark this page as "historical"

I've had enough. I am of the opinion that this is a pseudoWP:PAG and that it is actively confusing the community. I believe the rules it presents are arcane, arbitrary, sometimes nonsensical, and have let to a bloat on Wikipedia with a proliferation of terrible (non-)articles on no-name academic journals. I argue further that WP:LOCALCONSENSUS has formed here, so a broader community WP:RfC is in order. I invite everyone who has any stake or interest in this to help draft a neutral call here. jps (talk) 12:52, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

I concur. For the sake of centralizing the discussion, let me repeat my comment from WP:FTN: while reading through the old deletion discussion, I've learned that WP:NJOURNALS was intended to be a guideline, which is why it is written as one. In the ensuing discussion it failed to gather support. It should have been tagged as {{failed}} then, but got tagged instead as {{essay}}, even though it was never intended as one. Now it's too late to fix this mistake, so the only solution is to mark it as {{historical}}.

Hopefully this will finally stop editors confusing it with an actual guideline. This is not an idle concern, this confusion happens frequently and causes actual damage, as illustrated by the recent AfD for Physics Essays. Tercer (talk) 13:23, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

It's an active page used in near all deletion discussions. It's the opposite of a historical page. That you don't like it is not a reason for getting rid of it. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:03, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

How do you propose we frame the discussion then? Tercer (talk) 14:28, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't. The page is fine as is. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:33, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

You can't forbid us from discussing it. Your input would be valuable for the RfC, so that discussion doesn't get bogged down in formal matters. Tercer (talk) 14:41, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

In situations like this, I think it is fine to note that the party who wants to keep the status quo has refused to address the issues outlined by others and in fact doesn't seem to be engaging in the discussion in good faith. So it's still valuable input for writing the RfC, in any case. jps (talk) 15:04, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Can't we edit the article to make sure that it conforms to NOTABILITY? TFD (talk) 14:59, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

I tried that avenue some years ago. The pagewatchers are reticent to allow for any edits, but go ahead and propose some below and see if that can be worked as well. jps (talk) 15:01, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

• As I have said before (sorry, don't remember where, I'm starting to lose track of all the different places where this discussion is taking place), it may be instructive to have a look at the archives of this talk page: While some people (like several editors above) find this essay too permissive and would like every journal article to meet GNG (which would kill 95% of decent journals, but leave a large proportion of predatory ones), others find it too restrictive, arguing that every journal that is being used as a source on WP should have an article. As such, the current essay is w=a workable compromise. As such, I fear that the current discussion is going to go the same way and will, after wasting a gazillion electrons, result in yet another "no consensus". --Randykitty (talk) 15:18, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

I appreciate that this is hard work and I promise I have WP:RTFA. But the point I keep coming back to is that this essay never gained consensus, and it is now becoming a problem because the issues that prevented it from gaining consensus have not been addressed. The fallback position should not be "no consensus = let's refer to this as though it is a WP:PAG" especially when it is used essentially to overrule actual guidelines like WP:FRINGE. The desire to have every journal that is used as a source have its own standalone article is a strange one. WP:NBOOKS, for example, doesn't seem to suffer from this problem and is much more workable as an understandable WP:PAG. WP:TNT may be the right way forward. Y'all have created a web of criteria and explanations that are serving, it seems to me at least, as its own separate system from the rest of Wikipedia. I don't think that's good practice. jps (talk) 16:08, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

"The desire to have every journal that is used as a source have its own standalone article is a strange one." That's a position espoused by very few people, and certainly not by this page. It also does not overrule WP:FRINGE. Find any reliable source criticizing Physics Essays and everyone will be happy to include it. Also see my proposal from my last ping. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:53, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

You keep repeating "Find any reliable source criticizing Physics Essays" as though that is somehow in compliance with WP:NFRINGE. I have explained enough times now why that is not the case. If you don't want to admit that it is not the case, that's fine, but it doesn't somehow make what you are saying correct or even coherent. jps (talk) 18:17, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

You said WP:FRINGE, not WP:NFRINGE, so I said WP:FRINGE. And per WP:FRINGE Statements about the truth of a theory must be based upon independent reliable sources and reliable sources must be cited that affirm the relationship of the marginal idea to the mainstream idea in a serious and substantial manner. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:45, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm finding it increasingly difficult to accept that you are discussing these matters in good faith. WP:NFRINGE is a link to a specific part of WP:FRINGE. To harp on that distinction has gotta be a new one. But more to the point, the guideline is quite explicit about the idea that a lack of independent sources is a decent argument for removing problematic content completely. Again, you can choose to ignore that this is a main thrust of the thresholds discussed, but the fact that you continually are bringing up red herrings and nitpicking just makes me think that you are taking this way too personally and are not accepting that there are real problems here that may need fixing. jps (talk) 19:10, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

This is an abuse of process. Historical ≠ WP:IDONTLIKEIT. The fact that this does not represent consensus for notability is adequately represented by the fact that it is marked as an essay rather than as a subject notability guideline. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:23, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

The closer on the last AfD recommended that this is what those of us who think there are problems should do. Granted that was in 2017, but I see nothing much has changed since then. If anything, it is has gotten worse. I really do not think y'all have the consensus you think you do with this essay and, like it or not, it is being used confusingly in discussions on this site. The only way we are going to be able to tell if you do have consensus is by having a discussion that tries to get more input from outside of this space that the "usual suspects" are occupying. jps (talk) 18:28, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps you had some difficulty reading my comment, because you are argumentatively contradicting the supposed consensus for this essay, when I explicitly stated that it does not represent a consensus. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:54, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Okaaay. So what would you have us do when this "non-consensus" essay is being used in discussions as though it is a consensus WP:PAG? Should we ask for an edit filter or something? jps (talk) 19:07, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Nothing. Anyone is free to cite whatever standard they feel applies (see also WP:1Q). You can cite WP:NGAMES in a deletion discussion, despite the fact that 'it's only an essay'. If you don't agree with it, cite something else. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:24, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Historically, when conflicts have arisen on Wikipedia where it seems that people are gaming the "free to cite whatever standard they feel applies" rule, the community gets together to have a conversation about whether we should make a statement about the standard being deprecated or having consensus. But the group most in favor of this essay seem to be particularly unwilling to have this conversation. It's very noticeable. jps (talk) 19:35, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Historically, we have seen many attempts to ban certain arguments or people who make those arguements from deletion discussions, by people who disagree with those arguments. That, and not the arguments themselves, consitutes gaming the system. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:55, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

I appreciate your desire to avoid policing speech or whatever, but for as long as there have been rules at this site there have been people complaining about poor application of them. WP:NOT is arguably a page invented to do exactly what you are complaining about. You may not like it, but it is a part of our culture, and I think you are in the minority of users who argue that a wisdom-of-the-crowds approach is key. A point to note is that closers are tasked with making sure that the arguments in AfDs are based in coherent WP:PAG arguments. Marking this page as {{historical}} won't necessarily stop people from referring to it, but it may give closers a chance to identify problematic arguments at a glance (lord knows they have enough on their plate as it is). jps (talk) 14:07, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

I do find it rather strange that since this proposal was rejected back in 2009 no effort was made to fix its obvious problems and get it accepted as a guideline. It does seem like an attempt to game the system and use it as a fake WP:SNG without achieving consesus. Tercer (talk) 21:19, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

So, you are accusing a group of editors of gaming the system? And intentionally foisting a fake SNG onto other editors in discussions? Please see NPA and AFG. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 21:49, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

I mean, we could apply Hanlon's Razor here, but I think the problem is apparent that the essay as it is being used is confusing users. I have my anecdata about it here: [1] Thank you, @Bduke: for explaining how you see this essay. The question I have is, then, what do we do about this kind of thing? The claim was that "The fact that this does not represent consensus for notability is adequately represented by the fact that it is marked as an essay rather than as a subject notability guideline". I think that claim is false at least marginally. jps (talk)

Rather opening a RfC for every SNG(or SNE in this case) that exists, how about changing the AfD process itself? I believe adding a clarification to WP:AfD or WP:SNG would have greater impact. Ca ^{talk to me!} 00:35, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

WP:SNG and WP:AfD are already crystal clear. The problem is the existence of this fake guideline and the editors that insist on pretending that it is an actual guideline. If other fake SNGs exist you probably should open an RfC for them. Tercer (talk) 07:29, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

It's not historical if it's being invoked and relied upon. For my own part, I've tried never to invoke it in a way that implies it has an overwhelming consensus behind it, instead calling it "advice" or the like, and arguing that the advice it offers is applicable to the case at hand. XOR'easter (talk) 15:30, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Nobody is claiming it is historical, this is just the formal way of deprecating it. To quote the closer of the deletion discussion: If you wish to prevent this page from being used, seek consensus to have it tagged with {{historical}}. Tercer (talk) Tercer (talk) 15:37, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

OK, but wouldn't it make more sense to work toward an advice page that is beneficial, rather than ditching the entire thing with no apparent statement about why? I'm trying to see everybody's perspective here (and finding that I disagree with everyone about some aspect of the situation); I'm just not clear on how slapping a template on the page is a constructive step. Just because a discussion-closer from years ago suggested it doesn't mean that it would be clearly communicative. XOR'easter (talk) 16:55, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

That is a laudable goal, but a quick glance at the talk page archives will convince you that it will never happen (EDIT: no need to look at the archives, the current discussion demonstrates it very well). The fundamental problem with this fake guideline is that it contradicts WP:GNG, and it is one of the main reasons it failed to become a real guideline. This is not fixable, because contradicting GNG is an explicit goal of the editors who wrote it. For some unfathomable reason they want journals that fail GNG to have an article nevertheless.

I don't see any solution other than discarding the entire thing. Deleting it, tagging it historical, I don't care. I'm just going with the suggestion of the discussion-closer in order to avoid getting bogged down in a discussion about proper formal process. Tercer (talk) 18:33, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

It doesn't contradict GNG, it supplements it and explains what is considered a reliable source in the field. Indexing services are those sources, in particular the premier selective services like the Science Citation Index, Scopus, the Social Science Citation Index and so on. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:50, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Randykitty is explicit that it contradicts GNG, and that's the goal: While some people (like several editors above) find this essay too permissive and would like every journal article to meet GNG (which would kill 95% of decent journals, but leave a large proportion of predatory ones). The GNG is also explicit that you need significant coverage: "Significant coverage" addresses the topic directly and in detail, so that no original research is needed to extract the content. Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic of the source material. Being one item in a gigantic database obviously doesn't count.

And must I remind you that we landed here in the first place because there are no sources from which to write an article about Physics Essays, despite it satisfying NJOURNALS? It is impossible to satisfy the GNG and nevertheless lack sources. So please don't try to gaslight me. Tercer (talk) 19:05, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Indexing services are never, ever significant coverage. There has been a consistent and VERY strong consensus that mere appearance in directories or databases fails to count toward GNG. JoelleJay (talk) 20:36, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Editors may be interested in the related discussion at Wikipedia talk:Notability (organizations and companies)#Are the autogenerated database metrics provided by an indexing service such as Scopus SIRS coverage of journals? WhatamIdoing (talk) 09:53, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

...and whether appearance in a database counts towards GNG depends on the database. Inclusion in the Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man database (sample database entry) is an excellent indication of notability. I don't think we've ever deleted an article on a subject that was known to appear in OMIM. WhatamIdoing (talk) 09:57, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

"Nobody is claiming it is historical, this is just the formal way of deprecating it." That's highly tendentious and pointy. What we have here is a guideline/essay/whatever that works great 99%+ of the time and has a handful of edge cases. Hard cases make bad law, and a <1% disagreement in outcomes is not a reason to can this page.

Remember that policy/guidelines/essays whatever should reflects practice, not the other way around. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:32, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

If this is highly tendentious and pointy, then the fault is with the closer of the last AfD and maybe we should just run another one? I'm all in favor of User:XOR'easter's suggestion that we should edit this page so that it works for all of us and then can be elevated to a guideline. But the last time I tried that, I was reverted so many times that I ended up just walking away and now we're back and just as annoyed. So what would you have those of us who have complaints do? Are you really of the opinion than we can all just go pound sand -- that we're all acting in such bad faith that nothing we're saying has any value at all? Because that's the register I'm getting from you. jps (talk) 19:16, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Last time around, just like this time, you were trying to delete/invalidate the page outright. It's rather hard to have a discussion with someone who's default position is scorched earth. There were also many changes that occurred as a result of that discussion. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:25, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Okay, cool. I tried out an edit. It's infelicitous. Some may even call it "gauche". But it is the sort of thing I think there may be consensus for. The essay starts out well in arguing that we need some serious mention but then seems to take a dangerous turn in automatically conferring that "serious notice" to simple indexing. Hey, I think good indexing is fabulous. It helps set the scene. But if that is the only source? Whew! That seems a bridge too far. jps (talk) 19:28, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

I feel that's already covered in WP:NJOURNALS#Criteria. I don't see the need for repetition. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:32, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Then how do you explain that Physics Essays is only sourced to indexing right now? What am I missing in the conversation that would allow that you agree with the ugly new subsection I wrote to the point of finding it repetitive and, yet, you find that our article on Physics Essays is not demonstrating this feature? jps (talk) 19:35, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Because many, including me, considered JCR and Scopus to be good enough sources for purpose of showing WP:N. You have a different opinion. That's fine. The majority disagrees with you. That's life. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:40, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

That seems to be in contradiction with my new section, no? I mean, that's cool if you think the majority disagrees, but I don't see how JCR and Scopus simply including a journal in a list suddenly confers notability on the journal. I cannot think of anything comparable in any other standard. In fact, such approaches are explicitly rejected in WP:NBOOKS, for example (just being on a list of recently published books is not good enough for inclusion, e.g.). I actually don't think the "majority" has considered this point. I think the "majority" has been misled by this page into thinking that this is the careful consideration of consensus... which, I think, it is not.

So, for you, inclusion in Scopus or inclusion in Journal Citation Reports are automatic ways to confer notability on a subject. Are there any other indexing and abstract services that you hold in similar high regard? What standard are you using to decide when simple inclusion on one of these lists is good enough?

jps (talk) 19:53, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

The standard is that these sources are independent, reliably published, and provide detailed summary pages on the journals that they index that could reasonably be interpreted as in-depth. As such, they plausibly meet the standard of GNG that the journal is covered by multiple in-depth independent reliable sources.

You are entirely within your rights to disagree on whether the coverage is in-depth. (You could also disagree on whether it is independent or reliable but I would be within my rights to interpret that disagreement as tendentious.) But as it stands, this essay is merely setting out the viewpoint that it is in-depth. Your over-the-top attempts to censor that opinion from Wikipedia deletion discussions are noted but inappropriate. Please continue to allow consensus to be determined by an actual consensus of Wikipedia editor opinions, rather than forcing the matter by silencing all opinions that you personally happen to disagree with. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:06, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

You seemed to miss my drift. What constitutes a detailed summary page? Is it this? The single entry in a table from JCR on page 200 of this document? If no, how do you justify that any summary page is "detailed" for any of the sources chosen for Physics Essays? jps (talk) 20:59, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Your first link (including all of its three tabs, not just the landing page) could reasonably count as detailed. So could ScimagoJR. A line listing only a journal name, issn, and country is not detailed, in my opinion.

Another plausible opinion (I'm not sure who holds it; I don't) is that the fact that these indexes collect and index masses of data about the papers published in these journals is in itself in-depth coverage. It's in-depth because it is an index of large amounts of data; in this view depth does not require analysis.

But this is not the place to try to reconcile differing opinions about what is or is not detailed, or to somehow "justify" the opinions and censure those whose opinions cannot be justified. Those opinions obviously differ. This essay conveniently summarizes one line of reasoning, providing a shortcut that can be used to summarize it instead of detailing it over again by the holders of that opinion in each AfD where it might come up. That is what notability essays are for. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:22, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Jesus, man, if not here then where? C'mon, we obviously have a lot of disagreement here and I have been trying to be accommodating of the other side, but there's only so much "let's not talk about this" I can take. It's cool if you don't want to be part of the conversation, but can you stop making meta-pronouncements about where and when such conversations should be allowed to occur. Please?

Anyway, I'm a little confused by your "all three tabs" comment. The three tabs, as far as I can see, just show aggregate data in comparison to certain arcane metrics about the journal in question. There is, as far as I can tell, no discussion whatsoever about journal content. Seems like this is should be a pretty big part of an idea article written about a journal, but YMMV. As for Scimagojr... I can't make heads or tails of that bizarre website. It also looks like it is just a programmed content aggregator. The summary of the journal looks like it is lifted wholesale from the journal website. All the metrics are copied from other sources. Not exactly an "independent" source in that regard, as far as I can tell, but maybe you know more about it than I?

So this just goes to my overall point. These sources seem middling to poor. I feel like I'm in an alternate reality where Wikipedia editors who are usually really excited about high-quality sourcing are accepting really slipshod examples to argue in favor of standalone articles that seem to have no promise to go anywhere. But maybe you know something I don't. Maybe you've seen a thousand blooms from similarly sparse stalks. If so, examples would be nice.

jps (talk) 22:41, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

It's a notability essay that offers zero basis in P&Gs outside of IAR... JoelleJay (talk) 22:30, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

That's just, like, your opinion, man. Mine is that it is based on WP:GNG and clarifies what kinds of sources have been deemed to count towards GNG. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:32, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

The essay does not presume GNG coverage, it asserts notability directly through meeting criteria that do not have any basis in secondary independent SIGCOV. There is no expectation whatsoever that any particular indexing service actually provides SIGCOV; in fact, index inclusion is set up entirely separately from coverage: A journal can be considered notable if it can be demonstrated to have significant coverage in the media, or demonstrated to have a significant impact in its field. This is usually verified through the journal's inclusion in selective bibliographic databases and selective indexing and abstracting services, or by being the subject of significant commentary in independent scholarly publications, news media, books, theses, and other sources. A hand-wave towards "notability" being "in the spirit of GNG" does not equate to a claim that the information provided by an indexing service constitutes GNG coverage. If such material counted as SIGCOV it would count as SIGCOV in all non-fringe reliable indices regardless of comprehensiveness.

Moreover, journals are businesses, so should be subject to NCORP. JoelleJay (talk) 01:42, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

How is an indexing service that a journal applies to be indexed in, and may even pay a fee toward, in any way independent! How can catalogue entries like what you linked, where literally all info is auto-generated primary metrics from some database and there is not a single sentence of prose written by a human specifically about the subject, let alone anything contextualizing the data, significant coverage (Non-triviality is a measure of the depth of content of a published work, and how far removed that content is from a simple directory entry) that provides direct thought and reflection based on primary sources and contains analysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis of the facts, evidence, concepts, and ideas taken from primary sources. And if that constitutes SIGCOV, then why would an entry with identical "depth" be considered "not SIGCOV" if it appeared in a less-selective index?

If you want to argue that the mere fact that a journal is included in a particular citation index is indicative of coverage existing, then whatever(*), but those entries are manifestly not SIGCOV in IRS according to every other SNG and the GNG.

(*)My counterargument to this is: why should Wikipedia provide free advertising, boosted visibility, and implied legitimacy to a business based on its successfully applying to an indexing service? Especially when NCORP says even inclusion in far more selective indices, like being listed at the NYSE, explicitly does not exempt a subject from SIGCOV sourcing requirements. JoelleJay (talk) 22:20, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

How on earth is this significant secondary independent coverage? It's literally just a catalogue entry! The essay also makes it very clear that it considers inclusion in selective indexes a sufficient and separate criterion from receiving SIGCOV, so it's essentially acting as a de facto grantor of notability, not a predictor of GNG. JoelleJay (talk) 21:00, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

PubMed has never been considered sufficient, both in terms of selectivity or coverage. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:11, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

It literally contains more bits of info than Scopus. JoelleJay (talk) 22:26, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

In what sense? PubMed appears to list only the publication data and holdings for the issues of the journal. Scopus lists its ranking among other journals with a similar focus, a five year trend in its citation statistics, and the number of papers it published in each year since 1996. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:37, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

@JoelleJay: well take a look at this [2]. Be sure to scroll down. What do you think about this? ---Steve Quinn (talk) 22:48, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Isn't this just a paper count? I am trying to wrap my head around why people think that is particularly remarkable. Are we really that bereft of soul that we think we can write articles based on the number of papers that appeared in a journal from year-to-year? I am truly flummoxed. jps (talk) 23:09, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

No, it is also a ranking over time of how well-cited the journal is in its field. XOR'easter (talk) 23:23, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Okay. But what magnificent prose are we supposed to compose about that? I just don't understand how people are counting this as a serious source about the journal. It looks like a list of sports statistics. jps (talk) 23:48, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

I see some lists, numbers, and graphs all autogenerated by the database. None of that is significant secondary coverage. There is in fact overwhelming consensus, from multiple discussions including a global RfC as well as thousands of AfDs, that sites like soccerway or footballdatabase.eu and other pro sports databases that may provide much more detail (of the form used by the indexing services) never count as SIGCOV or otherwise contribute towards notability, even when they are highly selective (like restricted to members of national teams, e.g. National-football-teams.com). JoelleJay (talk) 23:12, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Maybe that sports consensus is wrong. There is far too much thinking of the form "we should cover a selective subset of topics in this area, but we have sources that cover more than that, so we must find excuses for why those sources somehow don't count" in this sort of discussion. Really, what we should be thinking instead is "we want to cover a selective subset of topics, but judging notability by sourcing isn't working for that, so let's find some other way to judge significance". But if we take one more step back, we might ask "do we really not want to cover established academic journals? why not?" For the sports articles, the answer was clear: because we had too many dubiously-accurate sub-stubs. But for a well-established academic journal, what's the actual problem we are trying to solve? —David Eppstein (talk) 04:41, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

The main issue with athlete microstubs has never been that they are "dubiously-accurate". It is that far too many are indiscriminate directory entries because the inclusion standards for individual sports were set so low that nothing beyond database records and routine, trivial coverage exists for many subjects. As long as we have completionist fans who want to see all members of their special interest represented as standalones on wikipedia, we will never have a usable non-coverage-based notability threshold for sportspeople or any other topic that does not ultimately result in a large number of articles that fail NOTDIRECTORY. JoelleJay (talk) 01:54, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Oh, the problem as I see it are poorly-considered journals that are agenda-driven, pay the fee to get indexed, and publish absolute garbage. Physics Essays is just the latest example of that, but others pop up from time to time and will continue to if we don't acknowledge that this is a phenomenon. Given that Wikipedia has a strict no original research rule, including those articles would tend towards an abrogation of editorial duties, in my opinion, which is largely where notability itself came from as a concept. The point is that these journals have an agenda to trick people into thinking that they are more serious and more mainstream than they actually are. The general reaction by the community is to ignore them. Wikipedia should follow that lead. jps (talk) 11:04, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

• Policy already requires that local consensuses be ignored, so you don't need to shift the burden of starting an RfC to yourself. If this essay is being used disruptively, perhaps you could propose userfication or deletion at WP:MfD, though I'm not familiar with the rules there. Avilich (talk) 22:03, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

To which local consensus are you referring? Here is a list of the participants for WikiProject Academics [3]. Here is a list of the new articles [4] of which there are 62. This project has wide-ranging support and participation. I am not seeing a local consensus here. And I am not seeing any sort of disruption as a result of these activities. In fact it is a well organized WikiProject. ----Steve Quinn (talk) 22:32, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Steve, what's your explanation as to what happened at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Physics Essays? Doesn't it seem a bit weird? If this isn't an instance of LOCALCONSENSUS operating against usual norms, it is evidence that I am totally out of touch with what is qualifying for serious, independent sourcing. It was not for nothing that I said that it looks like WP:NFRINGE was superceded. Maybe the global consensus at Wikipedia is that NJOURNALS essay works better than NFRINGE. That's cool. But it means I've been in such an incredible information bubble that I'm going to need some help to find my way out. jps (talk) 22:46, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

It might be evidence that the written rules (e.g., the GNG's insistence upon secondary sources, written at a time when many editors believed that breaking news was 'secondary' because the reporter got the information 'secondhand' from the eyewitnesses) don't align with the wider community's actual practices. WhatamIdoing (talk) 10:37, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Wikiprojects are a local consensus: For instance, unless they can convince the broader community that such action is right, participants in a WikiProject cannot decide that some generally accepted policy or guideline does not apply to articles within its scope. WikiProject advice pages, how-to and information pages, and template documentation pages have not formally been approved by the community through the policy and guideline proposal process, thus have no more status than an essay. Much broader input from the wider community is required for an essay to be elevated to a guideline. JoelleJay (talk) 22:55, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

(This is policy). JoelleJay (talk) 23:18, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

JolleJay, OK, if it doesn't get elevated to a guideline then it remains an essay. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 23:21, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Non-guideline essays are cited in AfD rationales all the time, e.g., WP:TNT. Pointing to one is just a way of saying, "Here is an opinion that I think is relevant and that I agree with." The typical response to an essay that one or more editors vehemently disagree with is, I think, to write an opposing essay. Then, when a topic comes up to which they are relevant, the question of which has the rhetorical upper hand gets argued out until people are too tired to argue any longer. XOR'easter (talk) 23:29, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

I get that. Hell, there are a few essays I've written that I use in that fashion. But what is the procedure then for what to do when there is controversy about a non-guideline essay? The closest I can think of is when the rightwingers went off and wrote WP:ACTIVIST as a counter to WP:ADVOCACY. Should I write WP:NACADEMICJOURNALS with the exhortation to only write about journals when there are serious sources that are written about them? That doesn't seem right, but I'm also clearly not allowed to edit this essay either. I'm shut out of being a part of the conversation which means either there is a problem with the in-group (LOCALCONSENSUS) or there is a problem with the out-group (WP:TE). I'd like to understand which is which... or, ideally, come to some sort of synthesis. jps (talk) 23:40, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

I've been disagreeing about how to edit the article that set this all off with the other editors who seem to think this essay is generally good advice, so if there's an in-group, I probably won't be able to renew my membership card. Just speaking for myself, I can see the merit in adding a criterion that says something like, In rare cases, creating an article about a journal that technically meets one of the conditions here but about which little overall can be said may grant that journal an impression of respectability that it does not deserve. Since the Physics Essays article now has a reference calling it the nonsense that it is, this edge case is no longer a pressing concern there, but it might come up again. XOR'easter (talk) 23:53, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Part of what I hope to get out of this conversation is an agreement to do something so that concerns like mine can actually be articulated in a way that don't get shut down in other discussions. I think your proposed wording is hedged a bit much, for my liking, but if that's what consensus bares I can live with it. Right now, it seems like there is no budging the elephant. If someone finds an entry for a wacko journal in Scopus, article is a go! I get that this guideline has also been used to nice effect to eliminate problematic content too. Wonderful. But I am still not particularly pleased with the sparseness of Physics Essays. Maybe I'm just not good at finding sources about journals, though, and maybe it really is the case that there are good sources out there when these indexing criteria are met. Others argued as much about WP:NPOL and state legislators in a way that I found surprising but had to admit I knew not much about. jps (talk) 00:12, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

That phrasing was off the top of my head, and I'm certainly not committed to it. I do think cases like the one that prompted all this are rare, but we wouldn't necessarily have to say so, for example; that's just my impression from what's coming to mind at the moment. XOR'easter (talk) 00:18, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

ජපස (jps.) It can be argued that the result of that AfD was a local consensus. And I don't know where else to go with that. If someone wants to AfD it again, I think they are free to do so. --Steve Quinn (talk) 23:21, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Well, to a point. The cited arguments starting with a number of editors I highly respect pointed back to this essay. And, further, the arguments continue to be made in a way that makes me think there is something bizarre about the way this essay is constructed/treated. Maybe it is me, but I am very concerned that a group of editors seem to be taken with sourcing that is very akin to the sourcing that this project has rejected for sports-related articles and it seems that there may be portions of the community accepting these criteria simply because, well, the subject is nominally *academia* and since academics are mostly the ones writing about this stuff, they're probably smart enough to get this right. I think BDuke was deferring to this essay and project because of this. I think others might as well. This looks to me like it may be groupthink run amok. But if I'm wrong, I want to understand why. jps (talk) 23:33, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Why should biographies of sports people be evaluated the same way as academic journals? I've stretched an analogy or two in my day, but that makes no sense to me. XOR'easter (talk) 23:43, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Why shouldn't they be? I think they're probably equally as important culturally (possibly sports having more general population interest, but still). Anyway, the main thrust of this point is that aggregated statistics don't make for good sources regardless of the topic. jps (talk) 23:51, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't know what equal cultural importance means in this context. My point is that the two areas are entirely different qualitatively, so I don't see how a precedent for one translates to the other. I would also disagree with the idea that aggregated statistics always make for bad sources. (Population demographics for cities, box-office returns for films, even performance statistics for sports people deemed notable by the current criteria... They might make for dry prose, but sometimes they're what an article ought to provide.) XOR'easter (talk) 23:59, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm not saying that we can't use these sources! Indeed, sports is illustrative because they use those kinds of sources all the time. I'm just saying that in the context of sports articles, when the only sources about an obscure player are the stats, that's seen as evidence for a lack of notability. Would that we could see our way to such determination. jps (talk) 00:17, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

ජපස,."Groupthink run amok." That is a good one. I hope you don't mind I found that to be laugh out loud funny. I think because it was unexpected. It could be that academics are writing about nominally academia. This I don't know. One would have to analyze the membership for a start. Then maybe take a look at the article creators to see where they tend to edit and which projects they belong to. Perhaps it is an attraction to academia that is a motivator. Why not? Also, I don't see a correlation between excluded databases for sports articles and selective databases used in this project. So, that is a point of view for you. In any case, what can I say? One person's treasure is another person's trash (ha ha). ---Steve Quinn (talk) 23:59, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Just so we're clear, the sports articles do use those databases. They just can't be used to determine notability. An obscure player who ended up in a few games in one weird year doesn't deserve an article. A journal that ended up indexed and no one else cared to write anything about? Feels like maybe that doesn't deserve an article either. jps (talk) 00:17, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Well, you're welcome to propose wording for this essay (of course). Just open a section on this page or over at the WikProject Academic Journals talk page. I'm not sure which is the better option. I prefer the latter. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 00:34, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but Wikipedia: WikiProject Academic Journals did not land on a proper page the first time I put it in the search bar. I wonder if it is a bug in the search functionality. jps (talk) 14:17, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

When I put those exact words that you have above, Wikipedia:WikiProject Academic Journals, into the search bar it worked. But, when I only entered WikiProject Academic Journals that didn't work. Did you end up with a red link at the top of a bunch of destination suggestions? And it looks like you have access to the page based on the wiki link you provided in your post.--Steve Quinn (talk) 16:35, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

The indices that the essay currently says are selective enough to count for wiki-notability require that a journal have been around a while (four years in the case of CiteScore). I don't think there's a problem analogous to the obscure player who walked onto the field once in 1906. A criterion about having been selectively indexed for at least a certain length of time might be worth considering (again, just an idea off the top of my head). Another way in which Physics Essays was unusual is that there was no obvious merge target. In a case where there's just not much to say about a journal, one option is to shuffle it off into the article about the publisher or the society that operates it. That way, we still get the benefits of making it linkable in bibliographies, etc., without giving it a stand-alone page. The publisher of Physics Essays doesn't do anything else, and poking around the articles in the pseudoscience cluster didn't find any candidates. XOR'easter (talk) 00:43, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

The rejection of sports databases includes those selective for contemporary professional sportspeople who have competed on their national or premier-level teams multiple times; it's not just those where an obscure player who walked onto the field once in 1906 might appear. The consensus has been that the detailed aggregation of stats and autogenerated metrics provided even by the most selective databases does not constitute SIGCOV because no person is providing significant independent secondary analysis in their own words in any given entry. For databases where some entries do include substantial prose commentary by an independent author (like some cricket dbs), it is required that editors actually demonstrate that the entry on an individual goes well beyond mere stats.

We have the same expectations of actual SIGCOV at NASTRO too, which explicitly excludes being listed in a database as a direct criterion for notability: Being listed in a database does not make an object notable. Rather, even inclusion in historically important selective catalogues only presumes notability, which still must be established through significant commentary in reliable sources, such as being one of the primary targets of a study with in-depth discussion (beyond discovery and basic parameters).

