Wikipedia talk:List of missing journals/Queue

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[edit] Journal searches

This is a continuation of a discussion that started on User talk:jayvdb#Missing Journal articles.

Template:ISSN isnt very good for searching. I would like to create a new Template:ISSN Search that includes a few useful search links, similar to Template:Missing article.

Here are a few different ways to use an ISSN:

Are there any other useful links we should include for every ISSN? John Vandenberg 22:36, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


Would a Template:OCLC Search also be worth creating; are there different OCLC databases that can be searched? John Vandenberg 22:36, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

I see that your two ISSN templates above are doing two different lookups:
{{ISSN|0044-2968}} is looking up stuff in worldcat but getting different results from
http://worldcat.org/search?q=issn:0044-2968.
The first of these searches seems to give only a single OCLC entry, but it gives more library holdings. A person might need to study the OCLC behavior more thoroughly to understand this. EdJohnston 02:49, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Yea, that surprised me. When you mentioned that there were seven results for that ISSN, I was a bit perplexed when the Template:ISSN only returned one result. Somehow worldcat is linking them all together in a way that isnt being displayed via the website. Do you know where/how we can see the literal MARC records for a journal ? John Vandenberg 23:42, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
You can display MARC records at catalog.loc.gov and in major libraries, like Harvard. I did an ISSN search at LOC and came to this screen: sub [1]. *Then click on the tab called 'MARC tags' and you get tons of stuff. I'm guessing worldcat doesn't display MARC because the OCLC wants libraries to pay them for the info. EdJohnston 01:09, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
The session for the link you provided timed out; I followed your instructions and my link was similar except for the PID and SEQ parameters of the URL; I wasnt able to create a non-session based URL using that system.
I noticed their Z39.50 gateway[2], and found the same data was available in raw MARC format when I searched for ISSN 0044:2968: [3], and that the URL can be trimmed [4], but that first value in the URL appears to be a rather random session id, and it expires as well.
Reading up on Z39.50 lead me to this: http://www.loc.gov/standards/sru/, which does appear to be "live": dinosaur more dinosaur ISBN:9780756622282 and ISSN:0044:2968.
This is all powered by YAZ [5].
More investigation needed. John Vandenberg 03:57, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Finding MARC records at Lib. of Congress

Sorry to give you a URL containing a session ID. Follow this procedure:

  1. Open up catalog.loc.gov
  2. Select 'Basic search'
  3. For the search type, choose ISSN
  4. Enter the ISSN in the search box, with hyphen, like 0044-2968
  5. Hit 'begin search'
  6. From the list of results, select one
  7. From the detail screen, choose 'MARC Tags'.

EdJohnston 04:06, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Your previous instructions were fine, however I am looking for a way to access the MARC record via only a URL. i.e. one click MARC data, so that I can include it in a template that works like Template:Missing article (a bunch of useful links), but targeted at journals. for example, one link would be http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=0044-2968.
The problem is that I cant figure out how to link to the LOC without directing the reader to follow the above instructions, which they probably wont be bothered to do. John Vandenberg 04:48, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
What info do you actually need from the MARC data? .. I speculate that LOC may want to avoid people getting data for free that they would normally pay a subscription for (as local libraries). EdJohnston 05:03, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Missing journal

In addition to Template:ISSN Search, I would like to create a Template:Missing journal, also similar to Template:Missing article, but more targeted. I like some opinions on how the arguments should be laid out.

  • Simple: {{Missing journal|journal name}}
  • Adv.: {{Missing journal|journal name|abbr=JN|issn=0044-2968|oclc=4734421}}

However, many journals have multiple issn/oclc records, e.g. Zeitschrift für Kristallographie. A few suggestions on how we could provide tools for that:

  • enhance Template:ISSN Search to use the for syntax, so it could be called as {{ISSN Search|0044-2968|0930-486X}}
  • identify all of the reasons why a single journal would require multiple issn records, and parameterise the template. e.g. {{ISSN Search|print=0044-2968|web=0930-486X}}. This doesnt appear to be feasible as the ISSN could differ for no other reason that the publisher has changed, which cant be generalised as a parameter name.

