Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Knowledge. Understanding. Skill

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 delete. Per compelling rationale of nominator (and others, especially RockMagnetist)based on relevant policies cited here. Obviously not a straight !vote count. Keeper | 76 03:02, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Knowledge. Understanding. Skill[edit]

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Article on a Russian academic journal. Main claims for notability are inclusion in the Russian Science Citation Index and inclusion on a Russian government list. The RSCI seems to try to include most Russian journals, so is not the kind of selective database that we usually take as proof of notability for academic journals. The Russian government list contains journals that are acceptable as outlets for PhD theses, as far as I understand, and doesn't seem to be particularly selective either. I appreciate the problems encountered by non-English-language journals in getting included in major selective databases, but even among Russian journals, this one is rarely cited: the RSCI impact factor (not to be confused with the impact factors published by the Journal Citation Reports) is only 0.13, meaning that in general only 1 in about 7 articles published in this journal gets cited even once in the first two years after the publication year. No independent sources are otherwise available either. Does not meet WP:GNG or WP:NJournals. Randykitty (talk) 15:40, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There are really few Russian academic journals presented in English Wikipedia. Some of them have practically the same (e.g., International Organisations Research Journal) or even lower the RSCI impact factor (e.g. Nezavisimiy Psikhiatricheskiy Zhurnal, although they were established much ealier. Anyway it is the data of the year 2010. Please, look upon the number of citations at present time - it is much higher than it was in 2010 (http://elibrary.ru/title_profile.asp?id=11981 - 713). So, I would like to consider that there is a justice here and one will be so kind as to indicate the difference between some other Russian humanities journals presented in English Wikipedia and this periodical. It seems that most of them are not indexed in any well-known citation indexes. Thank you in advance. In my humble opinion, the Criteria of notability are too cruel for non-English publications. As most of the articles are published in Russian it is better to search for "Знание. Понимание. Умение", for example in Google Books Stonedhamlet (talk) 16:37, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Those Google Books results, apart from this single sentence that tells us the publisher and scope of the journal, appear to consist of just a few dozen citations to articles published therein. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:23, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe, but, unfortunately, as far as I know most of the Russian academic books are not indexed in Google Books. Cf., e.g., the results for International Organisations Research Journal or Nezavisimiy Psikhiatricheskiy Zhurnal. So, why are these publications OK and this journal is not?Stonedhamlet (talk) 08:49, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS (aka WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS) is an argument better avoided in an AfD... --Randykitty (talk) 09:09, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, not so good in all English Wiki's WPs. But still I see a kind of injustice.Stonedhamlet (talk) 09:14, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Russia-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:24, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:24, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Social science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:24, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep-I haven't seen this academic journal but the topic seems notable and I broadly agree with Stonedhamlet's remarks.--Goldenaster (talk) 01:33, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - It's not clear whether the Russian Science Citation Index itself is notable. So far the article on the index has no independent sources. RockMagnetist (talk) 16:07, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - Ulrich's does not list a single index that this journal is on. RockMagnetist (talk) 16:11, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - The main source of information on this journal is eLIBRARY.RU (it is also the publisher of the Russian Science Citation Index). It says it was commissioned by the Russian Ministry of Education. So maybe it is a reliable source, but I'm not sure how to determine that. RockMagnetist (talk) 16:16, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I think that eLIBRARY.RU is reliable in the sense that we can trust the information listed on it. I don't think it confers any notability, as it seems to list basically all Russian journals. --Randykitty (talk) 16:22, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

But there is enough discussion to satisfy WP:GNG, if it is reliable. RockMagnetist (talk) 16:38, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
And Ulrich's is another source of information. RockMagnetist (talk) 16:43, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