If the bulk of the DUE/BALANCED info we can write about a topic is just repeating raw stats from a directory, the topic fails NOTDIRECTORY, regardless of how "important" it seems it should be. JoelleJay (talk) 02:22, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

• The page can use some (minor) edits, but otherwise the page is fine as it is. Since, academic writing and publishing occurs on a very broad spectrum, one size fits all is very challenging. This provides a very vital guidelines, hence it should not be marked as "historical" as it is very relevant essay. Nanosci (talk) 14:37, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

In re these journals have an agenda to trick people into thinking that they are more serious and more mainstream than they actually are. The general reaction by the community is to ignore them. Wikipedia should follow that lead. – Should we? Maybe we shouldn't. Maybe we should be thinking that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good Wikipedia editors to do nothing. Maybe we should be thinking about the advantages of saying that predatory journals are predatory, that publishers of nonsense have published nonsense, and so forth.

This may be difficult, as we can't say anything that reliable sources don't say, but I frankly find Physics Essays, in its current form, far more useful than nothing. Imagine an editor innocently citing a paper from that journal. WhatamIdoing (talk) 11:16, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

I saw someone earlier this year saying that citing a source in an article is some sort of endorsement by Wikipedia, and so we should only cite sources that make us look good. I wonder if that's the same idea here: If you have a Wikipedia article saying that a journal publishes articles "widely rejected by physicists" and "in contradiction to mainstream physics" and "has been accused of charging authors for publication", then that's somehow making them look good. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:49, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Proposed phrasing

The preceding discussion convinced me that there's little support for entirely discarding this essay, but a lot of support for fixing its core problem, the incompatibility with WP:GNG and complete disregard for WP:SIGCOV. Accordingly, I propose the following phrasing for the RfC:

Should WP:NJOURNALS be amended so that merely being indexed or having an impact factor will no longer imply notability?

More specifically, criteria 1.b and 1.c need to be rewritten. By the way, they do a mockery of Criterion 1, that they're supposed to remark upon. Criterion 1 says "The journal is considered by reliable sources to be influential in its subject area", which is perfectly reasonable. But defining influential to mean only that's indexed or has an impact factor? That's ridiculous. In any case, should we go ahead with this phrasing? Tercer (talk) 08:14, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Sure, I see no problems. Ca ^{talk to me!} 08:31, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Absolutely not. That's like saying inclusion in the Forbes 500 is not a sign of notability. Indexing in selective databases is the primary marker of the notability of journals and always has been the criteria by which librarians and scientists determine whether journals are worth giving a shit about. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 10:47, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Everybody already knows that you are against fixing NJOURNALS, there's no need to keep repeating it. Here I'm only asking about what the question should be, you'll have your chance to !vote no when the RfC goes live. Tercer (talk) 11:02, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

That presumes NJOURNALS needs fixing to begin with, which it doesn't. If you disagree with this essay, write your own. This has been a core component of NJOURNALS since its inception and 2-3 editors being pissed about the outcome of one deletion discussion in a corner case is not reason to invalidate it, and usurp the opinion of hundreds of people in deletion discussions over the years. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 11:29, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

You know very well that this isn't limited to 2-3 editors. NJOURNALS has been controversial since it's inception, and failed to become a guideline, precisely because of this incompatibility with GNG. As you are well aware, the talk page of NJOURNALS is full of people trying to fix it, and you always adamantly refusing.

This is not the opinion of hundreds of people, this is your opinion. You are talking about it as though it were an actual guideline supported by consensus when it's most emphatically not. Tercer (talk) 11:58, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

• Again, you don't need to do an RfC, because this is not a guideline and carries no weight. Not to mention that most people who show up in an RfC over an essay will be the essay's adherents anyway. If the essay is being used to uphold a local consensus, then this is a conduct issue. Avilich (talk) 13:54, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Well, if you are someone else thinks this is a conduct issue then you or someone else should take this to ANI. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 14:16, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Tercer, if you think that journals should have some other form of sourcing than the form of sourcing that is most often available for journals, or that we should cover significantly fewer journals, write your own essay. Essays are for expressing opinions that are widely held but not uniform consensus. That is obviously the case for this essay. You obviously disagree with it. That does not require fixing and it does not require hijacking the essay to reflect your opinion instead of someone else's. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:42, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

RfC for essays isn't unheard of; Wikipedia:WikiProject Venezuela/Reliable and unreliable sources had a similar problem where editors treated the essay like a guideline while the consensus on its validity was unclear. Ca ^{talk to me!} 00:46, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

It is not problematic for AfD participants to refer to essays as a shortcut for explaining their beliefs about how the actual notability guidelines should be interpreted. For instance, we see WP:HAMMER or WP:HEY invoked all the time. They are not the guidelines that notability actually rests on, but they explain why a participant thinks a specific article has failed to meet or now does meet (respectively) those guidelines. Because this kind of behavior is not a problem, it does not require fixing. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:06, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

The problem with this essay isn't that people link to it, but its the fact that it contradicts established guidelines.

If a journal meets any of the following criteria, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources, it qualifies for a stand-alone article. Uh, WP:GNG? Following WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, this essay should have no impact in consensus decisions whatsoever. Therefore, people will need to prove that it meets WP:GNG in tandem with this essay, which makes it useless. Ca ^{talk to me!} 10:21, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

That is not a contradiction of the guidelines. It is an interpretation of the guidelines, a very different thing. It states the opinion that those listings constitute independent, reliable, in-depth coverage. You may well disagree with that opinion, but your disagreement does not make it a contradiction, a violation, or a problem. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:50, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

I wanted to post here earlier along similar lines as David. I couldn't think of the correct way to put it. But, yes, this an interpretation, and not a contradiction of the notability guidelines. The highly selective listings equate to independent, reliable, in-depth coverage. These listings are not affiliated with academic journal publishers. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 23:13, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

An essay in the Wikipedia namespace belongs to everyone and can be edited by everyone. The idea of "hijacking" it makes no sense. There is even an actual policy about it: Essays the author does not want others to edit, or that contradict widespread consensus, belong in the user namespace. Since you clearly don't want other people to edit this essay, and it does contradict widespread consensus, maybe moving it to userspace would be a solution? Tercer (talk) 08:42, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

This essay does not contradict widespread consensus anymore than any other essay in Wikipedia space. Again, if you disagree with it, write your own essay. This has been used by literally hundreds of people in hundreds of deletion debates. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 10:29, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Reading through discussions again, I feel we are debating whether journal database listings give significant coverage. It may be better to hold a RfC on that topic. Ca ^{talk to me!} 23:24, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Well, it certainly has been a waste of time trying to explain this essay. I won't waste any more of my time doing this.---Steve Quinn (talk) 23:48, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

It may be better to allow AfD participants to hold opinions on what they think significant coverage is, in general, rather than holding an RfC to demand that the world form a consensus around only your opinions on the matter and forbid all others. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:09, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Some clarifications

• I have noticed several misunderstandings in the above discussion and will give some clarifications here. As the discussion is getting unwieldy, I am putting this in a separate section. I hope that this will make the discussion better informed. --Randykitty (talk) 09:06, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

  Your implication that people who disagree with you are uninformed is simply insulting. I am a professional physicist with plenty of experience in refereeing and editing, and much more knowledge about these bibliographic databases that I ever wanted to have.

  To briefly correct two falsehoods you've written below: being included in SCIE or Scopus does not make a journal influential. It is the bare minimum for a journal to be taken seriously. There are plenty of indexed journals with laughable impact factors. They are not influential.

  The other falsehood is about peer review. The process at Physics Essays is not normal, contrary to your claims. For the editor to declare in advance that the author is free to disregard the referee's comments is completely unheard of. There's also no hint that a paper can be ever rejected from the journal.

  In a normal peer-review process, the editor chooses referees they can trust and does listen to their advice. Only on rare occasions where the referees have clearly made a mistake or are being plainly corrupt the editors allows for their comments to be disregarded. Tercer (talk) 09:41, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

• No insult was intended. If you look at the discussion above, comparing inclusion in SCIE with lists of recent books, for example, then it is clear that some editors are misinformed. There's a gazillion of subjects where I am misinformed, if somebody points that out in a calm and reasonable manner, I'm not insulted at all. Being included in SCIE does indeed not make a journal influential. It's the other way around: a journal has to be shown to be influential (among many other things), to be included in SCIE. And I did not say that an editor routinely ignores reviewers (otherwise veery soon nobody would be willing to review for your journal any more), I just wanted to point out that it is the responsibility of the editor to make a final decision, not the reviewers (who often enough disagree among themselves), they only provide advice. --Randykitty (talk) 10:25, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

  A calm and polite statement of a falsehood is still a falsehood. A journal most emphatically does not need to be influential to be indexed in SCIE. It's an index with literally thousands of journals! Do I need to give you a list of journals that are in SCIE but are nevertheless irrelevant? Tercer (talk) 12:06, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

• It's absolutely not a falsehood. There exist well over 100.000 academic journals and only a fraction of those are in SCIE. And read the inclusion criteria that I have linked directly below. If a journal is not influential, it doesn't get in SCIE. --Randykitty (talk) 12:26, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

  Sigh. I do have to give you a list then. Of course I don't take Clarivate's word for it. Let's start with Physica Scripta and Entropy, crackpot journals well-known for having no standards. Both in SCIE. Also in SCIE is Scientific Reports, a borderline scam journal that managed to make a lot of money from the "Nature" name before the community realized that it had terrible quality. And these are just notoriously bad journals. The vast majority are serious but low-impact and little-known journals like Laser Physics, Physical Review Accelerators and Beams, Chinese Physics B, or Acta Physica Polonica.

  Do you seriously maintain that these are influential journals? Tercer (talk) 13:56, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

  I do, yes. There's not necessarily at the very top, but they are all impactful journals. That some are shit does not make them unimpactful. Entropy is a terrible journal, but it has nonetheless an h-index of ~91 for instance (Google lists h-index of 60ish, ranking 15th in General Physics). Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:06, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

  An impactful journal? With an impact factor below 1? I'm sorry, I can't believe you are arguing in good faith anymore. Tercer (talk) 14:12, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Entropy has an IF of around 3, not below 1. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:14, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm talking about Acta Physica Polonica. Tercer (talk) 14:19, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

APP's history goes back to 1920 and has a rich history of fruitful publications. That it's current standing is not what it once was is irrelevant. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:22, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

If it is a "rich history", then where are the sources that indicate that? The article right now is a stub that contains essentially no independent sources written about the journal. How does the standalone article as it is written help the reader? And is there any chance that we will find sources that can improve it to the point where a reader may be able to actually learn that it has a rich history?

Look, I'm all in favor of stub-culture when it looks like there are ways to expand articles. But in example after example I see articles about obscure journals that look like they have no chance to go anywhere. What is the point of an inclusion criteria which is essentially creating standalone articles that function exactly as a WP:DIRECTORY?

jps (talk) 13:27, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Bibliometric databases

In the discussion above, inclusion in databases like the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and Scopus has been compared to sports databases and even indiscriminate lists of recently-published books. These comparisons are based on an apparent misunderstanding of these bibliometric databases. Inclusion into these databases is not automatic, as is the case with sports databases or lists of recently-published books. The procedure to get included in SCIE or Scopus is not easy and publishers and editors have to jump through several hoops before they get accepted. What they do not have to do (as suggested above or on one of the other pages where this discussion is raging) is pay a fee. Inclusion in these databases is absolutely free for a journal, so getting money from publishers is not a motivation for the database providers to include a journal.

To get included, a journal must have published a certain minimum number of issues, usually one or two years worth. When it has been shown in this way that a journal has "staying power", a journal's application goes to a commission of specialists, who evaluate the journal on contents and geographical spread of editors, editorial board, and authors, among other criteria. This evaluation is very detailed and very stringent: many journals fail to get included the first time they apply or even ever... And if they get rejected, they will have to wait several years before they can apply again.

There are more than hundred thousand journals in existence, only a small proportion of them are included in SCIE/Scopus/etc. It is databases like Google Scholar that resemble more the "recently-published books list", as GScholar strives to include everything (even predatory journals). DOAJ is not a selective database in this sense either. It's selective only in the sense that it tries to keep out overtly predatory journals, but apart from that it aims to include every open-access journal around.

As the late lamented DGG argued: do we WP editors know better than a committee of specialists? Only the best journals get included in these databases. And staying included is not automatic, if a journal turns bad, it will be dropped from coverage (as, indeed, happened to Physics Essays).

Once a journal is included in the SCIE (or similar databases like the Social Sciences Citation Index, it gets evaluated in-depth in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR). While part of that evaluation is automatic, it is important to note that the final results are hand-curated. The result is a lot of interesting data, varying from the impact factor to which journals get cited most by a certain journal and the other way around.

The roles of editors and referees

The description of the editorial procedures used by Physics Essays, specifically that the editor may deviate from what is suggested by referees, has been interpreted as meaning that the journal is not peer-reviewed. This is incorrect. An editor has the final responsibility for what gets published in a journal or not. Editors who simply count referees' "votes" are lazy bums that don't do the job they're supposed to do. And referees do not accept or reject a manuscript: they give advice to the editor, nothing more and nothing less. It is up to the editor to interpret their comments. Most of the time, an editor will follow the suggestions of the reviewers, but for all kinds of reasons they may deviate from that. This can go both ways: reviewers may recommend "major revisions", but an editor may find the issues raised too serious and reject the manuscript for publication. Or a reviewer may recommend rejection, but the editor judges the objections raised as more minor issues and ask for a revision before accepting the manuscript for publication. In all cases, this is normal peer review.

What is peer review

Peer review is a way of handling submissions to a journal. It's a procedure, nothing more, nothing less. It's not a badge of honor, nor is it a guarantee that a journal practicing peer review will be high quality. Bad peer review is peer review all the same. So just as we accept it if a journal says that John Doe is their editor-in-chief (unless we have evidence to the contrary, as happens occasionally with the more blatant predatory journals), we should accept a journal's self-description of whether it is peer reviewed or not.

• One can say "Flat earth is a scientific theory supported by astronomers and experts." Technically, Flat Earth is science, and "astronomers" support this claim. However, this is a violation of Wikipedia:FRINGE. To parrot your logic, the label 'science' is not a guarantee that the science is valid. The label 'astronomer' is not a guarantee that they are qualified. Therefore, this lead sentence must be perfectly fine. Ca ^{talk to me!} 14:07, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Luckily, we have sources describing Flat Earth shit as nonsense, so you are well justified in adding the label "fringe" on there. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:20, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Misconceptions in RandyKitty's essay

Inclusion into these databases is not automatic, as is the case with sports databases or lists of recently-published books. Inclusion in sports or recently-published books databases isn't "automatic" either. There are strict criteria for inclusion, but that still allows for a gigantic list of players and books. This is absolutely the same as bibliometric indices. Academia is not somehow special by comparison. It is the same gatekeeping that goes on anywhere. If you think it is easy to get included in a sports statistic database, I encourage you to try to get yourself into one!

Inclusion in these databases is absolutely free for a journal, so getting money from publishers is not a motivation for the database providers to include a journal. While it is true for some indexes, it is not true for a few that were uncritically being cited on Physics Essays. It would make sense to disparage those indexes that charge for inclusion. We are silent on this fact in this guideline.

While part of that evaluation is automatic, it is important to note that the final results are hand-curated. The result is a lot of interesting data, varying from the impact factor to which journals get cited most by a certain journal and the other way around. The reports, however, mention essentially nothing about the subject matter of the journal, for example. It's instead a lot of curated data without any analysis. Not something upon which we would be able to write meaningful prose, that I can see.

an editor may find the issues raised too serious and reject the manuscript for publication. Or a reviewer may recommend rejection, but the editor judges the objections raised as more minor issues and ask for a revision before accepting the manuscript for publication. In all cases, this is normal peer review. Corrupt pocket journals are a big problem in academia that we are not going to solve here. In the case where a EiC starts publishing garbage, the community responds by ignoring the journal. Wikipedia is ill-equipped to notice this. The correct approach is to be really stringent in sourcing. If there are sources which indicate something about the quality of the journal, then it is safe to have an article. If not (as in the case of many journals included here), I question the wisdom of an inclusive philosophy.

Bad peer review is peer review all the same. So just as we accept it if a journal says that John Doe is their editor-in-chief (unless we have evidence to the contrary, as happens occasionally with the more blatant predatory journals), we should accept a journal's self-description of whether it is peer reviewed or not. In no other part of Wikipedia do we take people at their word when there is controversy. This idealization of peer review is your own invention. It is not reflected in the literature on the subject. It is not the public understanding. It is a kind of approach which flourishes in libraries where there is a kind of enforced agnosticism when it comes to publication. They are not in the business of enforcing epistemic closure, etc. However, Wikipedia is not a library. We are tasked with looking at what experts evaluate various claims to be. If no expert has evaluated that peer review has taken place (for some value of peer review meaning "responsible peer review") then it is the height of arrogance for us to parrot a journal's self proclamation. It would also be the height of arrogance to say that the journal is not peer reviewed. The responsible thing for Wikipedia to do is to get an independent, reliable source to verify. Not an index that copies what the journal itself says. Not the journal itself. A proper third party. To do otherwise is to treat academic journals as special flowers in the Wikipedia universe that they simply are not.

jps (talk) 22:49, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

I wonder if you two have different ideas of what constitutes "automatic" inclusion in a database.

On the one hand, someone might say "Inclusion in the famous footy database 'Bundesliga Players' is not automatic. You have to go through years of training, work your way up through the various lower-level teams, and get hired by a professional team in the correct tier of the right association, and only then will you be added to the database." Another person might look at this and say, "Yeah: As soon as you join any of the teams they cover, you're automatically added to the database."

It does not appear that any selective index system is "automatic" in this way. These databases don't have single-criterion automatic rules like "anything published by Elsevier". WhatamIdoing (talk) 11:07, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

That's a fair contrast, but I'm not sure there is a functional difference between the two situations in terms of article writing. jps (talk) 14:15, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

While part of that evaluation is automatic, it is important to note that the final results are hand-curated. The result is a lot of interesting data, varying from the impact factor to which journals get cited most by a certain journal and the other way around.

The final approval for inclusion/review in the index are subject to human judgment, but the actual "coverage" of the journal is all autogenerated.

Citation indices also provide a lot of curated, highly-detailed metrics on authors (like h-index, graphs of their publication history, citation calculations, sometimes even basic network analysis) and papers (field impact score, other rankings). Those metrics are never considered secondary SIGCOV of people or papers, so why should they be considered so important as to be notability-conferring for journals? Simply being published in the highest-ranked journal in the world isn't a notability criterion for first/senior authors; surely that's a higher bar to clear than the Scopus journal inclusion criteria of: having articles cited in Scopus-indexed journals, having editors that have some professional standing (e.g. professors), having a publishing history of 2+ years, and publishing articles that contribute to their academic field and are within the journal's stated scope. Indexing services just want journals that aren't obvious trash or so minor as to be read by only undergrads at one college. A journal of relevant breadth not being indexed in Scopus is a red flag, whereas not being a member of the National Academy of Sciences doesn't mean anything at all for a researcher. JoelleJay (talk) 19:52, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

I have to concur with jps and JoelleJay, at least in this section. This is especially on-point: "If there are sources which indicate something about the quality of the journal, then it is safe to have an article. If not (as in the case of many journals included here), I question the wisdom of an inclusive philosophy."  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:42, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

You appear to be the first in this entire debate to base your argument on "an inclusive philosophy". Nobody else here is doing that; we are instead debating different criteria for how to judge the relative noteworthiness of journals, but have not addressed whether some of those criteria would allow more journals to be included, or fewer, or even whether that would be a good thing or a bad thing. So, pray tell: how many articles on journals is the right number? Are we above that, or below that, currently? Which of the two positions in this debate (that we should base notability on inclusion in selective indices, or on whether the journal can get some publicity for itself in independent publications) would support "an inclusive philosophy", and what data do you have to support the inclusiveness of that position and the exclusiveness of the opposite position? —David Eppstein (talk) 00:55, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

On your first point, I don't get what you mean, since I'm directly quoting someone else's prior commentary. Anyway, I think (even judging from your own bullet-point summary in the thread at or near the bottom, where you warn of the possibiliity of being less inclusive of high-quality journals and more inclusive of fringe/controversial ones, depending on how things go in this broader debate), that inclusiveness shifting will necessarily be a consequence, even if people don't want to focus on that as the prime-mover of the discussion. On your seeminly semi-facetious question: There is no specific "right number", of course, but it's clear that some editors think we have too many articles (not just on this topic; AfD is a very, very busy place). There is a general community feeling against "perma-stubs". On your latter question, it's the former criterion ("base notability on inclusion in selective indices") that would lead to an inclusive (i.e. m:Inclusionist) result. I don't have any particular data, and this to me is not about a "right number" or any other tabular measure, but about a) maintainability at the project level (are we wasting our time trying to create and maintain zillions of journal articles, when there are over 100,000 academic journals in the world?), and b) clarity at the editor level (am I wasting my time writing an article on a journal, only to have it deleted on the basis of pseudo-rules from an essay there is no actual clear consensus about?).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:06, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Recommend reinstatement of this edit

[5] After protection expires, I recommend reinstating this edit. Note that there are three editors acting as de facto owners of this essay, but since it is not a user essay, WP editors are free to change it as consensus dictates.

This edit will make it easier to remove the WP:FRINGE-cruft these three editors have been tacitly and, likely, unintentionally, supporting by allowing Wikipedia to function as a WP:DIRECTORY for journals.

jps (talk) 16:28, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

The essay reflects hundreds of deletion discus sions. So far, you have 3 editors that vehemently disagree with it because the community resoundingly endorsed keeping Physics Essays, and instead of writing their own essay, try to undermine this one and change its meaning. And that edit is already covered elsewhere at the very bottom of WP:CRITERIA. Go WP:ABF elsewhere. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:39, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

It's so vaguely worded that I don't see how it could actually help resolve any deletion dispute in practice; because of its vagueness, it could be read as either redundant with § Criteria or in contradiction with the rest of the essay, neither of which is desirable. Regardless of one's take on the overall situation, I don't think this specific addition works. XOR'easter (talk) 17:51, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

I agree (see below) that this addition to this essay is unhelpful, as it describes a completely contradictory view to the rest of the essay. I suspect the point of view of the editors pushing this change is that we should not ever have essays interpreting GNG, we should just use the bare wording of GNG itself everywhere; if so, perhaps this explains their reluctance to write a separate essay setting out their alternative interpretation. However, such a point of view is not an adequate justification for sabotaging others' essays of interpretation by making them say the opposite of what their proponents are using them to mean. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:08, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Concur with the others. And couldn't dispute FRINGE-cruft more strongly. By Wikipedia standards, our journal articles are well-maintained, mostly by editors with academic experience. They're a public good. When I cite a journal, I check our article on it. I don't have Clarivate access. If an infobox shows a low impact factor, or mass-resignation by the editorial board after pressure to increase acceptance rates, that's helpful info. For Physics Essays, I'd know to look for a better source. (Before you ask: yes, I still dig around, whether or not we have an article). What would deletionism achieve here? Bugger all. DFlhb (talk) 19:22, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

@DFlhb, how can we write a neutral article on a subject sourced only to its own website and a couple unexplained metrics? Probably 98% of readers and the vast majority of editors have no idea what being delisted from Scopus or having a very low impact factor or being indexed by Index Copernicus implies since these attributes are not accompanied by any contextualization whatsoever. We wouldn't accept an article on a nonprofit or school or website where literally all of the prose description--including important details like peer-review--is (and can only be) derived from ABOUTSELF. Why should we do so for an industry with well-documented self-promotion[6], reputation manipulation and gaming [7][8][9][10][11], and other abusive business practices?[12] I also used to use our articles on journals extensively whenever I was at an NPROF AfD or evaluating sources on FRINGE pages. This ended during the height of the lab leak lunacy when I saw our article on BioEssays was exclusively sourced to its own website and an index from 2012. That journal published multiple awful lab leak-apologist papers by wholly unqualified authors (like this one by two DRASTIC affiliates--a mycology/botany postdoc and some guy with only a CS bachelor's who is heavily involved in life-extension woo; and this one by a retired genetic databases curator and his extremely unsavory son who proudly states he hasn't taken biology since high school), yet no one would ever be the wiser from visiting Wikipedia because the journal is too minor to be discussed directly in RS, and we can't coatrack in the bountiful criticism of specific papers either.

Further:

• Inclusion does not correspond to SIGCOV in IRS; the essay proposes a completely separate route to notability than SIGCOV or secondary sourcing, which historically would need an even higher level of consensus than that expected for GNG-based guidelines. Citation indices are also nowhere near selective enough to ensure inclusion even incidentally predicts significant secondary independent coverage.
• Citation indices are clearly not selective enough to exclude junk journals. If not being listed on Scopus is a red flag for a journal that otherwise appears eligible, then inclusion clearly does not imply a journal is among the best in the world. It implies it is probably not total garbage. Merely being reliable is not an indication of notability. More problematically, journals that were indexed briefly and then delisted are treated exactly the same as ones that were continuously indexed, which means a journal that was quietly delisted for, e.g., lack of peer review, without those reasons being made public, will forever be entitled to a wikipedia article mirroring whatever it claims about itself regardless of its current reliability. JoelleJay (talk) 05:13, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Regarding and we can't coatrack in the bountiful criticism of specific papers either. Why not? Presuming at least some of that criticism is published in somewhere more reliable than forum posts (and/or that the subject-matter expert clause applies), I don't see a fundamental objection to including a journal's most-criticized papers in the article. We can't draw a new conclusion from that criticism, like saying "and therefore you should never publish here", but critiques of what a journal has published are pertinent information about the journal. Half of the Social Text article is about the Sokal hoax; Entropy has a whole section about a controversial paper and its fallout, as does Frontiers in Psychology, while Scientific Reports has a big one. XOR'easter (talk) 19:14, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

There was extensive coverage of the journal's role in the controversy in each of those examples (literally front page NYT pieces for some...). The coverage doesn't merely excoriate an article they published. It would be coatracking to include the reception of individual articles that do not go into any detail on the journal itself. JoelleJay (talk) 02:14, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, but I still don't get it. The journal always has a role in the controversy, tautologically: they are the ones who made the choice to publish the article. The publication of an article is an act taken by the journal, so nothing in policy prevents us from writing about it when we write about the journal. The things that do tie our hands are not being allowed to synthesize a conclusion and not being allowed to start the criticism from scratch ourselves.

I am not sure that having a Wikipedia article makes a journal look more respectable to any practical extent. People believe fringe nonsense because they want to, and everything else is reinterpreted to suit. Wikipedia has an article that says nothing much about the journal that stands out in any way? Ah ha, the Truth will out! No Wikipedia article for the journal? Well, they weren't expecting one, and/or Wikipedia is part of the Establishment working to censor the Truth. Wikipedia has an article that calls the journal sketchy or predatory? Obviously, the Establishment is at work, suppressing all those who would speak the Truth. Heads I win, tails you lose; the enemy is strong and weak as the occasion demands.

Suppose we redirected BioEssays and maybe other Wiley journals to a list, as has been a suggested course of action for journals whose articles are too stubby. Would appearing in a list of Biology journals published by Wiley (for example) make it look more questionable to someone wanting to know if some new paper is serious? Maybe, but I'm kind of doubtful. XOR'easter (talk) 02:58, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

We wouldn't include criticism of individual books at the publisher's page unless the criticism actually describes the role of the publisher. We don't do that with every controversial film at the articles of film production companies either. So why would we do the same for a journal?

Having a wikipedia article lends a ton of legitimacy toward a journal, just as it lends legitimacy to any business. It skyrockets the journal toward the top of search rankings. And since people expect articles on academic subjects in particular to be neutral and accurate, having an article on a journal sourced only to its own website and some uncontextualized numbers is even more misleading. Being in a list where the publisher's reputation in [field] is described provides a much less isolated treatment of a journal, doesn't confer the same degree of authority, and doesn't present ABOUTSELF from the journal as if it's a secondary independent evaluation. JoelleJay (talk) 22:09, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Since input was requested on the Village Pump, I'll state for the record, as a heretofore uninvolved editor, that I do not support this edit. First, by its literal terms it says nothing at all -- any subject may not be notable, for any number of reasons, so the fact that a journal with only index entries may not be notable provides no new information. Verbiage that adds nothing should not be added. Second, looking at what the edit implies but does not say, it suggests a harder line against databases than is supported by the current language of WP:N, where footnote 1 only states that databases (presumably including indices such as these) are examples of RS coverage that may not actually support notability when examined. Footnote 1 is careful to close no doors, and to leave this fact-sensitive question to be settled based on the particulars of each situation. I suppose that nobody could really object to including the exact language of footnote 1 here, but I'm not really sure why we would do that either. If this essay has merit, its merit comes precisely from saying things that other pages don't. Otherwise, why have it at all?

Having spoken my piece, I will now depart; if for some unlikely reason further input from me is required, please ping. -- Visviva (talk) 05:12, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

@Visviva: You're inconsistently condemning in one place then praising in another the same kind of may language. So, it's not easy to follow your rationale. Regardless, it seems pretty clear to me that what "may not" means in this particular case is that inclusion in an index isn't a notability indicator. Maybe it could be phrased more emphatically (if consensus arrived to include something like this at all, which is an open question.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:08, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

I would hate to give the impression that I am praising footnote 1, of which I am the opposite of a fan. But one thing that is true about that footnote is that it adds new information, which this language does not. (That is, the baseline rule would otherwise be that all RSs providing sigcov contribute to notability, so footnote 1's statement that some RSs may not do so adds new information.) The problem with language like the proposed edit, which by the plain meaning of its words adds no new information at all, is that the reader is naturally led to draw a Gricean implication that the language must be trying to say something that it does not actually say, since otherwise the maxims of relevance and quantity would be violated. So at best, it seems to me that this edit would leave us with yet another provision that will be prone to being given an exclusionary reading not supported by its plain language. -- Visviva (talk) 23:05, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Seems like a surmountable problem, of just needing to be written more clearly (in one direction or the other). And maybe "praising" was too strong a word; more like "relying upon".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:32, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

I think that if you want to resolve the ambiguity, you change "may not be notable" to "may or may not be notable", and if you want to solve a bigger problem, you remind editors not to judge notability solely based on the sources that have already been cited in the article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:26, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

• I have to agree with "If the only reliable independent sources about a journal are its inclusion in scholarly indices, then the journal may not be notable." I also don't disagree with the idea in a thread above that perhaps this question should be put to an RfC. It is probably better to get a site-wide consensus on the matter, which is apt to have some actual effect on AfD debates and such, than to rely on whether some disputed essay says it or not.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:37, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

  You're missing the point. The question is not whether some Wikipedia editors may consider such a journal to be non-notable (the answer to that is obviously yes), nor whether we have a consensus for considering such journals notable or non-notable (neither position has consensus). The question here is whether this essay, used to encapsulate the point of view of some editors on this position should be amended to instead reflect the opposite point of view. Is that an appropriate thing to do to essays? Obviously, other essays do not in general reflect consensus views (otherwise they would not just be essays). So why is it that you are stating your agreement with handling an essay in that way? —David Eppstein (talk) 00:47, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

  Well, that's a question. I don't feel that even the existence of this essay at all is particularly important or dispositive of anything; what ultimately matters is forming better consensus on how to determine journal notability. A problem in the debate/point you want to focus on is that this essay is named as if it is a guideline on academic journal notability. It's probably ultimately permissible (though not very helpful) that an essay be named as if it's an NC guideline, but probably only if it's inclusive of significant divergent views on the subject, perhaps clearly denoted as conflicting opinions for the editor-reader to weight. In my own big pile o' essays, I've frequently "permitted" people to inject contrary viewpoints into them for this reason (though often re-edited to make it clearer that there are mutiple views to account for).

