Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Journal of Biological Sciences

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. Academic Challenger (talk) 00:24, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Journal of Biological Sciences

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Non-notable predatory journal Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:30, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academic journals-related deletion discussions. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:30, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment According to MIAR this journal is included in several databases, including Scopus. Currently no time to look closer at this, what makes you say that it is predatory? (It started way before we had predatory journals - but may have become one since). --Randykitty (talk) 07:14, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It's a journal published by SciAlert.net/Medwell. If it's in Scopus, Scopus erred. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:29, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Forgive my ignorance, but could you explain in more detail how this makes the journal predatory? I'm not finding much about the publisher through a quick Google search. – Lord Bolingbroke (talk) 17:50, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
SciAlert.net is one of the worse predatory publishers out there. You can check "Science Alert" and "Medwell" in https://beallslist.weebly.com/. Googling will give you results such as [1] and [2]. Not to be confused with https://www.sciencealert.com/. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:54, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, thank you. I didn't find these results since I searched "Science Alert" rather than "SciAlert.net". – Lord Bolingbroke (talk) 18:01, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. It looks like this is a failure of WP:NJOURNAL. Although a journal listed in databases like Scopus would normally be kept per criterion 1b, the links presented by Headbomb show that the Journal of Biological Sciences is a predatory journal that shouldn't be indexed by these databases to begin with. (I should note that I'm not too familiar with the publication practices for academic journals, so I'm willing to reconsider my !vote after more discussion.) – Lord Bolingbroke (talk) 20:14, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Further analysis of the SCOPUS listing on MARS shows this journal isn't listed in SCOPUS. (see here). The publisher is also listed as predatory on Beal's List. This means the journal has no value for the academic community in terms of contributing to its discipline because the peer review is faulty. Steve Quinn (talk) 11:04, 26 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment on the SCOPUS preview page it shows no metrics for this journal [3]. Steve Quinn (talk) 11:09, 26 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. It pains me to disagree with the above !votes and to !vote "keep" on this one myself, but the fact remains that this journal was listed by Scopus, which makes it a clear meet of NJournals. Note that it has since been discontinued, but also note that notability is not temporary. I think it would set a bad precedent if we would basically argue that "listing in Scopus makes a journal notable, unless we don't like it, because then Scopus was mistaken". Of course, our article should mince no words about this journal being predatory, using the sources provided by Headbomb. --Randykitty (talk) 15:52, 26 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per WP:NJOURNALS. My university library system marks their journal articles as peer reviewed (I am at the University of Oklahoma which is one of the "Big Ten" research universities). They were listed in SCOPUS. I think the assertion that it is a predatory journal is inaccurate.4meter4 (talk) 20:02, 29 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sandstein 08:04, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. I agree with Randykitty that we should not be rejecting pages because we don't like them. Nor should we reject a page that meets NJOURNAL because we think that SCOPUS made an error. We rely on third parties to make these judgements, not on our own feelings. Regardless, it still fails GNG; the article is bereft of any information other than the journal's existence. Note that even NJOURNAL says It is possible for a journal to qualify for a stand-alone article according to this standard and yet not actually be an appropriate topic for coverage in Wikipedia because of a lack of reliable, independent sources on the subject. SpinningSpark 12:33, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Predatory does not automatically equal not notable. If predatory, describe how in the article. Hyperbolick (talk) 14:35, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. XOR'easter (talk) 18:52, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per Randykitty. Wiki-notability is not temporary, and having been listed by Scopus in the past is traditionally enough to qualify, so by that standard, we'd be done. The question then becomes, is it possible to say anything else about the journal? And there, I think we can expand the article at least a little bit by talking about the publisher, so I come down as a "keep" (though a merge/redirect might also be suitable if a target could be identified). In borderline cases, I tend to think that we better serve the scientific community by documenting that a journal is predatory, rather than erasing our mention of it because it is predatory. XOR'easter (talk) 19:02, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - per SpinningSpark. If the only thing in the article that can be referenced to a reliable independent source is that it appears in an index or whatever (and mind you, not a third-party statement that it appears in an index, but simply citing that index), there shouldn't be an article. Agricolae (talk) 19:28, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

As some of my previous !votes have been discounted for not explicitly naming a policy: Fails WP:GNG. I also agree that WP:NTEMP is not applicable to this situation - it was never notable. Agricolae (talk) 20:21, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Keep WP:NTEMP once notable always notable. Wm335td (talk) 19:30, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. The journal was not notable even while it was listed by Scopus, so WP:NTEMP is irrelevant here. There are good reasons why WP:NJOURNALS is just an essay, and not a guideline. In complicated cases we should rely on official WP policies and guidelines such as WP:GNG. I feel that having been listed in a single selective index like Scopus is insufficient in cases like this one, and WP:GNG does require significant coverage by multiple sources. In biology specifically, which is the topic of this journal, for journals that are genuinely notable I would accpect to see them listed in the WebOfScience and probably PubMed. Neither one has ever indexed this journal, and it never had a JCR impact factor. I don't think we should disregard the fact that the journal is published by a predatory publisher. Similar to WP:FRINGE cases, we should treat such journals with greater scruitiny. Predatory journals basically function as expensive self-publishing platforms; they receive little coverage, their articles get minimal citations, and the journals are generally ignored by the scientific community. We should not keep WP articles on such journals just because the journals exist. In any case, the bottom line is that WP:GNG is not satisfied here. Nsk92 (talk) 20:50, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging DGG for their expert opinion. --Randykitty (talk) 13:28, 3 October 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.