Template talk:Infobox Journal

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[edit] Introduction

I looked around in WikiProjects, the list of Infobox Templates, and in Templates in general and did not find something that would suitably cover the salient bits of information that describe an academic journal. Therefore, I created this.

[edit] Suggested usage

Utilize the tag {{Infobox Journal}}, and fill in the parameters (see empty syntax below), then save the article. For academic journals, but I think it is suitable for many magazine types. This template might also be suitable for trade newspapers, but this is debatable; see {{Infobox Newspaper}}.

[edit] Empty syntax

provided for cut-and-paste usage

{{Infobox_Journal |
| title = 
| cover = 
| discipline = 
| language = 
| abbreviation = 
| publisher = 
| country = 
| history = 
| website = 
| ISSN =  
}}

[edit] Description of fields

Title. This is the current official journal title.
Cover. A journal cover can be added to Wikipedia as an image file under the supposition that the usage constitutes "fair use". Such covers should not generally be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.
Discipline. I've provided a link to the List of academic disciplines which I think should be the source for values in this field. The value in this field should be wikilinked.
Language. I am not assuming that all academic journals that are of encyclopedic interest are English, even though I can only read those in English.
Abbreviated title. More accurately "abbreviated titles"; these are both official abbreviations (such as those found via the NCBI; example entry) but also colloquial titles. For instance, for the Journal of Biological Chemistry the official abbreviation is J. Biol. Chem. but the colloquial abbreviation is JBC. The abbreviations should probably appear in Wikipedia as redirects.
Publisher (country). The publisher of record and the country from which publication takes place or in which the publisher is based. The publisher value should be wikilinked internally.
Publication history. Many journals that have existed for more than a couple of decades have changed their name. This space can be used to indicate those changes, as well as any interruptions in publication that might have occurred. If there has been continuous publication under the same name since 1974, then an appropriate value might be "1974-present" or "1974 forward" or some other statement of the type.
Website. There are often two websites for a journal: the publisher site and the homepage for the journal itself. Typically this link should be to the journal itself.
ISSN. This is an international registry code for serial publications and is a useful key for identification and tracking of serials; not all serials have associated ISSN codes; therefore, this should be an optional field. Further, unless the ISSN appears on the journal's website, some mention about the source of the information should be provided in a References or Notes section as the validity of the information cannot be otherwise verified.

[edit] Additional fields for consideration

editor
volume span
peer-review status
type (original research, reviews, news, etc.)
impact factor (see below)
organizational affiliation (for those that are, such as JACS and the American Chemical Society)
indexed in ... (for instance, medline, science citations, etc.)
representation in JSTOR using the {{JSTOR}} template (see Science (journal) for an example case) it might be true that template-in-template won't work and that the addition of the template would only be possible if this infobox were subst'd ... comments? Courtland 10:29, July 26, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Impact factor

I did find sufficient information to compose a chart for Genome Research. The Image link from that article for the chart leads to information on the source of information for each of the years 1999 through 2003. It should be possible to use these information sources to describe the IF trend for that period, but I'm still not including this in the template as it is a controversial measure.

Courtland 02:25, July 13, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Degree of openness

With all the discussion about open access these days, it may be interesting to specify for each journal how much they are open-access. Given Wikipedia open nature, I think it would be of particular interest. Hard work, especially given that the number of open-access policy probably rivals the number of licence for open-source software, but probably worth doing. Having the relevant field in the infobox would be a start. Schutz 22:17, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Major changes (template evolution)

10:39, August 11, 2005 (UTC): updated to use toccolours class and other tweaks. Use as a parameterized template throughout, so that all style changes are synchronized. Lexor|Talk 10:39, August 11, 2005 (UTC)
July 17, 2005: addition of ISSN field Courtland 02:19, July 17, 2005 (UTC)
July 17, 2005: addition of country subfield by placing it parenthetically behind the publisher Courtland 02:34, July 17, 2005 (UTC)
July 17, 2005: addition of wikilink and href/url guides Courtland 02:34, July 17, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Example cut'n'paste text broken?

