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on
style
.
It contains the advice and/or opinions of one or more
WikiProjects
on how to format and present article content within their area of interest.
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This guide is intended to assist editors in the creation and writing of articles on
academic journals
,
conference proceedings
,
monographic series
, and other scholarly
serial publications
. After following this, you should have a "
perfect stub
", and bigger articles should feel a bit more "mainstream". Note that this guide is not intended to replace
Wikipedia's Manual of Style
and that articles should follow the usual layout/formatting guidelines.
For the sake of simplicity, these publications will be referred as 'journals' in this guideline, unless otherwise noted.
If you are
affiliated with a journal or its publisher
, this puts you in a
conflict of interest
. Wikipedia has several policies on the topic, with which you must comply to ensure a
neutral point of view
. The highlights are if you are compensated for editing, or are asked to edit an article as part of your job,
you must disclose it
. Likewise, if you are not compensated but stand to gain standing, gain status in your field, get credit in a course, or advance a cause,
you must disclose it
. If you do not disclose such conflicts of interest, you may be
blocked
from editing. See
Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure
and
Wikipedia:Conflict of interest
for more information.
Disclosing these conflicts of interest can be done as follows:
For example, an employee of Foobar Publishing (from interns, to editorial board members, to a journal's editor-in-chief) would be required to disclose their connection to Foobar Publishing. Note that this also covers edits made to competitors and affiliates of the employer. Likewise, a scientist that publishes research in a journal can also have a conflict of interest since a scientist's status is often judged based on where they publish their research. This is particularly true of
recently established journals
,
niche journals
, or
fringe journals
. While
Science
'
s and
Nature
'
s reputation are well established by now, this may not be true of a recently established journal (roughly anything established in the last 20 years or so), of a niche journal of interest to only a handful of people (e.g.
Horological Institute of America Journal
), or of a fringe/pseudoscience journal (e.g.
Answers Research Journal
).
Note that disclosing your conflicts of interest does not grant you a "right" to edit, or give you license to
advocate
or
advertise
, it is simply a minimum requirement for participation. If you are in a conflict of interest, it is best to limit yourself to this guide and stick to adding/updating non-controversial information (see
what to include
and
what not to include
) such as updating
journal articles related to your publisher
to have the most up-to-date impact factors, document history (merges/splits, current/previous editor(s)-in-chief), uploading missing cover images, fixing links to official websites, or expanding the
further reading
section. Updating existing routine information based on updated sources is also non-controversial. However, if you wanted to add a section on how the journal recently won some recognition, or the specific business practices of the journal/publisher, it is probably best to suggest doing so on the article's talk page (with sources) and let other editors decide if this is warranted.
If something is unclear, or if you are unsure of something or need help getting around, you can always ask for advice at
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Academic journals
. If you are
here to improve
the encyclopedia and want to edit in line with community expectations, you will find helpful editors. If you are
here to promote
a journal, attempt
search engine optimization
, or otherwise try to
game Wikipedia
, your efforts will most likely be in vain and may be
blocked
. Your efforts may even
backfire
, as Wikipedians are prone to purge anything
remotely
promotional in an attempt to sanitize articles edited by those with COIs (leaving the article more negative than it would have otherwise been). You may also cause a PR nightmare for yourself by making the news for attempting to subvert Wikipedia,
causing
the general public to
vandalise the article
with rather unflattering claims.
Getting started
[
edit
]
Before starting to write an article on a journal, it helps to keep a few things in mind.
- First,
search
for the journal's article on Wikipedia. It might already exist under a slightly different name than you were expecting.
- Second, make sure the journal is notable according to
our notability guidelines
, otherwise it will probably be deleted. A journal will usually be considered notable if
at least one
of the three following criteria are met:
- The journal is considered by reliable sources to be influential in its subject area.
- The journal is frequently cited by other reliable sources.
- The journal is historically important in its subject area.
- This makes it hard for newly established journals to get an article on Wikipedia, as they usually have not had time to become influential journals. As a rule of thumb, if a journal is indexed in
high-selectivity
bibliographic databases
in its field (e.g.
Scopus
or
Science Citation Index
) or has an
impact factor
, this will usually be enough to establish notability. Being indexed in
low-selectivity
(e.g.
Emerging Sources Citation Index
,
Directory of Open Access Journals
), or
comprehensive
(e.g.
