Talk:The Journal of Slavic Military Studies

Recent additions and deletions

I have put in material from an independent WP:RS, namely ResearchGate, researchgate.net. This includes some actual content about this journal. One of our editors thinks that this content is promotional. I think it is descriptive and informs readers about the journal. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 14:45, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

• The promotional language added to the journal is sourced to ResearchGate. Content on that site is user-generated (so it is not a reliable source). Comparing the blurb on this journal on ResearchGate with the blurb on its own website shows so many parallels that it is obvious that, whatever its reliability, the ResearchGate one is not independent either. I have tagged the article as an advert and call upon 7&6=thirteen to revert this addition. --Randykitty (talk) 14:54, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

I disagree. I call upon Randykitty to remove the drive by tagging. Or change the language that "offends" to something that will meet your editorial standard. This article otherwise has virtually no content. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 15:02, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

I wanted to ask about this on the reliable sources noticeboard, but there has already been a discussion, concluding that ResearchGate is not a reliable source (see Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 178#Is ResearchGate reliable?). If that is not enough for you, I can start a new discussion there. --Randykitty (talk) 15:09, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

That discussion does not discuss or concern their discussions of journals. It apparently concerned articles posted.

We can start a discussion there. You might consider this in the context of sources concerning journals generally—a subject in which you have displayed an interest. It would be nice to have content in these articles. That you can and do strike content may not be an improvement to the encyclopedia. If you have a better source, I would like to hear about it. Having a mere title of a journal in Wikipedia provides almost zero information to readers. ResearchGate on this issue is better than a void. I have always found the distrust of anything that uses user contributions – a distrust endemic to Wikipedia – to be tinged in irony. If the professionals in the field do not know the worth of the professional journals, who does? 7&6=thirteen (☎) 15:24, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

If you look at my userpage, you'll see a whole section with resources to find stuff relevant for journals. For this journal, I didn't find anything. Because it was only a short, neutral stub, I didn't go to the trouble of taking it to AfD. Yes, it is brief. But worse than a brief article is one containing promotional stuff sourced to an unreliable source. I have solicited the opinions of other editors at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#ResearchGate. --Randykitty (talk) 15:40, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

It is still a short neutral stub, IMO. It now has additional sources. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 15:54, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

You really think that "a unique international editorial board" is neutral? Or "varied and surprising content"? "In its field it is cited and noted"? With a grand total of 271 citations (98 of them self citations) for no less than 817 published articles (Microsoft Academic Search) and an h-index of 2 (TWO!) (SCImago)? This means that 75% of its published articles have not even been cited once and only 2 articles have been cited more than once. These figures are abysmal and basically show that this comes as close to being completely ignored as possible. Neither of the sources you give says anything like "cited and noted in its field" (WP:SYNTH/WP:OR). You also added a reference to Army Guide to the promotional paragraph, even though the whole content of that reference is "Academic journal investigating all aspects of military affairs in the Slavic nations of central and eastern Europe in historical and geopolitical context." Again, probably just publisher-provided and certainly not a post vetted by some editorial oversight. Have a look at the writing guide for journal articles for tips on how to create/expand journal articles in a neutral way. The adat.crl.edu reference does not provide much info either, with one notable exception: it claims that the journal is abstracted and indexed in Scopus. I just checked and this is indeed correct. Scopus is not very selective, but selective enough to make a journal notable under WP:NJournals. I'll add this to the article. --Randykitty (talk) 16:28, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Unlike in most other fields of study, academic papers in military history are NOT considered primary sources. Military history papers cite archival data. You can't expect a research paper to be citing secondary sources (i.e. other research papers). Academic papers in the field of military history don't tend to cite each other, unlike in other fields of study. In fact, any military history book that mostly cites papers and books of other military historians is typically considered average or mediocre in book reviews published in military journals. My guess is that you're not very familiar with military history journals (well, there aren't many of them to begin with). But my guess could be dead wrong! Anyways you can check out and compare this journal to other military history journals, like The Journal of Military History. EyeTruth (talk) 19:19, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, but that is absolute nonsense. Historians regularly cite each others work and I see no reason why military historians would be an exception to this. --Randykitty (talk) 19:43, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

You "see no reason" because it's clear you are not sufficently conversant with military history. So why would you expect to see a reason when you don't understand it. Check other military history journals and tell me which one has 300+ citations over any 20 or 30-year period. Anyways, this won't be turning into an argument. EyeTruth (talk) 21:16, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

• Just tried to fix the ref to the Army Guide site (the = sign is missing between "url" and "http"), but the WP software didn't allow that noting that this is a blacklisted website. Please remove that "reference". --Randykitty (talk) 16:39, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

"The Journal of Slavic Military Studies". Army Guide. {{cite journal}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Text "urlhttp://army-guide.com/eng/firm3706.html" ignored (help) removed per your request. This is a WP:Blacklisted site. Cumulative it may be, but it does, however, corroborate the other references. I could have given the numbers for citations. You could, too. I'm glad we agree it is notable. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 16:49, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

I've copy edited this down. It is not written "like an advertisement." Your tag is unwarranted now. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 18:02, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, but as long as the article contains promotional language "sourced" to ResearchGate, the advert tag needs to stay. In addition, you just added a long list of authors (most apparently not notable, not that it makes any difference). This has no place in an article on a journal, except if there are independent reliable sources that comment on how this journal published articles by these people. A link to that Microsoft site really doesn't do it. Almost no other articles on academic journals contain such lists. There's a long-standing consensus in the WikiProject Academic Journals (see also WP:JWG) that this kind of name dropping flies in the face of WP:NOTINHERITED. --Randykitty (talk) 19:37, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

• I think it is clear from the discussion at the RS noticeboard that ResearchGate is not a reliable source. In fact, the linked page carries a note at the bottom of the page, saying: "Data provided are for informational purposes only. Although carefully collected, accuracy cannot be guaranteed." I will therefore remove this reference and the (promotional) text that it was supposed to source. --Randykitty (talk) 10:12, 20 February 2015 (UTC)