I tried to cut-and-paste the example infobox from here, and found that it SEVERELY did not work. I had to:

change publisher(country) to separate paratmeters 'publisher' and 'country'
change abbrev_title to 'abbreviation'
change publication_history to 'history'

Check out Isis (journal) for the example; I left the old params in marked noeffect. I haven't ever tried to mess with templates before, but this seems like it SHOULD be a simple update to the guideline, not to the template itself? --Alvestrand 12:33, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Problem with ISSN part

Take a look at Journal of Physical Chemistry B, where the ISSN entry is:-

|ISSN=1520-6106 (print edition) and 1520-5215 (web edition)

It gives:-

(print edition) and 1520-5215 (web edition) 1520-6106 (print edition) and 1520-5215 (web edition)

Can this be fixed? I do not understand why it is doing what it is. We need to give 2 ISSNs in many cases. In some like Angewandte Chemie, we need to give four as there are German and English editions, each in print and online (Note: I edited this one so the template only has one ISSNs and the four are in the text of the article). --Bduke 02:55, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

I suggest the field be renamed to "id", as in WP:CITET, the citation templates. This allows both ISSN and OCLC (and possibly others) to be included. Bduke could try: {{ISSN|1520-6106}} (print edition), {{ISSN|1520-5215}} (web edition). I also suggest a new field "location". For U.S. publishers, it is standard to name the town and state of the publisher (not the country), e.g. Nashville, TN. -Colin MacLaurin 13:43, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion. This problem was fixed long ago, essentially by using {{ISSN|... as you suggest. --Bduke 20:09, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New fields

I have added two fields to the template:

openaccess, which was suggested (by me) above, but that noone commented upon.
frequency, which seems quite logical to have.

Obviously, I have made these two fields optional so that no article containing this infobox should break. As an example, I have just added the infobox, including these two fields, to the article Cell (journal). Schutz 23:42, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi, openaccess is a great idea. I'm just reading up on open access now. I think it would be more beneficial if we used keywords rather than, or as well as, free form text. e.g. openaccess = gold, or openaccess = green. Are there other open classifications ? John Vandenberg 00:05, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

I've added openaccess=After 6 months to Biochemical Journal, using the information from the list at PubMed Central. John Vandenberg 00:28, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

I am not sure how many models are around; the ones I can think of right now are:

No open access
Open access if paid for by the authors
Open access after a given time
Full open access

I like the idea of using keywords, but they should be self-explanatory, unlike colour codes (although these could possibly be added in addition). Schutz 00:32, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Would it were this simple. The terminology has been getting a little more consistent in the last two or three months, and I have added articles explaining

Open access journal - -what has been conventionally known as gold
Delayed open access journal -- such as most of the US society biomed journals, corresponds to after a given time
Hybrid open access journal --also known by publisher-specific names, such as "open choice" , OA if paid by the author/sponsor
- There's also those journals that are both delayed and hybrid, such as PNAS-- OA immediately if paid, otherwise 6 months. no std term yet.
- There is a good list of the first, and no available lists whatsoever of delayed and hybrid!--if we make them, they will be the only ones.
Green is complicated--there are too many types, there's a partial directory of policy for many journals, but the variation is immense, including the ones that are green, but only after X months. There are two incompatible sets of detailed color names, which implies to me that we should stay away from colors. From a readers point of view, all green means is that you must check each article, & there's good evidence that a lot of people post even if prohibited, by Kristin Antelman —The preceding unsigned comment was added by DGG (talk • contribs) 01:25, 17 December 2006 (UTC).