Google Scholar
) bibliographic databases is not enough. An alternative to a standalone article is to create a section in another relevant article. For instance
Bird Notes
is detailed in a section of our
Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
article.
- Writing an article about a journal usually is easier if you have an issue of the journal next to you, or the journal's website loaded in your browser, or both.
- Tracking down the history of a journal can be a bit complicated. Merges, splits, renaming, etc... are sometimes mentioned on the website, but are often omitted. The
National Library of Australia
's
catalogue
is a good place to look for such information. The
CODEN
database is also a good place. While library catalogs can sometimes provide clues, care should be exercised as they can be outdated or contain errors.
Article name
[
edit
]
The article should be located at the official full name of the journal (
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
, not
PNAS
) unless it is officially known in an abbreviated form (
FASEB Journal
, not
Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Journal
). Use
title case
, rather than
sentence case
(
The Lancet
, not
The lancet
) per
WP:NCCAPS
.
- The:
If the "The" is part of the official full name, the article should be located at that name (
The American Journal of Medicine
, not
American Journal of Medicine
, but
American Journal of Physics
, not
The American Journal of Physics
).
- Subtitle:
Subtitles are not part of the title. For example, use
European Journal of Physics
, and not
European Journal of Physics: A Journal of the European Physical Society
.
- "Topical" subtitles can be included in the
lead section
if
they clarify the topic of the journal. For example, see
Journal of Physics A
, with
Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical
is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by IOP Publishing...
in its lead section, since it is not immediately obvious what the topic of the journal (especially when part of a series like
Journal of Physics A/B/C/D/E/F/G
each covering different topics). "
Fluff
" subtitles, like
An International Journal
or
Official Organ of the International Foobar Society
should be omitted entirely.
- Capitalization:
Use
title case
(
American Journal of Physics
, not
American journal of physics
). In foreign languages, honor the native usage (e.g.,
Comptes rendus de l'Academie des sciences
, not
Comptes Rendus de l'Academie des Sciences
? but create a redirect, see below.)
- Disambiguation:
If the journal title is already used for a more important subject, add the suffix "(journal)", as in
Injury
(journal)
.
See
below
for guidance on how to deal with alternate spelling and former names.
The infobox
[
edit
]
- Note:
For professional or trade magazines, you'll want to use
{{
infobox magazine
}}
instead of
{{
infobox journal
}}
.
The first step of creating a journal article is to add the
{{
infobox journal
}}
template to a page, and fill as many entries as you can. You can
copy-paste the code
from the documentation page in the article, rather than type it all yourself. It is OK to leave blank fields. An infobox does not replace prose, it simply presents key information (such as ISSN, language, license, impact factor, journal website, etc...) in a consistent (and
machine-readable
) manner from article to article. Filling this infobox will also help with the writing of the article. Please read the
documentation
for this infobox carefully before filling in the different fields.
The ISSN is usually listed on the journal's website, but the other identifiers such as LCCN, OCLC, CODEN will usually need to be looked up. See
Wikipedia:WikiProject Academic Journals/Resources
for where to look for those.
Moving from the infobox to prose
[
edit
]
After you're done filling the infobox, convert what you can into prose. For example, if the
Journal of Foo
is a peer-reviewed journal published weekly by Acme focusing on codfish reproduction and migration, founded in 1924 by John Doe, you can write something like:
- The '''''Journal of Foo''''' is a [[peer-reviewed]] [[academic journal]] which focuses on [[codfish]] [[reproduction]] and [[fish migration|migration]]. It was founded in 1924 by the Austrian biologist [[John Doe]], and is published by [[Acme Corporation|Acme]] on a weekly basis.
(Replace "
academic journal
" with "
scientific journal
" or "
medical journal
" if that is more appropriate.)
Pretty much everything from the infobox can be included in prose, but leave out things like ISSN, OCLC identifier, website, and other "technical" information. Good descriptions of the journals can usually be found in the first few pages of the journal, or on their website, but sometimes they are overly precise and need to be "condensed".
Please reference everything you write. You can use a
citation template
to facilitate your task. The
{{
cite web
}}
and
{{
cite journal
}}
templates will usually prove particularly handy. If you use the same source multiple times, you can write
<ref name="NAME">{{cite xxx|author=|year=|title=|url=|publisher=|accessdate=}}</ref>
the first time, and
<ref name="NAME"/>
subsequent times (replace
NAME
with something you like, such as
JFooWebsite
).