  But if people want to gate-keep this as an opinion (one particular opinion) piece, it should be moved to a title that encapsulates that opinion. (I say this as someone who spent a lot of time, back when, cleaning up "essay space" by moving confusingly named pages around to better, more identifying names, and I don't think I ever got seriously challenged on any of the moves, other than one, which ended up being rewritten from the top down anyway.) I.e., I'm not looking at how to "WP:WIN", from a particular "side", but how to make the dispute go away one way or another and how to arrive at a more solid consensus. I don't spend all my time in science articles, but I do have an interest in creating some articles on journals and on some academic biography subjects, and it's frankly very uncertain ground; I fear that I would waste a lot of research time, only to have the material targeted for deletion, under principles that are not actual rules and on which there is not widespread agreement.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:55, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

  @SMcCandlish, yes, that's a great way of putting it. People expect that frequently-used essays (especially those that are used to influence mainspace outcomes directly, and especially especially those cited by admins) do have some consensus discussion behind them wherein significant dissenting opinions have actually been considered. JoelleJay (talk) 22:26, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

  I think part of the 'problem' is the name of the page. Editors expect that shortcuts beginning with "WP:NOT" will usually link to some part of Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not, or at least to some policy, even though that is demonstrably false. Editors expect that pages that follow the naming convention for notability will reflect a view that the community in general more or less agrees with. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:39, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, that is why @ජපස was trying to get the essay marked as "historical" or "failed". JoelleJay (talk) 00:40, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

  Of which it is neither. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:56, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

  Except for the fact that it failed when it attempted to gain consensus as a guideline? JoelleJay (talk) 01:24, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

  Failing as a proposal is more nuanced than that. "I think it needs a little work, and then come back later" is not a rejection in the same way that, say Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (history) was rejected on grounds of fundamental problems (like trying to require only scholarly sources and ban textbooks). WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:28, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

  If consensus for broad community support has not developed after a reasonable time, the proposal has failed. If consensus is neutral or unclear on the issue and unlikely to improve, the proposal has likewise failed. JoelleJay (talk) 02:15, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

  The rejection happened in 2009. The part "needs a little work, and then come back later" never happened. Clearly it is a failure then?

  The Wikipedia way would be indeed to work on it, address the problems identified in that discussion, and actually obtain consensus support. But the editors here adamantly refuse to do it. Tercer (talk) 10:10, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

  "needs a little work, and then come back later"

  It had a ton of work done on it. It also aims to reflects how deletion discussions actually go. And this is how deletions discussions actually go. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:07, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

  Don't be disingenuous. I'm talking about working on the problems identified in the guideline discussion. What are they? I counted 13 oppose !votes, of which 9 were complaining about it being indiscriminate. They specifically mentioned the same problems that we are arguing about now: how it contradicts GNG, how it recommends articles without having SIGCOV, how it uses being indexed as a criterion for notability. You have always adamantly refused to fix them. No wonder that 14 years later this essay is still controversial for the same reasons.

  Frankly, Wikipedia is based on working towards consensus, not in retreating to your bunker. Tercer (talk) 19:32, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

Some unifying principles

While there is obviously significant disagreement over what sourcing should count towards notability for academic journals, I think there can be general consensus over some more general principles towards a common view of the subject:

• As I think we all agree, the controlling guideline for notability for academic journals is GNG, requiring multiple sources that are independent, reliable, and cover the journal in-depth.
• We should have articles on some prominent journals, but there are too many journals for us to cover them all; we need to be selective in some way. If we're following GNG, that selectivity needs to be performed through the selection of what kinds of sources are good enough to count for notability. I think most editors here would prefer that the selection ends up with the most prominent and respectable journals, but differ in how pragmatic (do whatever it takes to cover those journals) or idealistic (follow our guiding principles no matter their outcome) they want to be in getting there.
• Unfortunately, academics tend not to write much about the journals that they publish in, and when they do it is often in editorials in those same journals, which do not count as independent sources. That leaves us with three main types of source material:
  • Announcements of new publications in some journals may become reported in newspapers and magazines, but this is coverage of the paper not coverage of the journal. This kind of coverage is often used as evidence of notability by individual proponents of including individual journals (there was some of this in the Physics Essays discussions), but I don't think there is any organized group of editors who wants to see this kind of source, which is only incidentally about the journal, form the general basis of notability for journals.
  • Selective indices provide some amount of coverage of the journals that they list, in the form of mechanized analysis of citation patterns in those journals. They primarily cover only the journals considered by the scientific community to be respectable (Physics Essays being a big outlier here). Basing notability decisions on this sort of source (regardless of its real depth) would allow us to focus our coverage of journals to include respectable ones, and exclude fringe ones. However, it is a big stretch to call this coverage in-depth. Doing so would require us to take a wide and subject-specific view of what counts as depth of coverage in GNG, rather than respecting the purity of GNG as a one-size-fits-all guideline that requires no subject-specific interpretation.
  • Sources such as Retraction Watch and the Chronicle of Higher Education frequently feature in-depth stories about shenanigans at specific fringe journals. These kinds of stories are widely accepted as reliable, independent, and in-depth. Basing notability decisions on this sort of source would maintain the purity of GNG as a one-size-fits-all guideline, not requiring subject-specific interpretation. However, it would have the minor side-effect of focusing our coverage on fringe journals, and forcing us to remove our coverage of many major and well-respected journals, in some cases the ones at the top of their discipline, whose coverage is only in indices and not in scandals.

Is that accurate, or is there some aspect to this debate that I have missed? —David Eppstein (talk) 16:36, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm afraid that you haven't mentioned the issue I have been complaining about all the time: namely that without WP:SIGCOV we don't have enough material to write an article about the journal. And we do need that, it's not only my personal preference. As WP:WHYN puts it: We require "significant coverage" in reliable sources so that we can actually write a whole article, rather than half a paragraph or a definition of that topic. If only a few sentences could be written and supported by sources about the subject, that subject does not qualify for a separate page, but should instead be merged into an article about a larger topic or relevant list.

I don't understand this burning desire for a standalone article for every reliable journal. Not having a Wikipedia article does not make a journal unreliable. There just isn't much to be said about it. And I see no benefit in insisting on a standalone article without much to say: what is the point of Journal of Physics A? What harm is there in merging that scarce information into IOP Publishing? (I chose this example because I have personally published in Journal of Physics A. It's a serious journal, but there's nothing remarkable about it.)

As a final point, WP:NJOURNALS implies that we should have a standalone article for all 34,346 journals in Scopus. Surely nobody actually thinks so? Tercer (talk) 19:07, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

"If only a few sentences could be written and supported by sources about the subject, that subject does not qualify for a separate page"

There, WP:WHYN is simply wrong. We have plenty of stubs, and many permastubs, and that's entirely fine.

"What harm is there in merging that scarce information into IOP Publishing?"

Because there's a lot more than can be said about JPA in a standalone article than could be said about JPA in the IOP Publishing article. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:10, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Unlike WP:NJOURNALS, WP:WHYN is actually supported by consensus. Contradicting it is not fine.

And I'm curious where is all this information about Journal of Physics A. It's certainly not in the standalone article that is supposedly needed to contain it. Tercer (talk) 19:39, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

When you write "without WP:SIGCOV we don't have enough material to write an article about the journal" as a statement of fact, it is obviously a falsehood. Because in fact we do have standalone articles about journals based on this material. Journal of Physics A is an example. We do have them, therefore we can have them. Additionally, your "without SIGCOV" takes as a given one side of the question that I have tried to address here, of how we should decide what counts as SIGCOV. Perhaps what you meant to say is that we shouldn't have these articles. But that requires an explanation of why we shouldn't have them, rather than a bald statement that the existence of such an article is impossible. Your stating that we shouldn't have them because we (falsely) cannot have them is mere circular reasoning. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:13, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

I meant "article" as opposed to "stub". We have a stub about Journal of Physics A, but we have an actual article about Nature. Tercer (talk) 19:25, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Also false. It is at least start-class. But there is nothing in notability saying "stubs can exist without notability but we must enforce notability standards for non-stub articles": stubs and articles alike are subject to notability requirements. So in situations where sourcing is adequate for a stub, but not for expansion into a longer article, it makes no sense to use that situation as a reason to say "a stub cannot exist". The stub obviously can exist. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:35, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

WP:WHYN is very clear that if the coverage we have is only enough to produce a stub then the subject is not notable. So no, a stub cannot exist permanently, it only makes sense to have stubs as a work in progress towards an actual article. Tercer (talk) 19:48, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Go ahead, try and delete Grande Anse, Nova Scotia. See what happens. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:54, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

There are tons of articles in Wikipedia that violate the policies and guidelines. That's not news to anyone. If that stub bothers you you're welcome to propose its deletion. Me, I have no interest in it. Tercer (talk) 21:23, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Being a stub is not a "violation" of any guideline, and especially not of WHYN (which I wrote, BTW).

Being a hopelessly doomed permastub – an article that cannot be expanded past a couple of short, basic sentences, no matter how much time, effort, and money you put into it – would be contrary to WHYN. Most of our stubs aren't inherently doomed to stay that way; they only await the attention of a skilled and resourceful editor. For the Grande Anse example, that might require cultivating the acquaintance of a librarian in one of the local communities, but it should be possible. It is unusual for 100 people to live together for two centuries without anyone writing anything down, or their neighboring villages and towns taking notice of them, after all. (The Grande-Anse in New Brunswick is much easier to find sources for online.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:57, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

GEOSTUBs at least have guideline-level consensus. JoelleJay (talk) 22:32, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

We don't have SIGCOV from independent secondary sources. The journal's own website is not IRS SIGCOV. And bibliographic data hosted in an index certainly isn't secondary SIGCOV. JoelleJay (talk) 23:21, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

If a merge discussion for Journal of Physics A came up, I'd advise against it. To be consistent, we'd then have to merge all or most of the IOP Publishing journals into that page, which would be unwieldy. XOR'easter (talk) 19:58, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Why would it be unwieldy? I'd put then in a table with stuff like founding year, editor, impact factor. We have list articles with much bigger tables. Tercer (talk) 21:14, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Well, let's look at the article Journal of Physics A. It says who the publisher is, what series the journal is part of, what sections it is divided into, what journal it split off from, when it started being available online, and where it is indexed. All of that is worth saying, but there's no practical way to make a table that could hold it; a column for each of those would end up being blank for many journals, and a miscellaneous "Notes" column would be so overfilled that it would obviate the point of having a table in the first place. If the concern is that Wikipedia is being too database-like, I don't see how that is alleviated by tabularizing the material. XOR'easter (talk) 22:00, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Why would you !vote for splitting Journal of Physics A from, say, Journal of Physics series? jps (talk) 01:36, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Why would you think that the paragraph immediately above your question does not already answer it? —David Eppstein (talk) 06:45, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Because the paragraph above is talking about a hypothetical merge to IOP Publishing rather than on to the Journal of Physics series. jps (talk) 15:18, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

I've accidentally found a list of the sort I had in mind in Physical Review#Journals. I think it's really manageable. Tercer (talk) 22:15, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

I think there's stuff in some (maybe not all) of the journals listed there which would fit badly into a table, like the content of Physical Review B. XOR'easter (talk) 03:04, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

@Tercer, I attempted to do something similar at the List of MDPI academic journals, and it was reverted by editors who thought that it was "promotional" to say, e.g., that some of their journals have high metrics and some have (very) low metrics. Eventually, it appeared that the definition of "promotional" was that (unbeknownst to me) the journal publisher had prepared a similar list of metrics for their journals. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:04, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

That's ridiculous. The impact factor is what 99% of our readers will be interested in (for better or worse). It is a number calculated by an independent organization. Of course, when the impact factor is large the journal will use it for promotion, but so what? Are we not allowed to list any good information about companies? And plenty of MDPI journals will have rather small impact factors. That cannot possibly be considered promotion. Should we then list only the small impact factors? Tercer (talk) 10:25, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

Well, I thought it would be an improvement, but the discussion at Talk:List of MDPI academic journals#Removal of Impact Factor and Scopus index percentile ranks went the other way. Promotionalism is in the eye of the beholder, no matter how many WP:UPPERCASE shortcuts they list to try to suggest that they're merely objectively applying the rules, that's not what's usually going on. The fear that some (read: many) editors have of Wikipedia "promoting" an organization or a product is deep and fundamentally irrational – meaning that you can't really reason them out of it, because it's ultimately based on emotions and values. This results in all kinds of stupid, like nominating one of the largest hospitals in the world for deletion because nobody ever wrote about it, and all the media reports (all the sources that he just claimed didn't exist?) were in his personal opinion "promotional". We shouldn't expect this one area to be exempt from it. In fact, the fear of unknowingly citing a source from a predatory journal (much less publishing in it), or a journal that's okay today but is involved in a scandal later, is so high in much of academic science that we should realistically expect even more of it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:37, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

In that particularly case I think what happened is that the other editors didn't want to add information that would portray MDPI in a better light, because MDPI is infamous for their low standards. Tercer (talk) 19:54, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

You could be correct. In some other subject areas (e.g., Multi-level marketing), we have editors who seem to believe anything that's not at risk for {{db-attack}} is an "obvious" advertisement, and it could be that some editors find it intolerable to have the numbers available. The Scopus numbers are all over the spectrum, from the lowest I've ever seen to some quite high numbers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:01, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

I broadly agree with this summary, although I would strongly dispute that the indexes used by NJOURNALS are anywhere close to exclusive to "respectable journals". There are several categories of shitty journals that would pass NJOURNALS through Scopus:

• Defunct journals that were indexed continuously, e.g., Akupunktur und Traditionelle Chinesische Medizin, indexed by Scopus from 1987 to 2006 without ever being delisted
• Journals that were delisted from Scopus, e.g., British Homeopathic Journal; Revista Medica de Homeopatia
• The hundreds of active journals that are currently indexed but are/would be deprecated as wiki sources for content in their field (big ol' [sic] to all below).
  • Journal of Ayurveda and Integrative Medicine (indexed 2010–present), includes such recent articles as "Revisiting the therapeutic potential of homeopathic medicine Rhus Tox for herpes simplex virus and inflammatory conditions"; "Deep vein thrombosis cured by homeopathy: A case report"; "Ancient wisdom of ayurveda vis-à-vis contemporary aspect of materiovigilance" (abstract end: The Ayurveda literature highlights that the ancient seers of Ayurveda were well aware regarding Materiovigilance in their own way. However in view of modern era and mainstreaming of Ayurveda heritage, critical revision, updating, systematically categorization of Ayurveda devices, development and implementation of AMv regulation is the need of hour.)
  • Alternative therapies in health and medicine (1995–), recent article "Schizophrenia and Homoeopathy: A Review" (article conclusion: As again pschizophrenia is a psychiatric condition which affects the mental process of patient, Homoeopathy can be used as an effective method of treatment but to establish the efficacy of it, more studies including randomized controlled trials are suggested.; "A Case Report of Tonsillolith Treated With Individualized Homoeopathy"
  • Journal of Complementary and Integrative Medicine (2006–), recent articles: "Wet-cupping on calf muscles in polycystic ovary syndrome: a quasi-experimental study"; "Can measurements be physically conditioned by thought? Further observations following a focused intention experiment"; "Evaluation of antipyretic activity of Belladonna and Pyrogenium ultrahigh dilutions in induced fever model: Antipyretic effects of Belladonna and Pyrogenium"; numerous articles published by the Department of AYUSH
  • Complementary Therapies in Medicine (1993–), recent articles: "Effectiveness of a homeopathic complex medicine in infantile colic: A randomized multicenter study" (conclusion: The current study indicates that Enterokind is an effective and safe homeopathic treatment for functional intestinal colic in infants ≤ 6 months.); "Anthroposophic Medicine: A multimodal medical system integrating complementary therapies into mainstream medicine"; "Expert consensus-based clinical recommendation for an integrative anthroposophic treatment of acute bronchitis in children: A Delphi survey"
  • Journal of Integrative Medicine (2013–), recent articles: "Apoptotic and autophagic death union by Thuja occidentalis homeopathic drug in cervical cancer cells with thujone as the bioactive principle"; "Double-blind evaluation of homeopathy on cocaine craving: a randomized controlled pilot study"
  • Complementary Medicine Research (2015, 2017–), recent articles: "Efficacy of Chininum Sulphuricum 30C against Malaria: An in vitro and in vivo Study"; "Some Remarks on QBism and Its Relevance to Metaphors for the Therapeutic Process Based on Conventional Quantum Theory" (authored by "independent researcher" Lionel Milgrom)
  • Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing (2005–)
  • Medical Hypotheses (1975–); most recent article: "Can Wim Hof Method breathing induce conscious metabolic waste clearance of the brain?"
  • The Scientific World Journal (2000–)
  • Homeopathy (1998–), recent articles: "Evaluation of Therapeutic Potential of Selected Plant-Derived Homeopathic Medicines for their Action against Cervical Cancer"; "A Case Report of Idiopathic OAT Syndrome, Associated with Necrospermia and Hypospermia, Reversed with Individualized Homeopathy"; every other paper in this journal
  • Numerous other active journals dedicated to homeopathy: Revue d'Homeopathie (2010–); International Journal of High Dilution Research (2011–); Indian Journal of Research in Homoeopathy

This was just a small selection of the 160 journals with 10+ article abstracts containing "homeopathy". JoelleJay (talk) 00:20, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

"respectable" was never the metric. "impactful" is the metric. You can be a highly cited journal of crap. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:58, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

I think the fundamental point is that some editors want only "respectable" subjects to be mentioned on Wikipedia, because even documenting various scandals is "promotional" in your eyes.

It reminds me of a story that Molly Ivins told about a Texas politician she despised: "I think the meanest thing I ever said about one of them was that he ran on all fours, sucked eggs and had no sense of humor," she said. "And I swear I saw him in the Capitol the next day and all he said was, 'Baby, you put my name in your paper!'" [13]

If you start with the belief that all publicity is good publicity – and this is just something that some people believe in their bones, and has nothing to do with our guidelines – then of course you will be appalled to see "unworthy" subjects getting any coverage at all in Wikipedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:11, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

This was a direct reply to David's summary, which stated They primarily cover only the journals considered by the scientific community to be respectable (Physics Essays being a big outlier here). Basing notability decisions on this sort of source (regardless of its real depth) would allow us to focus our coverage of journals to include respectable ones, and exclude fringe ones. And why would the journals themselves get to benefit from the same "impact" that is specifically called out as not counting toward notability of academics? NPROF 8b implicitly acknowledges that a biography of someone only notable for head editing a fringe journal, and that can only be sourced with the same type of pseudo-independent and primary coverage accepted by NPROF, would likely have fatal NPOV issues. An article on a crap journal highly cited by other crap journals that exclusively reflects the crap journal's self-description and some unexplained metrics from the indexer of those crap journals is even worse. JoelleJay (talk) 01:49, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

But is that true?

NPROF 1 is explained thusly: "The most typical way of satisfying Criterion 1 is to show that the academic has been an author of highly cited academic work" and I see nothing in here that says that being cited as an example of bad research does not apply.

So if a notorious researcher such as Andrew Wakefield would theoretically qualify as highly cited under NPROF1 for a fraudulent paper – Google Scholar tells me that the central paper, which has since been retracted has been cited more than 4,300 times – then why shouldn't a notorious journal equally qualify as having high metrics? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:51, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm not talking about C1, I'm talking about C8b. JoelleJay (talk) 20:00, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

I think C1 is more analogous: The author qualifies as notable for writing a highly cited paper vs the journal qualifies as notable for publishing the highly cited paper. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:22, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

I think that the walled garden effect where journals people ignore Wikipedia wide standards on notability is untenable in the long run. If there is significant coverage in RS than it qualifies for its own article, otherwise the basic information on the journal should be covered in a list. (t · c) buidhe 16:13, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

What benefit to readers would be provided by reorganizing things in that way? Note also that the availability of in-depth sourcing for even some major journal academic societies or publishers, such as IOP Publishing, may not be significantly better than for the journals they publish (for the same reasons: they're not what academics care to write about, and when they do write about them they publish them in non-independent publications). Even when sources about those journals exist they might reasonably not be construed as coverage of the publisher, and that publishers must pass the stricter requirements of WP:NCORP. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:13, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Who are journals people? Do I qualify because I've said on occasion that WP:NJOURNALS is pretty good advice for the most part? Or am I excommunicated because my 94% agreement with consensus in AfD's makes me too much a devotee of Wikipedia wide standards?

If the concern is that dubious/fringe journals look more respectable than they deserve if we provide their basic statistics, how does merging those statistics into a list make those journals look properly disreputable, particularly when dozens if not hundreds of decent journals would be treated the same way? What problem does mass listification solve, other than the "problem" we have defined into being? XOR'easter (talk) 18:48, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

I hope you don't mind if I answer a question you asked somebody else. First of all, mass listification would solve the problem of having thousands of permastubs. Apparently this doesn't bother many people, but it does bother me, and is a violation of Wikipedia policy.

But to answer about disreputable journals specifically: I suggested they should be merge to the article about their publishers. Consider a non-notable journal published by Hindawi or MDPI. These publishers are notable, we do have sources calling their reliability into question. In absence of specific information about the journal, a reasonable reader will conclude that the journal is not trustworthy either. On the other hand, consider Journal of Physics A. How is the reader supposed to know that it is a serious journal? In the article of IOP Publishing the reader can infer that from the good reputation of the publisher (granted, in its current state the article on IOP Publishing doesn't allow one to learn much, but it's just because nobody cared about the article, not because we lack sources; Institute of Physics is in a much better state and rightly inspires confidence).

And what about non-notable journals published by non-notable publishers? Their articles should be deleted. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. Tercer (talk) 19:27, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

What you have articulated, that we should cover respectable journals and not cover "non-notable journals published by non-notable publishers", is exactly what is intended by using coverage in the major indexes to guide our selection of what we include. What you suggest as a replacement, that we cover journals that have been successful in garnering external publicity for themselves, would have the opposite effect, because it is precisely those non-notable journals published by non-notable publishers that seek out this form of publicity. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:47, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

As the Physics Essays debacle shows, your good intentions did not translate into good effects. And if you took NJOURNALS seriously and covered all 34,346 journals in Scopus you would have many more articles about non-notable journals published by non-notable publishers.

A non-notable journal that managed to get external coverage is a contradiction in terms. That makes them notable. Perhaps you meant unreliable? That is not a problem, if a journal is notorious for being unreliable we should definitely cover that in Wikipedia. Tercer (talk) 21:14, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

What a stupid example to use to make your point. Physics Essays is an extreme outlier. Troll harder. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:59, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Your behaviour is appalling. I joined this conversation under the assumption that you were actually interested in a productive discussion. Now I see that I was mistaken. Therefore I'll no longer interact with you. Tercer (talk) 22:07, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

And how do you know it is an outlier? It took until I found some philosophy paper that described it, in a passing mention, as a forum for wacky ideas before we had anything to even convince several other editors that removing its claim of peer review might be warranted. If it's that hard to find a single trivial source that can positively contextualize a reputation that "everyone already knew" (if they were in or adjacent to physics research...), then how many other "obviously unreliable" journals in fields none of us are intimately familiar with are out there? How many of the ~800 journals discontinued by Scopus have serious issues that would be part of any NPOV article? JoelleJay (talk) 03:04, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

I can't speak to fields I'm not familiar with, but I have been watching fringe physics for years (technically I could even say decades) and paying attention to where it shows up. Physics Essays is unusual in just haw bad it is now, for falling to that status from the merely eccentric, and for having little written about its fall. It's an edge case, though of course it may have counterparts in other fields. XOR'easter (talk) 03:17, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Indeed, Physics Essays used to be a lot better in the past. It's undocumented though. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:00, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

You act as though all external coverage of a topic is orchestrated by self-promotion when a) we don't have evidence that all such media is "hype"; b) our policies already prohibit PROMO and encourage rigor in checking the provenance of sourcing; c) maybe your idea of what does constitute a GNG source is actually just way more permissive towards hype and routine coverage than how most of the rest of the community interprets GNG, re: interviews, awards announcements, speaker profiles from the host of the speaker, sports accomplishment recognition in local media, transactional news, etc.; and d) "accomplishment"-based notability criteria are also subject to promotional pressures and manipulation (and how do we determine an accomplishment itself is worthy enough without using external sourcing on it?). JoelleJay (talk) 02:38, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

You act as though all external coverage of a topic is orchestrated by self-promotion... This is not exactly an unusual position. I've seen quite a number of editors strain to prove that a local newspaper report about how many people are employed by the biggest business in town is "self-promotion". The "maybe they took this number from a press release" paranoia is so common that I would not be surprised if I could find similar comments from you.

(The GNG doesn't accept non-independent sources, and that category includes some Wikipedia:Interviews and some speaker profiles. If the host of the speaker merely copies and pastes the speaker's autobiographical material (example), then the fact that they copied and pasted it does not make it independent.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:20, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

Rigorously checking each candidate source for evidence of promotion or non-independence, as I try to do at every AfD, is not the same as dismissing all external coverage as "hype". And material produced solely to advertise or promote a host event, such as basically all speaker profiles, is surely not independent of the host. JoelleJay (talk) 02:02, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

You said that most of the community accepts "speaker profiles from the host of the speaker". Nothing published by an event host is entirely independent of the host or the event, but what I wanted to add is that what the hosts publishes may not be independent of the speaker, either. I've endured a couple speeches that minimize my faults and glorify my contributions without having any input in the material, or even known that it would happen, so I can attest from personal experience that such things do happen, especially at small community events. But if the host's involvement is merely copying and pasting from the speaker's website a bio pre-written by the speaker – neatly provided in the linked example in three different lengths, so the host doesn't even have to do any copyfitting – then that material would not be independent of the speaker (and it is generally the speaker whose notability is being considered in such cases). WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:44, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

No I did not say that. I said maybe your idea of what does constitute a GNG source is actually just way more permissive towards hype and routine coverage than how most of the rest of the community interprets GNG, re: interviews, awards announcements, speaker profiles from the host of the speaker, sports accomplishment recognition in local media, transactional news, etc. I'm saying most of the community has a stricter standard of independence that would generally exclude such things. I am aware of what goes into speaker profiles and the issues with independence, that's why I brought it up. JoelleJay (talk) 20:04, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

You're right; I missed the start of your sentence. Thank you for the clarification. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:21, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes: "If there is significant coverage in RS than it qualifies for its own article, otherwise the basic information on the journal should be covered in a list." (It need not be a bare list; there's no reason that drill-down lists of journals in paritcular [sub]topical areas can't have significant information about each list entry.) I also tend to agree with David Eppstein's summary at the top of this section, though I wonder if there isn't some other means of establishing the notability of a high-quality journal, by its general credibility in the field, so we don't lose articles on high-quality journals just because there's no scandal material about them. But just being listed in indices doesn't appear to be the answer to the need. [sigh] I don't have the answer, but I fear there's an element of the "any proposed solution must be better than no solution" fallacy at work in this page-wide discussion.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:48, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

• Comments: rather than trying to intersperse the above wall of text, I'll put some remarks here.

1. Permastubs. If a journal meets NJournals (or GNG), then our journal article writing guide provides guidance on how to write an acceptable article that will be at least "Start" class. Too many of our articles are marked "stub" but are, in fact, start or even C or B.
2. Inclusive philosophy: See our deletion archives (here and here]) to see the many journal articles that were deleted (redlinks) or merged (many of the remaining blue links) after being PRODded or taken to AfD. Many of these deletions were based on NJournals, so obviously NJournals does not lead to us being overtly inclusive.
3. Lists: List articles are more tricky than people seem to realize. Leaving aside the fact that only a small part of the info that we routinely include in journal articles would not fit in any table, there is the fact that at this point, the vast majority of lists that we currently have only include journals that have an article. This way we ensure that predatory journals don't get the appearance of respectability by being included in one of our lists. If we would do away with every journal article that only meets NJournals but not GNG, we would have no easy way of keeping predatory journals out of those list articles.
4. Which journals to cover: As has been remarked many times, it is rare that a reliable source publishes about a journal. There are many popular press articles that mention some article in a journal, either because it discusses some important health-related issue or because it discusses something that went wrong (failure of peer review leading to a nonsensical or fraudulent article being accepted). The first is usually all about the article and its authors, with the journal itself only being mentioned in-passing. In general, most journals that meet GNG will do so because something went wrong, not because of the good work that they published. Doing away with NJournals would result in us covering any journal here something went awry, but exclude the vast majority of solid academic journals (that , I may add, get cited all the time in WPs articles).

Thanks for reading this. --Randykitty (talk) 12:32, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Well, probably 99+% of non-journal sources cited by Wikipedia don't have articles here. That doesn't indicate a failure on our part. It may just be that due to lack of independent, in-depth, reliable-source coverage that most journals cannot effectively be encyclopedia-article subjects here. I'm not ready to go that far yet, but it's a real possibility that has to be considered (as much as I actually want to create a couple of such articles).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:37, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

"That doesn't indicate a failure on our part". I would argue it does, when it comes to magazines, newspapers, journals, websites, etc. that have established presence. One-off authors or individual books are different. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:02, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

Your "journal article writing guide" cannot perform miracles. If the only source about a journal is its entry in Scopus or SCIE there just isn't enough information to write more than a stub. Do an exercise: select a couple of journals randomly from Category:English-language journals. What you get is almost always a permastub.

As for your concern about predatory journals, do you have an example where you have a non-predatory publisher, so that its list of journals would mix non-predatory and predatory journals, thereby giving the appearance of respectability to the latter? Tercer (talk) 10:43, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

"If the only source about a journal is its entry in Scopus or SCIE there just isn't enough information to write more than a stub"

Luckily, for most journals, we have other sources than Scopus, we have the journal itself. This lets us write good quality start-class articles. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:09, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

Writing an article based primarily on what the journal itself says does not seem likely to comply with the advice in Wikipedia:Neutral point of view#Selecting sources that "In principle, all articles should be based on reliable, independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy."

So it might let us write a start-class article, but I'm not sure that an article based on the subject's own opinion of itself would necessarily be called a good one. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:22, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

No opinion is involved. You're not getting an FA out of it, but you do get a good little article, e.g. The Journal of Urology. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:35, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

The question isn't whether the existing contents are subjective (about which subject, you may be interested in User:WhatamIdoing/Subjectivity in Wikipedia articles). The question is whether the existing contents are the things that sources without any self-interest would choose to write about. There is a risk in any article based almost entirely on non-independent sources it is non-neutral by omission.

For a completely made-up example, perhaps people with a vested interest in Journal of Important Stuff would choose to write about the impressive age of the journal and the list of editors, but perhaps if a completely independent source looked into J. Imp., they would decide that it was far more interesting to write about the journal's support for eugenics when that was fashionable a century ago, or the surprisingly high number of times the journal has been sued for copyright violations, or would discover that the journal was the first academic journal to switch from petroleum ink to soy ink. You can't know if an article is neutral when everything you know about the subject is what the subject tells you about itself.

Imagine that you write an article about J. Imp. today. It contains a couple of independent metrics, but otherwise everything else – every sentence, and half the infobox contents – comes from the journal's own website. It's neutral in tone, and you haven't written any individual facts that anyone would contest.

Tomorrow, you find a note on your talk page from an editor who says "Um, I'm guessing you didn't know that J. Imp. is on the Reputable List of Predatory Journals. I added this fact to your new article."

Question: Was your original version of the article actually neutral? Does an article that fails to relay such important information comply with NPOV?

I'd say "of course not" – but so long as you rely almost exclusively on non-independent sources for articles, you'd have no idea that the article wasn't neutral. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:23, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes, agreed(!): you cannot write a neutral article if the only sources discussing the subject in detail are from the subject itself. JoelleJay (talk) 20:11, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

This is (surprise!) overly dogmatic. One might even say, it is based the dogma of GNG rather than on thought about what we are trying to achieve when we use GNG. It is quite possible, in many cases, to write a neutral article based on non-independent sources. What is important is that we still trust in the reliability of those sources, both for the accuracy of what they report and in the completeness of what they report. For non-controversial material about non-controversial subjects (such as the editorial direction of journals from major and respectable academic publishers) this is non-problematic. For predatory journals, in contrast, we have experience that statements from their publishers can be untrustworthy, and for those we definitely need independent sourcing for what we write about them. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:55, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't think this is based in the dogma of GNG (which I mentioned exactly nowhere, though I did quote WP:NPOV), and since I gave an example of "what we are trying to achieve" (namely, writing an article that can comply with the core policies), I'm not sure why you think that I didn't give any thought to what we are trying to achieve.

I don't believe that we can count on writing a neutral article based on non-independent sources. It might work out most of the time, especially for shorter articles – often, the basic description from the subject is the same as the basic description from independent sources – but it won't work out some of the time.

Consider: Could you write an NPOV-compliant article about Martin Kulldorff from non-independent sources? I think https://dc.hillsdale.edu/Academy-for-Science-and-Freedom/Martin-Kulldorff/ is his official website now; give it a try, and then compare it to the article we have that's mostly based on independent sources. Do you think you could you write an NPOV-compliant article about Barrett Watten from the kind of non-independent sources that we usually rely on for academics? His official page appears to be https://clasprofiles.wayne.edu/profile/ad6155 and it looks like it has a link to his blog.

