Talk:Project Muse

Category created

I've set up Category:Wikipedians who have access to Project Muse for editors who have access to this service. Please add the category to your user page if this describes you. (A similar cat exists for JSTOR.) -- ℜob C. alias ⒶⓁⒶⓇⓄⒷ 19:52, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Comparison with JSTOR

Putting some comments here to avoid reverts in article.

1. There are numerous databases of journals. Why is JSTOR picked for comparison?
2. "JSTOR usually blocks access to the most recent issues, Project Muse has no blackouts." Does JSTOR actually have recent issues (albeit "blocked") and, if so, is there a citation for that?
3. Numerous journal aggregators have embargoed content. JSTOR is an archive and does not have content available for a longer period after publication than in most aggregators. It may not be intentional, but this article sounds like it is having a sly dig at JSTOR. But the delay for the moving wall is decided by the publishers not JSTOR, isn't it? The facts are: Muse has current issues; JSTOR doesn't. The first fact is stated in the first sentence; the second fact is stated in the JSTOR article and isn't particularly relevant here. Nurg (talk) 07:22, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

JSTOR and MUSE are the #1 and #2 databases in the social sciences and humanities that feature full runs, often back to volume 1. JSTOR has an announced policy that will block access to the last X years of a journal (X=0 to 10 dependening on the journal; in 80% it is 3-5 years; in 1% it is zero years, same as MUSE). The moving wall was part of its founding philosophy, and does not exist for MUSE. See Moving Wall policy (This is quite separate from the delay in getting the current issue online.) As for the technique used, JSTOR has scanned older issues but now nearly all journals are prepared online and the editors send JSTOR the files. JSTOR releases them according to its schedule. This difference in philosophy is a major feature and deserves mention--that is MUSE appeals more to the users and JSTOR to the journal editors. There is no "sly dig" here; we are comparing official policies.Rjensen (talk) 07:48, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Why the name “Project MUSE”? Is MUSE an acronym?

From this technical move request:

• Project MUSE → Project Muse — Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (trademarks) — — The Little Blue Frog (ribbit) 23:16, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
  • Does "MUSE" stand for something, which is to ask, is it an acronym? -GTBacchus^(talk) 04:07, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
    • Nope: from their own site a history of the name (HTML from a PDF via Google), page 2, small article that starts with "Why the name “Project MUSE”? Is MUSE an acronym?". Also, note that TIME and KISS have both claimed to be acronyms (backronyms, really) but Wikipedia still doesn't given them special all-caps treatment. As I understand it, it's more about the fact that you pronounce Time and Kiss and Muse like words, than about their origin; caps go to CIA or SAT because they're still pronounced C-I-A or S-A-T. — The Little Blue Frog (ribbit) 04:41, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

The above PDF link is dead; here is a working link to the Wayback Machine archive.

See "Director's Musings" on page 2.

"The most frequently repeated account of the origin for our name attributes it to the nine Muses of Greek mythology."

"The classical female figure seen in our promotional materials is our appropriated Muse, Calliope."

"...when MUSE was born, the name was used as an acronym or, to be more precise, a 'backronym.' Lore and legend say that the name 'MUSE' was a hit and, perhaps in anticipation of questions as to the reason for it, a tagline was created to match. The result was 'Many Users in Scholarly Exchange.' " – wbm1058 (talk) 21:24, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

So let's fix it. In books, "Project Muse" is most common, and it's not an acronym, so we should fix it per WP style guidelines. Dicklyon (talk) 03:26, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

Requested move 6 September 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. (non-admin closure) Edward-Woodrow • talk 14:16, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

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Project MUSE → Project Muse – Not an acronym, and most commonly not treated as one in sources (see book stats). Dicklyon (talk) 03:28, 6 September 2023 (UTC) — Relisting. HouseBlaster^talk 21:30, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose per both WP:COMMONNAME and WP:ABOUTSELF. First off, that is not a reliable use of ngrams. I highly doubt the ngrams results for "Project Muse" are really about the topic of this article, but rather are those two words merely appearing next to one another in running text - rare, but discussing Project MUSE in books is also rare. Second, whether it's an acronym or not is irrelevant. There are other reasons to use capital letters. So... we should investigate the sources. An inspection of the sources from a Google Books search for both "Project MUSE" and "Muse", seeing the previews, and narrowing to when it's on the topic of the ebooks provider - well, GBooks offers a lot of search results that say "no hits within book" when clicked on to search for Project Muse/MUSE, so that's unhelpful. Of the two that actually had hits, both Academic E-Books: Publishers, Librarians, and Users and Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education uses "Project MUSE", capital letters. Checking news sources, I see mixed results - Washington Post has [1] which uses MUSE, but NY Times uses "muse" [2] . But both seem to discuss MUSE very rarely, so I wouldn't put much stock here. Anyway, mixed news results and book results favoring capital letters makes me think that we should honor what the service itself chooses, and here there is a strong ABOUTSELF case to just use what they use: names are not running text, and are much less affected by any style concerns. Names are just names, they can't and shouldn't be "fixed" like Led vs. Lead Zeppelin. https://about.muse.jhu.edu/about/story consistently uses MUSE, so Wikipedia should as well. SnowFire (talk) 05:08, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

