Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Austin Publishing Group

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Guerillero Parlez Moi 14:01, 23 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Austin Publishing Group

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Austin Publishing Group (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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This is a company therefore GNG/WP:NCORP criteria apply. None of the sources meet GNG/NCORP criteria for establishing notability. Right now there is no WP:ATD unless a section is added to list companies at Predatory publishing HighKing++ 13:25, 27 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Flaky Academic Journals is a blog by David H. Kaye, an exceptionally well-regarded professor at Penn State Law and easily passes meets the criteria for expert blogs. The in-depth Beall's list information is at Beall's blog here. Likewise individually these sources might not cover Austin in depth, but collectively they paint a picture. E.g.doi:10.35122/001c.13267 details that APG violates consent, engages in plagiarism and journal hijacking, pretends to be located in the US while there are actually based in India. This is substantially more than an in-passing mention. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:35, 28 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you! Good points but for me, I disagree that those mentions meet the criteria for in-depth coverage on *this* company and fails the criteria, etc. In my opinion, a list of companies accused of being a Predatory publisher belongs either their or in a separate list. HighKing++ 13:30, 1 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Enough sources in the article to make this pass WP:GNG. Listing publishers like this in an article on predatory publishing or even a category "predatory publishers" has been discussed in the past and was rejected. --Randykitty (talk) 15:16, 27 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • There are currently 12 sources in the article. Three are primary from the website. The others are as follows:
  • Flaky Academic Journals is a blog, fails as a WP:RS
  • Beall's List is just that, a list. No in-depth information, fails CORPDEPTH
  • Canadian Journal of Surgery contains in Table 1 "Summary of phishing emails" 45 companies including the topic company. No in-depth information provided, fails CORPDEPTH
  • American Academy of Opthalmology article "Predatory Publishing: Shedding Light on a Deceptive Industry" contains an extract from Cabell's Journal Blacklist which lists the topic company. No in-depth information, fails CORPDEPTH
  • The Journal of Scientific Practice and Integrity paper entitled "Unmasking the Hunter: An Exploration of Predatory Publishing" analyses soliciting emails for journals and there are several mentions of journals related to the topic company. There is some classification on the soliciting journals but there is really no in-depth information or analysis on the company itself. Fails CORPDEPTH.
  • National Library of Medicine published "Not All Young Journals Are Predatory" lists, in Table 5, one of the groups journals but fails to provide any further mention of the topic company, fails CORPDEPTH
  • Science article doesn't even mention the topic company.
  • Business Insider article mentions "Austin Addiction Sciences" in passing, fails CORPDEPTH
None of the sources in the article meet GNG/NCORP criteria, nor is there a quantitative criteria of "enough sources" (which are nothing more than mentions). In a previous discussion some years ago, you said that the vast majority of predatory publishers were non-notable and including a list of all publishers would likely overwhelm any article - well it appears this company is one of the non-notable ones. HighKing++ 17:01, 28 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Companies-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 15:29, 27 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Telangana-related deletion discussions. Spiderone(Talk to Spider) 15:41, 27 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academic journals-related deletion discussions. Randykitty (talk) 16:58, 27 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete: Fails WP:ORGCRIT and WP:ORGDEPTH, unreliable sources, some brief mention and irrelevant sources. M.Ashraf333 (talk) 13:38, 28 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep The sources look reliable and on-point enough to me. I can follow the WP:NCORP concerns, but that guideline is fundamentally about preventing Wikipedia from being used as an advertising platform, whereas documenting shady publishers is anti-advertising. Making the evidence that a publisher is shady harder to find would be doing a public disservice. WP:NCORP warns against usingroutine coverage, but documenting that a publisher is predatory or disreputable is notroutine in the sense of annual earnings reports, participation in trade shows, etc. Moreover, WP:NCORP has an explicit note about duplicitous conduct: it observes that an organization might havea number of significant sources discussing its (alleged) illegal conduct, fail to qualify as notable by NCORP specifically, and yet be notable by other guidelines. The conduct here is not alleged to be illegal, but it is alleged to be bad behavior, and the same ethos applies. XOR'easter (talk) 18:03, 28 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    • Your argument has merit but is misplaced. I agree this type of information is useful in aggregate but a list of Predatory publishing companies rightly belongs on that page, not for each company to have their own page in circumstances where those companies aren't notable in their own right. In this case it seems to me that if a list of companies was rejected at the topic page then you should take this argument to there. HighKing++ 13:26, 1 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      a list of Predatory publishing companies rightly belongs on that page No it does not. There are literally thousands of such companies. