Talk:Ufahamu

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Academic journal?

• I wonder in how far this is an academic journal. As far as I can see from the journal's home page, it is not peer-reviewed. If that is correct, this rather belongs in the WikiProject Magazines. --Crusio (talk) 13:21, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
• It absolutely is an academic journal (please see my book on the topic). Not all academic journals are peer-reviewed, especially in the sciences. Thus, peer review is not the sign of whether something is an academic journal. This journal is listed in Ulrich's Web as an academic journal, and that is the final authority. --WLBelcher (talk) 21:50, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Disputes over content of this page

This is for RandyKitty. I thank you for your help with this page. The student and I are still learning how to work on Wikipedia pages, learning a lot from the Wikipedia Education Foundation. Some of what we have done is clearly problematic and sorry for the undoes, I was just trying to get back for my own knowledge the information that we inserted. I now see how to do that through the compare feature. However, some of your edits I don't agree with. Are you willing to discuss this?--WLBelcher (talk) 21:09, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

This is for RandyKitty. Okay, thanks for agreeing to discuss this. So many changes were made to the original article that my student wrote, that much of what remained was nonsense. But a lot of what was there originally was important and it simply must go back in in some form: for instance, the main source on the journal, the history by Hale, was deleted. Here is my proposal. Ufahamu is not a regular academic journal and if you are not in African studies, you are not aware of what this journal was--a historic part of the decolonization process. If you know a Wikipedia editor who edits academic journals, as you do, but is in African studies, would you mind alerting them to this article and asking them to edit it instead? I'm not against editing; I know we've done things wrong; I'm against editing that restricts our ability to write up much needed information on this really rare archive of African history. I need someone who can help us build a better article, not just tear down a weak one. --WLBelcher (talk) 23:02, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

The reliance on "usual" sources of citation statistics is problematic for establishing the significance of pioneering journals in underrepresented areas of scholarship. It seems that, although the previous efforts of authors to establish the citation rates may not be directly comparable to more well-accepted sources, they do represent evidence of the journal's impact. I would think that, with appropriate cautions, some such statistics could be included. Ufahamu is not included by ISI, but we can't let an organization founded by a natural scientist to dictate what is important in an area such as African Studies. Mschmidt62 (talk) 00:25, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

• I'm afraid there are a number of important misconceptions about Wikipedia in what you write above. First, one does not need to be an expert in order to edit a certain article (although basic competence is required, of course). The reason for this is simple: articles need to be based on verifiable independent reliable sources. We don't write what we have figured out ourselves (see WP:OR and WP:SYNTH)), but only what those sources have said. So WP will not "dictate what is important" at all. WP only reflects what others have deemed important. Hence our concept of notability, which has nothing to do with "important" or good or bad, but is used in its literal meaning of "having been noted". BTW, Ufahamu is not only not included in any ISIS citation index, it's not even included in the far less selective Scopus either. In short, the article at this point does not do a good job of showing that others have deemed this journal worthy of note. Most references are to the journal itself and the others are just short, in-passing stuff, not in-depth discussions. In order to remain on WP, you will have to show that it meets our inclusion criteria (either WP:GNG or WP:NJournals) and at this point, I don't see this. Finally, please realize that WP is supposed to be an encyclopedia. So the writing here should be encyclopedic and neutral. WP is not the place to promote anything (and please note that "promotional" does not necessary mean that an editor should have a financial interest, we see promotional edits in anything from politics and religion to people who are fans from some band or singer) or to correct the wrongs of the world... --Randykitty (talk) 13:06, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

This is for RandyKitty. Okay, I'm taking out my previous comment. But I will just say that I'm sorry to see, Randykitty, that you have escalated to threatening to remove this historic journal, which has been so important to so many, as we proved in our original article. Wikipedia has a problem with the under-representation of people and things not to do with white Western culture and your editing here is a great example. All I ask is that you go and read some of the research on the racism of Wikipedia to see whether any of it would help you to find a way through to allow this journal to exist.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Wendybelcher (talk • contribs) 16:19, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