  The parallel curves in the n-gram stats suggest that they are likely the same topic. If they're not, you should be able to find examples of where the words "Project Muse" together refer to something different. I'm not seeing it, in news, books, or otherwise. Dicklyon (talk) 06:02, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

  A fair point. Now, I'm a big fan of ngrams, but it's also well-known that ngrams works better on less obscure phrasings, and the sample size here is extremely small. I don't cherry pick my results, but report back what I find, even if "against" my !vote. If "Project Muse" is really so common in books, why did both of the hits where GBooks previews came up with hits use "MUSE"? Possibly just bad luck, sure, but I'm standing by Books being a null tell at best here, hence ABOUTSELF being more controlling than very patchy ngrams / Books hits of unclear significance. SnowFire (talk) 17:22, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

  I really doubt that "Project Muse" (however capitalized) is a phrase that would be encountered by accident in discussions of other subjects in any significant quantity. The fact that the ngram found practically no matches from the time period before this subject existed is evidence in favour of that interpretation. Unusual styling of a name is not the same thing as unusual spelling. Sources do not typically change the spelling of a name, but it is common for independent reliable sources to exercise editorial control over aspects such as capitalization and punctuation in order to provide a more professional and consistent tone of publication. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 00:28, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

• Is there a source that states MUSE is or is not an acronym? Nardog (talk) 08:29, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

  See the section immediately above. The director says it can be interpreted as "backronym" for "Many Users in Scholarly Exchange"; but that's not where it came from. Dicklyon (talk) 15:36, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

  Again, why does this matter? If it's "really" a backronym, who cares. A backronym is still an acronym - DREAM Act is blatantly a backronym. SnowFire (talk) 17:22, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

  Knowing whether something is a backronym or not is at least relevant to detecting whether we would expect independent reliable sources to consistently use the self-published promotional styling or not. I don't think we should blindly accept strange self-published styling for subjects that have a low amount of independent reliable sources to consider. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 00:28, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

  Also, if something is a true acronym/initialism, it is typically important for the reader to understand the acronym. If something is a backronym, especially in a case like this one, it may be hard to even find the non-abbreviated version of it, and the non-abbreviated version is not helpful for the reader to understand. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 19:21, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Academic Journals has been notified of this discussion. HouseBlaster^talk 21:30, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

• Support: Independent reliable sources do not appear to consistently use the all-caps styling. All-caps is clearly promotional and tends to be strongly resisted in Wikipedia article titles. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 00:28, 16 September 2023 (UTC)
• Weak support per MOS:TMSTYLE. Nardog (talk) 01:04, 16 September 2023 (UTC)
• Support. But I do wish the article page announced where the name is derived from. Tony (talk) 05:47, 16 September 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose this universally known and branded as Project MUSE. Compare Special:WhatLinksHere/Project MUSE (1000+ mainspace links) and Special:WhatLinksHere/Project Muse (no hits, though mostly because I cleaned up the 4 links that existed before this discussion) Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:30, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

  Branded, yes. Universally known, not so much, per book stats. When sources are inconsistent, WP defaults to "normal" styling. Dicklyon (talk) 05:55, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

• Support pre MOS:TM. And "whether it's an acronym or not is irrelevant. There are other reasons to use capital letters" simply isn't true on Wikipedia (see MOS:ALLCAPS, and all of MOS:CAPS generally, and WP:NCCAPS. Also, the organization doesn't even use "Project MUSE" in their logo, but "PROJECT MUSE" indicating they are simply into use of aggrandizing capitalization.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:42, 16 September 2023 (UTC)
  • Nobody is arguing based on the logo, though, which are well-established to not count for much, so I don't see the merit in bringing it up. The actual text is very consistently Project MUSE on their website. You are free to email them to tell them that they're spelling their own name wrong and are being "aggrandizing", but while they are currently using MUSE, that is an ABOUTSELF argument to trust them to know their own name. SnowFire (talk) 21:10, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
    • The styling of a name is not the same thing as the name itself, and independent reliable sources are preferred over self-published material. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 05:50, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
• Support per MOS:ALLCAPS and MOS:TM. It would be good form when rewriting to note that all-caps is the prefer styling.~TPW 17:52, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
• Support. I think Dicklyon and SMcCandlish are correct. Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 23:58, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.