Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Juniper Publishers

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 no consensus. Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 14:00, 23 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Juniper Publishers[edit]

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This is a company therefore GNG/WP:NCORP criteria apply. None of the sources meet GNG/NCORP criteria for establishing notability. Right now there is no WP:ATD unless a section is added to list companies at Predatory publishing HighKing⁺⁺ 13:24, 27 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of India-related deletion discussions. HighKing⁺⁺ 13:24, 27 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep well-known and well-criticized in multiple independent reliable sources predatory publishing group. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:40, 27 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. While several sources are blogs, they nevertheless are reliable sources as they are published by well-known experts. Sources mentioned in the article make this pass WP:GNG. Listing publishers like this in an article on predatory publishing or even a category "predatory publishers" has been discussed in the past and was rejected. --Randykitty (talk) 15:13, 27 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Companies-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 15:28, 27 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academic journals-related deletion discussions. Randykitty (talk) 16:59, 27 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Telangana and California. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 17:03, 27 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: Fails WP:ORGCRIT and WP:ORGDEPTH, unreliable and primary sources. M.Ashraf333 (talk) 13:41, 28 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per Headbomb and Randykitty. As I said on a related AfD: I can follow the WP:NCORP concerns, but that guideline is fundamentally about preventing Wikipedia from being used as an advertising platform, whereas documenting shady publishers is anti-advertising. Making the evidence that a publisher is shady harder to find would be doing a public disservice. WP:NCORP warns against using routine coverage, but documenting that a publisher is predatory or disreputable is not routine in the sense of annual earnings reports, participation in trade shows, etc. Moreover, WP:NCORP has an explicit note about duplicitous conduct: it observes that an organization might have a number of significant sources discussing its (alleged) illegal conduct, fail to qualify as notable by NCORP specifically, and yet be notable by other guidelines. The conduct here is not alleged to be illegal, but it is alleged to be bad behavior, and the same ethos applies. XOR'easter (talk) 18:06, 28 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Timothytyy (talk) 13:25, 6 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - Fails GNG. My analysis of the sources is below (based on source numbering in the article as of this diff):

1 - Primary source.

2 - Not WP:SIGCOV.

3 - Just appears on a list of potential predatory publishers. Fails WP:SIGCOV.

4 - Personal blog written by Jeffrey Beall, a librarian known for coining the concept of predatory publishers. There's some decent analysis and discussion of Juniper here so, although it is a personal blog, this appears to be a reliable source.

5 - Primary.

6 - Primary.

7 - Just lists of editors for various journals. Not WP:SIGCOV, and primary.

8 - No mention of Juniper.

9 - Primary.

10 - Juniper appears once in a table of results. Fails WP:SIGCOV.

11 - Personal blog written by DH Kaye. Juniper is discussed in some detail here, although I do not think that Kaye's self-published blog post on this topic counts as a reliable source (see below).

12 - Personal blog written by Jerry Coyne. Juniper is mentioned only once (in an email address) and then a few times in the comments. The tone of the blog is more 'what the hell is this?' than an analysis of Juniper, which limits its use as a reliable source for an encyclopedia article. Also, I doubt that Coyne's personal blog counts as a reliable source on the topic of predatory publishers (see below).

13 - Personal blog written by Elisabeth Bik, based on an earlier Twitter thread. Although this post is discussing various papers published in Juniper journals - and Juniper thus gets some passing mentions - Juniper itself gets very little direct attention. I am also not convinced that Bik's personal blog on this topic is a reliable source (see below).

14 - Juniper mentioned in passing as the publisher of the journal being discussed. Not WP:SIGCOV.

15 - Verifying someone's position; nothing to do with Juniper.

16 - Discusses one of Juniper's journals in depth, but Juniper itself only gets a passing mention.

17 - A lengthy discussion of predatory journals and academic hoaxes, but no mention of Juniper - the only passing relevance is that some of Juniper's journals are discussed.

18 - Part 2 of the previous source; same as above.

In all, I make that one independent reliable source (#4) giving significant coverage to Juniper, which is not enough to pass WP:GNG. I should make a comment on some of the other blog posts, since Randykitty argues that they nevertheless are reliable sources as they are published by well-known experts. This applies specifically to sources #11, #12, and #13. WP:RSSELF says: Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications. Kaye, Coyne and Bik are certainly experts in their respective fields but I do not think that this means they have expertise in the field of predatory publishing (which Beall, by contrast, does have). As a result, I do not think we should count these personal blogs as reliable sources for the purposes of WP:GNG. If there were additional reliable and independent sources, then we could perhaps use these blog posts to evidence how academics in various disciplines have responded to Juniper (and in this sense they'd become more like primary sources) but I do not think we can use them to determine notability. WJ94 (talk) 14:39, 7 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

These are plenty reliable sources, those you dismiss as blogs are all valid as expert blogs (particularly those of Beall, Bik and Kaye, all three specialize in predatory journals). Also not all sources are there for purposes of WP:N, many are there simply for WP:V. Likewise, discussion one/several of their journals, as in 14/16/17 is a de-facto discussion of the publisher as well. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:47, 7 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Headbomb, thanks for your reply. I agree with you that the Beall blog is a reliable source; to pass WP:GNG we'd then need at least one further reliable source.

