Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Journal of Forensic Accounting

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. Bearcat (talk) 06:41, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Journal of Forensic Accounting

Journal of Forensic Accounting (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (delete) – (View log)

Article fails WP:NOTABILITY, WP:COI. Article was created by an account who spammed links for their employer, R. T. Edwards Publishing, Inc (Publisher of Journal of Forensic Accounting). Self-promotion and product placement are not the routes to having an encyclopaedia article. This is a peer-reviewed academic journal, perhaps suitable as a source (in an apropriate context), however not as its own article. Has a few links but they seem to be self-refereces and merely trivial coverage or mentions. Trivial or incidental coverage of a subject by secondary sources is not sufficient to establish notability. The depth of coverage of the subject by the source must be considered. Nothing more than Self-promotion and product placement for R. T. Edwards Publishing, which wikipedia is WP:NOT. Hu12 (talk) 10:16, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

  • Keep I've been thinking about this one for a bit, so please forgive me if I'm not as succinct as I should be. My understanding is that academic journals do not specifically come under any of the current notability guidelines. The most likely place in the future is WP:SERIAL, but that's merely a proposal and doesn't currently cover journals. Given that, I'm forced to use WP:BK which is the only guideline that speaks to academic works. It is still a poor fit, though, and it mostly suggests relying on common sense. :) My major concerns, then, were whether or not the journal is peer reviewed (yes), whether or not it is widely cited (seems to be), the quality of the editorial board (they seem qualified, but this isn't my area of research), and how the journal is regarded in the field. For the last one, I noticed two things: the ranking provided by Australian Business Deans Council, which ranks it as a "B", and various mentions of the journal in lists of journals covering this area (occasionally, as in the case of the "Encyclopedia of White-collar & Corporate Crime", as the only journal in the subfield). The "B" ranking isn't great, (A and A* are above it) but does mean that it is regarded as a "well regarded journal in the field or subfield", which seems like a good sign. Overall, given that journal rankings are a somewhat subjective and difficult area in academia, the journal meets various academic requirements, and that the journal seems to be significant in its subfield, I think that it is worth keeping the article. - Bilby (talk) 11:54, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep after looking at the policy myself, I agree with User:Bilby with his statement on the journal's notability and that the journal does not have its own notability but is a source of notability (paradox anyone?) and we really need a policy on this kind of situation.  Atyndall93 | talk  12:26, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep - The fact that the article is well-sourced (in the sense that every claim in the article is verified, rather than that the references themselves are ideal, which they are not) largely overrides any COI concerns for me. That leaves the question of notability. Unfortunately, the main notability criterion of 'significant coverage in independent, reliable sources' is not really suited to academic journals. For instance, even a prominent journal such as the Journal of Peace Research–one of the top five journals in fields of political science and peace and conflict studies–would have some trouble meeting that criterion. The field of forensic accounting is significantly narrower than political science, so I think that the article is worth keeping in this case, per Bilby's analysis (the journal is peer-reviewed, relatively widely-cited, and relatively well-regarded). –Black Falcon (Talk) 15:36, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep – The Journal is cited extensively, as shown here [1]. Along with the arguments made above. Strong Keep. ShoesssS Talk 20:27, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete this is too minimal a journal for me to defend. The journal is held in only a few dozen libraries. Hundreds of universities teach the subject, only 40 or so have the journal. Harvard Business doesn't, nor Columbia, nor NYU, nor Wharton--not even British Library, or LC, or National Library of Canada. Most tellingly, Louisiana State, where the editor in chief is an emeritus professor, seems willing to list in in their catalog. U Texas Arlington Accounting department may like it just a little--not in their top category-- but they didn't convince their library. It apparently has 325 paid subscribers accordingto Ulrich's, --that wouldn't bother me if it were a journal of Assyrology, or Bhutanese history, or Gnostic studies, But when its a major field of accounting,... Journals publishing books as "special supplements" often mean they don't have enough content in the way of journal articles--such supplements are almost never actually peer-reviewed. It's only a semi annual, two issues a year for seven years--14 issues in all. Only one very specialized index covers it, one of the Proquest supplementary indexes--not the major business indexes-- not Factiva, not Lexis, not any of the Wilson or Ebsco indexes or major Proquest indexes. The publisher is essentially unknown, except for a few similar titles--how does it expect to make money?