• I'm not threatening anything. I'm telling you what kind of content is not acceptable and what kind of content is needed for this to meet our inclusion criteria. If this journal is "so important to so many", then it should be easy to find sources for this that say so. Surely you understand that what you or I personally deem important cannot be the measure of what should or should not be included in WP. There are subjects that I care about a lot and think are very important, yet I don't create an article about them because there are no good sources. It's a sad fact that a mediocre rapper or third rate football player is more likely to get independent coverage in reliable sources than academic journals. Says something about our society, I guess. Many editors here try to include as many articles on those journals as we can, but we also face strong opposition in doing this (just see the heated discussions on the talk page of WP:NJournals...) --Randykitty (talk) 17:05, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

This is for RandyKitty. Thanks for that. I appreciate it. But, you aren't getting the problem if you can state something like: if this journal is "so important to so many", then it should be "easy to find sources for this that say so." That's exactly the problem with non-Western things. Huge figures and events are mere traces in Western scholarship. That doesn't mean that they are unimportant. That means there is a problem with Western scholarship. Okay, so Wikipedia depends on that and must reflect that bias, I get that, but you can't say that the sources should be easy to find. They aren't. They are buried in journals and books on the African continent, often in African languages, that have never been digitized and that don't appear on citation calculations. I can tell you with certainty that every African academic in the United States knows what this journal is and could tell you about its importance. However, most people don't discuss the journals they cite in their articles, they just cite its articles. --WLBelcher (talk) 19:24, 30 December 2016 (UTC) The question is how open you are to the idea that some softening of the interpretation of the rules is possible. If ISI and Google refuse to include this journal in its citation reports, why can't we use an alternate metric? That's why I tried to use citations, in Wikipedia and Harzing. I get that they don't work, but what alternatives can you offer? You are the expert on academic journals. You are the best person to figure out how best to represent these non-Western journals. We need your help for this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wendybelcher (talk • contribs) 17:40, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

• I am open to anything, but we have to work within the rules. Otherwise sooner or later somebody will come by and propose this for deletion. What we need is not that some other journal has cited some article from Ufahamu, but references that discuss the journal itself. Footnote 3 (mentioned in the next comment might be a step in the right direction (but I don't have access to JSTOR, so I can't check). However, for GNG we need multiple sources, so at best this is a step in the right direction. As for softening the interpretation of the rules, did you have a look at the talk page of NJournals? At this point, the trend is for tightening them, not softening... Anyway, as for sources in other languages than English or on paper, those are perfectly acceptable (see WP:RS). --Randykitty (talk) 18:04, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

• I'm unclear as to why this journal is not considered important enough for inclusion here. It would seem to be that its mention in academic journals, such as footnote number three counts as academic acceptance. But regardless of this point, your main point seems to be that it isn't an academic journal. Perhaps, since it was a student journal (though always a student-faculty journal) and not peer-reviewed (I don't know that status) it is still a useful and influential publication in its own right, just as other journals might be that are not strictly scholarly in a narrow sense of the term. Excluding such journals is tantamount to excluding, for example, literary journals which clearly aren't peer-reviewed. The fact that so many well-known academics published in the journal and the fact that one of the articles was cited over two hundred times in academic literature (since this number came form Google Scholar) would seem to argue in favor of its inclusion. Beepsie (talk) 17:50, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

• Hi, nobody (as far as I can see) has said that this journal is not important enough for inclusion, nor have I said that it isn't an academic journal. What I have said above is that the article as it stands does not make clear how this journal meets our inclusion criteria, and that's not the same thing. If I was convinced that this doesn't meet those criteria, I'd already have taken it to WP:AFD. That well-known academics publish in the journal is an encouraging sign that notability (not the same thing as "importance") may be there, but the fact that these people contribute is not in itself sufficient (see WP:NOTINHERITED). --Randykitty (talk) 18:04, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

This is for RandyKitty: I still don't see you doing anything to actually help. Just citing the rules we already know isn't helpful. As the novelist Chris Abani once put it, "no racism is so hard to prove as the racism of ALL the rules apply to you." Rules are how people defend exclusion. Black men are stopped at higher rates for speeding, and white men defend it, saying, "you see, you were speeding, you deserve that ticket," never once thinking about all the times they weren't stopped for speeding. And that in general, white men speed more. That's an example of rules being applied unfairly. The policies at Wikipedia were not designed to exclude worthy material at the margins. Why don't you actually do some research on this journal and help build it? Until you do something to build it instead of tear it down, you are part of the problem. --WLBelcher (talk) 19:24, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

