Talk:Physiological Reports

Notability and editor info

I reinstated the notability tag and removed a link to the academic homepage of the editor. To start with the latter: that link does not even mention this journal and therefore does not serve as a source for anything. The editor is probably notable and that link could be given in a bio on her, but here it does not serve any useful goal. On my talk page, Fæ argued that this link "provided some context as to her prominence in the field". As notability is not inherited, that is trivial here. Many journal editors often try to add their own homepages to articles on their journals (here is a recent example) and such links are borderline spammy. As for the notability, the article has currently 4 sources. The first one is in the journal itself and by its editor-in-chief, so it is not independent and does not contribute anything to notability. The second, third, and forth references are in the newsletter of the society publishing the journal. Hence, same problem as the first reference. In short, we do not have one single independent reliable source establishing notability for this journal and it fails WP:GNG. Because many editors feel that peer-reviewed journals should be easier to include in WP than GNG would allow, we usually look more to WP:NJournals to establish notability for a scientific journal. This is not met either. The journal itself only claims to be indexed by DOAJ, which is not at all the kind of selective database that NJournals talks about. In short, it also fails NJournals, as far as I can see. Therefore, I think that the notability tag is more than warranted. Fæ also asked me what I thought would qualify the journal under GNG. Unfortunately, academic journals rarely meet GNG directly, but to meet it, we would need multiple independent reliable sources that discuss the journal in-depth (i.e., not an interview with the editor that in-passing mentions that she's editor of this journal). In order to meet NJournals, the journal would have to be included in Scopus, MEDLINE, or the Science Citation Index Expanded. I think that the journal may manage this in the near future, which is why I did not PROD it or take it to AfD, but, I am afraid, my crystal ball is not flawless. If somebody were to take this to AfD, I would have to !vote "delete"... --Randykitty (talk) 16:26, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the context, Wikipedia:Notability (academic journals) is a useful checklist to address. Talking at the Physiologists conference today, the journal was established last year in the context of sister journals, this itself would be worth elaborating in the article as it should be presented in the context of this 140+ years long history. As this is the journal of the society, I would have thought there would be little problem addressing the guideline when it comes to significance in its own field, and being cross-cited to demonstrate this. I'm no expert in the academic subject itself, so hopefully others that are can bring to light some suitable references that can address the issues you raise.

In the meantime I have kicked off a very brief stub for the editor, Professor Susan Wray, as the English Wikipedia is woefully short on articles about British women professors, and especially those that specialize in women's medicine. --Fæ (talk) 16:50, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Given how young the journal is, I don't expect many citations to its articles yet, that always takes some time. If their journal department knows its stuff, they'll be included in good indexes soon (otherwise good authors will not want to send their manuscripts there...) And female or male, our coverage of academics always can be better :-) --Randykitty (talk) 17:36, 1 July 2014 (UTC)