--here's how: on the journal home page, it says " R.T. Edwards, Inc. is offering the following related internet domain names for sale: CPA-FORENSIC-ACCOUNTANT.ORG, CPA-FORENSIC-ACCOUNTANT.NET, CPA-FORENSIC-ACCOUNTANT.COM. Call R.T. Edwards, Inc. today to get your firm the hottest domain name in the profession!" [2] Hu12 and I often disagree, but not this time. (Journal of Peace Research,given as a comparison is notable: 1325 subscribers, held in over 400 libraries, published by Sage, a leading publisher, since 1964, in over 50 indexes. That's more an order of magnitude different in every criterion. One clearly notable, and one clearly not. . DGG (talk) 00:13, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment - I also agree that the advertising on the publisher's page is worrying - not exactly a positive sign. The lack of indexing is also a problem, but less of one to me - I know a number of significant specialized journals that aren't widely indexed, but I'm happy to accept that being widely indexed would be proof of notability. I'm not sure that the Journal of Peace Research is a good comparison, as I gather Black Falcon's point was that JPR is highly notable. Given that, JFA's subscription rate of 1/4 JPR's doesn't seem too bad, although, once again, a higher rate would have made things easier. (I tried running comparisons with journals in my field that I would rate as about the same, but Ulrich's had no subscription info on them). I'm still more interested in the ratings by the ANU and the Australian Business Deans Council, as I understand why those ratings exist and they have a good methodology, and both place it roughly in the middle of the rankings. Also, Herron and Hall's paper "Faculty perceptions of journals" ranked it in the exact middle in terms of quality (50 out of 100) (on re-reading, the scale goes above 100, up to about 106, but it still sits more-or-less in the middle), and gave it 3.4 for "publishing feasibility" out of four, which meant that it was considered a good place to publish in the auditing field by the academics surveyed (it also gave it one of the higher ranks for auditing, with the highest being a 3.6). As far as I can gather (noting that my field is IS, so I'm only peripherally related to Accounting, and have nothing to do with auditing), it is very much a mid-ranked and highly specialized journal. At any rate, I'm glad this has come to AfD, as I'm interested in seeing where consensus ends up on these types of publications. Ignoring notability, I think I'd rather have articles on them, if only to help with establishing reliability of sources from a NPOV perspective, but that's probably a different issue. - Bilby (talk) 01:49, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment No big deal, but you mentioned that U. Texas at Arlington liked it, but didn't convince their library. WorldCat disagrees. [3] Also, if by LC you mean Library of Congress, they, too, have it.[4] Further, it looks as if the data Ulrich has is from 2005, would you agree? If so, would it be safe to say that the distribution has most likely increased as the periodical has aged more than 50% since 2005? Finally, the notability of these special supplements are debatable and the reasons behind them ultimately unknown -- my contention was and is that the journal is notable, not necessarily the special supplements. However, attempting to attribute a purpose to them other than just being that which they are, supplements, seems a bit foolish. Jheiv (talk) 10:19, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
you are right about arlington. sorry. DGG (talk) 23:52, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Listed in Wikipedia:WikiProject Academic Journals/Deletion. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:40, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep / Comment I had planned on staying out of this discussion but I would like to note some things that I've read in other positions. First, in response to the "Accounting and Tax Index" reference. It doesn't look to be as specialized as you seem to think. CSU-LB calls it "The most comprehensive index to the literature of accounting." [5]. In fact, the index seems to be quite comprehensive and notable: Clemson notes that it "provides citations to articles about virtually every aspect of accounting and taxation." [6] Second, the journal is cited in many other accounting and auditing periodicals, including:
Journal of Management (A Sage Publication) [7]
Journal of Financial Crime and Managerial Auditing Journal (Both Emerald Group Publishing Publications) [8] [9]
Journal of Consumer Policy and Journal of Business Ethics (Both Springer Publications) [10] [11]
Critical Perspectives on Accounting (An Elsevier publication) [12] -- among others.