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:18, 1 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Well whatever the answer, creating individual articles on companies that don't meet GNG/NCORP criteria for establishing notability certainly isn't it. The statement about the guidelines being "fundamentally about preventing Wikiepdia from being used as an advertising platform" has some merit but ultimately (and also fundamentally) the guidelines aren't about that, but simply guidelines containing the criteria for establishing notability of any company or organization or product. The impression I'm getting with this article is that it is to serve a purpose, to highlight that the company is regarded as a predatory publisher, as a public service. Wikipedia is not a platform for advocacy. HighKing++ 16:10, 1 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Providing the information that a publisher is predatory doesn't advocate any particular course of action be taken about it. It's informing, not soapboxing. XOR'easter (talk) 22:39, 1 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree - if that company is notable to begin with. My point is that this article has been created *solely* because it is seen as some sort of "public service" to highlight predatory publishers. That's advocacy and soapboxing. We have analysis of predatory publishing in general including the techniques used, we have hundreds of companies named under various categories classified according to their activities. We have blogs containing lists of companies. All great material for the Predatory publishing topic. But none of the sources provide in-depth "Independent Content" about this company and the arguments being put forward to Keep the topic are simply ignoring that fact. HighKing++ 13:04, 2 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    There's plenty of in-depth coverage. You just don't want to recognize it for some reason. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:08, 2 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • I can see there's plenty of in-depth coverage on predatory publishing but I don't see in-depth "Independent Content" on this company. I've read the blog posts and the other pieces. Sure, if you ignore WP:SIRS and combine them together we have something decent. But I don't see how any individual source meets GNG/NCORP criteria. Point to a specific source/section/paragraph which you believe meets the criteria. HighKing++ 15:17, 3 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Wikipedia as a whole is a "public service". If an article here wasn't written out of ego, it was written because somebody thought the world would benefit from it. We have too much information on predatory publishing for it to all fit into one article; the sensible alternative is to organize that information by the natural unit, the publisher. XOR'easter (talk) 13:11, 2 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sure, and lots of advocates and editors with strong views would say the exact same thing. Not ego-driven, public good, world will benefit, etc, etc. I've no problem with an article on a particular publisher, I'm simply pointing out that the sources fail GNG/NCORP and for that reason, this topic does not appear to meet our criteria for establishing notability. After that it has become clear from this AfD that there's a different motive than "notability" at play in arguing to Keep this topic. HighKing++ 15:17, 3 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    If there were, so what? The question of what to include in an encyclopedia that covers all human activities and how to organize that material can't always be reduced to a set of bullet points. That said, the argument above is (a) that GNG is met and (b) the caveats and subtleties acknowledged by NCORP make room for this. For example, NCORP advisesIn cases where a company is mainly known for a single series of products or services, it is usually better to cover the company and its products/services in the same article. Journal publishers, predatory or otherwise, are known for the journals they publish. Accordingly, coverage of specific journals should be attached to the publisher unless those individual journalshave so much coverage in reliable secondary sources as to make a single article article unwieldy. NCORP supports the position that the publisher is the natural unit, and so any CORPDEPTH concerns about sources that discuss the journals rather than the publisher aren't really germane. XOR'easter (talk) 18:19, 3 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Right now, the article only mentions one journal, the "Austin Addiction Sciences" journal because it has a fake scientist on its board. Are you proposing that this article should be rewritten to focus and include coverage of specific journals under the umberella of the publisher instead of attempting to establish the publisher as notable based on information about the company? If so, I like it. HighKing++ 20:01, 3 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak delete Many of the sources do not even mention the publisher or list specific journals. I only see two good sources that include this publisher (Bramstedt KA. 2020. Journal of Scientific Practice and Integrity. 2(1). DOI: 10.35122/001c.13267) and (McKenzie M, Nickerson D, Ball CG. Predatory publishing solicitation: a review of a single surgeon's inbox and implications for information technology resources at an organizational level. Can J Surg. 2021 Jun 9;64(3):E351-E357. doi: 10.1503/cjs.003020. PMID: 34105930; PMCID: PMC8327997), but there isn't any more about the journal than is in the article here and neither are specifically about this publisher. The connection between this publisher to the Dr. Dog incident is only made in a blog post. The possibly reliable sources listed about that incident don't name the publisher or the journal.
