This page gives some rough guidelines intended to be used by Wikipedia editors to decide whether a periodical should or should not have an article on Wikipedia. While satisfying these notability guidelines generally indicates a periodical warrants an article, failing to satisfy them is not a criterion for speedy deletion.
These guidelines may be considered a specialized version of Wikipedia:Notability, applied to periodicals, reflecting the following core Wikipedia policies:
- Wikipedia articles must not be vehicles for advertisement
- Attribution
- No original research
- Wikipedia is not a soapbox
- Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information
- Wikipedia is not a crystal ball
Claims of notability must adhere to Wikipedia's policy on attribution; it is not enough to simply assert that a periodical meets a criterion without substantiating that claim with reliable sources.
"Notability" as used herein is not a reflection of a periodical's worth. A periodical may be a peer-reviewed academic journal, while still not being notable enough to ensure sufficient verifiable source material exists to create an article in an encyclopedia.
Coverage notes edit
The criteria set forth below also apply to periodicals in electronic form, such as electronic journals. However, the notability of electronic periodicals should also be evaluated using the notability criteria for web-specific content.
Criteria edit
A periodical is generally notable if it verifiably meets through reliable sources, one or more of the following criteria:
- The periodical has been the subject [1] of multiple, non-trivial[2] published works whose sources are independent of the periodical itself,[3] with at least some of these works serving a general audience. This includes published works in all forms, such as other periodical articles, books, television documentaries and reviews. Some of these works should contain sufficient critical commentary to allow the article to grow past a simple description of the periodical.
- The immediately preceding criterion excludes media re-prints of press releases, flap copy, or other publications where the editors, its publisher, agent, or other self-interested parties advertise or speak about the periodical.[4]
- The periodical has won a well-known and independent award or has been nominated for such an award in multiple years.
Derivative articles edit
It is a general consensus on Wikipedia that articles should not be split and split again into ever more minutiae of detail treatment, with each split normally lowering the level of notability. In the case of a periodical published by a learned society or the like, where the periodical does not fit the established criteria for notability, or if the periodical is notable but the publisher has an article in Wikipedia, it may be better to feature material about the periodical in the publisher's article, rather than creating a separate article for that periodical.
Notes edit
- ^ The "subject" of a work means non-trivial treatment and excludes mere mention of the periodical, its publisher, subscription prices and other nonsubstantive detail treatment.
- ^ "Non-trivial" excludes personal websites, blogs, bulletin boards, Usenet posts, wikis and other media that are not themselves reliable. An analysis of the manner of treatment is crucial as well; Slashdot.org for example is reliable, but postings to that site by members of the public on a subject do not share the site's imprimatur. Be careful to check that the editors, publisher, agent, vendor etc. of a particular periodical are in no way interested in any third party source.
- ^ Independent does not mean independent of the publishing industry, but only refers to those actually involved with the particular periodical.
- ^ Self-promotion and product placement are not the routes to having an encyclopedia article. The published works must be someone else writing about the periodical. (See Wikipedia:Autobiography for the verifiability and neutrality problems that affect material where the subject of the article itself is the source of the material). The barometer of notability is whether people independent of the subject itself (or of its editors, publisher, vendor or agent) have actually considered the periodical notable enough that they have written and published non-trivial works that focus upon it.