Talk:WikiJournal User Group

Banner links must be accessible on smartphones
On smartphones, the banners are hard to tap/click on, especially the Preprint one. I have difficulty changing the banners' format. George Ho (discuss • contribs) 12:31, 29 January 2022 (UTC)


 * @George Ho: Sorry for mising this earlier! Do you know if you were using the 'mobile view' or 'desktop view' on your smartphone? I've tried to make the tabs re-flow into a grid when on a mobie device, bit I think it only works in 'mobile view'. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 02:06, 21 July 2022 (UTC)
 * @Shafee: Using 'mobile view' on Android, the Preprint banner is hard to tap, yet I can access that journal via tapping the icon on the left of the banner. Others are still clickable, yet larger text is annoying on mobile view. --George Ho (discuss • contribs) 06:27, 21 July 2022 (UTC)
 * @George Ho: Aha, now I see it. Thanks. I was looking at the top banner in grey rather than the list of journals. I'm also getting some of the text overlapping too. I'll aim to fix it up next week. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 23:13, 21 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Three months have passed; have you fixed the issue yet? George Ho (discuss • contribs) 08:39, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Reference deposits
Hi all! I was taking a look at the WikiJournal User Group participation report over on Crossref's site. This is a useful tool for exploring how rich the metadata that WJUG submits to Crossref along with its DOIs is. It looks like there's lots of room for improvement, some of which would be fairly straightforward to accomplish: the License URLs category, for instance, measures how many articles' metadata include a link to the license under which the papers are distributed (either CC-BY 4.0 or CC-BY-SA 4.0 typically, right?).

What I wanted to look at right now was the References category, in which WJUG is currently scoring 0%. What this means is that none of the 87 articles registered for DOIs by WJUG with Crossref include the references as part of their metadata. This matters for a few reasons. First, reference linking (i.e., including DOIs in references) is required by Crossref's terms of service, and reference depositing (i.e., submitting metadata with references) is strongly encouraged. Second, the inclusion of references in metadata is how Crossref tracks citations. When you see a journal article's "What Cites This" page, you'll often see a few numbers, frequently a Crossref citation count, a Web of Science citation count, and a Google Scholar citation count. On these pages, you are often able to view which articles are specifically citing the article in question too, and in some cases, publishers may preemptively set up modules that autodisplay the citing articles alongside the article itself.

This brings up the third reason to begin depositing references: not only is it good practice for good metadata management's sake itself, but it also has the capability to improve visibility for WikiJournal articles. Consider the WJS article "Beak and feather disease virus: biology and resultant disease"; its first reference is the 1907 article "Parrakeets Moulting". If you visit the Taylor & Francis page for "Parrakeets Moulting", however, you can see in the righthand "Related research" module in the "Cited by" tab that no articles cite this paper. Because references for WJUG articles haven't yet been deposited with Crossref, there's no way to link "Beak and feather disease virus" and "Parrakeets Moulting"; if references were deposited for this paper, then the WJS article would eventually appear as a citing article on the "Parrakeets Moulting" page. Thus, reference linking offers readers of the cited article another connection to the citing WikiJournal article, increasing the visibility of WJUG outputs.

One final reason to consider depositing references is that doing so will grant WJUG eligibility for Crossref's Cited-by service, which is essentially the tool that allows WJUG the ability to see what research is citing WikiJournal articles. Right now, WJUG can access the number of citations for each of its journals' articles through Crossref (WJM, WJS, and WJH) but can't actually see what those citing articles are. Depositing references will grant eligibility for Cited-by which WJUG can opt to enroll in (free!) and access said lists of citing materials for WikiJournal articles.

If depositing references is of interest, the good news is that Crossref has made it pretty easy! References can be deposited manually via the Simple Text Query tool on Crossref's site. All one needs to do is copy the list of references from a WikiJournal article and paste it into the tool. (Note that for some articles, this will be easy; "Beak and feather disease virus: biology and resultant disease" has a unified reference list, but other articles like "Themes in Maya Angelou's autobiographies" have references split between a footnotes and a cited by list and may need to be manually trimmed to remove the repeated "[Author], [date], p. XX" footnotes when submitting.) Simple Text Query then parses the list and connects materials based on their DOIs. Once this is done, the depositor clicks Deposit, enters their email, the Parent DOI (i.e., the DOI of the article for which references are being deposited), and their Crossref depositor credentials.