I agree that it would be good for Wikipedia to be a place where people can come to check if a journal is legit. I just can't think of a good way to do that. Lamona (talk) 17:32, 5 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"Many of the sources do not even mention the publisher or list specific journals" literally all sources (save Science, which I've now removed) mention APG or one of their journals.
Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:33, 5 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 22:47, 6 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Headbomb, you are correct and I apologize - I missed some of the references to the Austin publications. The problem that I still see is that the only in-depth sources about Austin are their own sources and Beale's blog. The latter should not be considered a reliable source, IMO. Not only is it the un-reviewed thoughts of a single person, he was known for expressing some pretty prejudiced views. The other articles list one or more Austin publications but don't say much specifically about them. I'm still leaning delete. Lamona (talk) 03:03, 8 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Beall pointed out some of the nefarious consequences of open-access publishing and for that some OA zealots claimed him to be biased/prejudiced. However, he was careful in his evaluations of publishers and if shown to be in error (like with MDPI, for example, not really predatory but bottom-of-the-barrel anyway) he changed his opinion. I find his blog reliable. --Randykitty (talk) 09:49, 8 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Today, two references were added, one from the Irish Times, one from the Turkish Archives of Otorhinolaryngology. This adds to the previous references, Canadian Journal of Surgery, The Journal of Scientific Practice and Integrity, Eynet (from the American Academy of Ophtalmology), The Western Journal of Emergency Medicine, and Business Insider Australia. Kjalarr (talk) 10:00, 10 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Added one more reference, a position statement from American College of Clinical Pharmacology, published in Clinical Pharmacology in Drug Development. Kjalarr (talk) 19:58, 10 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In all of these the name of an Austin journal is given in a list of journals, but there is no further information about the Austin publisher or its journals. In the list of "Representative publishers" in the Pharmacology journal it is one of about 20 such publishers. I rather doubt that more mentions of this type will help establish notability. Lamona (talk) 23:21, 10 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I partially agree, but also have some objections. The cited sources provide characterizations of Austin publishing group as fraudulent, predatoy, incompetent, or opportunistic. Indeed, they do not contain extensive or in-depth descriptions of that publisher, and some mention Austin publishing group only in a list. Nevertheless, the academic sources seemingly base their judgements on careful analysis, and the anecdotal evidence was published in several newspapers. Moreover, the fact that so many sources see themselves obliged to deal with Austin publishing group, might be considered as a hint to a degreee of relevance also sufficient for a WP entry. Kjalarr (talk) 16:47, 12 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Kjalarr: presumably you mean to support a keep position? If so, would you mind stating it explicitely? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:22, 10 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Headbomb:Thank you very much for your notice, but since I created the discussed article, my keep vote might be considered partisan. Kjalarr (talk) 21:15, 10 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Seraphimblade Talk to me 03:35, 14 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete. I get a lot of emails from Austin Publishing Group, which I mostly discard unread, so I'm familiar with them. It's a very similar case to that of Juniper (above). Worth mentioning in a list of predatory publishers, but not worth its own article. Athel cb (talk) 09:02, 14 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Agree with above comment - a publishing company being 'predatory' doesn't necessarily confer notability upon it - and where that company is a small and marginal one, even more so. Disintermediation is inevitable. Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 10:14, 14 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    "Small an marginal" seems not easy to objectify. So maybe we consult the accepted standards? E.g. Wikipedia:Notability: "Notable topics have attracted attention over a sufficiently significant period of time." Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies): "A company, corporation, organization, group, product, or service is presumed notable if it has been the subject of significant coverage in multiple reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject." Kjalarr (talk) 11:35, 17 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete the publishing company is not notable via the avaialbe half-reliable sources. Rodgers V (talk) 15:53, 14 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    But the Irish Times, Archives of Otorhinolaryngology, Canadian Journal of Surgery, The Journal of Scientific Practice and Integrity, Eynet (from the American Academy of Ophtalmology), The Western Journal of Emergency Medicine, and Business Insider Australia are not half-reliable. Kjalarr (talk) 11:27, 17 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Without doubt, there is reason for the present discussion. But I am a bit disappointed about the quality of the latest contributions in favour of "delete". The quality of sources is in my opinion misrepresented, and no explicit reference is made to WP's standards for notability. Kjalarr (talk) 23:47, 17 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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