Once Template:Missing journal is in working order, the contents of Wikipedia:List of missing journals can be rewritten to make use the template. John Vandenberg 22:36, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Finding actual mistakes in Wikipedia

I'm hopeful that this research on journals might actually be used to correct errors. Such an effort has already been successful for books. Rich Farmbrough's SmackBot has traversed the known WP finding ISBNs with bad checksums, and this has led to numerous corrections of book citations. See the Category:Articles_with_invalid_ISBNs. Kinds of errors are:

  1. User miscopied the ISBN, too many or too few digits
  2. Book was published with an invalid ISBN.
  3. Book title not quite correct (usually you find this out only when the ISBN happens to be invalid)

The effort to dig up a correct ISBN sometimes helps to locate a version of the book that is actually in print. The end result of the correction effort is that a higher percentage of all the ISBNs in WP will work when clicked on. (If you want to search for the book in Amazon, for instance). A side benefit of Rich's robot work is that the surviving ISBNs are all hyphenated, which looks cool but has no informational benefit. The effort to look up an ISBN for a book sometimes leads to correction of the author or the title, but this is a slightly different activity than correcting known-bad ISBNs.

It is worth considering whether ISSNs might serve a similar purpose. From a quick glance at the Queue file the only actual error I see is the misspelled ISSN for Mathematics Today, which is 1316-2042. I corrected the ISSN in the Kathleen Ollerenshaw article. This was the only occurrence in WP that I could find.

Since ISSNs are so seldom used in WP, and they don't have a checksum, this avenue for finding mistakes doesn't exist. I see that there is a Category:ISSN_needed, and I assume these are all 'journal pages' for which nobody has looked up the ISSN yet.

Are there actual bad citations of journal articles (wrong journal name, for instance), that could be searched out by a mechanical process? EdJohnston 03:58, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I have quickly looked at Category:Articles_with_invalid_ISBNs when I saw it on your user page. I'd hope that we can find and fix a lot of invalid citations by at least semi-automated processes in the near future. Checksum checks will be very easy to do, and we could probably borrow a lot of logic from SmackBot, or ask Rich to extend it to also support ISSNs.
The biggest problem IMO is that journal citations are usually lazily filled in, and my gut feeling is that they are often merely copied from another source.
The meta:WikiCite project will provide a much better dataset from which to run mechanical processes to find bad data, but I am sure we can start on a few now. e.g.
List of articles that include a Template:Cite journal without providing either an doi or id
List of articles that include a Template:Cite journal that uses an abbreviated journal name that is not recorded on List of Journal abbreviations, a page we could build from other lists[6].

John Vandenberg 05:06, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

My statement above is not right, ISSNs *DO* have a checksum. See Category:Articles_with_invalid_ISSNs. Rich F is on the move! There is supposed to be a free ISSN checker at issn.org, but it is down at the moment. (There are traces of it in the Google cache). EdJohnston 20:43, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ex Tempore (journal) and Ex Tempore

Ex Tempore (wp gwp g | eb 1911 co en gct sw)
OCLC 34360356

I picked this one of the list first because it is an article about a journal, which should mean its rather authorative. It was using ISSN 1029-6604, which fails the checksum, so I searched for other WP pages that matched, and ran into Ex Tempore, which is using ISSN 1020-6604, which in turn doesnt appear in either WorldCat or LOC.

  • Ex Tempore was created on 06:42, 11 June 2006 Alfred de zayas
  • Ex Tempore (journal) was created on 06:56, 11 June 2006 by Alfred de zayas

Currently there is also a Ex tempore article for the legal term.