If you were only working from non-independent sources, would you even know whether your article had missed something important? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:57, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

There is a difference between being able to write a neutral article in many cases, and knowing with certainty that one has written a neutral article in all cases. Sources that are reliable but not independent are sufficient for the first of these two things. Sources that are independent are insufficient for the second of these two things; more strongly I think that certainty of that type is impossible – one can merely be more or less confident, not certain. So there is absolutely no justification for JoelleJay's "cannot". It is hyperbole, pure and simple. And so is your longer blustery response. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:29, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

It is policy that you should not write articles based on primary non-independent material. If that is what NJOURNALS is doing then there are even deeper issues here than I thought. I've tagged that article as needing secondary and independent sources. JoelleJay (talk) 20:09, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

See WP:POINT and WP:COMMONSENSE. You are putting your worship of ideals in the way of constructive editing. There is nothing problematic or unverifiable in the content of Journal of Urology and if you stopped for any reflection on the subject rather than quoting Wikipedia initials ad nauseam about how it must be that way because those initials say it must be that way, you would realize that. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:02, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

How do you know there is nothing problematic about the content as presented? NPOV doesn't mean "assume what a subject says about itself adequately reflects all the major opinions on it from external sources". This would be acceptable for a simple directory, where the info for each entry is strictly limited to that which fills in certain basic data fields. No one expects a directory of all the journals published by Elsevier to include secondary commentary on any of them, even if it exists, because that's outside the directory's scope. An article in Wikipedia is intended to provide a comprehensive overview of a topic that goes beyond those routine metrics and reflects what the world at large says about it in secondary independent sources. The expectation is that such a balanced description is possible, and passing GNG+SUSTAINED can contribute to that balance directly via the sources it uses to demonstrate notability, or indirectly by predicting that further SIRS coverage will exist should the topic become controversial. NJOURNALS instead operates without any expectation or even weak presumption that meeting its criteria will correspond to adequate coverage in IRS of any NPOV-required controversial aspects in the event that they arise. That is a fundamental problem. JoelleJay (talk) 02:28, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Why would academic journals be covered by WP:SIRS? I hadn't seen anyone challenge the assumption, presented at the opening of the section, that academic journals were covered by the WP:GNG, and SIRS doesn't apply to the GNG (proposals to extend SIRS in that way having up to now been rejected by the community). Newimpartial (talk) 02:36, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Well, JoelleJay was thinking about that question at Wikipedia talk:Notability (organizations and companies)#Are the autogenerated database metrics provided by an indexing service such as Scopus SIRS coverage of journals? It is not entirely unreasonable, since in some sense, any book, film, periodical, etc. is a "product", and CORP covers products.

But think of it as a shorthand: Why would a good editor create an article about a subject that is – that, to the best of the editor's knowledge can be – nothing (or very little) more than the subject's own curated image, repackaged to look like a Wikipedia article? It's not about WP:SIRS per se, but about the ability that a couple of SIRS-like sources would lend you in creating a decent article that isn't >90% taken from the subject's own marketing materials. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:01, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

What "marketing materials" are you talking about here? SCOPUS and the like are not "marketing materials", although the numbers they produce may well be used in marketing materials by the publishers of the journals they analyze. It's like you're calling an article on Bill Cosby "marketing materials" because he was once used in ads for Jello. Or a government climate analysis for its jurisdiction "marketing materials" because it might be used by a tourist board. Under that level of extreme stretching, everything is a corporate product and everything is a marketing material. Maybe that's the world we're living in, but that way lies madness. We don't need to think like that here. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:26, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Of course Scopus isn't marketing materials. But Scopus (or indexing in general) is also not >90% of the contents of an article about an academic journal. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:56, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

You don't think IFs and CiteScores are used by journals to market themselves?? This paper literally states As we might expect, OA articles tend to generate more citations, feeding bibliometrics such as Google Scholar and IFs which have become prominent marketing tools. [...] The stark reality is that impact factor data are used as an indicator of quality and prominence and are thus a critical “marketing tool”. This paper in an ethics journal states ...the corporate attitude about the value of the journal impact factor (JIF), and what it represents, namely a marketing tool that is falsely used to equate citations with quality, worth, or influence. The continued commercialization of metrics such as the JIF is at the heart of their use to assess the “quality” of a researcher, their work, or a journal, and contributes to a great extent to driving scientific activities towards a futile endeavor.

There are numerous books written on how to market journals; this one states One might think that "everybody knows the important journals in their field," but marketing is an absolutely crucial function in journal publishing and In the journal world, the publisher's brand matters to the Editors-in-Chief who are recruited to manage a journal, but the brand known to authors is almost always that of the journal rather than the publishing company... Publishers naturally want to promote the journal's brand--and their own--as broadly as possible, and the multitude of marketing activities discussed in this chapter will help to define and reinforce such branding, has a 23-page chapter on journal metrics, and includes those metrics among its essential journal "marketing plan" components. It also has an in-depth discussion of the "virtuous circle" (marketing attracts authors and readers to the journal, which increases usage, which leads to higher citations, which leads to more subscriptions...and more profit. JoelleJay (talk) 19:47, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

That they are used to market themselves is irrelevant. CPU makers advertise the number of cores and speed their processors have. Car makers advertise their horsepower. Just because something is used in marketing doesn't make it irrelevant information. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:53, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

It's a bit nuanced: https://www.scopus.com/ is not itself "marketing materials". But journals and publishers can, and do, use the facts found therein as part of their own marketing materials. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:04, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Ugh, WAID. I wish I had not opened that thread to read - so much confusion. Of course journals are businesses/business products...? - assuming the thing to be proved, and never letting go? And the pervasive, unfounded assumption that the GNG isn't flexible about the number and depth of sources it requires, when it explicitly says, There is no fixed number of sources required since sources vary in quality and depth of coverage, but multiple sources are generally expected, and when the community has repeatedly rejected adding a specific number or a specific "depth requirement" per source into the GNG? Sigh.

Anyway, to answer your question, WAID, it seems to me that you are asking whether a higher degree of independent coverage, or perhaps of secondary coverage, is appropriate in this topic area. That is a valid question, but introducing SIRS into the discussion doesn't help ask or answer this question IMO. And as far as all transacted things being products, we don't treat books or films or works of art as "products" nor do we apply SIRS to them, and the idea that maybe we should strikes me frankly as a kind of "de-encyclopaedification" in which we stop recognizing topics based on what they actually are and instead treat them based on what we fear "bad actors" might make of them. I want an encyclopaedia to treat books as books, and not as potential instances of deceptive marketing by book publishers, if you see what I mean. Newimpartial (talk) 10:28, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

I accidentally said "SIRS" once instead of spelling out "SIGCOV in IRS sources" in one comment where using the former term makes no meaningful difference to my argument, which doesn't otherwise make any assertions whatsoever about journals-as-businesses, and you decide to use your bludgeoning quota here nitpicking, strawmanning, and misrepresenting a discussion from a different page and condescendingly assigning some sort of IDHT attitude to me? JoelleJay (talk) 16:57, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

My second paragraph - which was most of my comment - was a direct response to WAID's second paragraph and was not directed at JoelleJay at all. Any implication to the contrary simply represents maladroit writing on my part. Newimpartial (talk) 02:52, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

Re JoelleJay's How do you know: Certainty is available only to saints and maybe some mathematicians. The rest of us, dealing with a human world, can only have greater or lesser degrees of confidence. If I see a journal from a known and respectable publisher, and I search hard for sources telling me about scandals involving that journal, but find none, I can be pretty confident but not certain that no scandals are known to be reported by us. That does not mean that the scandals do not exist, only that they have not been uncovered. But that remains equally true if I find in-depth histories of the journal published by historians of academia in impeccably independent sources. Those histories give me more to write about the journal, enough maybe to boost it to B-class or GA instead of the usual start-class, but they do not do anything to boost my confidence that there are more sources I didn't find. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:34, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Here's a problem I see all the time. The publisher or group or EiC may be the one that is a problem rather than the journal itself. Frontiers Media comes to mind as an example. We host lots of articles on individual journals published by them which do not fully capture the issues with the publisher since it is hard to find a source which mentions a journal by name while criticizing the publisher. Or here's another example: journal capture happened a few decades ago where IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science started publishing plasma cosmology articles while basically no actual experts in cosmology noticed because research academics in astrophysics do not read engineering journals. Wikipedia does not seem set-up to handle such obscure issues. jps (talk) 13:16, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

The solution to that isn't to genocide journal articles on Wikipedia. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:21, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Cool. What's the solution, exactly? jps (talk) 13:22, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Well... we've talked here about "articles" and "lists", but there is a third model. I want to be clear up front that it's a model usually implemented with complex templates (which I personally dislike), but if you are writing articles about subjects with limited independent sources, and you want to present a set of information that is bigger than trivially fits across a page in a couple of columns, then you could take a tip from the articles on television episodes, e.g., 90210 (season 3)#Episodes. If a television episode table can present a couple of numbers, title, director, author, date, viewership, and a paragraph of free text about the episode, then I don't see why a journals table couldn't present a couple of metrics, title, current editor, years of operation, and a paragraph of free text about the journal, maybe we'd even add a separate row for an {{hlist}} of past editors and indexing services.

I'm not sure that it'd make sense to do this per publisher (Elsevier has >2800, Wiley has 1,600...), but it could be done for smaller groups (e.g., MDPI's medical journals). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:11, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Seems like a reasonable approach to me. Can we include that as a recommendation in this essay? jps (talk) 13:32, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

It's already in there in WP:NJOURNALS#Journal series and in the section above with Consensus may also be that while a certain journal is notable on its own, it is best to cover the material in another article (for example, on the publisher's article). Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:43, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

That's no help because it is presuming that the journal is still notable on its own. WhatamIdoing seems to be saying that there are instances where this is not the case and that is when you make a sort of expanded table that includes information about the individually not notable journals/episodes. jps (talk) 00:41, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

You're sneering at the first three words of my comment as if I don't address how the GNG, with its demand for secondary independent SIGCOV commentary, provides an infinitely greater potential for approximating NPOV "certainty" than a guideline that has no such requirement at all. NJOURNALS says an article can exist even if it has zero chance of being anything beyond a surjective image of the subject's website. JoelleJay (talk) 17:41, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

But it's true. Demanding in-depth and independent sources provides no greater potential at all for being sure that your article is neutral. It provides potential for writing a longer article. It provides potential for writing an article that includes editorial opinions on the subject, which we cannot do with non-independent sourcing. But it gives us no information at all about whether we have done an adequate job of finding and using what sourcing there is about the topic. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:33, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

I do not agree. An article written almost entirely from the subject's own sources has a very high risk of being non-neutral, i.e., a risk of providing one POV and not others. When you have found and used multiple independent sources (independent from the subject + independent from each other), you might not wish to bet your life on full compliance with NPOV, but you should have a much higher confidence.

In the past, there has been a bit of special pleading. Editors would admit that it would be quite risky to try to write an article about a vote-grubbing politician or a money-grubbing business from merely the subject's own sources, but there's been a bit of a tendency to say that academics are so honest, so thoroughly square/Eternally noble, historically fair, so free of self-interest and self-deception (says nobody who has served on a tenure committee, ever) that it would be perfectly fine to present their own POV to the world as the only POV that could possibly matter.

There might be good reasons for Wikipedia to have articles (or at least information) about academic journals and other periodicals that we might wish to cite, even if we wouldn't normally want to have such thinly sourced articles on any other subject, but I cannot agree that an article that is not based primarily upon independent sources has only the same or a worse chance of editors "being sure that your article is neutral" as an article that has been thoroughly researched. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:46, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

What part of "editorial opinions on the subject, which we cannot do with non-independent sourcing" did you not understand? The decision to include evaluations of a topic, versus a bare-bones factual article, depends on independence of the sourcing that can be found. If searches turn up no significant opinion-based material on the topic then an article that states only uncontroversial facts about the topic, without evaluation, is not problematic with respect to its neutrality. In contrast, it is common for axe-grinding editors to base content on independent sources that provide only one side of a story, conveniently omitting the other sources. Those articles have no problem with respect to independence of sourcing, but they are not neutral. So there is no logical relation between independence and neutrality. An article that uses the available sources appropriately (sticking only to facts when the sources are non-independent, bringing in opinion from independent sources, and thoroughly searching for what sourcing there are) can be neutral regardless of the type of its sources. An article that uses its sources badly (by selecting which sources to use or basing opinion on non-independent sources) is likely to be non-neutral. The only connection of all this with perceived uprightness of its subjects is whether we can trust the non-independent sources to be reliable about the factual claims that we take from them. But that is a question about reliability, not about independence. For some journal publishers, such trust is warranted, for others it is not. There is no special pleading; the same reasoning would apply in any other subject. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:02, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

You have explained your POV. Do you feel like you understand the opposite POV well enough to describe it fairly? I suspect that many editors would feel like Wikipedia expresses two different POVs if it writes "It is an academic journal" vs "It is a predatory journal", and that when the second is true, they would not be satisfied with say thing first, even if you tell them that it's okay because it's cited to the journal's own opinion of itself and it expresses – in your personal opinion – no opinions on subject, not even by omission. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:25, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

Do we even have the same understanding of what a neutral article is?

I think that an neutral article is one that includes all the (significant) viewpoints held by reliable sources about a subject. Only the subject's viewpoint = not including all the viewpoints = ∴ not neutral.

You seem to think that a neutral article could include only the viewpoint of its subject, so long as that is written in a relatively restrained way. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:32, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

WP:JWG isn't about putting the subjects' own viewpoint in a straitjacket, it's to purposefully ignore the fluff and marketing claims and stick to basic facts. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:36, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

We can distinguish between two kinds of content that an article may have: facts and viewpoints. For some reason you (WhatamIdoing) seem totally averse to facts and only interested in discussing viewpoints. Viewpoints require independent sources, as we expect even respectable subjects to have biased viewpoints that are (with some exceptions) not usually worth reporting. Neutrality requires finding and reporting on all mainstream independent viewpoints, something that goes well beyond independence alone. Independence alone cannot guarantee neutrality. When finding all mainstream independent viewpoints returns the empty set, the viewpoint aspect of an article will be neutral if it is equally empty. In such cases, it may well still be possible to have an article whose content consists entirely of facts and not of viewpoints. If we understand something to be a factual claim rather than a viewpoint, independence of its source is irrelevant; what matters is purely the reliability of the source. Applied specifically to journals, this means that statements like "widely considered the top journal in basketweaving" or "has been accused of predatory practices" require independent sources; statements like "published by Wiley, founded in 1972 by X, with Y as its current editor in chief" do not. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:04, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

But if the only material we have about the subject is basic, boilerplate facts to fill in infobox parameters, plus a brief self-description, all found on the subject's website, how is it anything more than a directory entry that provides free advertising? An article on any other topic where the only things that could be said about it were "published by Wiley, founded in 1972 by X, with Y as its current editor in chief" would be rejected per NOTDIRECTORY; why should journals be treated any differently? JoelleJay (talk) 23:49, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

A phonebook is a directory, a basic article that complies with WP:JWG and sticks to the basics is lightyears ahead of that. And again, it provides encyclopedic information, not advertisement. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:05, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

David, I don't think I've been clear. "Just the facts" is a viewpoint. If you write "J. Imp. is an academic journal" you are presenting a viewpoint in the article – namely, the viewpoint that the proper way to describe that periodical is to categorize it in the subjective and opinionated category of "academic journals".

That viewpoint might be the only viewpoint held by any rational person in the world, but it also might not be. It could be that there are two viewpoints, e.g.:

• The subject's viewpoint: It is our opinion that we publish an innovative academic journal.
• An independent viewpoint: It is my opinion that you publish an online magazine that you claim is an academic journal.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:32, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

You are free to define terms in idiosyncratic ways, as you are doing, but then you must follow those definitions to their logical conclusion. If you want "J. Imp. is an academic journal" to be classified as a "viewpoint", then it is the kind of viewpoint that any rational person would consider verified by non-independent but reliable sourcing. I'm sure one can find editors who, without applying rational thought to the matter, think only "holy GNG holy holy" and jump to the conclusion that even such claims are impossible to verify by non-independent sources because holy GNG says only independent sources count. I hope you are not one of those. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:56, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Do you really think that any rational person would consider such a statement to be a trivially verified, essentially indisputable claim in all cases?

What if the next sentence in the article, also sourced to their own website, says something like "They consider themselves to be supporting citizen science by using post-publication peer review in the form of comments posted via WordPress blog software. They publish between three and four hundred articles per month on a wide variety of subjects, charge $3,000 per article in publication fees, and have an average turnaround time from submission to publication of six business days"?

In that case, would you still expect a rational Wikipedian to be satisfied with calling them an academic journal, or do you think that alternative viewpoints, like vanity press or predatory journal, might get mentioned in on the talk page?

What if it merely says "It is a for-profit business that is not affiliated with any academic institution"? Are you sure that would still be within the typical editor's idea of what so obviously constitutes an academic journal that any old ABOUTSELF source would be accepted as settling that question? I'm a bit doubtful that they would, even among those who are aware that Elsevier's profit margins recently have been unconscionable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:28, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

What part of reliable but non-independent sources do you not understand? If they contradict themselves in the next sentence, we have good reason to believe that they are unreliable. Allowing sources that we have good reason to take as reliable despite their non-independence does not mean throwing away any filter and allowing all non-independent sources, even the ones that we think are unreliable.

As for Elsevier, I have been trying to avoid using them for years (not always successfully). But that's not the same as believing that journals published by commercial journal publishers are somehow not journals, or that Elsevier is not one of the mainstream commercial journal publishers. Those beliefs are, to put it politely, fringe. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:20, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Imagine that I start my own periodical. I create a website – it looks very nice – saying "Journal of Important Things is a new and innovative academic journal". I get an ISSN (which is free), post a submission process, charge fees a bit lower than the existing reputable journals, and publish a few papers.

Given the problem of predatory journals, I don't understand why you would expect editors to accept my self-description as being reliable for whether it's actually an academic journal, assuming that word is to retain any meaning beyond "magazine". And if they won't accept my self-description for my periodical, why would you expect them to accept any periodical's self-description?

I'll give you a real example: Would you accept an article that says "Current Opinions in Neurological Science (ISSN 2575-5447) is a peer-reviewed open-access academic journal"? Is their own self-description as "a peer-reviewed open access journal" actually a reliable source for saying that they are a peer-reviewed open access journal"? When I compare it against the usual requirements for reliable sources – Reputation for fact-checking their own marketing claims? No. Independent source? No. Appropriate for the material in question? Maybe. Non-self-published? No. – I don't personally see this as obviously reliable, but would you accept it? WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:42, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Is your journal indexed in SCI? In Scopus? In any other reputable databases? If so, we can take your self description WP:RS and per WP:ABOUTSELF. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:53, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

The question is moot: the journal is not included in a single academic database, so unless it (unlikely) meets GNG, we doon't want an article on it. If it were in, say, MEDLINE, we could certainly call is a "medical journal" (not "academic", that's for social sciences and the humanities). --Randykitty (talk) 16:04, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't know what (or if) it's indexed in. FTR, I'm also not aware of any source claiming it's predatory. (MEDLINE is very restrictive, indexing only about 15% of medical journals. Many legitimate medical journals are excluded.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:05, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Exactly, that's my point. If it were in MEDLINE, we would certainly be justified in calling it a "medical journal" and create an article on it. This journal is considered predatory (the URL you gave is highlighted in red on my screen, this is something Headbomb made, so he'll probably be able to tell us why it's so classified). --Randykitty (talk) 16:22, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Published by Scientia Ricerca, a predatory publisher. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:33, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Then Scientia Ricerca should not be a redlink, so that editors can discover that more easily. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:12, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

There are thousands predatory publishers. This one isn't notable amongst them. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:20, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

But you cannot base an article on ABOUTSELF, per policy. JoelleJay (talk) 16:33, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

WP:IAR is policy, so we can. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:33, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

IAR is practiced only under exceptional circumstances, and NPOV explicitly overrides it. JoelleJay (talk) 20:18, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Well, it's a bit more complicated than that. NPOV has a strong statement about being non-negotiable, which is a bit... over-simplified. Incomplete, let's say. A little bit of a Lie-to-children. The fact is that what gets added to a policy by consensus can get removed from a policy by consensus, even if the words in question say they can't ever be removed. Even if we stipulated that these particular words can't be removed, words on a page that don't have the support of community consensus won't get enforced, so they might as well not be there. There is no outside agency that can compel future editors to keep these words on the page, or to enforce them in the fashion that we're accustomed to. (In fact, there are several outside groups trying to force us to not have what we call neutral articles, because they want their countries' claimed borders to be recognized, or because they want to protect readers from certain kinds of information, or whatever else they believe serves their purposes better than our own approach.)

But since these words currently do have consensus and community support, the current state is that you can't reject the idea of neutrality. However, you can reject specific approaches to measuring whether an article is neutral. NPOV now says (at my instigation, and not all that long ago) that "in principle" (though not necessarily in practice) articles should be based primarily on independent sources, but IAR allows editors to say, e.g., that the most common way to determine neutrality is X, but in this case, we believe that Y is more accurate and appropriate method for determining neutrality. As long as an edit has consensus, the edit will stick. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:39, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

I would not take a self-statement by Current Opinions in Neurological Science as a reliable source, because it is from a publisher that is flagged as predatory and predatory publishers are known for stretching the truth about their journals. But we were talking about independence of sources, not reliability. It is entirely possible for a source to be reliable (for factual claims) but not independent. It is also entirely possible (such as in this case) for a source to be not independent, and also not reliable, even for factual claims. It is the reliability that matters, not the independence. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:46, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

It sounds above that for a claim of "is an academic journal", editors are mostly not trusting the ABOUTSELF claims anyway. They're trusting the indexing services and usual databases (which are independent sources, even if we're not citing them) to determine whether the journal is a real academic journal. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:10, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

There's no need for hypotheticals. The current push for fixing NJOURNALS was sparked by Physics Essays, whose article gave little indication that it was a crackpot journal, and credulously repeated Physics Essays' claim of being peer-reviewed. We managed to remove this claim, by the way, over the strident objections of Headbomb. Tercer (talk) 19:16, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Because it is peer-reviewed. Indexing in Scopus is proof of that. So is [14]. Or [15]. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:50, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

It was peer-reviewed at the time it was indexed. You can't claim Scopus is proof of its being peer-reviewed after it was delisted. JoelleJay (talk) 20:16, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

The consensus is that it's not peer-reviewed. See WP:DEADHORSE. Tercer (talk) 20:23, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Well, the consensus is wrong. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:25, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

If the consensus is wrong try to change it (btw i disagree with you on this consensus being wrong)196.250.212.180 (talk) 09:47, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Tercer, you are flat-out wrong here. It is peer reviewed. That is not the problem with it. The problem is that the editors and peer reviewers are happy to publish peer-reviewed junk. Peer review ensures some amount of consistency but not quality. It is very susceptible to capture by a small in-group of like-minded authors, editors, and reviewers. In fact, that would be an accurate description of most subdisciplines, and most subdiscipline-specific journals. However, some subdisciplines are mainstream and some are fringe. That one is fringe. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:30, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

There is no such consensus, Like David and Headbomb I, too, maintain that this journal is peer-reviewed and have clearly argued for that on the journal article's talk page. Bad peer review perhaps, but peer review all the same. --Randykitty (talk) 07:52, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

That's funny, I distinctly remember everybody buy you three agreeing with removing the claim. Which is why it got removed, in case you haven't noticed. Tercer (talk) 08:08, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Well, we need reliable sources to say in our article that it is peer reviewed. It's a factual claim, so the source could be non-independent, but it needs to be reliable. And, to me, the publishers of a self-published fringe journal are not a reliable source. Not being able to source a claim is different from that claim being false. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:39, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

RfC on notability criteria

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

It took me some days to finish reading this discussion and at last, I have some to a conclusion. I have read several guidelines/policies before doing this so that I can be guided. I saw the discussion from the closure request page and I was immediately interested in the discussion and decided to close since the last comment was on 16 September or so.

I am not an administrator but I guess I am allowed to close per policy.

The discussion revolves around the notability criteria for academic journals on Wikipedia, primarily focusing on the interpretation and application of Criterion 1 (C1) and Remark 1b (R1b) found in "Wikipedia:Notability (academic journals)" (shortcut: WP:NJOURNALS).

C1 states, "The journal is considered by reliable sources to be influential in its subject area." R1b, in response to C1, suggests that the most typical way to satisfy C1 is by showing that the journal is included in selective citation indices, indexing services, and bibliographic databases. It explicitly states that being included in comprehensive (non-selective) indices and services like Google Scholar and the Directory of Open Access Journals is not sufficient to establish notability.

Key points from the discussion

Some participants discussed the importance of whether a journal should be required to be listed in multiple indices, emphasising that it's not sufficient to be in just one.

The central issue is whether inclusion in a selective citation index, such as SCIE or Scopus, should be sufficient on its own to establish notability for an academic journal. Some argue that C1 is a valid standalone criterion, while others believe it should be a part of a more comprehensive evaluation.

The discussion underscores the importance of notability being about quality rather than merely quantity. Notability should reflect the scholarly influence and impact of the journal, which cannot be solely gauged by metrics like the Impact Factor.

The discussion touched upon the role of "NJOURNALS." Some argued that the criteria outlined in WP:NJOURNALS, especially Criterion 1, are often used in discussions at Articles for Deletion (AfD). However, others questioned the validity of using this essay as a guideline or the criteria it presents.

A few participants expressed the need for consensus on whether indexing in selective citation databases should be considered sufficient for notability. It was emphasised that even if there is consensus, this does not mean the criteria in NJOURNALS would automatically become a guideline.

Some participants brought up the importance of citations and whether they should be the primary criterion for notability rather than just inclusion in citation databases. Citations were seen as indicative of actual academic influence and quality.

The question of whether journal metrics like Impact Factor (IF) should be used as criteria for notability was raised. It was argued that while IF is important for some purposes, it doesn't necessarily reflect the quality or notability of individual articles published in a journal.

Several participants criticised the essay NJOURNALS and its criteria for not aligning with the General Notability Guideline (GNG) and for potentially being misapplied in deletion discussions.

The discussion highlighted the distinction between quality and quantity in notability determination. Some participants argued that a journal's notability should be determined by the quality of its content and influence rather than merely the number of citations or inclusion in indices.

There were criticisms about the inclusion of journals in citation databases like Scopus and SCIE, with concerns that this could be driven more by financial considerations and that this alone shouldn't equate to notability.

Some participants cited specific journals like Nature and debated whether high Impact Factors are indicative of notability, while others emphasised that citation count is more crucial.

It was noted that NJOURNALS and its criteria have had an impact on Articles for Deletion discussions, and this impact varies among participants.

My conclusion

There is no clear consensus reached in this discussion. Views are divided on whether the inclusion of a journal in selective citation indices alone should be considered sufficient for establishing notability. Some argue for a more nuanced approach, taking into account not just inclusion in databases but also the extent of coverage and quality of content, particularly the number of citations. There is also a critique of NJOURNALS as an essay, and some concerns that it may not align with Wikipedia's General Notability Guideline or be consistently applied in deletion discussions.

As it stands, there is no overwhelming majority consensus supporting a change in the current criteria or essay, nor is there a consensus to elevate NJOURNALS to a guideline. --Vanderwaalforces (talk) 23:57, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

---

Is inclusion of a journal in a selective citation index (such as SCIE or Scopus) sufficient for notability? Tercer (talk) 13:51, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Survey

• No. What is "sufficient for notability" for a subject is that there is a substantial quantity of reliable and independent reference material available regarding that subject. Lacking that, there is nothing from which a reasonably complete and neutral article may be written to begin with. (And whoever above said that a permastub is enough—no, it's not; permastubs need merging or deletion.) Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 14:46, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
• Yes It's a documentable signifier that a journal is influential, from a source that is reliable (for the purpose of getting quantitative metrics about journals) and editorially independent. There may be edge cases where it is sensible to merge closely related journals all into one article, etc., but that's the case with any rule of thumb. (Wherever you draw a line, it's going to cut down the middle of something.) XOR'easter (talk) 15:47, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

  There are so many indexed journals with impact factors below 2, and even below 1. Do you seriously call such journals influential? And even among the journals with higher impact factor, you have things like Scientific Reports, Entropy, and Physica Scripta, which are well-known for their low standards. Tercer (talk) 16:49, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

  I think it is very risky to equate higher impact factor = more influential, especially when discussing across fields. Crelle's Journal is one of the most historically significant journals in mathematics; it apparently has an impact factor of 1.6. Inventiones Mathematicae is I think on many mathematicians' list of the handful of most prestigious journals in the entire field of mathematics; it has an impact factor under 3. Meanwhile Nature Reviews Immunology is a perfectly respectable journal in one subfield of biology that doesn't publish any original research, and has an impact factor of 100. Any argument that rests on a premise that low impact factor is not (or cannot be) influential is going to be badly broken. --JBL (talk) 17:59, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

  The threshold I used is 2, and it's telling that you couldn't find a counterexample. Crelle's Journal was historically influential, but it's not anymore. In any case, although I do defend that such extremely low-impact journals are indeed not influential, that's not essential for my argument. What is essential is that there are plenty of indexed journals that are not influential. I gave several concrete examples in my other comments here. Tercer (talk) 18:55, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

  Crelle's Journal was historically influential, but it's not anymore. I don't think this is true at all, and you give no evidence to support it. From time to time, I have discussed with colleagues whether to send a paper to Crelle's, and on every occasion we decided that the paper was probably not good enough for the journal. Also, to be clear, my process in selecting these journals was that I looked up three very prominent journals in mathematics, and two of them had IFs very close to 2. (The third was Annals of Mathematics, a journal I would describe as broadly similar to Inventiones in import, which has an earth-shattering IF of ... 5.2.) There is no need to do anything more comprehensive, because this incredibly basic check (that you could have carried out yourself) is enough to show that your argument There are so many indexed journals with impact factors below 2, and even below 1. Do you seriously call such journals influential? is fallacious. I don't have strong feelings on the question being discussed in this RfC, but I do have very strong feelings about using bad arguments to design bad criteria for notability; and any criterion that would apply an IF cutoff independent of field is definitely very, very bad. --JBL (talk) 22:40, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

  I'm definitely not defending using impact factor as a criterion of notability, I was simply demonstrating the falsehood of XOR'easter's assertion that anything indexed by Scopus is influential. Tercer (talk) 08:06, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  Influential/prominent/established enough to have an impact factor calculated in the first place is influential/prominent/established to be noted on Wikipedia. That doesn't have to mean having a whole article. XOR'easter (talk) 17:16, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  @Tercer, the meaning of any particular impact factor is going to be heavily dependent on the field the journal publishes in. Math journals have way fewer citations in general. JoelleJay (talk) 01:32, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  Well said @JayBeeEll. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 15:20, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

• Comment There has been a lot of discussion on this page, but not many concrete examples, aside from Physics Essays. Are there any actual numbers indicating that this criterion contradicts notability, or vice versa? Dege31 (talk) 16:15, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

  I gave before some concrete examples of respectable but non-notable journals that are indexed: Laser Physics, Physical Review Accelerators and Beams, Chinese Physics B, Acta Physica Polonica, Journal of Physics A.