This tool
can greatly facilitate filling out the templates.
Never
copy-paste descriptions (or anything else) from journal websites. These cannot be trusted to be
neutral
and are likely to be
copyrighted material
. Beware of
weasel words
, such as "is a
leading
journal...", "publishes
high-quality
research...", etc...
What to include
[
edit
]
Journal scope
[
edit
]
The article should have a brief description of the journal's scope and fields of interest (which is different from its
aims
). Explicitly mention if the journal is peer-reviewed or not. Not being peer-reviewed is exceedingly rare for academic journals, so this usually means that the publication is better treated as a
magazine
(see
the magazine article writing guide
). Unless there is a lot to say, this information can be included in the lead.
Official affiliations
[
edit
]
If the journal is affiliated with scientific societies (i.e. is their official journal), or part of an independent network of publications (such as the
Geoscience e-Journals
, the
Budapest Open Access Initiative
, or
SCOAP
3
, but not
ScienceDirect
or
Wiley Online Library
), this should be mentioned. Unless there is a lot to say on this topic, this information can be included in the lead.
Publication history
[
edit
]
The article should have information about any of the following which apply
- Year of establishment and disestablishment
- Former title(s)
- Founding editor(s)
- Language of publication (if non-English, or in addition to English)
- Mergers and splits with other journals
- Main journal series or directly affiliated publications
- Previous and current editor(s)-in-chief (or equivalent position)
- Previous and current publisher(s)
- Previous and current frequency of publication
If only little information is available (such as just one previous title), this should be included in the lead. Otherwise, create a subheading named "History" (see
Journal of the National Cancer Institute
§ History
or
Journal of Optics
§ History
for examples).
Supplements and side publications
[
edit
]
Some journals have supplemental issues or side publications (such as
The Astrophysical Journal
, with
The Astrophysical Journal Letters
and
The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series
). If this is the case, mention them along with relevant information (editor, ISSN, year of establishment, impact factor, abstracting/indexing information, etc.). If these publications are
notable on their own
(such as
Physical Review Letters
), consider creating a standalone article for them.
Abstracting and indexing information
[
edit
]
This information can often be obtained from the journal's website, or through
MIAR
. The information is generally best presented in its own subsection titled "Abstracting and indexing". List any selective or topical databases. These are crucial to establish that the journal passes our
notability guidelines
, e.g.:
- The journal is [[abstracting and indexing|abstracted and indexed]] in the [[Social Sciences Citation Index]], [[Current Contents]]/Social & Behavioral Sciences, and [[Scopus]].
Selective or topical database mean things like the
Astrophysics Data System
, the
British Humanities Index
,
MEDLINE
,
INIS Atomindex
,
PASCAL
,
Scopus
, (
Social
)
Science Citation Index
, etc. Trivial listings in non-selective or non-topical databases such as the
ISSN Register
,
Google Scholar
,
Index Copernicus
, or
Directory of Open Access Journals
should be omitted.
Finish the section with the journal's
impact factor
as given in the
Journal Citation Reports
. Do not give a list of past impact factors, but only the most recent one (the below text can be directly copied and pasted into the article with the missing information filled in):
- According to the ''[[Journal Citation Reports]]'', the journal has a 2020 [[impact factor]] of x.xxx.<ref name=WoS>{{cite book |year=2021 |chapter=JOURNALNAME |title=2020 [[Journal Citation Reports]] |publisher=[[Clarivate]] |edition=Science |series=[[Web of Science]]}}</ref>
Preferably, include the ranking information provided by the
Journal Citation Reports
. In this case, use this text instead:
- According to the ''[[Journal Citation Reports]]'', the journal has a 2020 [[impact factor]] of x.xxx, ranking it xxth out of xxx journals in the category "CATEGORY".<ref name=WoS>{{cite book |year=2021 |chapter=Journals Ranked by Impact: CATEGORYNAME |title=2020 [[Journal Citation Reports]] |publisher=[[Clarivate]] |edition=Science |series=[[Web of Science]]}}</ref>
It is acceptable to take this information from the journal publisher's website and use the above references as a source, even if you don't have access to the
Journal Citation Reports
yourself.