Possible copyvio as well: http://www.alfreddezayas.com/extempore.shtml

John Vandenberg 21:26, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of LGBT publications

List of LGBT publications a list of publications aimed at lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and transsexual (LGBT) people, by country. I have added {{ISSN}} to all of the ISSNs so we can check them against WorldCat. Im doing australia now, but wont have much more time to follow this up today. I intend to add {{Please check ISSN}} after an ISSN if it doesnt appear in WorldCat. John Vandenberg 22:32, 29 November 2006

All of the australian ISSNs checked out, however about half dont appear in WorldCat; I needed to use the ISSN search on the National Library of Australia catalog to find them. John Vandenberg 22:58, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
  • In general, might it make more sense to tag the individual article's talk page with {{ISSN-needed}} rather than having a mainspace list that may be filled with Please check ISSN? This is what I've started to do anyway as I've migrated to ISSNs from ISBNs. --Keesiewonder talk 12:15, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] White House Studies

White House Studies (wp gwp g | eb 1911 co en gct sw) : (wp:10; g:81,800; gs:282)

I have consistently found the wrong ISSN (ISSN 1535-4738 for this journal (ISSN 1535-4768) on three articles

I wonder if there is more to this repeated error. John Vandenberg 00:04, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I think you'd be amply justified in correcting these three articles. Sometimes a subject-matter expert will contribute to several related articles but copy the same wrong ID number into each one. EdJohnston 05:00, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] journals on books.google.com

In my travels over at books.google.com, I ran into ISBN 1422372030 : Proceedings, American Philosophical Society wp | wc (vol. 103, no. 5, 1959)

http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN1422372030

Clicking on the publisher link takes me to a part-error / part-usual page:

http://www.dianepublishingcentral.com/ProductDetailGoogle.asp?ProductID=1422372030

As an aside, decrementing the ProductID shows a real error page:

http://www.dianepublishingcentral.com/ProductDetailGoogle.asp?ProductID=1422372029

Sadly, google doesnt record the other free listings at DIANE Publishing Google Search: American Philosophical Society site:www.dianepublishingcentral.com.

But, google book search does provide 34500 (full view) results for Goole Book Search: "Proceedings, American Philosophical Society" and two (full view) results for Google Book Search: "Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia". added: by John Vandenberg

These things aren't journals, exactly, they are technically non-periodical serials, otherwise known as Monographs in series--I just wrote the beginnings of the article. There are a whole bunch of others. Of everything that might fall under the scope of the project, these will be the hardest. PubMed treats the individual volumes in such a series as if they were volumes in a journal, LC handles each of them as individual books, each with an individual call number and ISBN, with a series note for the overall series and its ISSN.

We can relatively easily put in entries for the major series--there are only a few hundred. Putting in articles for the individual volumes should be done when everything else is finished in 3 or 4 years. DGG 00:50, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] there is a faster way

If you want to add journals, the fast way is by publisher, because almost everything is on the publisher's home page for the journal--where you will get the current information on frequency and open access that is not on LC or OCLC records, which are generally not revised until the journal changes title. I've been compiling lists like this for--literally--over 25 years now. For the moment , I'm centralizing my full answer to my talk pageDGG 21:28, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok. Where do we find a list of journal publishers that we can start with? Can they be prioritised based on open-ness or something else, in order that we can divide the task between participants?
btw, this was someone else project that appears to have originally part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles. A few of us are trying to get our heads around this important task, so it's great to have an expert onboard! John Vandenberg 23:07, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, & who was doing it? either real name or wikiname?
I think it's better to start with the smaller & important publishers--for the larger ones you'll have to divide up by subject in any case. There should be WP entries for most of the publishers, and there is a Category:Publishers, but it needs total rework. I'll put them in suitable categories there, adding one for open access publishers. Taking into account what you have already done, & the chemistry and medicine are well covered in general, & that I think you want the true open access ones first, I suggest
  1. True open access publishers (publishers already in WP as OA)

(let me think for the others)