As well as books:
Forensic and Investigative Accounting [13]
Research in Accounting Regulation [14]
Research on Professional Responsibility and Ethics in Accounting [15]
Encyclopedia of White-collar Crime [16]
... among others [17]
For such a relatively new journal (8 years old) the citations are somewhat impressive but more importantly demonstrate clear significance in the subfield. Disclosure: I am the primary author of the article in question. Thanks! Jheiv (talk) 09:18, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
the point about the index is that this is indeed the most specialized index in the field, an index which tries to include every last one it can. and is therefore not selective. That's why inclusion in it is not a RS for notability. DGG (talk) 23:57, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete I am tempted to say delete per ShoesssS, as the citation record for this journal is very unimpressive. The journal's most cited article has only 18 citations, and that is the only article with a citation count in the double digits.[18] Furthermore, the ratings are not impressive. The Australian Business Deans Council ratings confirm that it is not among the top-60 journals in accounting and finance and may not even be in the top 100. The University of Texas at Arlington Accounting Department, like the Australian Business Deans Council, places the journal in its third tier. Throw in DGG’s excellent analysis, and I cannot justify keeping this article.--FreeKresge (talk) 15:56, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. -- Fabrictramp | talk to me 19:26, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
  • comment to some extent this is a policy question: how far down the list do we want to go? In practice, I have o problem with the journals in the fields covered by Web of Science that are included there --but this field isn't. And not that all the ones not in are automatically non-notable--some are too new or too old. Beyond there I do not know of many really trustworthy criteria. The chance of being included in the middle of a non-critical list is not really sufficient. I'm going to double check some b-school libraries on the chance that the WorldCat holdings have not been updated. As for citation, it's a curious fact of academic journals that even the very worst journals tend to have one or two decent articles. There's a very wide distribution at the bottom end--otherwise known as the Long Tail. If we really do want to include them all, I am not sure I have an actual strong objection. --DGG (talk) 00:05, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
    Comment - If no one minds my two-cents or soapbox, I just want to say, I continually come back to Wikipedia for the fact that I am consistently looking for information and surprised at what I find on a day-to-day bases. Not necessarily popular information, or fashionable thoughts, but more important to me, reliable – creditable and verifiable information. I can understand our concerns about inclusion in Wikipedia of hoaxes – intentional misinformation – WP:POV and other fantasy’s of some of our editors. However, what I cannot understand is the thought process that many individual editors have that seem to believe that we are limited by space or size. Even using the expressions that this piece or that article is not encyclopedic enough, worthy enough, or notable enough for inclusion in Wikipedia. Since when have we been tasked with the “Higher Than Thou” value? Personally, I have always believed that once the information has been proved reliable – creditable and verifiable, it should be welcomed with open arms. Not nit-picked, in such ways to say that it only fell into the middle of the pack on this list or that it was only cited 110 times versus 204. It is both a positive and a negative that we are each left to formulate our own criteria for inclusion with this project. It may be time to start to formulate some basic metrics that all individuals and articles are held to before going through this process. Thanks for listening. ShoesssS Talk 01:08, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep, admittedly weak, but I think the citations in a few notable journals makes an academic journal worth having around... I do agree to a great extent with DGG and it's clearly not as notable as some of the keeps say. Perhaps I have a low bracket for journals where it's hard to tell. But, it is perplexing why this was created before some clearly more notable journals. gren グレン 09:22, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete the citations are either listings and rankings or come from the publisher. So there is not enough independent in depth coverage by reliable sources to meet WP:N, still the basic notability guideline if there isn't anything more specific. This is a problem for many journals, so they can be included if reasonable rule of thumb criteria are met that indicate that we definitely should have an article on it (which is the general idea of secondary notability criteria that actually often arise from discussions like this). In this case, I don't see anything here that comes close. The journal is neither old, nor widely distributed nor widely cited nor ranked as top tier. It seems not even to be cited inside Wikipedia itself which should put the idea of having a separate article on what essentially is a source of information for this encyclopedia into perspective. Rather we now have the journal included in the 'See also' section of an uncited article forensic accounting which puts the cart before the horse.--Tikiwont (talk) 09:32, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep for the reasons stated by Bilby, and because of the B rating from ABCD. DGG argues against it on the grounds that not many universities subscribe, even though they teach the subject -- I assume he means that they teach accounting, not necessarily forensic accounting. Forensic accounting is a specialist field requiring a good few years of experience in practice, and is therefore generally a Masters subject rather than a particularly suitable specialism to teach undergraduates; and although some MBAs cover it, MBA students are mostly interested in big-company management rather than investigative careers; so it doesn't bother me that not many Uni's subscribe. Gren asks why this article was created before others -- seems simple, the article was started by an editor connected with the publisher, but I have no problem with that provided the resulting article is objective rather than an advert, and the creator allows the article to develop objectively. I've helped at least three other articles that started with apparent COI to become quite decent treatments of their subjects. So, Keep. - Fayenatic (talk) 20:11, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.