You suggest that Bik and Kaye specialise in predatory journals. If they are established experts in this area then I'd be happy to accept that their blogs are reliable sources. According to WP:RSSELF, the way to determine whether a the author of a self-published source is an expert in a field is to look at whether they have also published on the topic on independent reliable publications. Have Bik and Kaye done this on the topic of predatory journals? If they have and I've missed this then I'd be happy to reconsider my !vote, so could you point me to anything which would establish their expertise?

With regards to sources 14/16/17, I disagree that discussion of one of Juniper's journals is de facto discussion of Juniper themselves. Notability is not inherited, so just because something associated with Juniper (such as one of their journals) is notable it does not mean that Juniper itself is notable.

Finally, with regards to your comment about sources being used for WP:V rather than WP:N - that's fine but not what is at issue here. I'm not necessarily advocating for the removal of any of these sources, I just wanted to go through them to work out which ones would meet WP:GNG. WJ94 (talk) 16:11, 7 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

INHERITED does not enter into this. It's a publisher who determines how the general running of their journals is done (for example, how peer review is handled, so this is different from editorial policy), so if any discussion of this for a publisher's journals reflects, as Headbomb says, de facto on the publisher itself. --Randykitty (talk) 17:17, 7 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your reply Randykitty. I think we'll have to agree to disagree on that one, then. To my mind, discussion of a specific journal does not confer notability to that journal's publisher. In the same way, if a minor book publisher published a book which received a lot of coverage, the book would be notable but I wouldn't say that its publisher automatically was too, without the publisher itself being discussed in reliable sources. Or to use another example, the manufacturer of a notable product is not necessarily notable (per WP:INHERIT). The manufacturer will have a significant input into how the product is deigned, made, quality-controlled, marketed, etc (just as the publisher determines the general running of a journal) - even so, without reliable secondary sources about the manufacturer specifically, they would not be notable. WJ94 (talk) 18:09, 7 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"Have Bik and Kaye done this on the topic of predatory journals?" Elisabeth Bik's most famous for dealing with shady shit in journals and won prizes for it. Kaye is an Emeritus professor specializing in ensuring scientific validity in courts and other legal contexts. If he says something is shady, it's not a random guy on Twitter. See also another source I added [1]. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:27, 7 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 03:41, 14 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Almost all of the article seems to be designed to confirm that this is a predatory publisher. As such it is worth mentioning in an article about predatory publishers, but doesn't merit an article of its own. Athel cb (talk) 08:56, 14 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Any article on any predatory publisher would be appear to be "designed to confirm that this is a predatory publisher." because that's what predatory publishers are known for. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 09:30, 14 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I don't think that one can say that "Bik and Kaye specialise in predatory journals". For Kaye, I don't know, but Elisabeth Bik's emphasis in her recent work is on detecting fakery in published papers, often in serious journals like Nature. Predatory journals are certainly relevant, but her concerns are more general than that. Athel cb (talk) 08:56, 14 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep: on the balance of things. The inclusion on the Beall's List seems like a sufficient claim of notability. See also The Guardian: Another of the publishers used by Mörner, known as Juniper Publishers, was one of those to be caught in a hoax in 2017 when it accepted a “Dr Doll” on to its editorial board. Dr Doll was a fake veterinary surgeon created by Curtin University’s Prof Mike Daube with a profile based on his dog, a Staffordshire terrier. Daube told the Huffington Post he had orchestrated the hoax “to expose shams of this kind, which prey on the gullible, especially young or naive academics and those from developing countries”. Source. With a touch of WP:ITSUSEFUL, it's relevant to include an article that relate to the sources that may be used on Wikipedia, giving sufficient warning to article writers. --K.e.coffman (talk) 00:28, 15 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: Fails GNG, ORGCRIT, ORGDEPTH, nothing with Ind RS with SIGCOV addressing the subject directly and indepth. Beall's List has over 1000 journal entries, obviously not every one of these is notable, so the position that says inclusion there is enough sourcing for notability is nonsense. None of the other sources above and in the article have SIGCOV addressing the subject directly and indepth. BEFORE showed nothing that meets SIGCOV from Ind RS and the participants above have presented none. // Timothy :: talk 12:21, 17 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's not inclusion on the list that makes it notable/meet WP:SIGCOV, it's the coverage in the blog. And not just that of Beall but those of Bik and Kaye as well, which all meet the criteria for expert blogs. Outside of expert blogs, there are several peer-reviewed journals, city newspapers, and magazines all talking about Juniper and its publications. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:19, 18 March 2023 (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.