  It's very hard to get actual statistics, but an exercise you can do is sample a journal randomly from Category:English-language journals. With high probability you'll get a permastub of a non-notable journal. Tercer (talk) 16:54, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

  Those are all notable journals! Acta Physica Polonica is a 100+ year old journals with dozens of papers cited multiple hundreds of times (like Bibcode:1956AcPP...15..389P or Bibcode:2009AcPPB..40.2477H or Bibcode:1994AcPPA..86...97B) for fuck's sake. By h-index Acta Physica Polonica 62, Chinese Physics B 38 (with 82 for the series), Laser Physics 66, Physical Review Accelerators and Beams 65. And those are heavily undercounted because this is only from ADSABS-indexed citatiosn. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:54, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

  I'm sure Dege31 meant Wiki-notable, not notable according to your criteria. Having a large h-index is irrelevant for Wiki-notability, what matters is significant coverage in multiple independent reliable sources. Which these journals do not have, as can be seen by clicking on the articles. Tercer (talk) 08:42, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  Larges h-index show impact. As do indexing in selective databases. This is no different than WP:NPROF C1. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 09:20, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

• Yes. Inclusion in the Science Citation Index Expanded or Scopus means that a commission of specialists has determined in an in-depth examination that a journal belongs to the most influential in its field. Those sources are reliable and independent. --Randykitty (talk) 16:33, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
• No. Inclusion in an index may well mean that the journal is influential by some metric, but that in no way means that there are sufficient reliable, independent sources available to write a policy compliant article - that's what Wikipedia:Notability is. - MrOllie (talk) 18:10, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
• Yes, by far and large. These sources are independent, and unlike comprehensive index (i.e. DOAJ), are used by scholars to decide where to publish, and by librarians, to decide what to purchase/include in their libraries. There might be exceptions here and there, but indexing in selective database is the best indicator of journal notability. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:29, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
• Weak yes. If we try to enforce strict GNG, almost no journal will pass. We weaken GNG for a number of topics that we expect should be notable but are not. While WP:NOTACATALOGUE and we should not index everything, the middle line of having entries on journals indexed in major databases makes some sense. I would not be extremly opposed to seeing such entries merged into some list, but what list would it be? Practically, having a stand alone entry is more useful for everyone. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 00:55, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  If needed, a meaty standalone "list of journals published by X", with one journal per section (including a infobox), might work. Alternatively, a "list of journals sponsored by Y" would be preferable in the case of journals sponsored by a learned society, as the publisher can change eventually. If the sponsor or publisher own only very few journals, then a standalone list would not be necessary. fgnievinski (talk) 04:19, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

• No. While the content of an article in a journal listed in such an index should be considered in assessing notability, the mere presence of an article in such a journal is not enough to establish notability for the topic.

  Donald Albury 14:11, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

• No. Overall, a journal's notability requires far beyond indexation in just one database or even many. We'd also run into a problem of which list matters more. I also worry about the fact that some of these lists are owned by publishers which have a specific vested interest which are far from being transparent. Scopus is owned by Elsevier, for example. Drthorgithecorgi (talk) 19:14, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
• Strong Yes. Journals are an example of a topic where the GNG criteria hamstrings the ability of this site to maintain proper coverage. Many journals are too niche to have received SIGCOV attention; yet are nevertheless highly regarded and influential within their (admittedly niche, but important) disciplines. Altering the rule in this way would expand coverage in a way that makes this site better. Jack4576 (talk) 13:35, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Pinging all journal-related AFDs participant in 2023.

@A. B., A. Bokov, Alexandermcnabb, AllyD, Almeida Fernando, Aoidh, Asifupm22, Asilvering, Athel cb, Atlantic306, Basak, Cinadon36, Cunard, Curbon7, Cyberbot I, CycloneYoris, Daniel, Eastmain, Eddie891, EmeraldRange, Explicit, Extraordinary Writ, Filelakeshoe, Forbes72, Garuda3, Gidonb, Graywalls, Guerillero, GusSamaha, Headbomb, HighKing, Hintha, Htanaungg, Hybernator, InterstellarGamer12321, Iss246, Jack4576, Jlalbion, Jo7hs2, JoergenB, K.e.coffman, Kjalarr, Lamona, Let'srun, Levo3506, LibStar, Liz, Lokys dar Vienas, and M.Ashraf333: @Mimi Ho Kora, Moops, Mucube, My Pants Metal, Nanosci, Natg 19, Necrothesp, Oaktree b, Onel5969, Park3r, Pharaoh of the Wizards, Phil Bridger, PianoDan, Piotrus, PopoDameron, Premeditated Chaos, Prodraxis, Pumpkinspyce, RPSkokie, Randy Kryn, Randykitty, Rhadow, Rodgers V, Sal2100, Salvio giuliano, SchnitteUK, Seraphimblade, Shellwood, Shirt58, Sima Sam, Siroxo, SmallJarsWithGreenLabels, Spiderone, Star Mississippi, Suitskvarts, Taung Tan, TempusTacet, TimothyBlue, Timothytyy, Umimmak, UtherSRG, Vanamonde93, WJ94, Worldbruce, and XOR'easter: Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:47, 6 August 2023 (UTC) You didn't ping Ca. Tercer (talk) 08:34, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

• See also User:Randykitty/Thoughts on NJournals, by Randykitty. I don't agree with all points, but the explanation of why we need this is fairly bang on. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:56, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
• No (weak) It seems to me that it might be violating GNC. While inclusion is sufficient for being RS, it is not for notability.Cinadon36 19:09, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
• Yes. Nobody writes full length articles about journals unless there's a scandal or there's something weird. We need articles about journals. It's not just because lots of folks stay up at night reading these for pleasure; for an editor like me, they give me some context for assessing source reliability.

Why to we require "reliable sources" (typically dedicated, full length articles in reliable sources) for general notability? Gatekeeping. But we accomplish encyclopedic gatekeeping in some specialized areas in alternative ways; see for instance, WP:GEOLAND. Journal indices play the same gatekeeping role by measuring importance through the millions of implicit votes made by authors citing other work.

To recap:

1. We need journal articles for encyclopedia developmental work, not just pleasure reading
2. Citation indices are good evidence of notability and reliability.

--A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 19:14, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Sincere question: wouldn't the same information presented in a list or as part of a larger article be just as useful? Does it really need to be a permastub? Tercer (talk) 19:38, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

You're free to propose article mergers. But in general, things are best treated in a dedicated article. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:03, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

I was specifically asking for A. B.'s opinion, not yours. Tercer (talk) 20:08, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Good question and a good idea. I'm happy with a list. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 22:33, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Firstly, you didn't address A. B. by name. Secondly, even if you had done so, this is an open forum, anyone can post a comment. Thirdly, Headbomb is cofrrect. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:54, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

• {{rpp}} Almost. Inclusion in a selective index is indeed a strong indicator of notability, per Headbomb. Those indices are independent of the journals in question, and to a reasonable degree have inclusion criteria created by experts. However, we also need to be able to write something of substance cited to independent sources. I'm not comfortable making this a sufficient criterion for inclusion because I can see it being used to retain articles entirely cited to journal websites with no independent content. Or to put it another way; yes, the indexing is a sufficient indicator of notability, but not a sufficient indicator of the need for a standalone article; many notable topics are still better handled as part of a list or broader topic, and I believe that to be the case with many small journals. Vanamonde (Talk) 19:36, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

  Source that show WP:N can be different than sources that we use for WP:V. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:00, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

  I'm aware, Headbomb, and I'm not taking issue with that, I'm worried specifically about journals that meet the criterion above that lack secondary sourcing entirely. Vanamonde (Talk) 14:20, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

• Not as worded because in the absence of a consensus SNG the controlling notability guideline, WP:GNG requires multiple sources and "a selective index" clearly refers to only one source. Perhaps you should re-think how you phrase questions, because answering this RFC in this way is not going to settle the question of whether the content about these journals in one of these indices is sufficiently in-depth as one of the multiple needed GNG-worthy sources (nor should it; different indices differ in the depth of their coverage and that is not the sort of question on which we should demand conformity from all AfD participants). I strongly oppose any attempt like this at back-door legislation of what should be a matter of opinion: how in-depth should a source be to count as in-depth. Subject-specific interpretations of GNG (such as the one this RFC is attempting to impose, through the RFC creator's obvious intent at getting a negative answer) should be set as consensus only in SNGs and only with great care, through the creation of actual consensus, not by this kind of "I reject your interpretation of GNG but refuse to formulate a consensus SNG replacing it and instead will make it a thoughtcrime to disagree with my own specific interpretation" process. This is, by my count, at least the fourth recent attempt to silence proponents of essay WP:NJOURNALS from citing it as an essay (that is, explaining their position in AfDs rather than as being the fundamental guideline on which that position is based, as many other essays are also used). Previous attempts included trying to get NJOURNALS deleted, trying to get it marked as historical, and trying to amend it to say the opposite of what it says. Just stop it. Stop silencing people you disagree with. If you disagree with them, you're free to explain your disagreement in AfDs. If you find yourself having to explain yourself in the same way repeatedly, you're free to write an essay to point to as a way to avoid saying the same thing repeatedly. But those freedoms are also available to proponents of NJOURNALS, and should continue to be available. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:53, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
  • Incidentally, Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Academic journals is full of discussions based on NJOURNALS, almost always as a rationale for a deletion nomination or !vote arguing that a non-indexed journal should be deleted. The three journals currently listed there are all of this type. I have seen none of the opponents of NJOURNALS take part in these discussions. This surprises me: I would think that these editors would want to argue that these NJOURNAL-based nominations are faulty and therefore that the AfDs should be closed as a speedy keep under WP:SK3. Perhaps someone can explain to me why these editors, so active in the sort of discussion seen here, are so inactive in the AfDs that are most closely related. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:21, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Convenience break

• Yes: WP:N states: "The notability guideline does not determine the content of articles, but only whether the topic may have its own article." So discussions about the article's content should be treated as a separate matter (WP:V). Recognition by a sufficiently selective independent index implies there are other slightly less selective indices to back up the recognition (e.g., WoS/JCR/JIF tends to be a subset of Scopus). WP:NJOURNALS has proved itself reasonable compromise criteria during the past decade for determining whether a journal deserves its own article. Commenters are urged to avoid survivorship bias and keep in mind the results of previous AfDs, not just what currently exists in en.wp -- WP:NJOURNALS has kept a lot of junk at bay. Also notice although the previous discussion about promoting this text to guideline status was closed with not enough consensus, the closer stated: "it would be inappropriate to mark this as a failed proposal". Therefore, I welcome the present RfC as constructive step towards eventually recognizing the essay as eligible for promotion to WP:SNG status. Other SNGs, such as WP:NPROF and WP:NGEO, already recognize selectivity (e.g., prizes or naming) as an important criterion. fgnievinski (talk) 22:36, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
• Absolutely not. If we were merely a list/directory providing the basic self-description plus bibliometric/indexing data of all Scopus/WoS-indexed journals, such info-sparse boilerplate entries would be acceptable as there is no expectation of NPOV from deeper secondary independent coverage. But since this is an encyclopedia and explicitly NOT a directory, with rules that specifically state that all articles should be based on secondary independent coverage--something we do provide in numerous GNG-meeting articles on journals--it is unacceptable to host articles that are based on journals' ABOUTSELF descriptions.
  If we do not have the sourcing to maintain NPOV on a topic that clearly falls under FRINGE/PSEUDOSCIENCE, then we cannot have an article on it. There are literally dozens of homeopathy journals indexed by at least Scopus that we would be prohibited from using as RS on Wikipedia! Including these journals when their only sources are their own website and the indexing service they applied to join yields an extremely imbalanced representation of their reputation. This is bad for our readers and editors (who likely are arriving here through Google searches that push wiki articles to the top of results) to come away from our page on Journal of Ayurveda and Integrative Medicine believing they just read a neutral overview reflecting the consensus reputation of of a peer-reviewed medical journal instead of understanding it's the type of garbage to publish papers like "Deep vein thrombosis cured by homeopathy: A case report" and "Ancient wisdom of ayurveda vis-à-vis contemporary aspect of materiovigilance" (abstract end: The Ayurveda literature highlights that the ancient seers of Ayurveda were well aware regarding Materiovigilance in their own way. However in view of modern era and mainstreaming of Ayurveda heritage, critical revision, updating, systematically categorization of Ayurveda devices, development and implementation of AMv regulation is the need of hour.) See also Journal of Integrative Medicine ("Apoptotic and autophagic death union by Thuja occidentalis homeopathic drug in cervical cancer cells with thujone as the bioactive principle"); Complementary Medicine Research ("Some Remarks on QBism and Its Relevance to Metaphors for the Therapeutic Process Based on Conventional Quantum Theory" (authored by "independent researcher" Lionel Milgrom), and the 160 other Scopus journals containing articles with 10+ abstracts mentioning "homeopathy".
  There may well be GNG-level sourcing on these journals, but it is irresponsible to permit creation and indefinite retention of standalones on them with zero requirement they be based on anything other than ABOUTSELF claims and trivial indexing metrics, which is exactly what NJOURNALS does. JoelleJay (talk) 01:17, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  If it's evident that a journal is nonsense and somehow we can't say so, it's always possible to say, "Well, this one meets the letter of that criterion, but other factors are more important." (I recall this happening more than once in biography AfD's.) I think the wording of WP:NJOURNALS already leaves plenty of room for this, but I wouldn't be opposed to calling attention to that edge case more directly. XOR'easter (talk) 17:23, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  So we do this for the hundreds of currently-Scopus-indexed journals that publish credulous papers on homeopathy? And the dozens more that have ever been listed? What about the multiple papers investigating the Allais effect in Journal of Physics: Conference Series (pre-2022) and Physical Review D; Evans' publications on ECE in Physica B; explorations of the Heim effect in General Relativity and Gravitation; or nonsense from Van Flandern in Apeiron, International Journal of Astrobiology, Journal of New Energy, etc.? How many ABOUTSELF wikipedia articles are on journals that regularly publish quackery, and how could we prevent creation of further articles if the only thing the creators/reviewers/AfD participants look for is whether the journal is indexed? JoelleJay (talk) 17:58, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  Journal of Physics: Conference Series already notes a scandal about a paper mill, which both gives it GNG-style notability and puts evidence of its shoddiness in front of the reader. Physica D is a redirect to a section of the article on the Physica series, so notability is beside the point (and the existing wording of WP:NJOURNALS doesn't give any reason for splitting up the article on that series). The same goes for Physical Review D, which redirects to Physical Review. The Apeiron for which we have an article is the philosophy journal founded in 1966 and still going, not the fringe physics journal founded in 1987 and apparently defunct since 2012. XOR'easter (talk) 21:22, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  This argument rings hollow given that you have !voted to keep Physics Essays based only on the fact that WP:NJOURNALS says that indexing in Scopus is enough for notability. Tercer (talk) 18:05, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  In the first AfD, I said that there was more to say than just that Scopus had indexed it and that it had once had an impact factor. Moreover, we do have things to say: the article covers the downgrading of the journal over time, which is important information. In the second AfD, I argued that re-running the same debate mere days after the first was procedurally iffy; that the nominator has voiced support for a merge, which suggested that AfD was the wrong venue; and that arguments over whether WP:NJOURNALS is officially a "guideline" or not are beside the point when essays are invoked at AfD all the time. XOR'easter (talk) 21:00, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  Physics Essays was nominated for deletion precisely because it was nonsense and we couldn't say it was nonsense. You opposed deletion based on NJOURNALS. And now you claim we can nevertheless delete articles in such cases? Come on. I find it it easier to believe that you'll again oppose deletion. The article didn't "cover" the downgrading of the journal, it simply noted that it was dropped by Scopus without giving any context, explanation, or commentary. The vast majority of our readers wouldn't understand that this is a major red flag. Tercer (talk) 21:26, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  You said that I !voted based only on the fact that WP:NJOURNALS says that indexing in Scopus is enough for notability. I didn't. I pointed both to Scopus and to the JCR impact factor.

  The vast majority of our readers probably aren't looking up obscure journals in the first place. Perhaps there is some audience that is both eager to learn about (supposed) physics journals and unclear that "174th most-cited journal out of 205" [16] is probably a bad sign. I'm not inclined to speculate; on the whole, I am pessimistic that anything we write here will get anyone to not believe in crank physics or push the reputation of any (supposed) journal more than a little bit either way. XOR'easter (talk) 21:52, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  How can a low rank be a "bad sign" if the index is "highly selective"? How can anything be considered highly selective if exclusion from it is simultaneously considered a red flag for its reputation? And plenty of readers look up journals that they come across to see if they are reputable without necessarily understanding what an IF or index delisting means. I was doing this well before I knew what indexing meant, with the expectation that all articles on low-quality/crank journals would have the same level of prose contextualization as we have for MDPI and OMICS journals. I didn't realize that journals were not held to GNG standards whatsoever, so I assumed the lack of any negative commentary meant a journal was actually widely considered reputable as described in IRS SIGCOV sources. It's not till I saw garbage in BioEssays and ran into issues with OpIndia propagandists trying to get Ayurveda journals cited that I realized all these articles are written pretty much exclusively from the websites of the journals themselves. JoelleJay (talk) 01:15, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

  • I don't think anyone describes Scopus as "highly selective"?
  • Not being listed in MEDLINE (or the even more restrictive Index Medicus) is treated as a red flag for medical journals, but often that flag is a false one, especially if the journal isn't written in English.
  • I'm sorry that you once thought that "This journal exists" meant "This journal is reputable unless clearly stated otherwise."

  WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:37, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

  Yes they do? Even in this thread the indices that confer notability are being described as "highly selective". And where did I ever say I believed "this journal exists" meant "this journal is reputable..."?? I just expected that our articles on journals would be held to a standard where most of the text is derived from the words IRS sources other than themselves had published on them; you know, the expectation we have for every article governed by NPOV? And it sounds like a lot of people do assume that journals with standalones are reputable unless the text says otherwise. JoelleJay (talk) 23:44, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

  • The essay says only "selective" indices, not "highly selective" ones, and I find no comments on this page that both mention Scopus (by name/findable via ⌘F) and also contain the words "highly selective" (same method, and excepting this exchange). If you have seen editors in this discussion calling Scopus "highly selective" and I have accidentally overlooked them, then I apologize for my oversight and would be grateful to have a timestamp or link for any such comments, so I can read them.
  • You said I assumed the lack of any negative commentary meant a journal was actually widely considered reputable. I understood from this that when you saw a stubby Wikipedia article whose contents said little beyond the fact that the journal existed, you assumed that the Wikipedia article, by saying nothing about the journal's reputation, was indicating that it was reputable, on the grounds that it did not explicitly contradict your assumption. If I have misunderstood you – if you did not assume that an article that says "J. Imp. is an academic journal about important stuff..." meant it was reputable unless the article additionally contained a statement like "...that has been embroiled in scandals for the last 20 years", then perhaps you could explain what assumptions you made about the lack of any negative commentary meaning wrt the journal's reputation.

  WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:20, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

  You can ctrl-F "highly selective" yourself to see where in this thread "highly selective" is being used as synonymous with "NJOURNAL-meeting indexing".
  There is a substantial difference between "a journal exists" and "a journal has an article on wikipedia". Entering this area knowing only that journals should be subject to GNG or NCORP, yes I assumed articles on journals that had descriptions covering their scope, peer-review, etc. with no mention of any controversial papers/events/inclusion on Beall's list meant that the journals had received coverage from IRS sources describing their scope, peer-review, etc. and thus would be likely to have received IRS coverage of any controversial papers/events/inclusion on Beall's list. It seems that a lot of editors assume the journal is reputable simply from its having ever been indexed, which is functionally the same as my assumption. JoelleJay (talk) 04:14, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

I think I said (or wrote) "highly selective." I think I meant this as more of a description but didn't look it up in the essay. I suppose, this phrase reflects my experience more than what the essay says. I believe that if I had known this would be a problem I would not have written that phrase. In any case, I apologize for my mistake. I don't know if anyone else used that phrase. And looking at a previous post where I used that phrase — yes I meant it as a description. I say "selective" first, followed by "highly selective" in parenthesis. Briefly quoting myself, I wrote: "Notability is established by independent evaluation in selective (highly selective) databases. As I see it, the important thing is that these are independent of the journals and reliable. This also satisfies WP:V.---Steve Quinn (talk) 05:01, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

I did use my web browser's Find function in an effort to find that phrase (which is ⌘F instead of ^F, because I'm using a Mac), and it wasn't there. I see Steve's comment that "Notability is established by independent evaluation in selective (highly selective) databases", and I understood this to mean that notability is established by the highly selective databases rather than by a somewhat selective database, but I do not see Scopus's name in that sentence. I'm specifically looking for a comment that says Scopus = highly selective.

I don't think that there is much, if any, difference between "a journal exists" and "a journal has an article on Wikipedia". I assume (and hope) that if there is a Wikipedia article about the journal, that the journal actually exists, but the fact that the journal has an article on Wikipedia means to me that ...the journal has an article on Wikipedia.

I do not normally assume much beyond that. Perhaps I assume that an individual editor actually wanted to create an article about that journal (or, more likely, about a whole list of journals). But I never assume that Wikipedia articles are correct, complete, or fair. I know that important information could have been omitted, or unknown to the editor, or recently blanked by a vandal. Important information may not be available, or may not be verifiable in suitable sources. You said that when you saw an article about a journal, you assumed "the lack of any negative commentary [in the Wikipedia article] meant a journal was actually widely considered reputable". When I see an article about a journal, my faith only goes so far as believing that a Wikipedia article exists. I suspect that you are much more like our typical reader in that respect. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:47, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Whether it's actually highly selective or not, NJOURNALS editors consider indexing in Scopus to be sufficient by itself to confer notability. See the examples I gave below from AfDs where the editors most active in journal deletion discussions assert things like Wiki-notability is not temporary, and having been listed by Scopus in the past is traditionally enough to qualify, so by that standard, we'd be done. and this journal was listed by Scopus, which makes it a clear meet of NJournals. So Scopus is implicitly covered by Steve's comment on indexes that establish notability.

My assumptions about the reputability of these journals were the same as those from any of the other editors here who have stated they use our articles on journals to assess source reputation. Except that I was also assuming these subjects met GNG and thus that secondary independent SIGCOV actually existed even if it wasn't cited. A topic where I believe there is a strong presumption of GNG coverage gives me some reassurance that I would be able to find RS criticism if it did exist, and so I will feel more confident in a journal's reputability if my general searches for negative coverage don't return anything. That changes when the topic isn't expected to have garnered any IRS significant coverage, positive or negative. JoelleJay (talk) 01:23, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

• Conditional yes because it's a way to sort through them if it's an arena in which an editor isn't familiar and to have a sense of mainstream v. predatory. However, I don't think it necessarily means they need their own page. I think it would be more helpful to the reader if there's info about the journal together with its affiliation/publisher vs. multiple articles. Typically journal articles are fairly short so they could be covered within the primary article. Star Mississippi 01:37, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  This RfC is about whether an article on a journal is allowed to be based exclusively on trivial indexing stats (and ABOUTSELF). Do you think it's possible to write an NPOV article with only those sources? JoelleJay (talk) 01:41, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

• Pinging editors from recent discussions on the topic at WP:N and WP:NCORP: @Lambiam, Joe Roe, BilledMammal, North8000, Masem, RoySmith, Blueboar, Newimpartial, Scott5114, Avilich, Jayron32, Necrothesp, GreenMeansGo, J947, Aquillion, Curbon7, WhatamIdoing, SmokeyJoe, Alpha3031, and Steve Quinn: JoelleJay (talk) 01:48, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
• By a strict literal reading of the rules no. By Wikipedia:How Wikipedia notability works, yes. They are extremely encyclopedic topics and also tend to get less GNG type coverage in proportion to "notability" and so with the vetting provided by the OP criteria IMHO they typically get / should get a pass. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 02:09, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
• (Pinged above) The most interesting thing that I've learned in the discussions of the last month is that inclusion of a journal in a recognized selective citation index is an independent source (which I knew) that usually supports a claim that the indexed journal is a real academic/medical/scientific journals (which is what I learned). Anyone can start a website and claim to be a journal, but the indexed journal has been recognized as an actual journal by an independent source. I doubt that this single fact is sufficient to write a long article, but it would normally be enough to create and source a tiny stub that says "This is an academic journal, and it is indexed by SCIE and Scopus". In general, I believe that having information about periodicals that get cited in Wikipedia is a good thing. Whether they need to be separate articles vs lists is probably more dependent on design considerations (e.g., how awkward article layout becomes when you want to put 50 infoboxes on the same page, so that you can have a list of 50 journals instead of 50 separate articles, even though you know that the information in Wikipedia will be identical in either case) than on whether Wikipedia can (IMO: yes) and should (IMO: often) contain information about real and purported journals. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:13, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
• No. The most important aspect of notability is "do we have enough sources to write a neutral, well-sourced article on this subject"; all notability guidelines need to satisfy that in some way. An entry in a selective citation index is not enough to write an article based off of, and is therefore insufficient. --Aquillion (talk) 04:21, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
• As usual, this is all about the sciences, right? I hope you all enjoy yourselves, but if this ever results in new policy, that needs to make it completely clear that that is what it covers. Johnbod (talk) 04:32, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  No, it applies to all journals, regardless of fields. Humanities get covered by Social Sciences Citation Index, for example, or law journals by Bluebook and similar. It's an inclusive criterion, so failing C1 is not a reason to delete/exclude a journal on its own. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 05:12, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  No, that covers the social sciences, amazingly enough, though all the links at the article seem dead. It seems effectively part of the Web of Science anyway. Their website says they cover 47 disciplines (not 52 as our articles says) but a considerable amount of time on their beautifully designed but information-free website failed to uncover a list. Perhaps you meant to say the very small and much-criticised Arts and Humanities Citation Index, also run by Clarivate, with an info-free wwebsite. Johnbod (talk) 14:17, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  Johnbod, you can download the list as an Excel file from https://mjl.clarivate.com/collection-list-downloads (login required, but you can create an account for free). Cordless Larry (talk) 07:35, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

  Just FYI: Bluebook is a citation style guide. See Library of Congress, Legal Periodicals and Indexes for info about some of the prominent legal indexes. Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/him] 16:36, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

• Yes-in-the-WAID/User:Randykitty/Thoughts on NJournals-sense. I'm inclined to a relatively low notability standard for sources and 'sourcewriters' for usefulness purposes. If a publisher or a work it publishes is likely to be relevant (cited, named, discussed, etc) in many articles, we should provide easily-accessible information on it to contextualize its subjects, impact, potential concerns or biases, etc. WP:NOPAGE applies and some articles could reasonably be listified -- but the irony of it all is, I did actually need to look up a lot of journals recently, and Wikipedia having a fairly low threshold for standalone journal articles was extremely useful to that research. (In particular, lists aren't categorized super well compared to standalone articles, and I can assure you some readers do use categories for navigation. I did that before I was an editor too, before you object about confounders.) Post-edit-conflict: I also agree with Johnbod about Wikipedia's tendency to assume there are only about six academic fields, and I think a higher threshold for articles on journals would make that even worse. Vaticidalprophet 04:38, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  I can confirm the categories thing: I didn't think this was true, and I asked someone at work to pull the page views for me a few years ago, and I was wrong. Non-logged-in people use categories. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:00, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

• (was pinged). “ Is inclusion of a journal in a selective citation index (such as SCIE or Scopus) sufficient for notability?”. No. Mere inclusion includes something with zero prose content, let alone secondary source content, and thus does not necessarily meet the notability standard of justifying a stand alone article. However, all such journals need coverage. If there is insufficient material for a separate page, the information should be merged into a table. I prefer sortable tables to lists. If a too-thin page is found on a real journal, it should not be deleted, but merged and redirected. If there is very little information, and no real comment, on a set of journals, it is better for the readers if these journals are presented in a table. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:32, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
• Conditional yes As a last resort only. Along the lines of WP:NOTDIR, I agree with Star Mississippi and SmokeyJoe that we do not need individual articles on journals with little other independent coverage if several such journals can be grouped by publisher/affiliation. A few standalone fringe journals like Physics Essays may end up on selective indices, but in such cases it does not violate WP:NPOV to just mention that the journal publishes in astral projection or whatnot and let readers can draw their own conclusions. Journals that are both pseudoscientific and obscure, like Apeiron: Studies in Infinite Nature don't warrant any coverage at all, but if the journal made it onto a selective index, it makes Wikipedia better to have some coverage rather than none.〈 Forbes₇₂ | Talk 〉 06:34, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  @Forbes72 (and @Star Mississippi, @Vaticidalprophet, @Vanamonde93, @North8000), this criterion includes any journal that has ever been indexed. There are plenty (800+ in Scopus alone) of journals like Physics Essays that were delisted but still get articles through this essay sourced entirely to their own website, as if we can take that at face value eternally. That was one of the big issues with PE -- we only have their own claim that they are currently peer-reviewed, that their stated scope is accurate, etc. How many hundreds of journals that were delisted are now utterly bogus vanity press that nevertheless get a gigantic SEO boost and free advertising from a standalone because we have zero secondary discussion on them to provide context? Merely mentioning that they were delisted is meaningless to 95% of people, who will likely come away from these articles only learning that the journal "is peer-reviewed" and isn't designated predatory.

  And no, we can't just list some of the controversial topics they publish in and hope readers will draw their own conclusions from that because much of the time there is no secondary reliable sourcing to make that content DUE. It would be totally OR to highlight such topics. JoelleJay (talk) 14:13, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  They are currently peer-reviewed. That the reviewing process is shit is a different matter. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:14, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  How do you know that the 800+ journals delisted by Scopus are currently peer-reviewed? JoelleJay (talk) 17:24, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  (I thought his comment about Physics Essays, rather than 800+ journals?) WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:01, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  Even if WP:SIGCOV is difficult for journals, it's nearly always true that a selectively indexed journal has at least a passing mention of its content *somewhere*. An impact factor above zero means somebody has cited it, no need to do primary research. As for your main point about moral hazard, imo the usefulness of having pages for smaller, little covered journals outweighs the theoretical harm of not being able to conspicuously mark sketchy journals due to WP:V that have already managed to 1) get selectively indexed 2) have some semblance of peer review 3) avoid things like Beall's List. I'd love to hear a couple specific examples of journals you're afraid Wikipedia will end up inadvertently promoting, because I'm skeptical the lack of possible sourcing for them is so dire. 〈 Forbes₇₂ | Talk 〉 21:23, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

• No. These indices do not provide enough information for a proper article, they fail WP:SIGCOV. Such a criterion puts us in the impossible position of having to write an article about a journal without having content to write about. The result is a permastub. Not only this is lame, it is also against policy, and creates the problem that JoelleJay illustrates: fringe journals that end up with seemingly respectable articles because we don't have sources about them!

I'm afraid this criterion comes from confusing reliability with notability (they are unrelated, neither implies the other), and a misguided desire to "reward" good journals with a Wikipedia article. Wikipedia articles should definitely not be seen as rewards to the things we like. And it doesn't matter how good the journal is, there is still no point in having an article about it if we don't have anything to say.