    • I will email the people doing DOAJ to see if he can get us a list sorted by publisher, but most of the titles are 1 title=1 publisher, and they should probably be done by subject groups.
  1. The delayed OA publishers at HighWire: from [10]--Selecting on a basis of medium to small no of titles but not just one journal, using the "free issues' as an aproximate criterion, this might include there's a lot of medicine which will make it easy because they will mostly have articles)
It would be possible to make a very large table--showing all of it
How to keep track: I think by categories when you update or do new--I'll post the OA categories after I make them tomorrow, or tuesday
DGG 04:46, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
[11] lists the original contributors to the WP:LOMJ article
I've wiki-linked your list of OA publishers above, as I dont feel knowledgeable enough to edit the open access#Open access publishers list yet. How about we create articles about each publisher first, complete with a list of journals, with redlinks if there are only a few left to create. My reasoning for this is that each publishers article is unlikely to fall out of maintenance -- I am sure there will be ample (self-)interested hands to make that maintenance task light. Once we have a list of journals compiled on each OA publisher, we can each tackle a publisher's list, avoiding stepping on each others toes.
If you agree with this general strategy, we should summarise it on WP:LOMJ/Queue#Open Access, and I'll put my name down to tackle Hindawi, as I have already come across them by way of International Journal of Mathematics and Mathematical Sciences. John Vandenberg 07:35, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Couple of Questions

Can someone explain the parenthetical code in something like this

  • Discrete and Computational Geometry (wp gwp g | eb 1911 co en gct sw) : 16

I get the general jist that it is # of hits in different locations or something like that ... but ... why ... and what is the 16? An aggregate hit count amongst the targets? What's the vertical bar (pipe) for?

I'm also having a hard time understanding this project and how to help ... If there are other relevant pages I should read besides this project and talk page, please let me know. Thanks! Keesiewonder talk 21:20, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

What ... The main objective of this project is to bolster the quality of {{cite journal}}, by ensuring that the reader can find out more about the journals that are being sourced. i.e. a citation is only as good as the source used.
the "wp" and "gwp" hits show where the journal is used on Wikipedia, and the number at the end is the # of hits on Wikipedia. i.e. "Discrete and Computational Geometry" is mentioned 16 times on Wikipedia, and it is quite probable that those hits are {{cite journal}} (or should be).
"g" is just google hits, to help us find information about the journal. The other links (i.e. "eb", "1911") are also to help us find the history of the journal, but they are less useful, which is why they are separated by the vertical pipe.
How ... there are no rules on this queue page; we add any missing journal of interest, or even an existing journal article that could be incorrect, and then we try to figure out the details here. The layout of the page is adhoc; we are all more interested in the puzzles than the presentation. For example, Sciences Nat is not widely used on Wikipedia, but the history of this journal/society is hard to find. Simply, there are two parts to this project
  1. adding journals to the queue, and
  2. creating the articles
To be honest, we havent done much of the second part, as we have mostly focused on how do we prioritise them (the list at WP:LOMJ is too long to tackle one by one, and if done alphabetically we would waste our time on many unread periodicals. You could begin by doing more research on any of the entries on the project page, or maybe create the article for the "Journal of the Royal Statistical Society", as we have enough information now to write a decent stub. Or if you know of a journal you consider important for any reason, add it under #Unsorted, with your thoughts. John Vandenberg 23:08, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Russian list of journals

I just ran into a listing of journals over on the Russian Wikipedia: ru:Список зарубежных научных журналов ВАК с 2007 года. John Vandenberg 02:25, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] watching AfDs

I watch AfDs pretty consistently -- Most get copied into the list of science related deletions, but perhaps we could do such a scheme for this project, though I do not know how to set it up . They are also proposed on PROD--I watch this too, but usually it is enough just to remove the label. What nobody can watch fast enough is speedy.

So far I think we've only lost one, and that was a central asian geography journal that wasnt in LC, the BM, or the library of the very institute that published it. DGG 06:33, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
I started setting up a WikiProject at User:Jayvdb/Journals; I listed it on Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Journals but there was no response. John Vandenberg 07:08, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Where do I put this one?

Marlburg Journal of Religion[12], ISSN 1612-2941? davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 16:32, 5 June 2008 (UTC)