Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Geombinatorics

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 redirect to Alexander Soifer. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 16:15, 7 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Geombinatorics

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Article PRODded with reason " Non-notable journal. Not indexed in any selective databases, no independent sources. Does not meet WP:NJournals or WP:GNG." Article dePRODded by editor who added names of board members and the fact that Paul Erdős at one point was a board member, too. However, notability is not inherited and none of the databases indexing the journal is selective in the sense of NJournals. Therefore, PROD reason still stands, hence: Delete. Randykitty (talk) 12:54, 29 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academic journals-related deletion discussions. Randykitty (talk) 12:59, 29 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. Tyw7 (🗣️ Talk • ✍️ Contributions) Please ping me if you had replied 13:07, 29 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Mathematics-related deletion discussions. Tyw7 (🗣️ Talk • ✍️ Contributions) Please ping me if you had replied 13:07, 29 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Colorado-related deletion discussions. Tyw7 (🗣️ Talk • ✍️ Contributions) Please ping me if you had replied 13:07, 29 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of News media-related deletion discussions. Tyw7 (🗣️ Talk • ✍️ Contributions) Please ping me if you had replied 13:07, 29 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep It is indexed in both main mathematical bibliographic databases (MathSciNet, Zentralblatt MATH). Everybody in the editorial board is a highly notable mathematician. The journal is cited in papers published in leading journals of the scope of the present journal (many papers can be found in Google Scholar with two-digit citation numbers, examples exist with 72 or 76 citations; Zentralblatt MATH writes about this journal: 87 Publications have been cited 225 times). --Tudor987 (talk) 13:27, 29 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Quotation from Erdős: --Tudor987 (talk) 13:27, 29 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The success of Geombinatorics is due to many colleagues from all over the world who have for ten years contributed their thoughts and their aspirations to this quarterly. Some maturity manifested itself when Mathematical Reviews and Zentralblatt für Mathematik came on board and pronounced Geombinatorics to be their “publication of high density” (which meant that all Geombinatorics articles in their final form would be reviewed).
— Paul Erdős, http://geombina.uccs.edu/?page_id=78

Comment Please note that that number of citations would not even be enough to make a single academic notable, let alone a whole journal. As for the other arguments, please see the nom (and my response on my talk page to your earlier query) on why these arguments are invalid. Thanks. --Randykitty (talk) 13:46, 29 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

For your first argument, Wikipedia:Notability (academic journals) Criterion 2 says: The journal is frequently cited by other reliable sources. Then, The only reasonably accurate way of finding citations to journals are via bibliographic databases and citation indices, such as [...] Google Scholar, or [...] MathSciNet. And, If a journal meets any of the following criteria, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources, it qualifies for a stand-alone article. If I understand well, this means that citations are indeed relevant.

My other problem is that selective database is not well-defined. As far as I know, these two mathematical databases do not index non-trusted journals. --Tudor987 (talk) 13:56, 29 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Citations are indeed relevant, but if a whole journal garners a number of citations that wouldn't even make a single person notable, then we have a problem. As for selective, those two math databases strive to be comprehensive, that is, they will include any mathematics journal (except obvious predatory ones). Other databases, like Scopus for example, select the best journals from among "trusted journals" and therefore are selective. MathSciNet and zbMath are not selective in that sense. --Randykitty (talk) 14:11, 29 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Citation counts are going to be low for pure mathematics; everyone involved seems to be a notable mathematician, so this looks to be another of those cases where merging to the publisher would be the reasonable thing to do if the article can't stand on its own. XOR'easter (talk) 15:42, 29 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to Alexander Soifer. The only real notability guideline we have for journals is GNG, and by that criterion I can't find enough in-depth coverage of this journal to justify a separate article, even though this one is linked from some two dozen of our other articles. Having lots of incoming links used to be a notability criterion long ago but not in recent years. [1] and [2] are in-depth but not independent, and there are some independent mentions of the journal in connection with the Dănuț Marcu affair but not really in-depth ones. Citation count is a stupid way to evaluate professional mathematicians (if needed I can work at digging up statements from the professional societies saying so) and equally a stupid way to evaluate pure mathematics journals. And my understanding is that this is Soifer's personal journal (for instance it is called that by Ziegler in doi:10.1365/s13291-014-0101-y), so the article on him is the only plausible redirect target. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:40, 29 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- That sounds good to me. XOR'easter (talk) 19:15, 29 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  - Same for me. --Randykitty (talk) 20:48, 29 July 2018 (UTC) And BTW, as far as I am concerned, citation counts are a stupid way to evaluate any academic, not just mathematicians. The only evaluation that is even more stupid is looking at the impact factors of the journals where they publish... But the way we talk about sources on WP, we have to take citations into account because some people will argue that if an article has been cited by 3 other sources that means this article (or its author) meets GNG... --Randykitty (talk) 07:53, 30 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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.