Landmark papers
[
edit
]
If the journal has published particularly famous papers (e.g. papers that are notable enough to warrant their own Wikipedia article), like the
1964 PRL symmetry breaking papers
(published in
Physical Review Letters
), or "
Two Dogmas of Empiricism
" (published in
The Philosophical Review
), mention those. You can also mention particular papers that have attracted
significant coverage
in
independent sources
. A small number of quotations, especially in local news media or blogs, is not unexpected for papers and so falls short of this mark.
Further reading
[
edit
]
Retrospective articles about the history of a journal, or news items/web pages/books detailing specific milestones, are particularly desirable additions to our articles. If you know of such sources, include them in a 'Further reading' section. While they are rarely
independent
sources
, they might be acceptable as
primary references
for uncontroversial claims, and will offer valuable
insider
views to the reader. For instance
would add a lot of value to the relevant articles (
Aligarh Institute Gazette
,
American Journal of Nursing
, and
Physical Review Letters
, respectively).
What
not
to include
[
edit
]
Aims, mission statements, readership
[
edit
]
A journal of oncology can be assumed to have the goals of furthering research in oncology and related fields, as well as be aimed towards oncologists and related professions. If you correctly described the scope of the journal, e.g. "
Journal of Foobar
is a peer-reviewed scientific journal of oncology with a focus on chemo- and radiotheraphy methods.
", then the aims of the journal and its readership will be obvious.
List of authors and full editorial boards
[
edit
]
Journals often like to list well-known or prestigious academics, or to include them on their editorial board to add to their reputation. While journals are free to do whatever they want on their websites, authors have little impact on the daily operations of the journal, as do most of the editorial board. Therefore, lists of contributors and full editorial boards should be left out of articles, unless there are
independent reliable sources
discussing their involvement with the journal in a more-than-
in-passing
way.
Other things
[
edit
]
Things like
- Author rights and permissions
- Contact information
- FAQs
- Index-like list of articles published in the journal
- Physical address
- Pricing and subscription information
- Submission guidelines
are all best left out of the article. Anyone who truly cares about that can consult the journal's website.
Cover
[
edit
]
If possible, you should
upload an image
of the cover of the journal and place it in the infobox. You can usually find low-resolution images on the journal's website (or on the publisher's website) that can be uploaded under
our non-free media use guidelines
. For an example of a cover upload, see
here
.
External links
[
edit
]
Here give a link to the homepage of the journal. It is already present in the infobox, but a link to the home page of an organization needs to be added in this section. Also, give the homepage of its affiliated society/organization if it has one and this has no article of its own. Something like:
- {{Official website|http://www.journalofoo.com}}
- [http://www.FooSociety.com Foo Society of Sierra Gordo]
Publisher homepages are usually of very little relevance, so do not include them unless they are of particular relevance (for example if the publisher was founded to publish that specific journal). Likewise, omit links to social media sites (such as
Facebook
and
Twitter
pages). For more general guidelines on this subject, see
Wikipedia:External links#Official links
and
Wikipedia:External links#Links normally to be avoided
.
Remember to italicize the title of the page as appropriate. Usually this will be done automatically by
the infobox
, but can also be achieved by placing
{{
italic title
}}
at the top of the page if no infobox is present. Also make sure to italicize the name of the journal everywhere in the text.
Categories
[
edit
]
Several categories should be added to the article when possible.
- A category detailing the field of the journal. Please visit
Category:Academic journals by subject area
and pick an appropriate category when possible. If you don't find any that are suitable, then just add the generic
Category:Academic journals
and somebody else will take care of it in due time.
- Open access journals
- Some publishers have their own journal categories. Please visit
Category:Academic journals by publisher
and pick an appropriate category when possible.
- For some publication frequencies, separate journal categories exist. Please visit
Category:Academic journals by publication frequency
and pick an appropriate category when possible.
- For some languages, separate journal categories exist. Please visit
Category:Academic journals by language
and pick one or more appropriate categories when possible. For journals published in two or more languages, use
Category:Multilingual journals
, too.
- A category detailing the year of establishment (i.e.
[[Category:Publications established in YYYY]]
) and, if applicable, disestablishment (
[[Category:Publications disestablished in YYYY]]
, in which case you'd also want to add it to
[[Category:Defunct journals]]
).
If the page starts with a
The
(such as
The Journal of Foo
), add the appropriate sortkey at the bottom of the page (
{{DEFAULTSORT:Journal Of Foo, The}}
). See
Wikipedia:Categorization#Sort keys
if you are unfamiliar with sortkeys.If any category is missing, contact
WikiProject Academic Journals
and let us know that the category is missing.
