Deletion of Explore: The Journal of Science & Healing (2nd nomination)

Comment: Journals, like everything else, have to pass , i.e., need substantial coverage in reliable sources. The NJOURNALS page is an essay and therefore of no help in determining any presumptive notability. It is not apparent from either the article or this discussion what the reliable sources (i.e., presumably not any involved in propagating pseudoscience) that cover this journal in any depth could be
Stance: delete
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Notability (WP:GNG)

Comment: doesn't appear to meet  or be otherwise notable. Fringe coatrackery compounds the problem
Stance: delete
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Notability (WP:JOURNALCRIT)

Comment: This was kept at AFD just 1 month ago and nothing has changed. |A trout for the nom
Stance: keep
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Whacking with a wet trout (WP:TROUT)

Comment: It is true that  is not a guideline or policy, but rather an essay. However, just because you personally |don't like a journal because you think it or its contents is "bullshit", as jps stated above, certainly is not a policy- or guideline-based reason for deleting a page either. This remains true whether or not you can get a whole bunch of your sycophants supporters to post delete votes in the same discussion, because |Wikipedia is not a democracy, where the most votes determines the outcome of a discussion. Insulting a journal with your own ''unsupported'' claims that it consists of pseudoscience, bullshit, etc. is the least policy-based reason to delete a page
Stance: comment
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Notability (WP:NJOURNALS||WP:IJUSTDONTLIKEIT||WP:DEM)

Comment: NJOURNALS is an essay that will never make it to guideline due to it being not fit for purpose. The relevant guideline would be  which this completely fails to satisfy. Anyone who argues SCOPUS indicates notability needs a trout, only sources independant of the subject can demonstrate notability
Stance: delete
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Notability (WP:GNG)

Comment: because there are insufficient |reliable independent sources to write a verifiably  article. This is important because Explore, probably more than any other journal published by a mainstream company, is a platform for abject nonsense. A journal that can publish a paper on the medicinal efficacy of chocolate imbued with "intent" has completely lost any connection to the scientific method, and indeed the editor has described the teaching of science as tantamount to child abuse. He repudiates the scientific method., Thus, we can't have an article based solely on the self-description provided by the publisher, we absolutely must have solid reliable and above all ''independent'' sources. Most of the reality-based world imply ignores this journal. You won't find editorials in the NEJM saying that despite the latest paper in Explore, distant healing is still bullshit. Psychologists have come to the conclusion that Emotional Freedom Techniques is nonsense, the fact that advocates publish favourable papers in Explore won't change that and they won't comment on the journal that publishes those favourable results because it's ignorable. I have only found one source to date that comes anywhere close to  that actually talks about this journal, rather than one of its editors
Stance: delete
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Reliable sources (WP:RS||WP:NPOV||WP:RS)

Comment: Clearly this passes , but of course that is an essay rather than a guideline. My general feeling is that NJOURNALS is an attempt to find an objective way to distinguish reputable from disreputable journals, and that it mostly succeeds in that purpose, but that in the case of this particular journal it has failed to do so. So, although I would usually follow NJOURNALS (as a convenient shortcut for straightforward cases), in this case I think we should fall back to our actual guidelines, which for this case are  and  (as alternative medicine is mostly a fringe topic). On the side of GNG we have that it is listed by various reliably published indexes, and that those indices' coverage of it is arguably in-depth. The Journal Citation Reports page for it, for instance, includes data for a dozen different summary statistics for the journal, broken down for each year over a roughly ten-year period, as well as its overall ranking and impact factor. So I think it is a pass, just as I think that the "included in multiple indexes" clause of NJOURNALS is a shorthand for the fact that the coverage in these indices will always provide a pass of GNG. On the side of FRINGE we need mainstream sources that assess the content of this journal from the mainstream science point of view, so that we can provide an appropriately |neutral description of the subject. Here we fall down. We have only a single source with a single line, the source of the "truly ridiculous studies" quote, but no detail on what makes these studies ridiculous. Without more depth to this quote, it just comes off as an unbased attack, but without this quote we inappropriately legitimize this journal. Rather than fall into this dilemma I think it would be best avoided by not trying to have an article on the journal. But, as in most past instances where I have argued for deleting problematic but GNG-passing subjects,  I expect the discussion here to go against me
Stance: delete
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Notability (WP:NJOURNALS||WP:GNG||WP:FRINGE||WP:NPOV)