As a final point, note that Scopus indexes 34,346 journals. Surely nobody thinks we should have standalone articles for all of them? For comparison, we currently have approximately 7,309 articles about journals, the majority of which are already permastubs. Tercer (talk) 08:00, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

• No. There was an earlier discussion at Wikipedia talk:Notability § Do subject-specific notability guidelines trump the general guideline? that I started based on a misunderstanding of mine that WP:NJOURNALS was a guideline, resulting from my astonishment that a mere formal listing of the journal Physics Essays in the Scopus database (now delisted) was deemed sufficient in a deletion discussion for giving this obscure journal a stand-alone article. The inclusion in a major citation database may be an important indication of notability, but it is by itself not more than an indication.  --Lambiam 08:05, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
• No What counts for notability should always be "Is there enough reliable, independent text written about something to cite to write a reasonable (more than a stub) length article about it". A listing like noted above is only enough text to note that such an entity was so listed, which is a pretty piss-poor article if that's all we have to know about the subject. --Jayron32 08:40, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
• Question: What's the point of having an article about a journal covered by this guideline? If a journal has done something sufficiently dramatic to get secondary coverage, we don't need this guideline at all, the journal satisfies GNG and we can write a referenced article. We only need Notability (academic journals) to "rescue" those journals that have no secondary coverage, and about which we can therefore write nothing except what we can glean from the publisher's own site. In such cases, our readers could get the same information from Google, more easily. The only place where we need a record is where a journal is now defunct, and our readers have a legitimate interest in what it once claimed to be. And in this situation, their main legitimate interest is whether the journal was reliable. Logically, this means the reader actually needs a stub in main space telling them the little that is certain (that the International Journal of Sock Research was published between 1972 and 1976 by Downatheel University Press), and a link to any Reliable Sources noticeboard discussion on whether we trust it! But we don't do links to discussions from main-space so our readers will have to live in ignorance on that one. Summary: it doesn't matter what we do with this guideline, because all it distinguishes is whether we have no article, or an irrelevant, information-free stub. Elemimele (talk) 09:56, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  See User:Randykitty/Thoughts on NJournals for a short explanation for why. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:04, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  In such cases, our readers could get the same information from Google, more easily -- no, having been a reader in this circumstance days ago, this is flatly untrue. Journal sites dodge questions like "what actually is the impact factor here", and don't provide an easy way to narrow down journals in the first place (which Wikipedia categories do). Vaticidalprophet 17:00, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  Yeah, finding things like who was the first editor-in-chief, when they were replaced by their successor, etc., can be difficult if not impossible from a journal's website. Sometimes I've had to dig such things out of announcements buried in their archives. XOR'easter (talk) 17:39, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  Okay, I tried it. I picked a journal at random, Journal of Plant Physiology, and compared Google and our own article. Our article has the (significant) advantage that it shows the original German names of the journal; the editor information is identical; our impact factor is out-of-date compared to the journal's own, and our CiteScore is both out-of-date and undated, which means we have no idea whether it was ever correct, and if so, when. I ought to try some more. Elemimele (talk) 18:04, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

• No- Notability is not a measure of importance. It's a measure of whether we have enough meat to write an article. Using a journal rating as a standard for notability is no different than using "number of YouTube subscribers". It's just a number. There's no meat. The number of subscribers/the journal's rating may be a good indication that significant coverage may exist, and if we haven't found it, then maybe we just need to dig a little deeper, but it does not itself confer notability.
  I know people are always desperate to find hard-fast rules for this, but that's not how notability works. And that's how we end up with (what I consider) bastardizations of the principle in things like NPROF, though I've argued that point well into DROPTHESTICK territory. GMG^talk 11:05, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
• No. It isn't a reasonable predictor of whether we have sufficient coverage to write an article on the topic. BilledMammal (talk) 11:58, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
• No This has been an interesting discussion to read, especially the stuff upthread on this talk page leading to the RfC. I can understand the concerns with a strict GNG requirement as outlined by User:Randykitty/Thoughts on NJournals, but the practical result of loosening criteria would be the same issues just with tens of thousands of low-trafficked articles that cannot per Wikipedia's policies and guidelines be good articles. Just being in one or two citation indexes doesn't demonstrate notability, and it's certainly not going to mean there's enough sources to write what an article needs to stand alone. SIGCOV is gatekeeping, but it's a lot better than the alternative. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 16:01, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
• Not as the only criterion. I'm with many of the "yes" voters in principle and have no problem at all with permastubs. I think it's valuable to have articles on academic journals even if we can't say much about them. Like Vaticidalprophet, I have used Wikipedia's articles on journals as a reader, and find it far superior to Google. But using this as the sole criterion is absurd for the same reason that writing any other article based on notability conferred by only a single source would be absurd. Using "is it in SCOPUS" as a reason to bring an article to AfD instead of PRODding it makes sense. But "it was in SCOPUS at some point, and notability is eternal" makes little sense, especially in the face of various WP:FRINGE concerns. -- asilvering (talk) 17:47, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
• No, certainly not as sole, because the selection criteria used by the selective databases are not aligned to ours (notability), but concerned only with ethical behaviour and assessiblity. Meanwhile, Scopus is run by Elsevier, and has been heavily criticised as creating biased scoring.[17] The problem is that once we start to use these databases, they become the de-facto sole arbiter even if the guideline didn't intend them as such. Elemimele (talk) 18:33, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  That's criticism of Elsevier as a publisher, not Scopus as an index. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:17, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  Read again. There are several paragraphs specifically on the issues with Scopus. Nemo 13:36, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

• No There is no benefit to creating a flood of articles with no information other than what is already at the indexes themselves. As with everything else, it's simplest and most practical to judge a journal's impact and notability by the amount of prose that has been written about it. Avilich (talk) 19:44, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
  • On a sidenote, has anyone even given any thought to how the results of this RfC will be implemented? If nothing other than the essay itself will be changed, then this is all a waste of time. If it has some bearing on an official policy, then this should be made explicit. Avilich (talk) 19:48, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

    To judge from past experience, by going to ANI and demanding topic-bans from AfD for editors who invoke NJOURNALS in AfDs. But only when they invoke NJOURNALS as an argument for keeping a journal article. The proponents of eliminating NJOURNALS have been remarkably silent on its much more common usage as an argument to delete journal articles. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:27, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

    Indeed, nothing will change. The essay summarizes what goes on practically speaking, not what people wish would happen. All this will mean is that this essay won't have consensus to become a guideline as is. Those who stand by it will continue to cite it, those who don't will continue to arguing it's not policy. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:47, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

    In a way, David Eppstein and Headbomb, my personal desired outcome is that we continue to discuss things on a case-by-case basis and nothing dramatic changes. I don't like the idea that mere listing instantly guarantees an article, but nor do I like willy-nilly deletion based on a rule. It's much more subtle than that. To take a concrete example, the Journal of Plant Physiology article that I mentioned above is a stub with out-of-date citation information, and there's nothing much to say about this solid but unremarkable, minor journal. But our article gives the journal's original German names, which isn't something easy to find elsewhere. So to my mind, the stub is worth keeping, for a reason that doesn't feature in this discussion or in this guideline! Simple criteria like "included in database" are too crude, and there is a risk they'll be used crudely at AfD or in creation. Elemimele (talk) 07:46, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Convenience break 2

• No It's not sufficient for a stand-alone article - we would need at least one other source to demonstrate notability, assuming that the original source is reliable and secondary. It doesn't mean the article can't be discussed elsewhere, just that it would not be notable enough for a stand-alone article in the absence of any other information. We're also encouraging new articles to be properly sourced - not sure why academic journals would be any different. SportingFlyer T·C 20:11, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  Selective indices are reliable, secondary, and independent. If they're good enough for NPROF C1, they're good enough for journals too. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:48, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  @Headbomb as I read SportingFlyer's comment, the issue isn't that it isn't reliable and secondary, the issue is that it's just one source. This is effectively my argument as well. -- asilvering (talk) 21:08, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  Which can be supplemented by several other sources, which meet WP:V, while not counting towards WP:N. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:09, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  I mean, first, I don't think they should count as notable for NPROF reasons, but that's a different discussion. Second, the fact a journal has been picked up isn't bad for notability at all, but it does not make it automatically notable enough for a stand-alone page. It may be able to be mentioned elsewhere on here if that is its only source, though. SportingFlyer T·C 22:51, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  Not only that, it's a source with zero SIGCOV, that the journals apply to be included in, and the indexing service profits directly off of... JoelleJay (talk) 00:03, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  Again, you have no idea how selective indices work. You do not pay to join them. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:50, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  I didn't say you paid to join them. I said the journals apply, and the service profits off indexing these journals. JoelleJay (talk) 23:33, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  Selective indices are not "good enough for NPROF C1", what the heck. No one argues an article on an academic should be kept simply because they have a Scopus profile. Specific author index metrics aren't even DUE in the articles on the authors unless the metrics have actually been discussed elsewhere. The only places they come up are when assessing how high an h-index is, which you don't need Scopus etc. to do. JoelleJay (talk) 00:12, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  The difference is that my cleaning lady can go to Scopus and create a profile (not that I think she has been cited much), whereas a journal applies to be evaluated in-depth in order to be included. That's why having a Scopus profile is rather trivial for an academic, whereas for a journal it's a mark of importance and quality. --Randykitty (talk) 11:20, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  ? What? Scopus profiles are autogenerated from having published a paper in a Scopus-indexed journal. You don't "create" one yourself, your papers are just automatically collected under your name/ORCID and Scopus calculates your total citations, h-index, publication productivity graph, coauthor frequency, etc. JoelleJay (talk) 21:56, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  Selective indices are NOT secondary sources. SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:26, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  Really?? In what sense not? From your link, "a secondary source is a document or recording that relates or discusses information originally presented elsewhere". These indices are documents that relate or discuss journal publications, which are exactly "information originally presented elsewhere". I thought the more debatable question was their depth of coverage, not their secondary nature. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:50, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  Indices do not discuss. A secondary source requires prose, and creative content from its author. A source of mere indices, no matter how selective, sorted or processed, without contextualisation, cannot be a “secondary source” under any definition that I have seen. SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:45, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  I don't agree that a secondary source requires prose. It does require creative input from its author. However, selection is a type of creative input, and therefore it is at least theoretically possible for an index to be secondary. (See also copyright fights over indices: copyright requires creativity, and indices are copyrightable works.)

  That said, I don't agree that the mere fact of being included in an index is evidence of secondariness. It might be evidence of doing the job that we want secondariness to do (e.g., to provide some hint about whether this could turn into a half-way decent encyclopedia article), and you could make an argument that rankings within some of the indices are secondary (because they are a type of comparison; analysis is the hallmark of secondariness), but mere inclusion is not obviously secondary. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:45, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

  A secondary source doesn’t require prose. You are unhelpfully correct. Obviously, it could be poetry. Less obviously, it could be a set of indices, but “indices are secondary” is neither a correct nor a good statement.

  I don’t know what the scopus indices are, but I’m guessing that they are machine calculated much the same way week after week, year after year, and that they value reliability and predictability of the indices over their creative measure.

  I’m not a GNG absolutist. If there’s any kind of article that should go light on traditional secondary source content, it’s probably journals. What I can’t agree with is changing the definition of a term to make the GNG work for journals. Changing the definitions of terms is to worsen Wikipedia jargon and increase the barriers to newcomers.

  I don’t find this RfC particularly important, because it is just a question of Structurism. Not that Structurism is unimportant, but Wikipedia should cover all journals, and I think that big sortable tables is best for usefulness. SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:28, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

  Even ignoring for the moment the problem of deciding which journals should go into which lists, I'm afraid that "big sortable tables}} would become unwieldy very rapidly. What would go in there? Certainly things like: former titles, publisher, current and past editors-in-chief, ISSN, eISSN, OCLC and LCCN numbers, impact factor, language (if not English), starting date, if defunct also end date, a brief indication of the journal's scope, publication frequency, OA or not (or delayed or hybrid), CODEN if available, JSTOR link, and probably lots of other stuff that I'm not thinking about at this moment. Of course, there would also be the problem of categorization (as mentioned above, people do use these cats). In short, I doon't see how all this info could fit in a table (least of all for people using phones). --Randykitty (talk) 12:23, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

  Generally, “permastubs” can be listified, and if listifiable, it can be formatted as a sortable table.

  And there should be no rush.

  If it can’t fit into a table, that’s a reason to have an article.

  People do use these cats? Evidence for that, other than category editors? Readers? SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:53, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

  I don’t think former titles and past editors in chief would go in such tables. Former titles and be redirects to the table entry. All journals ever mentioned in Wikipedia should have an entry. Start date and end dat certain. A brief statement in scope yes. Surely an external link to verification will suffice for finding ISSN etc. SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:17, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

  ISSNs help editors make sure which journal is being talked about. Predatory journals sometimes choose a name that will be easily confused with reputable journals. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:40, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

  Excellent point. Not just editors, readers too. Not just predatory journals. Ok, I suggest that tables of non-Wikipedia-notable journals should list the parameters of template:Inforbox journal.

  I mean to imply not journals should not be deleted for failing in notability, but should be listified (but to a sortable table). Tables can be much larger than articles, but still need a max size, so somehow they’ll need to be many tables. SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:23, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, I think an infobox for each journal under a publisher (or in fields from a publisher if there are too many journals) would be much better than standalone articles that just parrot what the journal says about itself. JoelleJay (talk) 23:30, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

• Maybe/question. Does inclusion in such an index coincide reasonably well with eventually unearthing some amount of prose SIGCOV? If so, then I would say yes because it could help save editors a lot of time in these discussions, because unearthing sources about journals "on the margin" is pretty hard when going through dozens of 7-day AFD discussions. But if it leads to too many "false positives" where there's literally only "database" coverage, then I'd say no.—siroχo 05:47, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  It does yes. See WP:JWG, and some example that follows when that advice is followed, like Journal of the National Cancer Institute, or Journal of Urology. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 06:07, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  ?? There is not a single source in the JNCI article that is independent and contains prose SIGCOV. JoelleJay (talk) 22:00, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  And yet it is a well-written article, about an eminently notable journal, fully compliant with WP:NPOV and everything. Try to delete it, see what happens. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:37, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

  And, I think another point is, the primary sources are evaluated by the given selective database, which then produces a useful result that is independent and reliable. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 01:01, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

  The question @Siroxo asked was whether inclusion corresponded to prose SIGCOV, which I interpret as "independent SIGCOV that would count towards GNG". The various press releases and self-descriptions from the journals themselves obviously fail this, as do the database/catalog listings. It's also not a "well-written article", it's a stubby lead from ABOUTSELF plus a bunch of non-prose lists sourced to the journal/its publisher. It's a directory entry. JoelleJay (talk) 21:52, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

  A phonebook is a directory, a basic article that complies with WP:JWG and sticks to the basics is lightyears ahead of that. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:33, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

  No, it doesn't. Most articles about journals we have are permastubs. And the whole point of this criterion is to allow articles to exist without SIGCOV, because some editors find it scandalous that we would lack an article about a respectable journal. This is made explicit in this comment by David Eppstein and this essay by Randykitty (Headbomb has cited this essay approvingly several times). Tercer (talk) 09:03, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  But we don't need a standalone article to note that a journal exists. A "List of journals" or whatever is sufficient if all we have to say about it is the name and a sentence or two. Wikipedia articles are not honors we grant. It's not an award, it's a source of information, and sometimes, creating an entire stand-alone page is not the best way to house such information. --Jayron32 13:21, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  I agree completely. I'm getting a vibe here that some editors think that good journals should be rewarded with a Wikipedia article, and bad journals should be punished by not having an article. Needless to say, this is not how Wikipedia is supposed to work. Tercer (talk) 13:27, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  You mean something like this: Draft:List of American Medical Association journals? The main problem is the stacking of several infoboxes (edit: MOS:DONTHIDE). I've tried {{clear}} but it didn't help. fgnievinski (talk) 14:46, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  If this doesn't work for a publisher with just a handful of journals, then imagine how this would work out for larger publishers... --Randykitty (talk) 14:51, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  Are you replying to the right comment? This subthread isn't about how to organize information about non-notable journals. In any case, I wouldn't use infoboxes at all. In particular, I don't see any point of including the covers (except in very special cases), as nobody looks at them anymore. I think a sortable table like this one would work best. Tercer (talk) 15:03, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  Your proposition would find less resistance if there were a reasonable alternative demonstrated. An extremely wide table would appear severely truncated in small screens, such as smartphones (which is used by the majority of our readers). I'd consider merging permastubs into a meaty list, provided the infoboxes could be retained, as they're super informative. Maybe making only parts of the infobox collapsible by default wouldn't violate MOS:DONTHIDE. fgnievinski (talk) 15:19, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  I think the draft that @Fgnievinski: showed works perfectly, if you just drop the infoboxes. Infoboxes are really only useful as a quick summary, and are of little use here as the blurbs about each journal aren't so long that they need summarizing. We don't need images of the covers really, either. Otherwise, that article is fine; if individual journals have enough text to support a stand-alone articles, spin them out with a "main" link, if they don't, then just a paragraph there is fine. --Jayron32 15:24, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  Remove the ISSN and Website columns and the table has a sensible width. This is information that nobody wants to look at, just click, so it doesn't need to be displayed. I'm open to other ways of formatting information, though, it doesn't need to be a table. On the other hand, I don't think making anything collapsible is a good idea. Information that should be displayed should be always displayed, and information that shouldn't be displayed should never be displayed. Tercer (talk) 15:45, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  Infoboxes are highly esteemed by folks at WP:AJ. I'm afraid dismissing them would hinder consensus around NJOUNRLAS. A partially collapsed infobox is a compromise solution. fgnievinski (talk) 16:40, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  I was just giving a suggestion to fix the formatting issue you pointed out, I don't have strong feelings about it. In any case, I think it's an independent issue that we should discuss separately if we do decide for "No", as it's looking likely. Tercer (talk) 17:43, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  Infobox overload makes Draft:List of American Medical Association journals unreadable to me. It looks like a lot of start-class articles jammed together into an inconvenient concatenation rather than a proper list. It's like "let's make Wikipedia but glom all articles in each category together into single pages so that everyone has to scroll through hundreds of pages of text to get to what they want rather than being able to navigate to individual articles". It's a bad idea that does not improve reader experience. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:47, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  A common list, with little or no prose outside the lead, is not the only admissible list style. More substantial stand-alone lists exist, too, such as the List of Dilbert characters. That's the prototypical case for SAL in which "Every entry in the list fails the notability criteria" (WP:CSC), as in the case in point. fgnievinski (talk) 19:41, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  List of Dilbert characters is very badly sourced. Exactly as one would expect for a list with stub-level content on multiple individual topics that are not themselves notable. It is not suitable to be putting forward as a good example for what to do. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:06, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  You can check the second example in WP:CSC: List of paracetamol brand names. I'm trying to save as much content as possible from journal articles risking AfD en masse. fgnievinski (talk) 20:19, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  We had to destroy the articles about journal articles in order to save them? No thanks. For one thing, I think this would actually make this content more vulnerable to deletion, not less. In list form, we would need in-depth independent sourcing for the notability of the entire list as a collective entity, something that is likely to be much less common than sourcing for individual journals. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:50, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  Have a look at User:WhatamIdoing/Journals for one way of dealing with the infobox problem. This is a simple low-aesthetics version, so squint a little and imagine it slightly gussied up (e.g., with background colors and more thoughtful choice of contents) to have an aesthetic appearance somewhere in between the infobox template and a list of television episodes (example). WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:18, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

  Thanks for the constructive alternative. Let me emphasize part of the purpose of infoboxes lies in using semi-structured data, either to be exported (to Dbpedia) or imported (form Wikidata). Although tables offer some level of data organization, infoboxes have a more explicit data model (in terms of key-value pairs). So transforming infoboxes into tables would be a step in the wrong direction, IMHO. fgnievinski (talk) 01:09, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

  Isn't it possible to control a bit more how the infoboxes are displayed, so that you can have output that looks like WhatamIdoing's but the input is still in terms of key-values pairs? Tercer (talk) 11:00, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, it should be doable. fgnievinski (talk) 01:07, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

  It should be relatively easy, if that's what editors want to do. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:09, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

  I've sketched an alternative infobox, with partial collapse (template:infobox journal/sandbox2), and used it in a modified Draft:List of American Medical Association journals (v2). Now, infoboxes no longer stack over each other, as in the first draft with the original infobox. The ideal degree of partial collapse is debatable (Template_talk:Infobox#Partial_collapse). fgnievinski (talk) 01:37, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

  You're completely failing to address my main point above: this fails WP:LISTN. You have zero independent in-depth sources for this list as a collective entity. As such it is much more vulnerable to deletion than the individual journals. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:17, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

  I am now genuinely confused, because this sounds like an uncharitable description of the stance taken by the people who dislike WP:NJOURNALS the most: we should punish bad journals like Physics Essays by denying them articles, and WP:NJOURNALS is bad because it stands in the way of that punishment. XOR'easter (talk) 15:24, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  As I have already said before, my objection against Physics Essays is the lack of sources. When we do have sources, I have no problem with having an article about a bad journal. Take viXra for example. Tercer (talk) 15:55, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  I am just trying to understand where this idea of "rewarding" journals comes in. I've read and now re-read the comments being pointed to as evidence of that, and I'm not seeing it. Having short stand-alone articles about journals for the bibliographic benefit of the encyclopedia, along the lines of Vaticidalprophet's comment, isn't about bestowing honor upon journals. It's just about providing the available information conveniently. Conversely, if having an article is a reward for a journal, I don't see how including it in a list or a table instead is materially less so. If we can't talk about a journal publishing bad papers in its own article, we can't do so in a list or a table either. XOR'easter (talk) 16:20, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  That's the whole point of WP:N: whether a topic deservers its own article. If it doesn't, WP:V would still allow the journal to be discussed as part of a broader topic, whichever passes WP:N -- the publisher, sponsor, or the field of study, or the corresponding companion lists. fgnievinski (talk) 16:27, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  I've pointed the comment and essay as defending that we should have articles on respectable journals even without SIGCOV. I didn't point to anything for "reward and punishment", I merely wrote that this was the vibe I was getting. Tercer (talk) 17:54, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  Hey, XOR'easter and Tercer, here's a brainstorm: what if Wikipedia had a "Bibliography:" namespace for sources we make use of but don't have articles on, to provide verifiable information on sources Wikipedia relies on. Require anything in the namespace to meet pretty much all the normal guidelines, but with a modified WP:N where inclusion would be dependent on the depth of reliance Wikipedia has on the source. To avoid NPOV issues of including things Wikipedia relies on, we'd require a template at the top of every entry that would explain it's not an article, just a reference to a source used by Wikipedia. —siroχo 18:52, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  We already have WP:RSP and WP:CITEWATCH, that sounds a bit redundant. Tercer (talk) 18:59, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  Those are primarily for wikipedia editors. The goal of a hypothetical "Bibliography:" namespace would be to provide readers with further verifiable info about the sources Wikipedia relies on, without having to dedicate/justify an encyclopedia article about the source, aiming to avoid the seemingly perennial issue being discussed in this RfC. —siroχo 19:13, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  Creating a new name space is a drastic measure, I don't think it'd receive enough support across all of en.wp. fgnievinski (talk) 19:23, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  I like that idea. It does seem like creating a whole new namespace would be a big step, but it's possible that the reactions to a proposal would be split between approval and indifference more than approval and outright opposition. It has the feel of an idea that, had it come along 20 years ago, we'd just regard as a normal part of the site. Would it be an abuse of Wikibooks to have a book titled, e.g., Field Guide to Academic Journals Cited on Wikipedia? XOR'easter (talk) 18:27, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Convenience break 3

• No. I think we have plenty of other metrics to use that would allow us to determine notability and having this one around just seems to breed more confusion than is good for our collaborative consensus editorial functioning. jps (talk) 13:24, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  Re "plenty of other metrics to use that would allow us to determine notability": name three, that apply to academic journals. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:05, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  I'll name one: discussed with more than passing mention by a serious, independent reliable source. I'll let you fill in the blank with some others if you would like, but that's my favorite. jps (talk) 20:24, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  Only one source? And I said three, not one, because you said "plenty of other metrics". One criterion is not "plenty of metrics" (plural). —David Eppstein (talk) 21:49, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  Yeah, I'd be okay with one to start. I don't think it is my job to tutor you on the various other possible metrics for this, most of which are discussed by others with some eloquence above. I'm sure you are clever enough to think of some novel ones of your own, and I'm not really interested in playing games right now. jps (talk) 23:06, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  Well, no. I cannot think of any metric other than multiple reliable in-depth independent sources that would be considered acceptable by a GNG-proponent such as I perceive you to be. That was why I was puzzled by your use of the plural and questioned you on it. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:41, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

  Oh! I'm not a GNG proponent. I am not, in principle, opposed to NJOURNALS. I'm opposed to this particular criteria. I like some of the others! jps (talk) 00:46, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

  That makes more sense! Sorry for misunderstanding you. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:22, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

• YES. Index8ng should be sufficient for an article about the journal. Otherwise a merge to the insitition that publishes it should be fine. Oaktree b (talk) 23:24, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
• Yes. This works well most all of the time when applied to academic journal articles. For those who agree these are considered to be reliable and independent secondary sources. The Academic Journals project usually maintains a high bar on what is acceptable content for a journal article.

However, a result of this and other discussions, I am seeing a chink in this armor. And it is this chink that is causing concern for some editors, resulting in seemingly numerous discussions surrounding the NJOURNALS essay. This chink can be defined as the keeping of crackpot journals. So, I have come to the conclusion that a caveat of sorts needs to be added to NJOURNALS.

It can be worded to say something like this: If a group of Wikipedia editors in good standing reach a consensus that "Such and Such Journal" publishes mostly bunk, junk, and/or crackpot theories, then that article should be deleted, based on this consensus. This is just an proposal idea. But, I think it should be somehow implemented. And I am basing it on WP:COMMONSENSE. Let's face it, if articles are kept on the basis of NJOURNALS, this proposal could also be possible. This can be implemented in deletion discussions. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 23:53, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

• Yes, though I dislike the RfC framing. Love David Eppstein's excellent comments here. Also agree with Headbomb and Piotrus. Though I'd usually agree with the insistence on SIGCOV, it's addressed by Randykitty's essay, and don't find the attempted rebuttals convincing. It's also extremely undesirable to mash things into lists to sidestep notability disputes, because it overwhelmingly leads to hard-to-find unreadable minger. DFlhb (talk) 01:23, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
• No: This proposal looks to evade having multiple reliable sources about the subject. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. not a directory. We shouldn't be creating any new articles based upon sources which don't provide WP:SIGCOV with which to write an article about. Let'srun (talk) 01:34, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
• Yes per Randykitty and others. Benjamin (talk) 09:38, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
• Yes; however, perhaps not always enough for a stand-alone article. In some cases, a 'redirect with potentials' to a short section about e. g. a journal based at some university or other type of institute or society in an article about that entity might be preferrable (for now).
  If there are good (and well-sourced) reasons for debunking a listed journal, or if the journal even (for such or other reasons) has been de-listed (after having been listed more than just temporarily), I think it is still noteworthy enough for its own article or section. The negative facts should be added, not motivate a try to hide that journal from Google's search engines. (C. f. Intelligent design and Flat earth society!) JoergenB (talk) 17:08, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

  Notability does mean always enough for a standalone article. Tercer (talk) 17:21, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

  Technically, a {{R with potentials}} {{R with possibilities}} shares important features with articles; and it may well be used for section redirects for subjects which in themselves are worth their own articles, but where we presently have too little material for a stand-alone article. Such a redirect in general should be adequately categorised, for one thing. JoergenB (talk) 17:41, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

  Sure, but you don't need notability for a redirect with possibilities. Also, if we do have sources debunking a journal then it's not a problem having an article about it. The problem is when there are no sources. Tercer (talk) 18:31, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

  When a journal is listed and we have no particular reason to suspect that it is unworthy, then we treat it as worthy. JoergenB (talk) 19:24, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

  Indeed, we do. The problem is that there are many journals which are obviously unworthy, but we have nevertheless no sources saying they're unworthy, so we cannot say anything in the Wikipedia article about them. Tercer (talk) 10:31, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

• Yes, per XOR'easter, David Eppstein and Headbomb (among many others). What this essentially comes down to is that the law is made for man, not man for the law. To explain this briefly: I have a policy, in my house, that every week I bring the trash cans out to the curb so that a truck can take their contents to the landfill. This is a very good policy most of the time, since I frequently have things I need to throw away, and the trash can is a great place to put them. However, if my paycheck or my cell phone or my wedding ring accidentally falls in the trash can, am I required to throw it out? That's what the policy says!!!!!!!!! Well, no: I reach into the trash can and I take it out. I am not "circumventing" the policy by doing this, or "getting away with" taking the wedding ring out of the trash can. The policy exists so that I can get rid of trash -- it does not exist for its own sake. It is not dictated by religious doctrine or statutory law. The sole purpose of the "taking out the trash cans" policy is so that I can get rid of eggshells and wrappers and used tissues; it's not because taking out the trash cans is some kind of sacred ritual in and of itself. If the policy is not performing the role of helping me get rid of my trash, it is not fulfilling its purpose.

If our notability guidelines cause us to decide that we should spend our editorial time and attention on one-off political peccadilloes like "covfefe" or pointless forced memes like "cheugy" (I wrote that article, so I get to say this about it), and that we should not spend it on Journal of Physics A, then they are not fulfilling their purpose (or, as the kids say, they are "scuffed"). The situation being proposed is that a journal which exists and publishes reliable output for fifty years (and is cited by everyone as being such) is not notable, but if a clickbait tabloid writes an article about its chief editor shaking their ass in a TikTok video, it is? Scuffed indeed; if the guidelines do not fulfill the purpose of creating a useful encyclopedia, it is the right and the duty of the editors to alter or abolish them. jp×g 19:46, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

"If a clickbait tabloid writes an article about its chief editor shaking their ass in a TikTok video, it is?"

Not an independent source, not a good comparison. Gnomingstuff (talk) 21:52, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

I think you are misreading. "Its editor" refers to the editor of the journal, not the editor of the tabloid. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:13, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

What David said; I mean something like Slickman, Dick (2023-08-08). "Uh, It Turns Out The Twerking Professor Actually Runs, Like, A Real Academic Journal". Vice. or Trout, Kilgore (2023-08-08). "So, Like, Here's The Academic Journal That Professor From TikTok Was Trying To Educate Us About". The Daily Dot. If our system would count this as "significant coverage" and count the journal's normal operation as "run-of-the-mill", it seems like the system is kind of a bad way to ensure that an encyclopedia gets written. jp×g 00:54, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Misinterpreted, apologies... Gnomingstuff (talk) 02:43, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

No problem, I appreciated the opportunity to clarify (and write those headlines) :^) jp×g 18:16, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Hear, hear. -- asilvering (talk) 05:21, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

I think you're dangerously close to the mentality that "good things should be rewarded with a Wikipedia article". That's definitely not how it's supposed to work. Journal of Physics A has done its job, congratulations (really, I have nothing against it, I have published there myself). There's still very little to say about it. What is interesting are the articles that are published in the journal, not the journal itself.

I'm genuinely curious about how on Earth could you alter the notability guidelines in this direction. Are you thinking about journals only, that all good journals deserve a Wikipedia article, or are you thinking about something more general, that even all good people deserve a Wikipedia article? How about stars? They're so big, generate so much energy, and have existed for billions of years. Do all of them deserve Wikipedia articles? Tercer (talk) 10:53, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm concerned and somewhat confused by your repeated use of phrasing like "rewarded with a Wikipedia article" and "deserve Wikipedia articles". Is this projection or is it a deliberate misunderstanding? It's not present, even in implication, in jpxg's comment, which is about creating a useful encyclopedia, the reason we're all supposed to be here. A Wikipedia article isn't some kind of award. -- asilvering (talk) 16:23, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

I've been interpreting this as "academic things are inherently encyclopedic and thus deserve articles (especially since GNG gives us articles on so much non-academic trash)", which kind of is the temperament of some editors. JoelleJay (talk) 01:56, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

I think academic publishers occupy a unique position because their mission is parallel to (and intertwined with) our own. Their reliability as sources is directly upstream of our own reliability -- if journals are lying bastards, we have pretty dire problems with our own content -- and I think that there's a great deal of synergy between the processes of determining their reliability as sources versus their notability as sources. jp×g 01:46, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

What about the hundreds of journals that are no longer considered reliable by indexing services but are nevertheless afforded an article uncritically repeating what they claim about themselves? Or the dozens of currently-indexed journals that fail RS/MEDRS/PSEUDOSCIENCE? JoelleJay (talk) 02:07, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

They're a non-issue, to the extent that WP:ABOUTSELF still applies. A journal that ceased to be impactful does not suddenly became a lying sack of crap that can't be relied for basic self-descriptions like field, frequency of publication, etc... Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:26, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

On the contrary, it takes a lot for a journal to be delisted from Scopus. It's not only ceasing to be "impactful" (if it were, Scopus would be much smaller, there are plenty of journals there with no impact whatsoever). One of the reasons Scopus gives for delisting a journal is precisely problems with peer-review.

It makes absolutely no sense to have an article in Wikipedia because it was indexed by Scopus and still allow the journal to claim it is peer-reviewed, when Scopus itself won't stand behind this claim. Tercer (talk) 06:30, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

"Problems with peer review" doesn't mean there is no peer review. It means the reviewing is shit. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 06:48, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

That's just wishful thinking. You have no basis from which to claim the journal is still peer-reviewed. And it's not acceptable to claim in Wikivoice that the journal is peer-reviewed without any qualification. Our purpose is to serve the readers, not the journals. Tercer (talk) 07:10, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Again, wrong. We have multiple sources claiming Physics Essays is peer-reviewed (e.g. ESCI), we have the identity of several reviewers for Physics Essays, and Scopus did not delist Physics Essays because of problems with peer review (like you claim it did), but rather because of metrics (i.e. it's no longuer cited enough for Scopus to care about it). Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 08:22, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Who said anything about Physics Essays? I'm talking about dropped journals in general. There are hundreds of them. Do you seriously claim that none of them were dropped because of problems with peer review?

