Talk:Historic Environment

notability

I added some further references and information on the editorial board for the journal. I hope this is sufficient to demonstrate notability.Garyvines (talk) 04:25, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

• Unfortunately, it doesn't. Having notable persons on the board does not make a journal notable (WP:NOTINHERITED). Nor the fact that it is accessible in a library. To get an idea of what is needed here see WP:NJournals or WP:GNG (an article does not need to meet both, one is enough). --Randykitty (talk) 09:52, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

I could do with some help here. The journal is the pre-eminent publication on heritage conservation in Australia, is allied to the international organisation ICOMOS, it is cited extensively in conservation literature, records the major heritage conferences in Australia, and has been in publication for over 30 years. I note many other Wikipedia articles for journal have very brief listings (see for example, The American Statistician and Architectural Heritage). I have added some more links to the indexing and full text access services which include Historic Environment and more references. BTW I have no connection to this subject.Garyvines (talk) 10:59, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

I did not assume you have a connection to the subject, no worries :-) There are thousands of articles on academic journals and some of them are indeed bad and probably not notable. But that is not a strong argument (irreverently called: WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS); there are just not enough editors interested in these subjects to clean them all up... I had a look at the two that you mentioned. The American Statisticuan has an impact factor listed, meaning that it is included in the Science Citation Index and the Journal Citation Reports, which is very prestigious and a clear indication of notability (even though that article could do a much better job of showing the journal's notability). Architectural Heritage does not show any signs of notability and is indeed tagged as such. Nobody really seems to have taken enough of an interest in it to take it to AfD. I may do that if I find time (and cannot find other sources, that's the time consuming part of going to AFD). As for the stuff you added, most is irrelevant, I fear. The only database indexing it is the Australian Heritage Bibliography, which does not seem to be very selective (if at all). The claim that this is a "pre-eminent" journal is not sourced to an independent source (of course the publisher itself will say it's a good journal). The only somewhat substantial thing is the ERA ranking, but note that the 2012 ERA exercise abandoned journal rankings, apparently they didn't find them very relevant themselves. As an aside (this is unrelated to any question of notability), I don't think that the Trove reference actually sources the publication history of the journal. The source is rather unclear about that. --Randykitty (talk) 12:05, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

This seems an unnecessarily carping criticism of what is a useful article. You are setting high benchmarks for any journal to demonstrate particularly in a small field such as heritage conservation. I have a connection to the field of heritage conservation and would view this journal as pre-eminent in its field in Australia however, I and most other practitioner,s have far too many other things to do that write articles saying so. Surely the ERA ranking would be adequate as it assessed all the journals in the very broad field. Otherwise what was a useful article will be consigned to the dustbin because of your particular opinion. Iain Stuart (talk) 02:54, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, this is not my personal opinion, but a long-standing consensus among editors involved with articles on academic journals. There are many journals around and not all are notable. If the (abandoned) ERA rating is all there is, I'll take this to AfD. --Randykitty (talk) 09:28, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

I am an Australian conservation architect, and have been a regular reader of the journal 'Historic Environment' since it began. I agree with Gary Vines and Iain Stuart that this journal is the most notable in its field and it warrants a Wikipedia article. If it fails the test invoked by Randykitty, then we need more appropriate criteria for testing notability. --Peter Marquis-Kyle (talk) 10:34, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

• I don't doubt that what you and Iain are saying is correct. Unfortunately, what you or I think is immaterial: Statements on WP need to be verifiable and supported by reliable sources. Note that WP:NJournals was designed to make it easier for journals be regarded as notable (and also note that NJournals is not a guideline and that some people do not accept it). Passing the "ordinary" notability guidelines is only possible for a few of the international top journals (or some very bad ones, that generated publicity because they did something stupid). So I don't really see any room for easing the notability guidelines, but you're welcome to try to propose amendments. --Randykitty (talk) 12:44, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

I added reference to WorldCat listing it in over "80 libraries world wide including all of the Australian state libraries and major Australian and New Zealand university libraries". I would think this and the Excellence in Research for Australia ranking would be sufficient to meet WP:NJournals in reference to "one can also look at how frequently the journal is held in various academic libraries (this information is available in Worldcat." ERA was after-all the only concerted attempt to rank Australian academic publications in the humanities in Australia. The problem with the 'major indexing services' such as Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index, Web of Knowledge and Scopus and the Institute for Scientific Information's Journal Citation Reports impact factor is their science- and US/Europe-centric nature resulting in a bias against places like Australia.Garyvines (talk) 22:48, 21 October 2013 (UTC)