Template:JCW-Citewatch-Warning

Disclaimer / Warning

This is The Wikipedia CiteWatch, a bot-compiled listing of potentially cargo cult, conspiracist, denialist, fake, junk, not even wrong, obsolete, predatory, pseudoscientific, quack, or otherwise unreliable publications cited by Wikipedia through the |journal= parameter of citation templates (see this Signpost article for details). It is based on several lists of unreliable or questionable publications (such as those compiled by Jeffrey Beall, the University Grants Commission, Quackwatch, or Wikipedia editors) and currently reflects the state of Wikipedia as of 20 April 2024. See Q9 in the FAQ for the update schedule.

This list is a starting point to detect unreliable sources which are cited by Wikipedia, but it does not answer whether it is appropriate to cite them. Due to the somewhat arbitrary nature of what exactly constitutes an unreliable source, as well as imperfect matching algorithms, the list may feature publications and publishers which...

are flat-out promoting pseudo/junk scholarship or quackery
are flat-out predatory/vanity venues, with sham peer-review processes
were once-reliable, but have since been acquired by predatory publishers
were once-unreliable, but no longer engage in problematic practices
reflect the sources' good but imperfect judgment of what is unreliable
are problematic in some areas (e.g. pseudoscience), but reliable in others (e.g. news)
are problematic in some other way (e.g. circular references, or deprecated sources)
are problematic but used in an acceptable manner (e.g. primary sources about frauds)
are misclassified because of a spelling variation (red links especially)
are misclassified because of false positives, miscategorization, or flawed bot logic
are reliable, but share names with imposter publications and publishers
are about pseudoscholarship as a topic, rather than being pseudoscholarly themselves

While many, if not most, publications and publishers on this list have some questionable aspects to their publishing practices, these can still be reliable (or be otherwise acceptable) in limited circumstances. The CiteWatch cannot determine the full context in which a source is used, therefore use common sense and judgement before removing a citation from an article (see Q8 in the FAQ). When in doubt, discuss things on the article's talk page or at the reliable sources noticeboard – especially before a mass purge of a source. The Unreliable/Predatory Source Detector user script may also interest you.

Additions and removals from the listing – including false positives – can be discussed at WT:CITEWATCH. False positives can also be directly handled at WP:JCW/EXCLUDE.

ISO	:	ISO 4 redirect
BB	:	Bluebook redirect
MATH	:	MathSciNet redirect
NLM	:	NLM redirect
J	:	Journal
Mag	:	Magazine
News	:	Newspaper
Web	:	Website
Book	:	Book
Data	:	Database
Pub	:	Publisher
?	:	Unknown

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