I have been manually going through all articles in all three journals to make sure that all of them have relevant DOIs included in their references. I have completed WJS, am almost done with WJH, and will then start on WJM. Once this is done, I would be happy to either guide someone interested through beginning to deposit references or take over the project myself, at least to work through the 87-article backlog of existing papers. (If someone with depositor access wants to try making a reference deposit, "Beak and feather disease virus" is in good shape and its reflist is ready to be deposited.) In either case, please let me know if this is something WJUG would be interested in pursuing and how I can help. Please let me know if you have any questions. Kindly —Collin (Bobamnertiopsis)t c 01:02, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Okay, all WJH articles now include all available DOIs. WJM is left to do. —Collin (Bobamnertiopsis)t c 20:23, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks Colin for the very informative post and your great work on adding DOIs. I will bring this up at our next monthly meeting.  OhanaUnited  Talk page  19:31, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Great points raised! I've added a step-wise summary process here and we're looking at organising going through and uploading the back-catalogue. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 01:50, 21 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks ! I'm glad to hear it's of interest. I'm still working through adding DOIs to all references in WJM but I'll try to finish that by the end of the month so all articles in all three journals are ready to be deposited. Let me know if you have any other questions! —Collin (Bobamnertiopsis)t c 05:18, 21 July 2022 (UTC)
 * WJM is now complete, so all existing articles are ready to have their references uploaded should you choose to do so. Thanks! —Collin (Bobamnertiopsis)t c 00:44, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Oh neat, I see references have already been deposited for "Parenting stress" and it's already showing up in the cited articles' Cited By lists (e.g., here). Thanks for doing this! —Collin (Bobamnertiopsis)t c 01:44, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, I did Parenting stress and another one (can't remember if it was Kivu Ebola Epidemic or the Leptospirosis) as a trial to see how easy/difficult the process was. Is there a way to check back which one I did?  OhanaUnited  Talk page  19:27, 19 August 2022 (UTC)
 * , good question. Looking at the dates the DOIs were most recently updated, I'd guess that it was "Leptospirosis", updated 18 July just like "Parenting stress". However, looking at the metadata itself, it looks like only a single reference was actually deposited ("Hussain, A. (2021). Society and culture. International Journal of Scientific Research. 12 (1). 40608-40613.") and it doesn't even seem to be a reference actually cited in the article, so it may be worth it to try depositing refs for that one again. (Compare to the "Parenting stress" metadata where you can see all the references properly located within the metadata itself.) I hope this is useful! —Collin (Bobamnertiopsis)t c 20:52, 19 August 2022 (UTC)
 * That was indeed strange. Thanks for the detective work. I'll try Leptospirosis again this weekend and let the rest to be tackled by our technical editors.  OhanaUnited  Talk page  22:10, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

Rabeprazole?
I was just taking a look at the potential upcoming articles and noticed the 2018 preprint "Rabeprazole" which does not seem to be included on the tracking list despite having received two peer reviews. It also doesn't seem to have a Wikidata item, but I couldn't see anywhere that it had been declined. Just flagging it here to make sure it hasn't slipped through the cracks. Thanks! —Collin (Bobamnertiopsis)t c 20:45, 16 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Good catch. I'm contacting the WJM board to find out.  OhanaUnited  Talk page  19:31, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for catching this. It was indeed an approved article that didn't get published because it fell through the crack. It will be published shortly.  OhanaUnited  Talk page  15:28, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia as a bibliographic tool for researchers?
Wikijournals give incentives for researchers to write in Wikipedia, by allowing Wikipedia articles to be peer-reviewed and officially counted as academic publications. What if in some cases, researchers did not need incentives because writing in Wikipedia would be directly useful to their own work? The idea is that they would not write on their own results or subject, but on some related subject which they would need to learn. (See this short essay for details.)

Does anyone know examples of this modus operandi? If you are a researcher, does it seem applicable in your own field of research? Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 21:44, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

Capitalized titles?
Hello all,

There's currently an inconsistency whether article titles are written with upper-case or lower-case first letter in its words. I think it's reasonable to have them lower-case, and Wikipedia as well as high impact scholarly journals (such as Nature and The Lancet) do the same. I think this should be added to the Author guidelines. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 20:35, 21 August 2022 (UTC)
 * There was some discussion of this last year as well. —Collin (Bobamnertiopsis)t c 16:45, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I've added sentence case to the Author guidelines: . Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 23:32, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Proposal to introduce "Inactivity removal policy" to the bylaws
{|class=wikitable
 * Outcome: Approved (see section bottom)