The use of keywords was the extent of my thinking; something along the lines of openaccess=gold being transformed by the template into "Open access | gold", whereas openaccess=green would become "Open access | green" (see BMC Nursing). Those keywords are only selected because they are mentioned on the open access page; other keywords would work equally well, however colour coding is an interesting avenue I hadnt realised/considered. In the light of the background that DGG has provided, I think keyword should only be for the non-ambiguous types of open access, and the template needs to fall back to displaying the free form text if it isnt entirely comprised of known keywords (I've never tried this with templates yet, but it should be do-able). John Vandenberg 01:44, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Problem is, the color code only helps if the journal is true open access. It could also be done for delayed open access, but the periods keep changing, and now vary from 1 to 36 months, depending on publisher. This could be coded, but at this point not even services like Google Scholar have figured out how to do it. My guess is third quarter of '07 for them. And everything else is article by article, and this too is being worked on, by them and a lot of other people--my guess is 4th quarter '07.

But, as a strong proponent of open access, I think it reasonable to reward the true OA journals. The best database of them, DOAJ, does not quite keep up with them, but they try to cover even the smallest. has only 35. We could certainly keep up with the top ones--there are only about 150 in Web of Science so far,. I have just written a WP article, open access journal, which explains some of this a little more--the Open access article is written by a strong proponent of self-archiving, and I just wanted to balance it (I have nothing about self-archiving, I do it myself). I am about to write a WP article outlining how to find everything findable, but this is WP and it can't be called "how to", and suggestions for a title are welcome.DGG 05:50, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

It sounds like colour coding is stretching too far, too fast. A few questions:

For delayed OA, Is the delay usually constant for all articles within a journal?
For hybrid OA, is the cost usually fixed for all articles within a journal?
Does a journal usually nominate one archival repository for its deposits; is this useful to know?
British Medical Journal OA data found on PubMed indicates Immediate [non-research: after 12 months]; can someone explain what non-research means?
For the non-OA journals, are there different levels of closed-ness that we should also cater for (i.e. {half-jokingly} grey vs black).

As an aside, there are now 273 journals that use this template.

John Vandenberg 22:11, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] ISI listing

I think ISI listed should be added to indicate that the journal does or does not appear among the over 14,000 journals listed by the Institute for Scientific Information. The list includes over 1100 arts and humanities journals as well as scientific journals. This is an important indicator of journal quality and would be of interest to our readers (Master Journal List. Thomson Scientific. Retrieved on 2007-02-18.). Walter Siegmund (talk) 16:39, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree. --Bduke 21:40, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Microformat for citations

Please be aware of the proposal for a microformat for marking citations (which pages about journals are, in effect) in (X)HTML. See also Wikipedia:WikiProject Microformats. Andy Mabbett 16:56, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Without CSS

With CSS disabled, this appears as:

British Birds

Discipline Ornithology

Language English

and so on. I think there would be some value in prepending the word "Title" to the first entry, then hiding it with CSS. Andy Mabbett 14:33, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] ISSN reversion

I reverted the recent change to the ISSN field. On most journal pages, this field is already filled in using {{ISSN search link}}. When this was combined with the external link format in the recent revision to the infobox, it caused these infoboxes to stretch most of the way across the article on hundreds of pages. Specifically it caused links like this in all the infoboxes:

[http://worldcat.org/issn/0028-0836 0028-0836 0028-0836]

If we want to make this change, we need to go through and change the formatting of the field on the 100s of pages that transclude this template. --JayHenry 06:38, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

There's a crafty way of getting around this which I'll implement. Verisimilus T 13:36, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

That's a nice bit of templature on the ISSN field. Good work! I'm not sure about using the Web site field up top though. It causes problems whenever the Web site field has an unusual formatting like Science (journal) or Geobios or The Lancet. Also, I'm not sure if non-wikipedia editors will automatically recognize that the link up top is to the web site. --JayHenry 14:05, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks

I'd been thinking of that - I think I might create a "links" section to the template, including JSTOR etc. Verisimilus T 14:12, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Width problem, lost frequency

I'm not sure if this is related to the above change, but the infoboxes on several journals eg Biochemical Journal, AIDS (journal) appear to have doubled in width over the past couple of days. Is this an intentional effect? It looks very ugly.