And by the way, what is your source about Physics Essays being dropped only because of low citations? The Scopus entry doesn't give any reason, it simply says it was dropped. Tercer (talk) 08:59, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Headbomb, I'd really like you to answer this question. Why do you claim Physics Essays was dropped only because of low citations? Tercer (talk) 13:27, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

I don't know that it was dropped only because of low citations, but "metrics" (i.e. low citations) is the reason given by Scopus for discontinuing their coverage see July 2023 list or this slightly outdated alternative. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:34, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Tercer, if you look at the first link it says "Quality issues" which is a section heading at the top. If you look at the second link it says "metrics" in the column. I was thinking of providing two screen shots (one for each link), but I'm sure this is copyrighted material, and there would be a problem with posting those here or anywhere online. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 18:08, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. Indeed it lists "Metrics" as the reason for delisting Physics Essays (I never claimed it had delisted it for lack of peer review, what I said is that problems with peer review is one of the criteria Scopus uses for delisting).

The spreadsheet does list, however, hundreds of journals as being delisted for "Publication Concerns", which may very well be lack of peer review. Which is the point I was making: it is not acceptable to tell our readers that such journals are peer-reviewed. Tercer (talk) 19:11, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

On a second thought, the fact that Scopus delisted Physics Essays because of metrics, and not quality, is very worrisome. This implies that they would be happy to keep it indexed (as indeed they did for decades) as long as people were citing it? This implies that being indexed by Scopus means absolutely nothing about the quality of a journal, and we shouldn't use indexing by Scopus as a criterion for anything. Tercer (talk) 19:17, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

In the first place, if you look at the first link again it says "quality issues" in the "quality issues column." The second says "metrics". So we have both. Second, claiming something implies something else is not based on factual evidence. Being delisted means just that. It means a journal cannot claim credibility based on Sopus. Additionally, if a journals are delisted for "Publication Concerns" (which I don't see as a criterion on the page) does not mean lack of Peer Review, unless it says specifically that was the concern. This is a leap of logic you are making without evidence. In any case, personally, I find it highly unlikely that any journal that ever was listed on Scopus doesn't have peer review. This seems to be a fundamental standard of all academic journals. I have yet to see one on Wikipedia that is not peer reviewed. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 20:31, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Of course there is one: Physics Essays, as extensively discussed on WP:FTN. That's why we removed the claim that it is peer-reviewed from the article. Tercer (talk) 20:41, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Consensus is materially wrong about the facts here. It is peer-reviewed. It just has a shit reviewing process. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:45, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

It has already been explained to you multiple times. WP:IDHT won't make it peer-reviewed. Tercer (talk) 22:20, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Rather WP:IDHT won't make it not peer-reviewed. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:42, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the explanation was or is, other than removing "peer reviewed" from the "Physic Essays" article was accomplished by a consensus of a small number of Wikipedia editors. This does not mean there is no actual peer review. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 22:47, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

That's a very naïve point of view. It's well-documented that there are thousands of journals that are lying basterds.

And why would there be any relationship between reliability and notability? According to which definition of notability? Certainly the one in WP:N doesn't imply, and is not implied by reliability. Tercer (talk) 06:35, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

If anything, this seems more like an argument for raising standards on what sourcing qualifies internet ephemera for notability, rather than lowering notability standards for academic journals. – Teratix ₵ 20:45, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

• Yes, with reservation. (struck my "maybe" above) I currently see no viable alternative other than relying only on WP:GNG. While I think it's worth a few of us thinking on better ways to handle this and related notability questions long-term. But we need a clear guideline other than the GNG right now, because too much editor time is taken on discussions of such notability. This proposal does not cause any real risk to Pillar 1. To ensure that, I also think we need to rule out any mass creation of articles based on indexes. All articles should be created by humans not aided by scripts. —siroχo 20:08, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

  If 90% of our articles on journals can only be sourced to the journals' own websites and non-prose databases, with 100% of the article's prose being a self-description in the lead and the rest of the article just a collection of uncontextualized lists/stats/infobox, how is that compliant with NOT? How can we hope to meet NPOV if we've legislated that these articles unequivocally do not need any prose sources other than themselves? Even the non-prose indexing metrics fail independence for the thousands of journals that are published by the same publishers that run the indexing services. How can we assert those journals have been neutrally evaluated as "high-quality" enough to be indexed when their own publisher is doing the evaluating?? Wikipedia articles serve as pure advertisements for journals and their publishers, essentially doing all their SEO for them, as if they're not a multi-billion-dollar industry with notably serious ethical issues. And this isn't even getting into the hundreds of indexed journals that publish clear garbage, or the hundreds of journals that were quietly delisted but for which Wikipedia will still mirror their self-descriptions as if they were still reliable! JoelleJay (talk) 22:37, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

  Comment: I know that Elsevier is a publisher that many people here love to hate, but don't assume they're morons. If they would give their own journals a free ride in Scopus, they'd rapidly lose their subscribers to this service. Things like Scopus can only work if they're unbiased and, as far as I can see, Elsevier has done a pretty good job in isolating Scopus from the rest of thier business. As for all those "hundreds" in the above comment, all I can say is that I don't share this dismal view of academic publishing. --Randykitty (talk) 07:32, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

  Have you published through Elsevier lately? How would you know that they do a good job of being unbiased? We don't assume any other mega-corporations are immune to COI issues when it comes to profit, why should we for academic publishers? JoelleJay (talk) 02:29, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

  The moment somebody shows that Scopus is biased in favor of Elsevier journals will be the end of Scopus. Elsevier knows that. And I'm not going to give you any personal details, but turn things around, because proving a negative (i.e., Elsevier does not manipulate Scopus) is impossible. They are innocent untill proven guilty, so back up your assertion that Elsevier manipulates Scopus in favor of its own journals or back off. --Randykitty (talk) 08:23, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

  The self-descriptions are are allowed after notability has been established. Notability is established by independent evaluation in selective (highly selective) databases. As I see it, the important thing is that these are independent of the journals and reliable. This also satisfies WP:V.

  From my view there are no uncontextualized lists/stats/infoboxes. The contextualization occurs when evaluation by the database is understood. However, we could leave a little note on the journal page and say the following databases indicate notability and the same with impact factor. This would be for those who have a fixation on prose.

  Also, saying information in infoboxes is uncontextualized is quite a reach. There are 52,000 book-infoboxes in use [18]. There are 155,000 film-infoboxes in use [19]. Do these contain uncontextualized data?

  And the lists JoelleJay refers to are what? List of databases? This is what we use to show notability and to show other databases the journal is listed in. The non-prose indexing metrics are in fact a reflection of independent evaluation and results. NPOV is satisfied by the independence of the indexing services. The project makes sure no one goes overboard with more self-description than is necessary. And the info we have is sufficient for a short-sized article.

  So, saying that all of the above is incorrect is merely opinion, and from my view it is ill-informed. I know you don't think so, but that is OK with me. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 18:59, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, most infobox material is uncontextualized data. Lists of indexing databases are also uncontextualized data. That's fine as long as it's not the only content on the topic. But when all we have is a boilerplate collection of unexplained statistics and links, that is a database entry, not an encyclopedia article. And when all the prose is from the journal talking about itself, that unequivocally fails independence. It might be useful to have a database containing the union of the journal's website and its indexing metrics, but we still reject "useful" things if they violate NOT.
  And the threshold for the "highly selective" indices clearly does not align with what Wikipedia considers RS and especially MEDRS, as evidenced by the hundreds of CAM/quantum mysticism/etc. journals that have ever been indexed. Advertising such journals as if they are totally comparable with those that pass RS/MEDRS is actively deleterious. A separate namespace for these subjects that has no pretensions of offering secondary independent evaluation -- and thus wouldn't mislead readers/editors into thinking the prose in an entry represents a summary/the extent of IRS SIGCOV on a journal and accurately reflects its reputation and scope -- would be an acceptable alternative. JoelleJay (talk) 00:45, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

  Well, I don't agree that infobox material is uncontextualized. The data is contextualized by the prose in the article and people understand what is an isbn, oclc link, loc classification number and so on. And indexing databases are contextualized if you understand what they are. Demeaning databases doesn't change this. But I do agree that journals that publish research that supports unsubstantiated and unfounded cures should be removed. These type of journals lend credibility to alternatives that amount to nothing and might encourage readers to make the wrong choices. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 03:54, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

  "Expecting readers to already understand what various niche terms are" is not "contextualization". And the problem with these articles is that there isn't prose to expand on infobox data. JoelleJay (talk) 03:51, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

---That's fine. You have your point of view and I have mine and never the twain shall meet. Steve Quinn (talk) 07:27, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

• Comment: I don't have a strong stance, but "we need articles about journals so we can assess their reliability" is a weak argument. Nothing is stopping you from researching a given journal. You don't need a Wikipedia article to do that. TGnomingstuff (talk) 21:51, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
• Absolutely not. If we were merely a list/directory providing the basic self-description plus bibliometric/indexing data of all Scopus/WoS-indexed journals, such info-sparse boilerplate entries would be acceptable as there is no expectation of NPOV from deeper secondary independent coverage. But since this is an encyclopedia, with rules that explicitly ask for all articles to be based on secondary independent coverage--something we do provide in numerous GNG-meeting articles on journals--it is unacceptable to host articles that are based on journals' ABOUTSELF descriptions.
  If we do not have the sourcing to maintain NPOV on a topic that clearly falls under FRINGE/PSEUDOSCIENCE, then we cannot have an article on it. There are literally dozens of homeopathy journals indexed by at least Scopus that we would be prohibited from using as RS on Wikipedia! Including these journals when their only sources are their own website and the indexing service they applied to join yields an extremely imbalanced representation of their reputation. This is bad for our readers and editors (who likely are arriving here through Google searches that push wiki articles to the top of results) to come away from our page on Journal of Ayurveda and Integrative Medicine believing they just read a neutral overview reflecting the consensus reputation of of a peer-reviewed medical journal instead of understanding it's the type of garbage to publish papers like "Deep vein thrombosis cured by homeopathy: A case report" and "Ancient wisdom of ayurveda vis-à-vis contemporary aspect of materiovigilance" (abstract end: The Ayurveda literature highlights that the ancient seers of Ayurveda were well aware regarding Materiovigilance in their own way. However in view of modern era and mainstreaming of Ayurveda heritage, critical revision, updating, systematically categorization of Ayurveda devices, development and implementation of AMv regulation is the need of hour.) See also Journal of Integrative Medicine ("Apoptotic and autophagic death union by Thuja occidentalis homeopathic drug in cervical cancer cells with thujone as the bioactive principle"); Complementary Medicine Research ("Some Remarks on QBism and Its Relevance to Metaphors for the Therapeutic Process Based on Conventional Quantum Theory" (authored by "independent researcher" Lionel Milgrom), and the 160 other Scopus journals containing articles with 10+ abstracts mentioning "homeopathy".
  There may well be GNG-level sourcing on these journals, but it is irresponsible to permit creation and indefinite retention of standalones on them with zero requirement they be based on anything other than ABOUTSELF claims and trivial indexing metrics, which is exactly what NJOURNALS does.

  The above unsigned comment, by Mimi Ho Kora, seems to plagiarize a previous comment by JoelleJay. fgnievinski (talk) 01:58, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

  Thanks for catching that. I took the liberty of striking the comment and I notified Mimi Ho Kora on their talk page [20]. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 02:32, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

• No to the question as asked. Instead we should develop NJOURNALS as an SNG. Most of the comments here are really focused on what criteria should be used to establish notability of journals. HighKing⁺⁺ 19:45, 10 August 2023 (UTC)
• No. The GNG is not arbitrary – we need independent, significant coverage to actually write an adequate, policy-compliant article in the first place. Journals that fail GNG but pass this proposed criterion are better covered in a list of some sort. – Teratix ₵ 20:08, 12 August 2023 (UTC)
• Yes but No. The guideline should emphasize that while we presume notability for indexed academic journals, new article authors should explain why—in addition to being indexed—the journal is notable. For example, the journal is the official organ of an established professional society; the journal has published articles by respected scholars; some of the journal's articles have demonstrated influence (e.g., as shown by more than one citation metric); or journal articles have been mentioned in respected and reliable sources, e.g., the Wall Street Journal. (I recognize that adjectives like respected and established might also require justification.) Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/him] 17:19, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

  Your suggestion would be a massive improvement over the status quo. Currently notability is not even presumed for indexed journals, it is outright granted. Wouldn't your position be better represented by "no"? Tercer (talk) 19:25, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Tercer, oh my, right you are! I changed my response, and added Clarification for the Confused (like me) way down below. Thank you for catching my confusion. :^) Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/him] 01:21, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Markworthen, I do like your suggestions. There are some articles that say this journal is "the official organ of such and such society." Saying "articles published by respected scholars", or some "journal articles have demonstrated influence", or "some articles have been mentioned in respected sources" is possible, and in fact a good idea. Up until now, we have tried to minimize the prose in journal articles - but maybe this kind of content would work. I will take a look at this when I get the chance. It would be an opportunity for the sponsoring project to shine! ---Steve Quinn (talk) 21:53, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

• Steve, I routinely remove such author listings from articles, as they are almost always idiosyncratic collections of names that according to some WP editor are important. I only accept such lists if there are independent reliable sources that discuss the importance of an author for the journal or the other way around. Otherwise it's just name-dropping. The same goes for selecting influential articles, it needs sourcing. What can be done is list the 3-5 most cited articles from a journal. --Randykitty (talk) 07:47, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

  I meant that such additional criteria be considered when making the decision about whether a journal merits its own article or not. I did not mean to imply that if an editor decides to write such an article, that the article itself should include the editor's justification for notability (other than on the Talk page, if the editor wishes). Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/him] 01:26, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Randykitty - I agree with you and that is the angle I was thinking of. Also, I am aware of your removal of idiosyncratic materials, and I agree with that. I don't know if it is necessary to list 3-5 of a journal's most cited articles, but that can be looked as well, and might be a good idea. I believe editors have done this in the past. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 18:21, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

This is all covered in WP:JWG Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:04, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Headbomb, thanks. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 22:35, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Which is another essay with zero power to enforce rules... JoelleJay (talk) 03:54, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

That's because its main function is as a writing guide, not enforcing rules. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 07:27, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Journal sponsorship by a learned society wouldn't help with a journal's notability, as it's not inherited. fgnievinski (talk) 03:31, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Fgnievinski - What I meant by "sponsoring project" is WikiProject Academic Journals. Journal articles that have other related information cited by secondary sources, as Randykitty mentions above, might make this WikiProject look good. It was just a thought. Sorry for the confusion. ----Steve Quinn (talk) 18:07, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

• Yes per XOR'easter and Headbomb. There are a few arguments on the No side above that are so bad I don't even know how to addresss them without effectively insulting their proponents. Sandizer (talk) 15:18, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
• Yes, XOReaster's opinion is what I concur with. InvadingInvader (userpage, talk) 16:07, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

• No https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/leap.1489 Polygnotus (talk) 00:51, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

  That covers 41 journals out of 20K or so, or roughly a 0.2% error rate. This is hardly damning and those can excluded on a case-by-case basis when this is the case. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:46, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

  @Headbomb: 41 journals that Tove Faber Frandsen found because they were on a list. How many were not listed? We all know that the problem is likely much much bigger. But the point is, the question is: "Is inclusion of a journal in a selective citation index (such as SCIE or Scopus) sufficient for notability?" and that is a bad question because inclusion is not a 100% ironclad guarantee. The only correct answer is no because the people who work for SCIE or Scopus do not (and should not) get to decide what notability means on Wikipedia. Polygnotus (talk) 03:16, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

  Let's say it's triple that number. Or hell, 5 times that number. That's still under 1%. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:57, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

  @Headbomb: Let's flip it on its head. Is 1 bad thing not bad; just because it is a low number? What about 2 bad things? 41? 100s? At what point should we start caring? I'd say at zero. Predatory journals are a very serious problem. But its a bad RFC because the starting question is bad so it should be closed and ignored. Polygnotus (talk) 04:14, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

  What is wrong with the RfC question? Note that this is currently a criterion, the RfC is asking if we should keep it. Tercer (talk) 04:36, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

  The question is "wrong" (or I just disagree with it; which is literally the same thing) because the word "notability" on Wikipedia means "has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject". An RFC or local consensus or God speaking from the heavens can't overrule that.

  Some of those journals already have articles. But there are 44,737 in Scopus alone. How many are in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Academic_journals already? I don't understand https://petscan.wmflabs.org/. Someone will create a bot that burps out 40.000 oneliner stubs and those articles will be worthless. Heck, quite a few of those journals are worthless.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_des_s%C3%A7avans is a notable topic, because of significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject; not because a selective citation index includes it or not.

  Imagine a journal that was highly influential in the 1800s, and has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, but it stopped and it is not in a selective citation index. Or the opposite, a journal no one has ever heard of and no one cares about that happens to be included in a selective citation index for reasons beyond our understanding (the editor was the brother of the person who made the selection, whatever). I am happy to make SIGCOV exceptions for tiny towns in faraway places tho.

  People will nominate journals that do not reach SIGCOV levels for deletion, and this RFC cannot protect them because it cannot overrule SIGCOV. And maybe this RFC is seen as justification for a bot to burp out a hell of a lot of articles, and those will have to be deleted. Polygnotus (talk) 05:38, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

  "a journal no one has ever heard of and no one cares about that happens to be included in a selective citation index"

  This is a contradiction. If it's in a selective indexing service, people have heard of it by very definition. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 06:52, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

  And yet, you still know what I mean. You've read the full quote in its context. Topics become notable because of SIGCOV. Look at the confusion this RFC caused (e.g. see below). A waste of time. Polygnotus (talk) 06:54, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

  @Headbomb: Would you be so kind to use Petscan to check how many journals there are in the Academic journal category excluding things like redirects? I am kinda curious how many already exist. Thanks in advance! Polygnotus (talk) 07:04, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

  I've rarely used petscan. Feel free to use it yourself. But we currently have about 10K articles on journals and journal-related topics. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 07:13, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

  Yeah, I tried and failed. I got around that same number but it included a large percentage of things that were not journals. Thanks again! Polygnotus (talk) 07:17, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

  I think you misunderstood the point of the RfC: the goal is to stop considering indexing as sufficient for notability, not start doing it. Tercer (talk) 10:38, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

  @Tercer: But at this point in space in time, the fact that a journal is indexed is *not* sufficient to make it notable. See WP:CONLEVEL Polygnotus (talk) 10:51, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

  Well, I agree with you, but NJOURNALS claims it is, and this is what I'm trying to change. Tercer (talk) 11:24, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

  @Tercer: You don't need to. Polygnotus (talk) 11:45, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

  Well we do, because editors are invoking NJOURNALS as if it actually was a real guideline at AfDs, and admins apparently don't care/are not aware that it's just essay and will close as "keep" because there is a large enough bloc of editors promoting NJOURNALS to sway numerical consensus. We ran into this issue most recently with Physics Essays. JoelleJay (talk) 20:35, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

  If people give cogent arguments for why something should be kept, whether or not they are based in an essay, a policy, a guideline, etc... is ultimately irrelevant. The first discussion closed 7-1 for keep. The second one, with broader advertisement, closed 13-3 with "a clear consensus among editors in this discussion to Keep this articles". This RFC is basically a sour grapes attempt at making it wiki-illegal to have a different interpretation/standards/opinions than the 3 in that 13-3 discussion. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:46, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

  Those are local consensuses, they do not reflect broader community opinion on the merits of the criteria being invoked. The second AfD was also complicated by the existence of secondary independent coverage, even if it wasn't SIGCOV by any means, since several keep !voters invoked GNG or IAR instead of NJOURNALS. JoelleJay (talk) 20:55, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

  Please, there are some misunderstandings here. Let me try to explain.

  Opinions are like assholes; everybody has one. Anybody with an opinion can write an essay. I can write an essay that says you shouldn't use the letter E on Wikipedia if that is my opinion.

  My essay, and my opinion, are completely irrelevant to you unless I persuade you to agree with me. But you can just as easily write an essay that says the opposite.

  On Wikipedia, our policies are a bit like laws. We all agree with WP:V; and you better do what it says or we will hit you with a cluebat.

  Guidelines are basically advice most people consider to be good advice. You should probably follow them; because it is usually a good idea.

  Essays are brainfarts written by 1 person trying to convince you to see things from their point of view. Some essays are genius and awesome and should definitely be taken seriously. Others... not so much and they can be safely ignored.

  We don't change an essay based on an RFC because an essay is just some persons opinion. If you disagree you can write a competing essay. If yours is better it may get turned into a guideline over time, and even policy.

  You shouldn't give a shit about essays you don't agree with. IRL if someone that you don't know on the streets says something you disagree with, you just keep walking.

  Trying to change what an essay says makes no sense. You write something better. Or you, like me, just point to WP:CONLEVEL and say: "your silly essay can't overrule widespread consensus so I will ignore it".

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Essays Polygnotus (talk) 11:44, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

  I wish it were that simple. This essay is routinely quoted in AfD discussions as if it were an actual guideline. It has fooled editors several times into thinking it is actually supported by consensus. It effectively is a fake guideline. Ignoring it will not solve the problem. We have to fix it. Tercer (talk) 12:39, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

  Let's continue below the convenience break 4. Polygnotus (talk) 12:59, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Convenience break 4

What a mess. People who vote here seem to think that:

- This essay is the law, instead of just an opinion. Please read Wikipedia:Essays

- An RFC where a bunch of people vote can somehow overrule WP:SIGCOV, which is one of the guiding principles of Wikipedia.

Neither of those things is true.

Now the question is; how do we end this farce? Polygnotus (talk) 12:11, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

If we keep insisting we have to somehow "fix" this essay it will be very hard, because the problem is the line "If a journal meets any of the following criteria, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources, it qualifies for a stand-alone article" and if you delete that line everything else stops making sense. The lightbulb moment should be this: Look at the old versions of the essay. Its just a copy of another page, WP:PROF. Look at the version where the user copied it. WP:PROF contained some pretty reasonable stuff. Then 1 guy, in 2009, copied it, and changed the rules a bit so it was about journals instead of academics, and it has never been touched ever again... Do you really think this one guy has the ability to make the rules without any attempt at consensus building? Why would you need widespread consensus to undo the mistake of one dude? It is certainly easier to, if someone says "this essay proves my point", say "an essay can't override widespread consensus". Polygnotus (talk) 12:59, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

The problem is that this essay is routinely quoted as if it were an actual guideline. Both by editors that were fooled, and by editors that know better and are simply lying. See [21][22][23][24] for some examples. There is also plenty of examples were people notice that it is just an essay and thus disregard it [25][26].

I think the best solution is to have an RfC to make it explicit that NJOURNALS is not supported by consensus. In the best case scenario we can then develop a notability guideline for journals that is actually supported by consensus. In the worst case scenario we will at least be able to point to the RfC when someone tries to use NJOURNALS as an argument for anything. Tercer (talk) 13:55, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

by editors that know better and are simply lying. So much for WP:AGF. The simpler explanation is that people who quote it agree with it. Wikipedia is not a strict bureaucracy, and does not have strict rules. You may consider GNG sacrosanct and unviolable, others may considered it for what it is, a good guideline, to which there can be exceptions. Others may also consider GNG sacrosanct, but have a different standard than you for what constitutes significant coverage. You can try as hard as you want, you will never succeed in barring people from quoting something that they, but not you, agree with. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:01, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Agreeing with it doesn't make it a guideline. I'm giving examples of people saying that it is a guideline. Tercer (talk) 20:33, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

If you think DGG wasn't for two seconds aware that NJOURNALS was not an 'official Wikipedia guideline', you really have no idea what you're talking about. When DGG wrote Scopus meets the usual guideline for academic journnals", he meant wikt:guideline, not WP:GUIDELINE. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:56, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Of course I'm including DGG among those that know better. Tercer (talk) 20:59, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

And yet DGG felt NJOURNALS was not permissive enough. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:00, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

He was wrong about that. Tercer (talk) 21:17, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

He had a different opinion about that. Right and wrong is in the eye of the beholder. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:20, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Anyone is free to argue how they see the merits of this essay — such as it doesn't overrule widespread consensus. No one is stopping anyone from saying that. And this is hardly one guy's interpretation. It has a had the support of a number of editors during its years-long history. There are many editors who agree with it, and this has been said a number of times in this discussion and in other recent discussions. And there is no way to change that. People have their own minds. Also, saying one group of editors are being fooled while the other group of editors is lying falls under WP:NPA. There is no evidence of either. I am glad these attacks are infrequent or I would feel the need to do something about it. ----Steve Quinn (talk) 00:59, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

You don't think this !voter

Weak Keep I'd prefer to see this deleted based on the paucity of sourcing, however, by my reading of the standards of NJOURNAL (the journal being indexed in Scopus) I am, regrettably, compelled to !vote Keep.

might have been misled into thinking it was a real guideline? JoelleJay (talk) 03:06, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Indeed, he quite prominently didn't agree with GNG as a method of determining notability either. The way some people talk you'd never know that GNG is a guideline that reasonable people can disagree about, rather than an explicit rule. -- asilvering (talk) 03:03, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Saying that particular ivoter was misled seems to be based on an assumption. Are you not reading your assumption into this ivote? ---Steve Quinn (talk) 04:17, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

• Yes per XOR'easter, Randkitty and Headbomb. The inclusion of a journal in a selective citation index is prima facie proof of notability that should create a rebuttable presumption that the journal merits an article (like all other notability criteria). Further, academic journals are likely to be cited on Wikipedia as sources. Deleting their articles will break the links in our citations and deprive readers of any contextual information about the journals we are citing. As far as I can see, the information in these articles generally does provide useful context to readers in judging the article content that is referenced to those journals. (Speaking as a reader, I find it useful when I encounter an unfamiliar journal). That information should only be deleted if there is a positive reason to delete it. James500 (talk) 02:05, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

  Our articles on journals provide no prose context that isn't directly from the journals themselves... That's not going to be any more informative than the journal's own website. JoelleJay (talk) 02:53, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

  (1) Information about indexing is useful context. (2) The fact that an article fails GNG does not mean that it has no content other than information about indexing. (In theory, GNG could be used to delete any article based on less coverage than "the book-length history of IBM by Robert Sobel", that being the only example GNG gives of "plainly non-trivial coverage"). (3) It may not be easy to find the journal's website with a search engine. If the title of the journal was "Chemistry" or "Physics", and that name is all you know about it, you will never find that journal's website with a search engine. James500 (talk) 03:58, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

  1) The way NJOURNALS is structured, articles can be created based on indexing even when the indexing info is egregiously out of date. A page on a journal that was indexed at one time and then quietly delisted in 2011 will be misleading to someone looking it up after seeing an article it published in 2017. It would be much better in these cases if the tiny minority of readers who would get anything out of knowing a journal was indexed in Scopus at some point just searched "[journal]" "[relevant index]" instead. 2) I don't understand your argument here. 3) I don't know under what circumstance someone would be needing to look up a journal without knowing anything other than its name? Journal websites are not hard to find if you're starting with something like an article the journal published or an author or editor. JoelleJay (talk) 05:47, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

  Evidently you're unfamiliar with the cryptic citation style used in some academic fields where papers are referred to only by a single surname, journal name, and some numeric metadata, without actually giving complete author information or paper title. —David Eppstein (talk) 09:15, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

  Those parameters are still more than just the journal name by itself and are sufficient to find the journal website... JoelleJay (talk) 17:16, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

  They are not sufficient in older citations that don't use dois. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:52, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

• Yes echoing JPxG. Otherwise we'd be deleting numerous articles on excellent, fairly prominent journals that did the right thing and avoided controversies, while keeping those that only got notable because they were involved in controversies (usually as a result of being low quality). If having articles on journals dedicated to promoting known pseudoscience is an issue, than address that, perhaps with a clause that states that journals that do that are not notable or should be merged somewhere. But the proposal would likely lead to a greater proportion of articles on crappy journals since those are the ones that get detailed write-ups in external publications as refuges of junk. Crossroads ^-talk- 22:58, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

  This argument sounds like WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS to me. Journals that have gotten involved in controversies, and so have received significant coverage in reliable independent sources, are more notable than journals that keep their nose clean and don't attract controversies (and thus WP:SIGCOV). Suriname0 (talk) 23:29, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

  A guideline (or essay) that defines notability that way is not well-designed then. Inclusion in selective databases is also a form of notability. JPxG explained this better than I can, summarized as "the law is made for man, not man for the law". Crossroads ^-talk- 23:58, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

  Sure, I think everyone has a category of topics they think we should cover in stand-alone articles even if they don't meet WP:GNG. I just want to see arguments that more specifically argue for why it is important to have stand-alone articles for academic journals rather than covering them in lists or articles on specific disciplines. Suriname0 (talk) 02:53, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

• No But. WP:GNG is likely unhelpful, about what 'significant' coverage means for a journal, since media typically don't 'significantly' cover journal as opposed to its contents/individual articles.

I counter propose a journal is significant if a significant number of its article content are significant.. So, if a good number of the articles (or the content within them) in a particular journal meets GNG, then so should the journal. Jagmanst (talk) 05:22, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

I think this "upward" inheritance of notability is generally an intriguing idea if used cautiously. In cases where appropriate, it might be a WP:Summary style article that makes the significant aspects of the subject clear (for journals, the set of notable articles). —siroχo 22:22, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

I've seen similar arguments for the notability of record labels, though label drama is covered enough for that case to be more flimsy. Mach61 (talk) 13:48, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

• No. Simply being included is not a substitute for independent reliable coverage of a topic, and an essay like this one should not be used to override guidelines. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:28, 27 August 2023 (UTC)
• No I'm a huge fan of the GNG. We have some notion that a pure GNG approach isn't ideal. Some topics tend to have a lot more coverage than others. Maybe because of the subject throwing money at folks to get coverage (lots of recycled press releases from companies). Maybe for other reasons (Reality TV). But that's all fairly subjective and I don't know that we can get consensus on what is important and what isn't. I'm fairly sure that most academic journals, other than maybe the top few in each field (so Science, Nature, and maybe a few others for me), are not notable. I can't think of a single IEEE or ACM journal I feel we should have an article on. And I'm not sure what we'd write. We could pull things non-independent sources (things that count toward WP:V but not WP:N). And sometimes that's the right call. But I'm not seeing it here. These journals do important stuff, but so do a lot of people who don't meet WP:N. Important isn't the bar--sources are. And while for some things, like Geographic features, we can be pretty sure there are sources, that isn't the case here. Hobit (talk) 21:38, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

  I do like the idea of notable works being published by the journal contributing toward notability of the journal. Much like the coverage of books can contribute to an author's notability. But it would have to be pretty fractional. If a journal has published 3 notable papers and we have nothing else that covers the journal in the in-depth way expected by WP:N, I don't think we're there. But if it's 30, yeah probably. Hobit (talk) 21:41, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

  Academic papers are almost never notable. A journal with even one paper that is independently notable (such as maybe Grothendieck's Tôhoku paper) would be exceptional and probably notable some other way. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:06, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

  Really? I mean as a percentage of all papers, are we really much lower than a percentage of all people? I mean we have what, under a million BLPs? And 7 billion people. I'd say the papers that see coverage in the relevant press (Science News for me) and win "test of time" awards from someplace like the IEEE are probably notable. That's actually a fair number of papers these days. A dozen or more a year in CS fields I'd guess. Probably out of 10,000 CS papers published a year if you include some moderate journals and conferences. Similar ratio... Hobit (talk) 22:18, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

  Category:Mathematics papers: The following 17 pages are in this category, out of 17 total.

  Category:Computer science papers: Software engineering papers‎ (5 P); The following 11 pages are in this category, out of 11 total.