To all commentators: I want to be fair to everyone who comments here and notify them that the dispute over this article is likely to become an open petition to Wikipedia management, as a case study in racist exclusion, and an article on same for one of the blogs like Africa is a Country, AfricaFocus, and so on. I don't want to spring that on anyone later. Edits of this page and comments made here on the Talk page may be cited in that petition and article. --WLBelcher (talk) 19:41, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

• I'm sorry that you feel like this. You seem to be familiar with this periodical, so you should be in a much better position than me to find sources. All I have tried to do is explain to you how things are being done here and what is acceptable content. And as thanks I now get this rant comparing my efforts to racism? A "case study in racist exclusion"? Whenever did race come into this??? And you're supposed to be the instructor to a class on editing WP?? I guess you haven't gotten around to reading WP:NPA yet. You're welcome to include anything I have done or said here into whatever petition you like. But I don't want to spring this on you later: One more remark like that and we'll go to WP:ANI. I'm done talking with you. --Randykitty (talk) 23:22, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't think it's the same thing to say that "applying the rules rigorously may lead to a prejudicial outcome" is the same as saying "you're a racist." And I read WLBelcher's critique as being far closer to the first than to the second. I think those who work in African Studies are used to having their whole field being dismissed as relatively unimportant, and are likewise are well aware that what had been written in the scholarly literature prior to the mid-twentieth century was condescending and colonial. It is not in the nature of a personal attack to see this well-ingrained institutional bias as a roadblock to the documentation of the importance of an innovative journal, founded at a time of growing racial awareness and decolonization. The first paragraph of this article, outlining the historical context of its founding, places it clearly in a space in which race and institutional bias are constant background issues. What this means for the article is that, given the controversial area that this journal occupies, one should err on the side of lenience and inclusion. This isn't the n-thousandth Journal on Electrochemistry at Platinum Electrodes with a predatory business model. It's a journal with a fascinating founding story, for which rather favorable citation statistics can be found, even if the citation statistics come from sources that are less than gold standard.Mschmidt62 (talk) 23:07, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, Mschmidt62. You put that beautifully and cogently; certainly better than I have on this page.--WLBelcher (talk) 23:16, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Documentation for allowing sentence on h-index, etc. to stand

This is for RandyKitty. Regarding using PoP/Google Scholar as a source for data on journals, here is one article on the topic. As you can see, the article has been cited by 235 sources. PoP/Google Scholar is a metric under wide discussion and thus worthy of being included in the body of a Wikipedia journal article as a dependable source. It is not something "no one knows of" as you state. I won't return my sentence on my own, so I'm asking you to please reconsider the sentence that I gave on the PoP/Google Scholar statistics for Ufahamu and add it back.

• Harzing, A.-W. and van der Wal, R. (2009), A Google Scholar h-index for journals: An alternative metric to measure journal impact in economics and business. J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci., 60: 41–46. doi:10.1002/asi.20953. "We propose a new data source (Google Scholar) and metric (Hirsch's h-index) to assess journal impact in the field of economics and business. A systematic comparison between the Google Scholar h-index and the ISI Journal Impact Factor for a sample of 838 journals in economics and business shows that the former provides a more accurate and comprehensive measure of journal impact."
• For a recent article on the topic, see http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157715300900 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wendybelcher (talk • contribs) 01:05, 31 December 2016 (UTC)
• PoP is used very widely (see links below) and has been used in more than 1,000 articles to conduct bibliometric analyses

• http://www.harzing.com/blog/2016/10/publish-or-perish-increases-transparency-in-academic-appointments • http://www.harzing.com/resources/publish-or-perish/in-the-news Again, I think that this sentence should be allowed back in.

• And just like that, ignoring the previous comments completely? If you want to talk with me, you'll first have to address the issue that you called me a racist. --Randykitty (talk) 08:09, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

This is for RandyKitty. You informed me that if I talked about race you would ban me. So, just as I warned you, you warned me and I'm glad, because I don't think we should be sneaky with each other. So, I'm not talking about race. I'm moving on. I added some more information about about the value of PoP/GS, and I would be grateful for you allowing the sentence to pass.