As per September's WikiJournal meetings on September 7 and September 9, I am proposing amendments to the bylaw to introduce an inactivity removal policy in "ARTICLE VII - END OF TERM" to all WikiJournals. The reason for this proposal is to ensure that current editorial board members (editors and associated editors) are active in the activities that support the journal. At the meetings, we identified this issue when we attempted to find peer review coordinators to handle our submission backlogs across the journals. The proposal seeks to ensure that the activities that support the journal are spread out to many individuals and not place a burden on a few active volunteers. The proposed wording can be found at WikiJournal User Group/Individual WikiJournal bylaws/Proposed changes (the inactive policy words being added are in bold). Inactive members will be automatically removed if they do not participate in any WikiJournal activities for past 12 months. They will be given an opportunity to become active again before being removed from the editorial board. Meeting attendees representing all 3 WikiJournals unanimously agreed to proposed amendment. Our proposed inactive removal policy and its approach are similar to other WMF communities over how to handle inactive senior staff. I also included an exemption clause to the inactive removal due to extenuating circumstances if advance notice was given.

The voting will be conducted according to ARTICLE III - VOTING with regards to eligibility, quorum and outcome.  OhanaUnited  Talk page  03:13, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Support

 * 1) Support as nom.  OhanaUnited  Talk page  03:13, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
 * 2)  Physikerwelt (discuss • contribs) 04:57, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
 * 3)  - makes sense. Don't know many academic journals that will continue to support inactive Editors. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 07:00, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
 * 4)  rwatson1955
 * 5)  Eystein Thanisch This sadly does seem necessary. I've been inactive for some time and have been making inquiries about how to tidily resign from the board, but presumably those who are still active are too busy with other things to assist with that. An automated procedure thus seems best.
 * 6)  Rosieredfield (discuss • contribs) 15:22, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
 * 7)  --AmyFou (discuss • contribs) 15:35, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
 * 8)  I do support these types of clauses for a variety of reasons. I have been involved in the drafting and proposing of similar policy on several wikis as  is aware. There are good reasons for this. For administrative roles its security, as pointed out above here its backlogs. For myself I have spent the last two years serving as chair of the Ombuds Commission which takes considerable time for me. As such if people wish to remove me from the editorial board here I can understand that and will not object to it. I am still currently working on the OC and have plans to do a third term next year. Cheers  Scott Thomson  ( Faendalimas ) talk 16:39, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
 * 9)  Rachel Helps (BYU) (discuss • contribs) 17:00, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
 * 10)  Mstefan (discuss • contribs) 12:36, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
 * 11)  Oertherdb (discuss • contribs) 12:56, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
 * 12)  I think it's reasonable. I'd originally envisaged that we could just let people who's activity dropped off simply not renew at the end of a 4-year term, but I can see how that's probably insufficient for cases of complete inactivity over a year or more (so long as it doesn't add in too much admin overhead). It it were to be implemented, a reasonable process might be an email with the options: A) remain on the board; B) drop down to assoc editor to be contacted only for articles on their key subject area; or C) be removed from the board (default if no response). It'd also be an opportunity for them to give feedback if they have any. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 04:33, 19 September 2022 (UTC)
 * 13)  As an inactive member, I approuve. MarcRR

Oppose

 * 1) Perhaps we can find better incentives to stay active rather than to punish inactivity, in light of us having fixed terms renewable as per the existing by-laws. If feasible, we can perhaps create another category for officials to be deemed "inactive" by new definition, and maintain them as pool of experts ("fleet in being" analogy) who can choose to reactivate their editorship at any time, since we believe in their expertise the first time. This may help us project an image of a welcoming board that provides better recognition and promotion of active members. Arius1998 (discuss • contribs) 03:39, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
 * I find the conceptualisation of it as "punishment" questionable. Nothing bad happens. It's just that people who aren't doing any editing (and haven't done any in a long time) are no longer listed as editors. I think the discrepancy is with how different people in this discussion understand the "title" of "editor": some see it as some sort of badge of recognition for a person's expertise, while others (including myself) see is as a description of an activity. If it's just a descriptor of an activity, when the activity ceases (for a long amount of time), then the descriptor is no longer accurate. The proposed definition of "activity" makes the bar for further participation extremely low, so I do think that continued listing as editor is accessible to those who want it. Mstefan (discuss • contribs) 12:44, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
 * 1) I second Arius1998. Definitions of active and inactive along with exceptions need to be put forward before jumping to conclusions. Being an innovative journal with non-conventional format, we need to be careful in executing hasty decisions. G10sinha (discuss • contribs) 09:15, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
 * The definitions of active (and vice versa for being inactive) along with exceptions have already been specified in WikiJournal User Group/Individual WikiJournal bylaws/Proposed changes.  OhanaUnited  Talk page  13:08, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
 * 1) Oppose per my comments below regarding "The definitions of active (and vice versa for being inactive)" etc. If you limit editorship to a year where no editable submissions occur you lose valuable editors! --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 07:43, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Indeed we risk losing editors in the process, but I believe it is for the better overall, as we are in need of activity more than having people registered as members. I think a year gives plenty of opportunity to engage. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 23:42, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Neutral