To me, it looks like the site mainly displays information provided by the indexed journals themselves. I think they would not reproduce just anything, which is why I said that I would tend to trust the information provided, but I don't think that it is eLIBRARY.RU that has evaluated this journal and then provided the description that you see on that site. So I would only source non-controversial information from it (like date of establishment, publication frequency, and such). Ulrich's also provides information but, again, much (all?) of that is journal-provided and there's been a long-standing consensus in AfDs that being listed in Ulrich's doesn't confer notability. --Randykitty (talk) 16:50, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - It is not listed in any index that is considered by Ulrich's. It is not in Journal Citation Reports. There is not a single citation in Web of Science under its English or Russian name. It is only found in two libraries in WorldCat - Library of Congress and Bavarian State Library. As discussed above, even the sources for the citations in the article are of unclear notability. If this is unfair, the unfairness is in the real world, and it's not Wikipedia's job to remedy that. RockMagnetist (talk) 18:44, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, per analysis by Stonedhamlet (talk · contribs), above. Cheers, — Cirt (talk) 03:44, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sandstein 10:04, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Weak keep. This is a humanities journal published by a major university, and its the importance of the publisher which is the only real positive factor. . Impact factor is irrelevant--since humanities articles take many years to become cited & are then cited in a wider range of books as much as journals. That it isn't in isi or scopus is also not relevant because they do not have significant coverage in the humanities , especially not in English, and most especially not in non-roman languages. DGG ( talk ) 17:16, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The first line of the article identifies it as a science journal; it actually seems to be a mixture (sociology, philology, pedagogy, psychology, art criticism and culturology). I covered it both ways in my statement: indices for science, and library holdings for humanities. I don't see anything in Wikipedia:Notability (academic journals) about the importance of the publisher. RockMagnetist (talk) 20:42, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The Russian word "научный", which is usually translated as "scientific", has a broader meaning which includes much of what English-speakers would classify as humanities, so I don't think we should read too much into the description as a scientific journal. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:29, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The only reason I brought up the citations in the nom was because the article mentioned an impact factor. We generally consider journals notable if they're included in the Journal Citation Reports, so I wanted to make sure that it was clear that this was something else. In general, I think that sizable citation rates show notability, but that low citation rates don't necessarily prove something is not notable. In this case, I think that being published by a reputable university really is a bit too meager (WP:NOTINHERITED). Apart from that, I agree with Phil: in other languages "scientific" sometimes includes social sciences and the humanities, in contrast to English usage. --Randykitty (talk) 22:34, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: If I understand the ISI criteria correctly, they may well refuse to index this journal because of the language, as "all journals must have cited references in the Roman alphabet." [1] --Hegvald (talk) 18:01, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - I believe Hegvald is correct; we can't use those criteria exclusively. And per DGG. We should be wary of systemic bias. – SJ + 02:48, 24 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Re: ISI: there are many other selective databases that don't have this restriction and which could make a journal meet NJournals if they included it. Re: systemic bias: I don't want to appear biased, but if someone publishes a journal in a non-Latin alphabet, you kind of "build in" that the journal will never be of more than limited, local relevance only. I don't think that it constitutes a systemic bias on our part if we consider this fact (and I'm not so sure that it constitutes systemic bias on the part of the rest of the world either, in fact). --Randykitty (talk) 09:55, 24 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The primary purpose of notability criteria is to ensure that we can write properly verifiable articles on subjects which contribute to human knowledge. I think on that basis, the analyses by DGG and StonedHamlet above are persuasive that it does Wikipedia no harm, and indeed quite possibly some good, to include a short article about a serious Russian academic journal, even if its indexing in non-Cyrillic seems to lag. Ray^Talk 17:07, 25 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I closed this as keep, my read on consensus was questioned and I see the point made by the editor. At this point I think it best if someone else closes this. J04n(talk page) 22:04, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - the arguments for caution with indices are reasonable, but - as I detailed in my delete vote - this article doesn't come close to satisfying any other notability criterion. So far only DGG has attempted to provide any evidence for notability, arguing that the publisher is a major university. The article on Moscow University for the Humanities provides only weak evidence of notability; but even if it is a major university, that doesn't guarantee notability of its publications. Major publishers of all kinds often publish non-notable literature - which is probably why the publisher isn't even considered in WP:NJournals. That leaves the arguments that this article should be kept to address systemic bias or because there is an indexing lag. If such arguments prevail, what basis would be left for deleting any journal in a non-Latin alphabet? RockMagnetist (talk) 22:57, 26 March 2013 (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.