Also the information on frequency is missing in the infobox, whilst filled in on the template. Espresso Addict 16:27, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Ah, seems to be fixed now, although the links to the journal website are still displaying strangely eg [www.annals.org Journal homepage]. Espresso Addict 16:32, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

All issues should now have been fixed by my bot - apologies for the disruption during the transition to the more functional template! Verisimilus T 19:57, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] website

How do we show more than one website? See the mess at Angewandte Chemie. --Bduke 00:17, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

I fixed the issue at Angewandte Chemie. There are fields for multiple links, where you use link1 for the url and link1-name for what you want the link to say. The feature was just added, so there's not documentation for it yet. We'll fix that soon! --JayHenry 05:26, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, that's great. --Bduke 07:26, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] COinS

Any chance that this template uses COinS, in the same way as {{cite book}}? Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 11:02, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Add CODEN field?

How do I add a field for CODEN? Makes for very cluttered reading when in running text, eg. Angewandte Chemie Thanks, BlnLiCr 17:54, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Y Done. You can now add CODEN to pages, exactly the same as you add ISSN. --JayHenry 05:25, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Code cleanup

I think I've fixed most of the major issues. I saw a note about using both basic HTML and CSS, however, that practice isn't really used on templates. There is still some work to be done, however, it isn't urgent. Cheers. --MZMcBride 18:14, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to do that! Do let me know of anything else that could be improved and I might be able to take a look at it. Verisimilus T 19:49, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Automated links with OCLC and LCCN

On Annals of Internal Medicine I filled in the LCCN and OCLC in the infobox journal, but no links are being generated? Did I not format correctly, is is this functionality not available? It would be nice to have - I was not familiar with the OCLC and can imagine this number being helpful. I tried using Template:LCCN, but this was awkward appearing with the text 'LCCN' being repeated twice.Badgettrg 22:11, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

I have automated the link to OCLCs. I'll look into LCCNs next. John Vandenberg 00:49, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Link to NLM

Seems there should be a field that links to the Journals database at the NLM. For example, for the Annals of Internal Medicine, the link would use the NlmId 0372351 and would be go here.Badgettrg 22:24, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm wary that Wikipedia is not a directory of links; that page isn't really providing the reader with any useful information not included in the infobox already. We've so many ID parameters in there I feel there ought to be a strong case for including any more! Verisimilus T 11:57, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Following on from Verisimilus's comment, I am curious why you want a link to the Journals database at the NLM. If it is because you prefer access journals from there, the proposal at bugzilla:3663 may be the "right" solution. John Vandenberg 13:13, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Anybody mind if I add this? It would be trivial to implement, consistent with the use of external links in other infoboxes, and very useful. --Arcadian (talk) 02:56, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I think that John's cross reference to Bug 3663 (feature request supporting ISSN magic numbers) illustrates a superior solution. Right now the ISSN auto-links to http://worldcat.org/; implementation of the Bug 3663 could expand this treatment (albeit one hop away) to include NLM as one of the links referred to on a Special:JournalSources page similar to the existing Special:BookSources page (BookSources example). However, if you feel strongly enough to boldly revise the template, I would suggest revising the existing ISSN field rather than adding a new field. There is no reason why the existing ISSN field could not be revised to render two external links, one to WorldCat and one to NLM, given a single ISSN parameter ... thus adding functionality to the template without the need to make another parameter addition necessary by a person implementing the template — and also providing an auto-update to the functionality of all existing transcluded templates without filling in a new parameter for each. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:01, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

I was not aware that ISSNs could be used to link to NLM in the same way a NlmId can be. What is the URL format for that? --Arcadian (talk) 05:07, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Example URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=nlmcatalog&Term=1539-3704%5Bjo%5D. See the "Journal [jo] and title abbreviation [ta]" subsection of http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query/static/nlmcat_help.html#search_tags for the notation that ISSN search is included in the [jo] and [ta] qualified searches. It does seem rather arcane to include it there instead of in, say, [other num]. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 02:24, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