Documentation for allowing sections on Ufahamu articles, Ufahamu editors, and Ufahamu's historic role

I have been looking at other comparable historic journals on Wikipedia. Many of them have the type of information that I would like to include about Ufahamu. For instance, look at the New England Journal of Medicine article. It was allowed to have the sections I would like to include: History; Logo; Notable articles; Website; Influence; ... and Editors. Also, look at the African American newspaper pages, like Freedom's Journal. It was allowed a background and history section. Likewise for North Star, which has an Inspiration section, as well as an Editorial Perspective section. The Los Angeles Sentinel has a Notable Articles section and a Notable People section. These basic sections are what I am trying to get for this historic journal of Ufahamu, and yet they keep getting deleted. I have precedent and consensus for much of the information that I posted for this article. But, I am being told that it is not allowed on Wikipedia, that journal articles are being tightened, i.e., stripped of the very information I would like to see when I come to Wikipedia and that I see on many other wonderful Wikipedia pages.

Comments

RandyKitty asked me to step in , because I along with him aam one of the principal contributors to discussions on academic journals. I think it's fair to say wwe usually agree, except I tend to be more permissive about small journals in unusual fields.

WP is an encyclopedia , not a place for advocacy. If the journal is notable by our usual standards we want to include it; if not, it would need a discussion on whether it is close enough to them that it merits an exception.. Our standards are based on two factors--first, out general factor, of having received substantial discussion in published independent reliable sources. If the journal is indeed an important one in Black Studies, then, as Randy said, there ought to be such references., and they should be added.The other standard is inclusion is standard selective indexes, by which we usually mean Scopus or Journal Ciaation Index.I don't think this journal qualifies yet, so this would be an exception.

I consider the use of Google Scholar for citation data as being similar in results to ISI or Scopus has been fully validated. In fact, one of my own former students, Nisa Bakkasian, did some of the early work on this at Yale. [www.bio-diglib.com/content/3/1/7].

The article needs some changes: The first step pis to remove adjectives of praise or importance. .They are better not used at all, but if they are included it should be a sourced quotation from a reliable published source. The second step is to remove the section on editors: We do list successive editors in chief of major journals; we do not list the members of successive editorial boards, We do not usually list people associated with the journal or who have published in the journal, unless they are famous, or at least notable enough to have a an article in WP. I strongly suspect that some of the people mentioned in the present article could well merit such articles, but the articles should be written first. The quotes in the last paragraph would depend very much on the context. I will need to check that.

It is not reasonable to compare this new and specialized journal with the WP coverage of a world-famous such as New England Journal of Medicine. See WP:EINSTEIN for an explanation. And for such titles as the Los Angeles Sentinel, the list is confined to those with WP articles. A modest article here is likely to be accepted--an over expansive one will probably be considered an attempt at promotion or advocacy and not accepted. WP doe not do advocacy , even for the most worthy of causes.

Please try to make some of the needed adjustments yourself; but otherwise I will come back and make them myself, as I do not want to lose this article. DGG ( talk ) 10:25, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks DGG for helping us out. I appreciate it. I will address each issue.

• Re "If the journal is indeed an important one in Black Studies, then, as Randy said, there ought to be such references." Yes, there are references, some in digitized, Western journals, which I have inserted, but most in non-digitized, non-Western journals. If Wikipedia does not take into account global inequalities in digital publication and access, then it will be a much weaker source. I think that the tip of the iceberg that I have inserted here is justification enough for the inclusion of Ufahamu in Wikipedia.
• Re Google Scholar, thank you. The sentence I wanted to include was "According to Google Scholar data, between its founding in 1970 and the year 2016, Ufahamu had 1,740 citations, averaged 38 citations per year, and had an H-index of 13." If it is okay with you, could you insert it?
• Re adjectives of praise, I thought I had stripped them all out. I believe that whatever remain are quotes from others. But if you find such, feel free to delete them.
• Re editors, the list is of editors, not of successive editorial boards, so I'm not sure what you are looking at. Perhaps an old version of the page? And we don't list people in the article, except those who have much cited articles and who were editors. I could have put links to web pages outside of Wikipedia for each of these editors, some of whom are very well-known, but I wasn't sure if that would be looked on favorably. If it is, let me know.
• Re Ufahamu being a "new" journal," I don't consider a 46-year-old journal new. Indeed, as noted in the article, it is the longest running graduate student journal in the country, having been founded in 1970.
• If, considering what I've said above, you disagree, let me know what you think I should delete.
• Also, if you could remove the clean-up banner, I would appreciate it. It is no longer warranted. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wendybelcher (talk • contribs) 18:47, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

I will remove the cleanup banner after the article has been cleaned, either by you or me.

