Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Interface: A Journal for and about Social Movements

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 no consensus. Sandstein 18:22, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Interface: A Journal for and about Social Movements (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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Article was depproded with the rationale "I think it may fail NJOURNAL but pas GNG based on coverage linked."

I disagree, this fails both WP:GNG and WP:NJOURNALS Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:43, 7 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. Meets NJ#1: significant impact on the field (of social movement studies), listed as one of the major journals in the field in this book and www.omicsonline.org/social-movement-journals-conferences-list.php this (blacklisted) page. It was deemed important enough to receive coverage from International Sociological Association two years after its launch ([1]). It may not be indexed in top indexes yet, for whatever reasons (perhaps being 'just' ~10 years old is not sufficient for those dinosaur-like entities?), but the point is it is already well established in its subfield (also, search on books/scholar/plain google reveals plenty of citations to it, as further proof it is actually part of many debates, and not some obscure 'no real impact' outlet - through not sure how objectively it relates to meeting NJ#2 without a proper citation index ranking). PS. This should be listed as the 3rd nom, this journal survived two prior AfDs, see Talk:Interface: A Journal for and about Social Movements. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 01:55, 7 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academic journals-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 06:28, 7 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academic journals-related deletion discussions. CASSIOPEIA^(talk) 06:28, 7 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Social science-related deletion discussions. CASSIOPEIA^(talk) 06:28, 7 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. OMICS is, of course, a spectacularly unreliable source. The mention in the book is just in-passing. The ISA coverage was written by a member of the editorial collective, hence not independent. Previous AfDs are irrelevant (I don't know why they don't pop up here, usually that is done automatically), but I note that they were both closed "no consensus" at a time when our criteria were interpreted in a much less stringent way. I don't see anything in GScholar that makes me change my mind either. 10 years is ample time to be included in at least some abstracting and indexing services, but this journal is not even in a single non-selective one. In short, this completely fails NJournals and GNG. --Randykitty (talk) 09:16, 7 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Randykitty: They don't pop up because they're located at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Interface: a journal for and about social movements and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Interface: a journal for and about social movements (2nd nomination) (notice the lowercase). Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 09:23, 7 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I value your view a lot, but in this particular way, speaking as a social movement scholar, I do think that for what is worth, my experience as a professional in this area leads me to repeat that NJ#1 is met. People in the field are aware of this journal, it has some impact. I am all for pruning journals that want to use Wiki as advertising, or otherwise are non-entities, but this is not a case here. PS. I've contacted the journal editor about why they are not indexed, and he sent me the following explanation: "It's not indexed because we're not a commercial journal (many indexes only consider journals published by specific commercial publishers; the others like the Directory of Open-Access Journals still have submission requirements which are too onerous in terms of time and administrative demands for a journal without paid staff)." --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:00, 8 March 2019 (UTC)--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:00, 8 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Piotrus, two things here. 1/ I'm perfectly willing to believe you when you say that this journal has impact. However, the word of a WP editor is not enough, we need sources for that. 2/ The journal editor is completely wrong. I don't know of any index that does not include non-commercial journals. Of course, commercial publishers employ people who's job it is to fill out the applications to databases for their journals, so they know exactly what they are doing and I appreciate that this may be more difficult for a journal that doesn't have such staff available. The issue remains that whatever the reason for this, indexing doesn't provide any evidence for notability either. Basically, all we have is your personal evaluation and I'm afraid that that is not enough. --Randykitty (talk) 12:23, 8 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Randykitty Well, I know that editor's personal opinion has little weight on Wikipedia, but I'll note that I am a professional sociologist familiar with social movement studies field. Not I dispute that this is enough. And I also think it shouldn't be that difficult to get this journal indexed, and it should be a priority for getting better publications it (on personal level, I will NOT publish in that journal, because my career depends on publications in indexed outlets... doesn't matter that people in my field consider this publication reliable, my university administration doesn't care about it, so, shrug). But I disagree that there are no other sources. The book source I provided mentions the journal is seen in the field as comparable to indexed journals like Mobilization or SMS. And it's not like either of those has in-depth coverage of any sort, now, is it? They are notable because they are indexed. But being indexed is not everything, per NJ#1. As for the ISA coverage, yes, it is an academic type of press release, but it's not like ISA will advertise any journal. They do it for free, AFAIK, and they do it only for journals they consider notable. So it should not be disregarded just for 'being written by the editor', ISA newsletter won't accept such submissions from any editor, there is some selectivity in play here too. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:55, 10 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep as I said earlier, borderline. The objections in previous afds were in large part that the publisher was OMICS, which has been listed as a predatory journal publisher. They've disputed that, and I think the status is that they're trying to get a viable model, and are not actually predatory. Their publishing model in fact seems somewhat appropriate for this sort of specialized academic/advocacy publication, which would not fit into a regular academic publisher's portfolio. The journal doesn't quite meet our usual standards, but the very nature of our standards is that they are only our usual, not invarible standards. There's a reasonable case here for keeping. It's an appropriate exception. (Innfact, I thinkfor all journals likely to be cited in WP, we should be inclusive if in any doubt -- the articles can be informative to our readers). DGG ( talk ) 07:01, 9 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Strong delete--I do not see any reasonable case for keeping. Entirely non-indexed journal, which's hardly any spectacularly cited as compared to the general standards in these areas. Was mentioned by a conflicted individual over an ISA blog post in a blatantly spammy manner. Nothing comes close to making the cut. ∯WBG^converse 19:33, 27 March 2019 (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.