  Now maybe you could make a case that many more meet the literal standard of GNG, but in almost all cases the coverage that one can find about them is about the research they present, not about the historical impact of the paper itself. 17 mathematics papers and 16 computer science papers is a tiny tiny insignificant fraction of the total, far less than the number published, and far less than the ratio of Wikipedia biographies to total people. Academic papers are almost never notable, in Wikipedia practice, and even restricting notability for journals to the journals that have a single notable paper would mean that journals are similarly almost never notable. Restricting notability to journals that have multiple notable papers (meaning, multiple bluelinked papers) would mean be almost the same as declaring that journals are actually never notable. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:20, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

  There are a lot of papers that have significant coverage. Yes, mainly wrt the ideas of the paper (of course) but the papers themselves are covered. The Meltdown paper [27] had a ton of reporting on the paper (again wrt to the idea certainly, but I think there was even some coverage as to how it was written and the delays in publication). There are some historical ones (e.g. Shannon's paper on what is now called Shannon's Limit) that have also seen a lot of coverage. And when you include the "test of time" awards that ACM/IEEE have been putting out in large quantity recently... But I'm not saying such a thing is necessary, only sufficient. Hobit (talk) 00:47, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

  Yes the coverage is about the research the articles contain, but isn't that also true for academic books and essays that advance new results and perspectives? I think there would be loads more Wiki pages on scholarly articles if the editors who created pages through NBOOKS applied the same criteria to research published in journals. Even ignoring all the primary academic citations, and even contemporaneous news reports and reviews, there are a ton of redlinked papers that have had lasting scholarly impact as evidenced by SIGCOV in RS. Like, everyone in my field knows exactly what "Brenner '74" is, and that paper continues to receive bountiful coverage (e.g. this retrospective, this commentary, and certainly in my own PhD dissertation). The only issue I see is the difficulty in assessing independence for papers in fields where collaboration is widespread. Other than that, the lack of articles on papers seems to be more a consequence of editors' disinterest in, unfamiliarity with, and/or lack of access to the resources needed to create a page rather than research articles being less notable in NBOOK terms. JoelleJay (talk) 02:46, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

  Wikipedia lacks a thumbs up, and a "thanks" doesn't really get to anyone else. So just replying to say I agree with all of that (other than I don't know Brenner 74. I do very much agree with the notion generically). Hobit (talk) 15:35, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

• Yes Per James500 and those cited in his arguments. Jclemens (talk) 22:38, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

• Question. Looks like Wikipedia:Notability (academic journals) is an essay. So if this RFC closes as yes, all it will do is modify an essay, right? I don't think it will create a new SNG or notability criteria. If this analysis is correct, then a lot of effort is being spent on the wording of an essay, without affecting our notability guidelines. That concerns me a bit. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. Thank you. –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:00, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

  No, the essay will remain as is because it is meant to represent the viewpoints of those who agree with it, and summarize how discussions typically go at AFD. If the consensus was widespread enough, it could be elevated to policy, but that's pretty unlikely. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 10:46, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

  That's not how it works. The essay is in the Wikipedia namespace, and thus anyone can edit it. An RfC is definitely enough for an edit. If you want to actually WP:OWN the essay, move it to your userspace. There indeed you can prevent others from editing it. Tercer (talk) 11:17, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

  It is how it works. Changing the main point of the essay to the opposite of its core thesis, inverting the meaning invoked thousands of times is essay hijacking. You are free to write your own essay in response if you want, but not change this one, especially based on such a poorly-framed RFC. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:48, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

  Wow, you really believe you own this page, don't you? At the end of the day it doesn't matter, if you try to edit against consensus you'll be overruled. Tercer (talk) 13:25, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

  What on earth? You can't use "consensus" as a reason to change an essay to mean something completely opposite to its initial meaning. That's precisely why we have, at the end of many essays, a section with links to essays that take a related or opposing approach. -- asilvering (talk) 20:31, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

  Indeed, it is just an essay: what prevented it from becoming an actual guideline is the question being posed in the RfC. If we have consensus for yes (I believe you mixed things up, yes is the status quo), then we could promote it to a guideline. On the other hand, if we have consensus for no, we will fix it, and then we could also promote it to a guideline. Tercer (talk) 11:21, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

  Re "if we have consensus for no, we will fix it": No. There is nothing to fix. The RFC is not in contradiction to the essay. The essay states "The most typical way of satisfying C1 is to show that the journal is included in selective citation indices", plural. The RFC asks about whether a single index is already enough. My answer above and others clearly hinge on this distinction between singular and plural. Even if there were a majority outcome that would not be adequate to justify "fixing" anything: we have plenty of essays that describe minority views and having such essays is not a problem that requires fixing. In particular, because it is only part of an essay, the statement about indices in the essay is not something that requires the consensus of all editors. An attempt to amend the essay would need to be carried out in an above-board process that clearly stated the intent to amend the essay, not in this dishonest way that pretends to ask about a general question with the intent of using the result as a bludgeon to do something else. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:06, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

  @David Eppstein:, @Tercer:, this is why it's really hard to write unambiguously! The current text of 1b in this essay is written in the plural, but if I said "can you buy Lego in independent toyshops?" many people would answer yes without questioning whether Lego is available in multiple independent toyshops. It's a subtle feature of language that general questions are often posed as plural questions even when a single example would create the answer. I do not know Tercer's intent, nor the intent behind 1b. For my part, I honestly thought this RfC was entirely about paragraph 1b. If it isn't, then what I've written should probably be struck. Incidentally, I am not seeing any consensus here, so there can be no outcome. But had the outcome been a strong disagreement with 1b, then I think if the essay's author were unwilling to change it, then at least it would be wise to remove the general-sounding bookmark NJOURNALS from it so as to make clear that it would, in that case, be just one opinion. But as I say, I see a lot of thought-provoking discussion (good) but no hope of any consensus agreement either way. Elemimele (talk) 20:44, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

  Indeed, the RfC is entirely about criterion 1b. This "plural" versus "singular" distinction only exists in David Eppstein's head. Tercer (talk) 21:37, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

  I am surprised at your ignorance of the controlling guideline, WP:GNG, which explicitly states that "multiple sources are generally expected". This distinction is very important in notability guidelines in general, and important here. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:40, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

  Er, or anyone reading your question as written? -- asilvering (talk) 22:46, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

  Sorry, what is the evidence that "yes" is the status quo? I don't believe "indexing in a single selective index is equivalent to notability" is a common AfD outcome. -- asilvering (talk) 20:23, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

• I don't understand the implications of answering either yes or no to the question. I'm ok with expanding the notability criteria for journals, as there's usually very little point deleting an article about an academic journal on the basis of (non) notability, but I'm not ok with the proposed criterion. Proprietary databases like Elsevier's and Clarivate's are known to be biased in innumerable ways and are not verifiable. Their mention should be eradicated from articles, not elevated to a criterion. Nemo 13:33, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

  I'm afraid you mixed things up: the RfC is not proposing a new criterion, but asking whether an already existing criterion (1b) is a good idea. That is, "yes" means the status quo, and "no" means removing this criterion. Tercer (talk) 19:21, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

  Please stop this dishonest misrepresentation of the RFC. It is not framed as being about editing criterion 1b and its framing does not accurately represent the wording of criterion 1b. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:50, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

  This comes as a surprise to me, since that's not at all how it's worded, nor did I (nor, evidently, many others) respond with this in mind. -- asilvering (talk) 20:17, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

  I'm sorry it was unclear, but could you be more precise what your confusion is about? A "no" answer is clearly incompatible with criterion 1b. If there's consensus for no it must be reworked to accommodate the result. Should I have additionally remarked upon this? Tercer (talk) 20:33, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

  I disagree that "no" is clearly incompatible with 1b, and I gave a "no" response. 1b says: The most typical way of satisfying C1 is to show that the journal is included in selective citation indices, indexing services, and bibliographic databases. Examples of such services are Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Scopus. Being included in comprehensive (i.e. non-selective) indices and services like Google Scholar and the Directory of Open Access Journals are not sufficient to establish notability. This is clearly plural. Meanwhile, the RFC question says Is inclusion of a journal in a selective citation index (such as SCIE or Scopus) sufficient for notability? This is clearly singular.

  Additionally, the wording of the lead of WP:NJOURNALS says, for example, A notable journal thus refers to a publication being known for its publishing of scholarly research in the spirit of WP:GNG and Note that this page provides guidance, not rules; exceptions may well exist, but the bulk of your responses here strongly suggest to me that you are not envisioning that the "is [it] sufficient for notability?" question in your RFC have anything to do with "guidance" or "exceptions" - you appear to have in mind that a "yes" on this question would by definition mean that any journal indexed in SCOPUS/etc ought to have a standalone article, ie, that a journal being indexed in SCOPUS means that it is 100% solid proof against deletion, listification, or redirection attempts. -- asilvering (talk) 20:43, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

  Indeed, and that's how WP:NJOURNALS is used in practice: being indexed by Scopus alone is used as a justification for creating the articles in the first place and !voting keep in AfDs.

  Not that I think that matters: if it's indexed by one or two indices that's still not SIGCOV, and there's still no meat for an article.

  In any case, If I knew this would create confusion I would have used the plural to make it more explicit that it's about criterion 1b. Tercer (talk) 21:45, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

  What if a given journal is indexed in three selective databases? And what about if there is also an impact factor? Does this make a difference (in your opinion)? ---Steve Quinn (talk) 22:11, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

  Can you show any AfDs where this has been the case? It's possible I've missed them but I don't think I've ever seen something close as "it's in SCOPUS, QED". -- asilvering (talk) 22:47, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

  Re how WP:NJOURNALS is used in practice: This is, again, false. in the vast majority of cases, when NJOURNALS is invoked, it is in the case when there are zero indexes, in the rationale for a deletion nomination, as shorthand way of saying "even if we count this sort of index as the level of sourcing needed for notability, it would not pass". I am unsurprised at Tercer's ignorance of this usage as, despite multiple invitations including in the discussion above, Tercer appears not to have participated in this sort of discussion. I can find only one journal AfD in which Tercer participated, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Physics Essays (2nd nomination). It is a mystery to me why Tercer appears to feel so strongly about a notability essay and yet to be so indifferent to the many ongoing deletion discussions for the articles the essay concerns. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:02, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

  This is true. This is how NJOURNALS is applied. However, if one does not participate in the AfD discussions one cannot know this. David Eppstein thanks for clarifying this. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 23:17, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

  @Asilvering, I don't see how being indexed in one selective database versus two matters, it's not like being indexed in Scopus and SSCI or WoS is at all unexpected. It's probably the norm that journals indexed in the more selective databases are also indexed in Scopus. And none of them are providing anything close to IRS SIGCOV (literally a database entry with some autogenerated numbers; I have as much coverage in my autogenerated Scopus entry as the journals I've published in).

  And yes of course journals editors invoke indexing in one single database as sufficient for notability. It's just rare that a journal is only indexed in one selective database. Here are some !votes from editors in this discussion at one AfD I happen to have bookmarked:
  @Randykitty:

  Weak keep. As our article on MDPI documents, it was indeed listed by Beall as a predatory publisher, but then removed from his list (long before he was forced to close that down). In addition, the journal is listed in Scopus, which we generally accept as evidence of notability in these discussions. As that's the only claim to fame, however, I only !vote "weak keep".

  @JayBeeEll

  Delete: the references, taken together, amount to just enough information for a directory listing -- there is no content in any of them that might be called "encyclopedic", and there seems to be little reason to believe that other, better sources exist.

  @XOR'easter

  Keep The least squishy criterion that I've seen invoked in academic-journal deletion discussions is "listing in selective databases". Being indexed in Scopus is enough to carry this one over the line.

  Here are some !votes from other editors not already in this discussion:
  Chetsford

  Weak Keep I'd prefer to see this deleted based on the paucity of sourcing, however, by my reading of the standards of NJOURNAL (the journal being indexed in Scopus) I am, regrettably, compelled to !vote Keep. Though, if there's a question about the veracity or - indeed - existence of its peer review process I feel like we can probably edit that away.

  Enterprisey

  Weak keep as it seems to pass the notability guideline for journals.

  Nosebagbear

  Delete - there are multiple references quoted, but they don't seem to do anything other than prove existence, and the ones mooted by JC7V7DC5768 don't seem to cover it at all. I can't see sheer listing at Scopus being anywhere near sufficient, and if GNG is the primary notability grounds here, then standard levels of sourcing quality is required, and it isn't met.

  Note that not a single keep !voter rebutted the claims that the topic didn't meet GNG, and instead some argued it didn't need to meet GNG because Scopus indexing was enough.

  From another AfD:
  Randykitty: Keep. It pains me to disagree with the above !votes and to !vote "keep" on this one myself, but the fact remains that this journal was listed by Scopus, which makes it a clear meet of NJournals. Note that it has since been discontinued, but also note that notability is not temporary. I think it would set a bad precedent if we would basically argue that "listing in Scopus makes a journal notable, unless we don't like it, because then Scopus was mistaken".
  XOR'easter (additional reasoning given in !vote, I'm just pasting the part that references precedent): Keep per Randykitty. Wiki-notability is not temporary, and having been listed by Scopus in the past is traditionally enough to qualify, so by that standard, we'd be done.

  Another:
  Randykitty: Keep. It's included in the curated database Index Medicus. If the experts at the United States National Library of Medicine think it is important enough for that highly-selective database, I'm not going to second-guess them.

  Note that several non-journals editors are !voting keep because they mistakenly think NJOURNALS is a real notability-granting guideline, rather than an essay that purportedly reflects some editors' interpretation of GNG. Probably because those latter editors repeatedly and unambiguously call it a notability guideline.

  Frankly I am utterly unconvinced that the regulars at journal AfDs arguing "Keep, indexed by Scopus and WoS, meets NJOURNALS" are merely invoking it as shorthand for "the coverage provided by these indices is IRS SIGCOV" and not just using it as a GNG alternative a la NPROF, the guideline it was directly modeled on. If they genuinely consider "[citation metric]: 2.4" etc. SIGCOV then why is it only admissible coming from "selective" indices and not the less-selective-but-still-RS indices? JoelleJay (talk) 05:05, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

  Bibliometrics databases are by definition in the business of simplification. Naturally, it's easy to find many examples of people abusing them (even if unintentionally, as seems to be the case in your examples). That doesn't tell us much. Nemo 06:45, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

  @Nemo bis, I don't understand what you're saying here. The above post was in response to Asilvering asking about the "multiple vs single" databases wording and whether editors ever claim inclusion in a single database passes NJOURNALS. JoelleJay (talk) 18:15, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

  I was trying to say what David Eppstein said later in a clearer way. Nemo 15:05, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm glad I asked the question: it seems I'm not alone in being confused.

My impression is that answering either yes or no makes little difference, although the discussion wasn't limited to a binary yes/no, so a consensus may emerge which goes beyond the specific question. Whether Scopus and WoS are included in the list of examples for an explanation doesn't affect either the proposed criterion "be influential in its subject area" or its alleged typical implication of relying on "selective citation indices, indexing services, and bibliographic databases". I've seen very few comments on the relative merits of Scopus or WoS and many comments on the number of articles people desire to have about journals; but Scopus lists twice as many journals as WoS.

Discussing criterion 1 is also rather pointless as long as people keep relying on the long discredited Clarivate JIF as a short-hand for notability under proposed criterion 2 "frequently cited". Someone above even mentioned "having a JIF" as a relevant property, although it never meant much and it's going to mean even less as Clarivate is going to state a JIF for 9000 more journals this year while the terrain moves quickly (one day your journal has a Clarivate JIF of 10, the next day it's delisted).

A quick search in Category:English-language journals shows that most mention being in Scopus, about half mention WoS and a little less than half mention all of Scopus, WoS and an IF. (By the way, it's silly to maintain such information in free-form text rather than on Wikidata.) Whether inclusion in WoS or Scopus is upheld or not as a criterion, I have a hard time seeing many articles being affected. Nemo 06:45, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

• The problem is that criterion 1 ("The journal is considered by reliable sources to be influential in its subject area") in general makes perfect sense, and is aligned with GNG. But if we exclude the use of selective databases, there are very, very few other source that write about journals being influential. But the selective databases are very problematic because they're not that selective, and it's not clear how they select. We have a good criterion that cannot be measured by any good means. But in the end, David Eppstein is right that this is usually used in a negative way at AfD, to reject journals that are so dodgy they don't feature in any index, and that's no bad thing. The whole question of plural/singular and whether they feature in multiple indices is, however, a red herring: once a journal has got into one selective index it's highly likely to be in others, and I've never seen any AfD discussion hinging on an appearance in a single database rather than multiple. Elemimele (talk) 09:03, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

  @Elemimele, I just listed several examples of editors saying appearance in one database is sufficient, with several of them saying this is the standard interpretation.
  I would agree that not being in an index is a red flag that the journal is not impactful, and so could be used as a presumption of non-notability at AfD. But appearing in an index should definitely not act as an inclusive criterion. JoelleJay (talk) 18:08, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

  Most topics are not notable, also not if covered by reliable sources. For example, we do not have articles on the Contact telephone number for The New York Times (which is 1-800-NYTIMES) or about Hoover Road, Grove City, Ohio. Non-notability is always the default assumption. If the notability of an article's topic is challenged by its being nominated for deletion, the onus probandi rests on the shoulders of those who wish to see it kept: they need to establish notability, whether by the GNG or some applicable SNG.

  Academics can fail NPROF yet still be notable by the criteria of the GNG. Some examples: John Buettner-Janusch, Philippe Rushton, Willie Soon. There is nothing wrong with observing in a deletion discussion that an academic individual fails the notability criteria of NPROF. If there are no other arguments establishing the individual's notability, the article should be deleted. Likewise, there is nothing wrong with making the "negative" observation that a specific journal fails even the weak criteria of the NJOURNALS essay. This is not by itself an argument for deletion, but merely an indication that the journal is in need of some other claim to notability than being indexed. This has no bearing on the question whether being indexed in major databases already suffices to establish notability.  --Lambiam 19:40, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

  I suspect Rushton might pass NPROF, odious and dubious as his research may be, because it has been so highly cited. No argument with your general point, though. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:05, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Move to close

I move to close this discussion. It is obvious that none of the possible answers (yes, no, yes but no, no but yes, yes but yes, no never, etc) is garnering a consensus and this is becoming a huge waste of time. I would encourage participants in this discussion who have not or only rarely participated in journal-related AfDs to do so from time to time. Being better informed might eventually lead to a consensus that is acceptable to a majority here. Thanks. --Randykitty (talk) 21:20, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

• I agree with "move to close discussion" based on the rationale provided by Randykitty. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 01:28, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

• On the contrary, there's a clear majority for no, and I suspect you want to prematurely end the discussion in order to prevent the consensus from being established. The RfC will run for the standard 30 days. Tercer (talk) 07:34, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

  There's no consensus for anything in this RFC. It's roughly 23 no, 18 yes, with a handful in the middle. The only actionable conclusion here is that this essay does not have sufficient consensus to be elevated to a guideline. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 09:33, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

  We probably have Wikipedia:WikiSpeak#consensus rather than Wikipedia:Consensus. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:06, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

  As someone who has opted not to participate in the RFC, I think there is a case for closing this as for pity's sake, I wish I'd never gotten involved in this. I suggest this be referred to a committee to explore such a possibility. Alpha3031 (t • c) 12:42, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

• I've requested closing at WP:CR Tercer (talk) 06:52, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Clarification for the Confused (like me)

After reading many comments, I responded with the opposite of what I meant because I misunderstood the question. Apparently I'm not alone. Therefore, I wrote a revised version of the RfC (below) with two objectives in mind: (1) Please tell me if I still don't understand the question accurately, and (2) If my revised version (below) is accurate, I hope it might help others who are confused, including any newcomers to this (long, dense) discussion.

Revised version of the RfC question

This RfC (Request for Comment) concerns the criteria we use to determine if a journal possesses sufficient notability for an article, i.e., a Wikipedia article about the journal. In the Criteria section section of this essay, Wikipedia:Notability (academic journals) (shortcut abbreviation: NJOURNALS), the first sentence is: "If a journal meets any of the following criteria, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources, it qualifies for a stand-alone article."

We seek comment specifically about Criterion 1 (C1): "The journal is considered by reliable sources to be influential in its subject area", and its corresponding Remark 1b (R1b): "The most typical way of satisfying C1 is to show that the journal is included in selective citation indices, indexing services, and bibliographic databases. Examples of such services are Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Scopus. Being included in comprehensive (i.e. non-selective) indices and services like Google Scholar and the Directory of Open Access Journals are not sufficient to establish notability."

We request comment (replies, answers, discussion, etc.) in response to this question: Is inclusion of a journal in a selective citation index (such as SCIE or Scopus) sufficient for notability? In other words, should we modify Criterion 1, Remark 1b (C1/R1b) or keep it as is? Finally, for clarity:

• A "Yes" response means inclusion of a journal in a selective citation index (such as SCIE or Scopus) is sufficient for notability and we should not change the current C1/R1b.
• A "No" response means inclusion of a journal in a selective citation index (such as SCIE or Scopus) is not sufficient (by itself) for notability and we should modify C1R1b.

Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/him] 01:08, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

You're still missing two points. First, the singular/plural distinction: Currently it says that being "included in selective citation indices", plural, is enough. Second, this is an essay. Consensus that something is sufficient for notability should not be represented by an assay. So, if there is indeed consensus that indexing should be sufficient, then it would be an incorrect response to that consensus to merely edit the essay and keep it an essay. Conversely, if there is consensus that indexing is insufficient, then that consensus is inadequate for removing it from the essay; we have plenty of essays that make points that are not consensus, or even that contradict our consensus guidelines.

A proper yes-or-no RFC would have two outcomes that are logical contradictions to each other, so there could be no excluded middle. That is not the case here. If yes means that indexing is now consensus for notability (that is, has the force of a guideline rather than an essay), and no means that indexing is forbidden from notability arguments (cannot even be mentioned by an essay) then why should respondents have to choose one or the other? Why are you preventing respondents from taking a middle position: that this is a position on which reasonable editors can disagree, and should be allowed to continue to disagree, rather than either codifying one side as a guideline or forbidding the other side from ever mentioning it? —David Eppstein (talk) 07:56, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

The editors who most often invoke C1b to keep articles at AfD don't seem to think multiple indices are needed... And anyway, it's pretty clear this criterion isn't being used as an "interpretation" of GNG SIGCOV but rather as a direct, alternate pathway to notability, otherwise the equivalent coverage in any RS database would equate to SIGCOV, not just the "selective" ones. And since this usage of the criterion is wholly outside what is allowed by WP:N, it is not a valid argument to make and should be disregarded at AfDs. JoelleJay (talk) 01:57, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

Lots of people at AfDs don't seem to think that more than one source is needed to pass GNG either. That doesn't mean we should change GNG to follow their misinterpretation, nor that we should deprecate GNG because it is frequently misapplied. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:28, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

The vast, vast majority of AfD editors recognize that multiple sources are needed to meet GNG. That's very different from the editors who most often invoke an essay appearing satisfied with only one index. And what about the other 80% of my comment? JoelleJay (talk) 23:58, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

JolleJay, I see what you are saying this appears to be an alternate path. But, I believe editors who participate in WikiProject Academics see this essay as an interpretation of GNG. And I am not clear about you mean, when saying "...otherwise the equivalent coverage in any RS database would equate to SIGCOV, not just the "selective" ones."

And there are editors such as yourself who think the criteria or criterion in NJOURNALS is not a a valid argument and should be disregarded at AfDs. Yet, the years-long track record has been that NJOURNALS, or its criteria, have been invoked at many AfDs pertaining to Academic Journals. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 03:49, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

@Steve Quinn, what I mean about SIGCOV is that if editors believe that the material provided by Scopus is genuinely SIGCOV then the same extent of coverage provided by e.g. PubMed Central must also be SIGCOV. And yet editors claim coverage by the latter is not sufficient to pass NJOURNALS, so it's clearly not actually about SIGCOV at all.

That a small group of editors has misled others into thinking this is a real guideline does not mean it has achieved anything beyond local consensus. JoelleJay (talk) 20:44, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

"PubMed Central" is not significant coverage because to get in PMC all you need to do is publish in an open access journal and be funded by US federal money. MEDLINE is more stringent but omission is generally more indicative of a lack of notability than inclusion is indicative of notability. Index Medicus is the truly selective index in Medicine. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:49, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

JoelleJay, you should have a closer look at PMC. It doesn't give any information about journals, let alone any metrics or whatever. It just lists manuscripts published in a journal and at best a table of contents. No analysis, no evaluation. And inclusion is automatic if you publish OA or was funded by US public money as Headbomb points out. --Randykitty (talk) 21:14, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Inclusion is also automatic if you publish in a Scopus-indexed journal. And sorry I meant the NLM catalogue, which contains exactly as much prose coverage as Scopus (none whatsoever) and comparable non-prose content. Autogenerated calculations from a database are not any more "secondary analysis" than an autogenerated NOAA list of the locations of today's ten highest reported temperatures is. No person is specifically analyzing the subject directly to provide context to those numbers and publishing it in their own words. JoelleJay (talk) 21:33, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Again, you apparently do not understand what SIGCOV is. It is the extent of coverage, not "what it takes to get that coverage" or "how prestigious the source is". JoelleJay (talk) 21:04, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

It's also not the format that matters. I wrote a whole article from a single database record, and the reason it works is because the database record contains significant coverage. Ergo, the problem with NLM is that there's not much information there, not that the tiny bit of information is formatted as a list or table rather than in prose. Turning it into prose wouldn't solve the problem.

I could imagine editors wanting to restrict notability-indicating sources to human-generated sources. This is not something we've discussed in the past, but I could imagine the idea being particularly interesting to the folks working on Wikipedia:Large language models. I think an RFC to amend WP:GNG would approve of this idea; on the other hand, AFD would soon be filled with unfounded and unprovable accusations that all sources for any subject that IDONTLIKE are obviously generated by ChatGPT. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:18, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

As I've said before, the amount of information that verifiably exists on a topic is irrelevant if it does not comprise secondary independent SIGCOV. A catalogue that contains n non-prose parameter fields for each entry is just as unusable a GNG source as one that contains $n\uparrow \uparrow ^{n}$ parameters because we have zero context regarding which ones are DUE or how any of them are important to the topic. Prosifying a database entry yourself is just flatly OR. JoelleJay (talk) 23:26, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

I think I get what you mean, but the way you've written it is confusing. For example, "the amount of information" is the only thing that matters for SIGCOV. Sources must additionally (but separately) by secondary and independent. Prosifying a database entry is not OR. OR == material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable, published source exists. If you have a "reliable, published source" (e.g., a reputable database) that contains "facts" (e.g., 'ISSN: 2409-294X"), and you write a "material" that says exactly what that reliable, published source says (e.g., "This journal's ISSN is 2409-294X"), then you have in no way violated either the letter or the spirit of the Wikipedia:No original research policy.

I'd much rather have you tell me that you think I'm destroying Wikipedia than to tell editors that copying an exact, objective, verifiable fact out of a database is making up garbage that can't be sourced to any published reliable source merely because the reliable source they cited is organized as a database. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:53, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Indeed, that is precisely what I meant, and I apologize again for being unclear. I previously proposed a longer, more explicit version, but afterwards I'm afraid I took WP:RFCBRIEF too seriously. Tercer (talk) 15:40, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

If that is what you intended, then this is not a well-posed RFC, because the yes and no outcomes are not actually the direct negations of each other. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:08, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

• comment - ok reading through all this from the perspective of a person with several hundred scientific publications this is so confused and and not really in touch with the world of scientific publishing, First up getting listed in SCIE or Scopus means that the journal has made a, likely financial, effort to have an improving Impact Factor. They do this to attract academics to publish because the academics need high IA for their annual acreditation with their Universities or other Institutions. What you need to do here is decide, is notability equal to impact factor or some other metric. If you look on many of the journal websites they will give several metrics for each article. Among these are reads, downloads, impact factor and citations. The most notable one for me as a scientist is citations. If the work in the published article is not noteworthy it will not be cited. IA is a metric for the bean counters, reads and downloads are about money for the journal. But citations is about the use of the article. So what is a notable journal? Obviously IA is important (unfortunately) because none of us can get away from the accountants. But what is really notable about a journal article is who uses it. Nature has an impact factor over 4 and attracts a lot of papers, most of which are glossy magazine style garbage. But their IA means we have to use it, but they are rarely cited so does that tell you something? I a rarely cite Nature articles in my papers, they are not good papers and are useless to me. For the record yes I have published in Nature I too am a victom of the issue. But that is all about IA and has nothing to do with quality and hence notability froma reference point of view. As an encyclopedia you are using journal articles as references, so Citations is more important than IA. You need to rewrite all of this to untangle the web of science and accountants. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 18:48, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

  Err, excuse me if I'm being thick, Faendalimas, but isn't impact factor calculated from citations? Cordless Larry (talk) 07:47, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

• I agree that if one looks at articles, that number of citations is a better indicator than the impact factor of the journal in which it was published. (Not sure what is meant by IA, I assume this means IF?) For a journal, however, number of citations is rather meaningless, as it heavily depends on how many articles are published. That can be normalized by taking the mean number of citations per article, which, of course, is the IF. (BTW, Nature's IF is 64.8, not 4 and neither Scopus nor Clarivate charge any fees from publishers to include their journals.) --Randykitty (talk) 09:03, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

• Cordless Larry so they say but then read the critique of the score in the page you linked. Oh and yes Nature is 64 not 4 my typo. However I do stand by the fact they mostly publish for purposes of a quick public grab not science these days. I prefer looking at the citations and downlads directly both of which are readily available on journal papers. By Nature I am only referring to their primary edition not the subsidurary journals which are very good. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 10:21, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

• No - No single information source should ever deliver an automatic pass on notability. We should always analyse the extent of coverage and whether or not sufficient information exists to write an actual article. To say otherwise is to say "it's included as an item on this list of arbitrary length, therefore it gets an article, it doesn't matter if there is no content other than that coming from the subject". FOARP (talk) 16:43, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

  Well if you watch the academic journals delsort you'll see that's almost always the only argument put forward to keep, and admins will close it as such despite it not being based on P&Gs whatsoever. JoelleJay (talk) 16:40, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Trying again...

If we just removed 1b would this be able to make it to guideline status? Or maybe we can find something a bit more restrictive to use here? I'd like to have a leg to stand on for things like [28]. I don't think just being indexed by some site is ever going to gain acceptance as the bar for inclusion. But maybe a particular impact factor (as measured by a particular site)? Maybe something about publishing highly-cited work? Not sure. I think the GNG is too restrictive, but what we have here is too permissive. And with the GNG being so difficult for most journals to meet... Hobit (talk) 04:34, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

You've probably seen  CheckUser is not magic pixie dust at some point, but if anyone finds some of that magic pixie dust, then I'd like to make writing academic journal articles about the journals in your field become fashionable. (I assume that pixie dust isn't strong enough to do something really big, like magically reversing all pollution.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:36, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

My field doesn't have journals that are considered relevant. We're conference people :-). But the problem is that the journals just don't meet any inclusion guidelines and so folks won't write them just to watch them get deleted. Thus my belief that getting this fixed is important. Hobit (talk) 13:21, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

I think you missed WhatamIdoing's point, that instead of working on the front end (what people see on Wikipedia) it would be helpful to work on the back end (creating and publishing reviews that could be used as sources). I have occasionally seen published reviews of journals but it's rare. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:52, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Ah, yep I did miss this. I was thinking that starting a journal that reviewed journals would be fun. Will I really have time to do this? No. Would it be fairly easy? Yep. I've been visualizing writing such an article (though again, for my area conferences would be more important) and I think it's possible to actually write meaningful stuff that would have use outside of Wikipedia. Hobit (talk) 18:53, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes, exactly. Any academic field could provide us with some properly published, independent, reliable secondary sources. A nice little "Review of Cardiology Journals", even if it only gave us two sentences about each individual journal and a couple of quick compare-and-contrast points, would be extremely helpful to editors. An article talking about how your field is focused on conferences, with a quick description of the most important conferences, would be equally helpful. It wouldn't even have to be a peer-reviewed source (although Collection development#Journals suggests that might be possible, and subject-area journals might well be interested in describing their field); a column for The Chronicle of Higher Education or a trade rag (e.g., for an engineering subfield) would be enough.

In terms of existing resources, for medicine, I know that Doody's Core Titles in the Health Sciences is an important resource that might be useful to us. Although it's paywalled ($175/year for the version that contains the actual reviews), I think it still counts as Wikipedia:Published. Maybe User:Samwalton9 (WMF) could get a subscription for Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library, or something similar for other fields. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:01, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Why do they have to be stand-alone articles? Is there a list of journals anywhere you could use to write an NLIST article? SportingFlyer T·C 17:02, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

• Lists won't work, even on the wide-screen desktop that I use, there would be too many columns. Just look at all the data that an infobox covers. --Randykitty (talk) 17:12, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

  Lists don't have to be organized quite that way, especially for smaller groups of journals (=20, not 200). I have some kind of ugly mockups at User:WhatamIdoing/Journals if you want to see an alternative. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:42, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

  Of course, that would just kick the can down the road. We'd go from "Delete, because nobody ever writes about J. Important Heart" to "Delete, because nobody ever writes about cardiology journals as a group". WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:43, 20 February 2024 (UTC)