Talk:Virology (journal)

Untitled

I can't locate an online ISSN for this publication. It's not given on the journal website, PDFs of sample issue or at PubMed. Espresso Addict 11:58, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Recent edits by Randykitty

I'm concerned that these introduce the following problems:

• Appropriately sourced information that this was the first US journal has been removed. This is clearly stated in the source by the 2nd editor in chief, writing in a different, peer-reviewed, journal, which seems very reliable. At least on foundation, the publisher was US, the three editors were all US -- thus, at foundation, the journal was US based, even if now (with a Netherlands publisher) it is international.
• The date of foundation is stated as 1954 in the publisher source.
• I don't understand why the number of references has been reduced from 21 to 18, as all IMO were necessary and adequately reliable.

As I'm trying to put the article up for DYK at the moment where full sourcing is critical, I therefore plan to revert these changes. Espresso Addict (talk) 20:39, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Journals rarely have a "nationality". I doubt, for example (although I don't want to shell out $22 to see for certain) that the editorial board of this journal, back when the first issue was established in 1955, did not have members outside of the US. I guess if you really think that nationality counts, you could say that the journal was "US based", but frankly, I think that is just trivial information. The first issue wa published in 1955, which for thousands of journals is taken as the date of establishment. As for the deleted references, the first one that I deleted was to the NLM catalog. Library catalogs are notoriously unreliable and more often than not contain mistakes. In addition, the statement after which it was placed was already supported by another reference. The second reference that I removed ("Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center: Michael Emerman: Virology's new editor-in-chief (accessed 17 February 2013)") was used to source the statement that it was the first US-based journal. As I removed that remark for reasons explained above, I also removed the reference (as it did not say that this was the first English-language journal in this field - a fairly trivial fact anyway). The third reference removed was about the name of the current EIC and was to a page listing the editorial board. As this name is already on the journal homepage, I didn't feel that a separate reference was necessary for that and removed it. Finally, I'd like to note that I made many more changes than those mentioned (templating all references, correcting links, etc), and I don't think that a wholesale reversion is warranted here. --Randykitty (talk) 21:44, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

• Journals certainly used to have a nationality, though I agree the internet and the mergers of most of the old small publication houses have tended to blur the boundaries. I do think in a historical section it is entirely appropriate to talk of nationality, especially when we're essentially discussing the birth of virology publishing, with reference to an Austrian journal (now Arch Virol), two American journals (Virology & J Virol) and a British journal (J Gen Virol). In a broader sense, the split of virology at that date between groups based in the USA & groups based in France was then very important.
• I don't know about the entire ed board but as the guidelines state, the ed board isn't involved in running the journal! As the publisher, editor-in-chief and two editors were all located in the US at that date, I think US is a fair call.
• I don't usually add references that aren't needed for some detail, so I'd prefer to restore NLM catalogue. The journals project have used it as a better-than-nothing source many times before. I think it was probably uniquely supporting the fact that Academic Press continued to be the imprint after the takeover with Elsevier (tho' I note Elsevier seems to have abandoned it, since I last looked).
• As to relatively trivial facts, if one is planning to go to DYK with a hook based on the fact, one needs to reference that the sky is blue -- preferably four times over!
• As to the current ed board it is needed for the affiliation of the ed in chief, which I don't believe is given on the main index page. In any case, it is much easier to find the name and more likely to be stably present than on the journal index page, which tends to change a lot in what information is represented there.
• I did notice all your other changes. Personally I dislike reference templating, largely because it makes it hard to edit & maintain the information and also because the resulting formats are all ghastly; I note it is also unnecessary even for Good articles. However, I know I'm in a minority on this one.
• I didn't see any corrected links, tho' you did manage to de-format a couple of titles with the reference templating. I'll look out for them. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:11, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Now submitted to DYK. Espresso Addict (talk) 09:32, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

• I confess to being rather shocked that you wholesale reverted most of the changes that I made (which cost me about an hour) without any further discussion. I put in a lot of effort to template the references. Whatever you may think of the output these templates provide, there is absolutely no justification for removing the additional information that was added (DOIs, PMIDs, etc). Templates containing DOIs and such provide stable references and allow fast reparation even when a link goes bad. Templates also help editing, in that they show you which information is missing and helpful tools like Citation-bot will help you fill in missing info. In any case, that discussion belongs elsewhere and not here (although I have to note that the "ghastly" output can very easily be changed throughout WP if you can get consensus for a change, not something you can do with untemplated refs). As for the (un)reliability of the NLM catalog, the fact that the current entry for this journal still indicates "Academic Press" as the publisher, whereas the journal website itself says that the imprint is "Elsevier" speaks for itself. As for "the Austrian journal Archiv für die gesamte Virusforschung that "was not founded until 1939", I'd like to note that Austria did not exist in 1939. In addition, although it was published by "Springer Wien", that was just a daughter of Springer itself, which was founded in 1842 in Berlin. I cannot find who the first editor was, but the first issue contained articles in German, French, and English, with authors from several countries beyond Germany (as said, there was no Austria at the time). So even in 1939 it was not that easy to determine the nationality of a journal. Your point about the editorial board is well taken. Instead, I'd like to note that already the first issue of this journal contained articles from the US, Japan, and France. So even though this journal has US editors and a then-US-based publisher, things are not that clear-cut. And given that the "Austrian" journal also published in English, your claim in the article should be modified to "the first virology journal entirely in English"... --Randykitty (talk) 12:30, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Going off-wiki now until this evening. You might like to read the WP policy on referencing (WP:REF); I'd particularly draw your attention to the bit under "Citation style" that states:

Editors should not attempt to change an article's established citation style merely on the grounds of personal preference, to make it match other articles, or without first seeking consensus for the change. If the article you are editing is already using a particular citation style, you should follow it; if you believe it is inappropriate for the needs of the article, seek consensus for a change on the talk page. As with spelling differences, if there is disagreement about which style is best, defer to the style used by the first major contributor. If you are the first contributor to add citations to an article, you may choose whichever style you think best for the article.

To be avoided

[...]

• Adding citation templates to an article that already uses a consistent system without templates, or removing citation templates from an article that uses them consistently

Espresso Addict (talk) 13:12, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

• Thanks for pointing this out, not something I was familiar with. Does it also cover cleaning out DOIs and PMIDs? Using links to third-party sites when perfectly good direct links are available? Any comments on the other issues that I raised? --Randykitty (talk) 13:48, 19 February 2013 (UTC)