1. WP accepts print references just as much as online, and any language is acceptable. This has always been the case, though there seems to be an unaccountable impression otherwise. If the journal is print only, it helps to cite a short sentence. If it is in a non-English language, it helps to give a translation of the journal title, the article title, and the selected phrase. If it is in a non-Roman script,a transliteration of these should also be given. We have alphabets for most but not all non-Roman scripts, and can deal with any character for which there is an ansi code.
2. We do not normally give citations from Google Scholar in the manner you suggest. Total counts of citations from GS are sometimes cited here, but that is always an error, for they are meaningless because the universe of citing sources is undefined. In particular, we never give h index from GS, which are particularly meaningless in several ways. What you can however do, is list the 2 or 3 most-cited articles, giving the GS counts.
3. I see there is a different editor in chief each year, presumably students. A list of them is inappropriate--this does not characterize the journal to the same extent as an ordinary editor in chief position does.
4. Except for law reviews, which are a special genre, WP has very rarely included student-edited journals. This is not my decision, or any one persons, but that of the community. I have no special power this way, and though I have voted to keep many of them, the consensus has almost always been otherwise. There is nothing I can do to ensure that this journal will not get deleted, the only real thing I can do to help, is to edit the article to be as modest as possible. I'm about to remove the content that must be removed, and your role is to add the citations from the other journals and figure out the most-cited papers in this one. It would help if you would include in the footnote the entire paragraph fro those journals--I will edit it appropriately. (And could you do that for African literature also). DGG ( talk ) 23:25, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Okay, this is my final plea then:

1. I don't have access to the non-Western print sources. I saw quite a few in Amharic in Ethiopian texts kept in the Addis Ababa University library, but that was long ago and I didn't write them down. The same for Swahili and French and some nondigitized South African print journals. I know of them, I don't have them. Again, I think the Western sources I've inserted are enough until others can get those print sources and insert them.
2. That makes sense; we don't have to insert that sentence about Google Scholar.
3. They are the editors-in-chief. That they do not look like other editors-in-chief does not change the fact that they are the editors-in-chief. While gnashing my teeth about this, I do see that many journals don't have a list of editors at all and therefore it is tough for me to defend them here. So I won't protest their removal.
4. Graduate student-run journals are the top journals in law, business, and education. The top journal in Latin American literary studies is a graduate student journal. I have written about this extensively in my book. For Wikipedia to use this as a measure of prestige does not follow the quantitative data on top journals in fields outside the sciences.
5. The most cited articles are already there. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wendybelcher (talk • contribs) 23:55, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Clean up

I cleaned up the writing and byproducts of demanding-proof-of-notability (explicit enumerations of citation count in the article). I looks fine to me now. The discussion of the journal as 'continuously published' should probably cite and mention discussion of its revival in 2014.[1] – SJ + 23:20, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Sj for your help. I'm glad to see the article linked to UC and journals. My only question is why the article has been rated "Stub-Class on the project's quality scale." I'm new, but I find online that this means that the article "Provides very little meaningful content; may be little more than a dictionary definition. Readers probably see insufficiently developed features of the topic and may not see how the features of the topic are significant." Does this article really fit that definition?--WLBelcher (talk) 20:31, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Start class seems right, moving towards C. Those assessments are updated by hand and probably hadn't been changed since the recent additions. – SJ + 18:41, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

If you add an infobox w/ details about the current editor and schedule, information about its 2014 revival, this might be C-class. Thanks for working on it. – SJ + 03:16, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Okay, thanks Sj. I never figured out how to add an infobox. Let me look into that.--173.72.20.81 (talk) 14:50, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

I never figured out how to add the infobox but could not figure out how to add a cover image. Also, I think some information was supposed to be hyperlinked--173.72.20.81 (talk) 14:50, 2 March 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wendybelcher (talk • contribs)

Sj Just one last question. I believe that you took out "The journal works 'to challenge and correct misconceptions about Africa'." I don't think we need all that was there, but the point about misconceptions is important I think. Can we return it? --WLBelcher (talk) 16:10, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Hi WLBelcher, yes feel free to readd that (with its citation to a source). – SJ + 21:34, 11 March 2017 (UTC)