Comment: The journal has an impact factor and is indexed in Scopus, thus meets notability criteria of , our de facto guideline at AfD. In short, nothing has changed since the last nomination
Stance: keep
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Notability (WP:NJOURNALS)

Comment: It's published by Elsevier, one of the world's largest publisher of scientific journals.  Some of the arguments to delete this article smack of .  The argument that it's a  is irrelevent as that's not a valid reason for deletion.  If it was a coatrack, that can be solved through normal editing of the article.  In any case, I just read the article as it stands today, and there's nothing coatracky about it that I can see.  Maybe it was in the past, I don't know
Stance: keep
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions (WP:IDONTLIKEIT||WP:COATRACK)

Comment: Would the delete !voters please care to explain why this journal having an impact factor assigned by JCR, which  explicitly says satisfies the first criterion of the notability guideline for journals, somehow does not confer notability in this case
Stance: comment
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Notability (WP:JOURNALCRIT)

Comment: the journal has an impact factor, and is indexed in several selective databases, making it a clear pass of . '''Update''' And with sources such as "https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/getting-nccams-moneys-worth-some-results-of-nccam-funded-studies-of-homeopathy/ ''Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing'' is a journal known for its publication of truly ridiculous studies." /"https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/getting-nccams-moneys-worth-some-results-of-nccam-funded-studies-of-homeopathy/ It’s also published in the second woo-iest of the journals, ''Explore''." / "http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/05/04/when-big-pharma-pays-a-publisher-to-publ/ (Elsevier) also publishes ... the quack journal Explore, which, as I described before, publishes Dean Radin’s pseudoscientific articles on “distant healing” and food imbued with “intent.”" it is also a clear pass of 
Stance: keep
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Notability (WP:NJOURNALS||WP:GNG)

Comment: Regardless of whether it passes , it passes  since it has been referenced in independent sources multiple times
Stance: keep
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Notability (WP:NJOURNAL||WP:GNG)

Comment: to List of Elsevier periodicals (with a mention there in the list). Since  is but an essay, the next best notability rules come from . I cannot find anything but passing mentions (as in "According to a study published in Explore, bla bla bla...") in my GNews and GBooks searches. Ergo, not notable enough for a stand-alone article, but does exist, so it can be mentioned in a higher-level article
Stance: merge
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Notability (WP:NJOURNAL||WP:GNG)

Comment: I don't think merely having an impact factor indexed by SCOPUS meets the "is frequently cited" of criterion 2 at the essay .  Anyway, it seems likely that the correct guideline is not one about academic journals, but one about peddling in pseudoscience, , which requires "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject".  There is at least one independent secondary source that mentions this journal in passing referred to in the article as known for publishing pseudoscience.  (It gives the example of a study of whether it is possible to embed "intent" into chocolate.)  It discusses this journal along with two others, and concludes that "these three journals are ''shams masquerading as real scientific journals''" (emphasis mine).  This strongly urges us to apply NFRINGE in our assessment of the journal, and if there are more such secondary sources, I think this article could be kept under that guideline.  Otherwise, I do not think it meets that guideline, and therefore should be deleted
Stance: comment
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Notability (WP:NJOURNALS||WP:NFRINGE)

Comment: can those bashing us over the head with  and its section  please note that it is an opinion essay - not even a guideline, never mind actual policy. It is worthless in the face of . And here, the existence of a few database entries and an impact factor does not provide RS for a significant level of citation and/or wider discussion. Given the lack of wider discussion and the pathetic level of citation, affirmed by the equally pathetic impact factor, no way can these toys establish notability of this journal. &mdash; Cheers
Stance: comment
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Notability (WP:NJOURNALS||WP:JOURNALCRIT||WP:GNG)

Comment: per the Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Explore:_The_Journal_of_Science_%26_Healing|AfD on this article one month ago. Per  "users should allow a reasonable amount of time to pass before nominating the same page for deletion again". No specific amount of time is stated, but I'm pretty sure one month is not reasonable. Unless new information has since come to light that should have changed the previous discussion, let's avoid relitigating previous consensus so soon
Stance: keep
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Deletion policy (WP:DPAFD)