P.S. By the way, I do not have a good explanation as to why http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=nlmcatalog&Term=0003-4819%5Bjo%5D returns two entries instead of one. If you can figure that out, let me know. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 02:26, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] online journals

Our template doesnt display the eISSN param unless a ISSN is also present. For online only journals, is their ISSN usually referred to as an eISSN ? See Nature China. John Vandenberg 02:30, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

The eISSNs aren't referred to as such in the real world: I only named the template parameter that to easily differentiate it form the ISSN. It's always appropriate to use the "ISSN" parameter first; the eISSN should only be used when there's a separate ISSN for the online version.

Verisimilus T 12:01, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

One reason behind my recent template changes and the above question is I was hoping to set up the template so that our meta data is "machine readable". i.e. the ISSN for web based journals can always to be found in the templates eISSN param. This isnt so much so for external users, but because I would like to be able to run a bot task every once and a while to verify that our ISSN/eISSN fields are accurate against an authoritative directory. If that underlying goal is also not grounded in the real world, I am all ears. John Vandenberg 13:01, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Hm, by the looks of it, journals such as PLoS do refer to it as an eISSN. I'm not sure how things lie. It'd be easy to change the template if it was deemed necessary. Verisimilus T 14:46, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] CODEN linkage

The documentation currently says "link to CODEN", as if there was an obvious link for a CODEN, yet we dont have a {{CODEN}} or {{CODEN search link}}. The two that I have found are:

WorldCat
CAS

Any others? John Vandenberg 02:43, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

I was trying to find the CODEN for Astronomische Nachrichten and found this page, which gives an old, five-letter CODEN of ASNAA. How do I find the six-letter CODEN? I tried various CAS look-ups, such as this one, and the ISSN finds this title, but not the CODEN. Can anyone help? I also tried finding JSTOR and atom links, but nothing. Maybe it should be made clearer that not all journals will have entries in all these systems? It would also be nice to include other databases, such as Astrophysics Data System, but including every database system might get silly... How should this be handled? At the moment, I've linked ADS in the external links for Astronomische Nachrichten. Carcharoth 18:50, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Funnily enough, ASNAA works for WorldCat, but not for CAS. I wonder why. Carcharoth

to the best of my knowledge, CODEN is almost obsolete outside of CAS. I have inquired about this on an appropriate list (CHMINF). . DGG (talk) 10:24, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

In agreement with DGG, I also think that CAS is about the only major indexing organization that still uses CODEN in an active way. I occasionally work with the CODEN values in a couple of contexts and despise the thing; it is really only useful in the context of queries against CAS (and CASPlus, for instance) and I welcome the day when they abandon it in favor of ISSN or another comparable standard (if there is one). P.S. There is a "Core Journal" listing of CODENs at http://www.cas.org/expertise/cascontent/caplus/corejournals.html; it is incomplete but useful — and remember 'CAS' stands for 'Chemical Abstracts Service', so it only covers a particular genre of published literature, and that CAS' bread has been historically buttered on the patents side of things and not the journal side. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:11, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] How do you find the JSTOR number?

When I search JSTOR for MELUS, I get most of the infobox numbers, but I don't see a "JSTOR number." Even when I click on the magazine itself, I don't see any special numbers in the URL.... Help? Has JSTOR changed its method of listing journals? Aristophanes68 (talk) 02:49, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Language parameter

Would anyone object if I modify the template to not show the language field if left blank? This is an English Wikipedia, and most content are in English, so it could be assumed that if the language parameter is blank than the template shouldn't need to re-iterate the obvious. Certainly, if the field were used, it would would behave the same as now. +mt 15:15, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cover field needs further help text

It should be noted that, unlike most infoboxes, this template requires the insertion of the full wiki image code. i.e.:
cover = [[Image:imagetitle.jpg]],
NOT
cover = imagetitle.jpg
Took me some time to figure this out. T L Miles (talk) 18:35, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Categories: Open access journals