Redirects
[
edit
]
Create
redirects
for the following and tag them with the relevant
{{
R from
}}
template.
- Note that
{{
Infobox journal
}}
will automatically ask you to create abbreviations for the
ISO 4
,
Bluebook
,
NLM
, and
MathSciNet
standards once you fill the
|abbreviation=
/
|bluebook=
/
|mathscinet=
/
|nlm=
parameters of the infobox. Generic/non-standard abbreviations can be created manually and tagged with
{{
R from abbreviation
}}
.
- Acronyms:
Acronyms
can be redirected to the journal if they are unique to the journal (if so, create them and tag with
{{
R from acronym
}}
). However, many acronyms will refer to multiple things. Those are best handled as a
disambiguation page
. Variants of acronyms should also point to the disambiguation page.
- with an entry for the journal added to the disambiguation page.
- Typos:
If there is a likely or common typo for the journal, you can create a redirect for it as well, tagged with
{{
R from typo
}}
- However, this is not critical and you can skip this step for most typos. Misspellings due to differences between
American and British English
are more important to identify however (e.g.
Journal of Archeology
vs
Journal of Archaeology
).
Stub templates
[
edit
]
If the article is missing the
some of the information suggested by this guide
(completed infobox, scope, affiliations, publication history, and abstracting/indexing information), add a stub template such as
{{
Biology-journal-stub
}}
(see
list of journals stub templates
for more) at the bottom of the article. If no specific stub template can be found, you can use the more generic
{{
Academic-journal-stub
}}
. The stub template will correctly categorize the page in the appropriate stub category?you do not need to add the stub category directly.
Wikiprojects tagging and planning for the long-term
[
edit
]
- Note:
For professional or trade magazines, you'll usually want to use
{{
WikiProject Magazines
}}
instead of
{{
WikiProject Academic Journals
}}
. However, sometimes both
{{
WikiProject Academic Journals
}}
and
{{
WikiProject Magazines
}}
might be appropriate.
It is important for the long-term development of articles that their talk pages be tagged with an
appropriate WikiProject
template and given an
assessment rating
. You should add the WikiProject Academic Journals template
{{
WikiProject Academic Journals
}}
and
other relevant WikiProject templates when possible (such as
{{
WikiProject Physics
}}
; see
Category:WikiProjects by discipline
for more). Doing so will ensure that the relevant WikiProjects will be contacted if the article is (for example)
nominated for deletion
(if they subscribe to the
Article Alerts
system), and will be categorized in the appropriate
Cleanup Listings
, on top of providing convenient links to WikiProjects for editors looking for help.
This also applies to relevant disambiguation pages. There is no need to tag redirects, but it is not wrong to do so either. For example, see
For clarity, each template should be on their own line at the top of the talk page, e.g.:
{{WikiProject Academic Journals|class=...}}
{{WikiProject Physics|class=...}}
How to assess articles
[
edit
]
In general, rating articles as Stub/Start/C/B class based on your 'gut feeling' is fairly uncontroversial and can be done unilaterally. The threshold between C class and B class is often difficult to gauge, and it doesn't terribly matter which of these two ratings the article gets, but typically C is more appropriate than B class for 'short' articles. You can rate articles by placing
|class=Stub
,
|class=Start
,
|class=C
,
|class=B
and so on in their Wikiproject template (e.g.
{{
WikiProject Academic Journals
|class=Stub}}
).
- If the article is missing the
some of the information suggested by this guide
(completed infobox, scope, affiliations, publication history, and abstracting/indexing information), it should be rated as 'Stub' class.
- If the article contains
all the information suggested by this guide
(completed infobox, scope, affiliations, publication history, and abstracting/indexing information), it should be rated 'Start' class.
- If the article contains more than the 'basic' information suggested by this guide (e.g. if it has a substantively developed history section), it may be appropriate to rate the article 'C' or 'B' class (
|class=C
or
|class=B
) (see
assessment rating
). If unsure, rate as C class over B class.
- If the article is substantially developed and well written, you may considered nominating it for a
good
or
featured
article status. Do not unilaterally assess them as such yourself. As of 2015, only two journal articles have reached good-article status:
The Accounting Review
and
Genes, Brain and Behavior
. No journal article has reached featured-article status.