Talk:Interface: A Journal for and About Social Movements

Notability

A claim has been made that this journal does not meet Wikipedia:Notability (academic journals). I think that's incorrect. The journal meets criteria 1, 2 and perhaps 3; as there are plenty of sources that mention it: Google search for "Interface: a journal for and about social movements" yields about 50,000 hits, including places like the International Sociological Association ([1]) and P2P Foundation ([2]). It has been mentioned by other publications (here is a mention in the Journal of the Association for History and Computing. Papers published in this journal are cited, and there are many hits on Google Scholar for it: [3]. Lastly, the journal comes up high (second for me) in a Google searchfor "social movement journal", making it certainly notable and important (if a newcomer) to the field of social movement studies. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me} 16:44, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

• The external links that you added are two blog posts (one of them by someone from the journal's editorial board). Yes, one of the blogs is the newsletter of the International Sociological Association, that still does not make this anything special. The mention in the Journal of the Association for History and Computing (itself at the lower end of the notability scale, I'd say) is just an in-passing mention in a newsletter-like section of that journal. Of course Interface has been mentioned by other publications. But Google actually only gives 281 results (just scroll down) and even if all those Ghits were citations to the journal from other journals, that is completely insufficient. Compare this to WP:PROF. An academic with 281 citations will never make WP:PROF (but may make WP:GNG if there are other sources). I see none of that here. This absolutely misses WP:NJournals on all three counts (and I don't see how any 3-year-old journal could ever meet #3). --Crusio (talk) 22:36, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Because it is one of the very few journals in the social movements field. In certain small fields, there may be only few publications, but this very fewness makes them notable. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me} 23:57, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

• I'm sorry, but I find that the strangest definition of notable I have seen in a long time. Fields can always be subdivided in ever smaller ones. I'm going to take this to AfD, I think. --Crusio (talk) 08:08, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

• Fair enough. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me} 01:17, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

• Just a brief addition to note that WikiProject Sociology gives this page mid-importance, to the very best of my knowledge with no involvement from the journal in that assessment (speaking as one of its editors). --Laurence Cox (talk) 00:26, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
  • The importance can be determined by any editor; in this case it was me, and as such, it cannot be considered fully unbiased. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me} 00:43, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
    • Fair enough! It seems reasonable in terms of the Sociology criteria ("fills in some more specific knowledge of certain areas") - social movement studies are a well-established branch of the field, and knowing the journals in the field is fairly important as specific knowledge goes...) --Laurence Cox (talk) 01:37, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
• I've added material towards establishing two forms of notability. One is noting that Interface is unique among social movement journals in not being a purely academic journal but understanding itself as an activist / academic publication or practitioner journal. The other is a list of Wikipedia-notable figures who have published in Interface over the course of its first five issues. I am not 100% sure how the notability criteria work in these respects other than to observe that the journal itself programmatically seeks non-academic significance, and the article may reasonably be evaluated under both terms. --Laurence Cox (talk) 01:38, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
  • I think that's quite helpful. Now, it would be even more so if we could find proper references for that (see WP:V and WP:CITE). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me} 02:19, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

• WP:NOTINHERITED. I will take this to AfD as soon as I have time. --Crusio (talk) 09:43, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Laurence Cox appears to have failed to disclose that he is in fact the editor of said journal. IRWolfie- (talk) 12:27, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

He has a COI, yes. But acknowledging that, I think his arguments about the journal being encyclopedic still stand. If you disagree, AFD is that a'way. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 15:13, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

His arguments are besides the point: being "worthy" or "unique" has nothing to do with notability. The fact that notable people have published in the journal is irrelevant, too (WP:NOTINHERITED), unless somebody has noticed those writing and written about them and the fact that they appeared in this journal. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 15:36, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

I think we are coming back to the wider question of what makes an academic journal notable. And seeing as the academia itself is in the middle of a major shift, it's a very hard question to answer, particularly when it comes to open content journals who care less about things like big name publishers and such. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 16:21, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

No the question is answered fairly easy, in the absence of dedicated guidelines, the article must meet WP:GNG. IRWolfie- (talk) 09:27, 21 September 2012 (UTC)