 * 1) I have been inactive for some time for want of submissions in my particular subject. I am not actively trying to encourage submissions, but if a submission came I would be happy to work on it. People like me could be kept in some kind of purgatory as per Arius1998's suggestion. Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 07:12, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Comments
I think it would be good to specify active. I myself was not active, as no articles were submitted and I never got a reply regarding my idea to organize a special issue. Physikerwelt (discuss • contribs) 05:02, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

I'd like to add a few observations:
 * 1) I haven't been serving as an editor for the same reason stated above in Neutral. Lately, all of the submissions have been outside the physical, chemical, astronomical, geological or mathematical. I update WikiJournal of Science/Contribute occasionally and have asked Wikipedia contributors to submit articles to the WikiJournal of Science but so far no submittals. I am interested in genetics and do consider serving as an editor in this area but my expertise is limited and expanding. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 16:41, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
 * 2) if you look at the current submissions on WikiJournal of Science/Potential upcoming articles you'll see that almost all current submittals are biological. I hope that the WikiJournal of Science is not being reduced to the WikiJournal of Biology.
 * 3) on WikiJournal of Science/Contribute we have the following: "Are you proud of any science article you've written on Wikiversity, Wikipedia or any other Wikimedia wiki? Then your article may be eligible for publication at the WikiJournal of Science!" Many of my lectures and resources that are part of my open educational resource called Principles of radiation astronomy are attempts to review in a course context fields within astronomy. Any that others believe might make a good contribution to the WikiJournal of Science could be submitted, and open to peer review. This of course also applies to other contributors here at Wikiversity. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 02:18, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
 * 4) usually the WikiJournal of Science only accepts open access submissions. Nature is the foremost science journal in the world and with a few exceptions its articles are for educational use only. This suggests that occasionally perhaps the WikiJournal of Science could publish educational issues or articles where figures could be fairuse. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 04:26, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
 * 5) "Active is defined as at least one productive engagement in an email or on-wiki discussion, participating in a virtual WikiJournal meeting, participating, attending or presenting as a WikiJournal representative at a local, national or international event, or finding peer reviewers for a submission." No! The purpose of an editor is to help prepare submissions for publication such as but not limited to finding peer reviewers for a submission where professionally likely. Discussions, meetings, and attending or presenting are optional and voluntary and do not constitute activeness as an editor. These instead help the success of the journal by encouraging submissions and are a user group function but are voluntary and encouraged but never mandatory. To make them mandatory is not needed for any editor or editor-in-chief but a manager only. Anyone who manages but does not perform editorship can be considered active but not as an editor. No editor should be considered inactive for lack of submissions upon which to perform editorship. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 07:38, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
 * But Editorial Board meetings are meetings for members of the editorial board. Who else would be attending? I get that there may be a year where no article within one's area of expertise is submitted and where therefore one cannot edit an article. But at least showing up to meetings where the general editorial policy of WikiJournals is discussed (or getting active in some other way that furthers the WikiJ mission) at least once in a year - I don't think that's asking too much. Mstefan (discuss • contribs) 12:36, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Actually it may be too much to ask. Looking at the history of submissions, the last one outside biology was just more than two years ago. Supplemental participation to a meeting here may widen participation where schedule conflicts occur. Usually, anything I have to add or discuss is easier here. The matters discussed are important and I'm happy with the general outcome. I have listed some suggestions here for widening submittals to the WikiJournal of Science which can be discussed at such meetings as well as here. But, the number and variety of submissions has dwindled suggesting that the meetings are failing somewhere or that the ended pandemic has caused some withdrawal that will soon change. On my talk page I'm putting together a table of "Recent contributions from WikiJournal of Science Editorial Board" which suggests that we may have to remove some inactive members for no activity for two or more years. While I'm not familiar with the success of "getting active in some other way that furthers the WikiJ mission", the number of scientists I've contacted for peer review has greatly widened their general awareness of our journal's existence. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 20:28, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Regarding the "Recent contributions from WikiJournal of Science Editorial Board" an arbitrary cutoff after one year seems to be a bit of a problem. A better solution would be to contact some of those I've listed as "Inactive" to see if they wish to continue on our board. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 03:43, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
 * 1) Looking at our WikiJournal User Group, there are about 73 members. Perhaps half of these would be considered inactive. To have a reasonable vote of the 37 active members would require some 19 votes as a quorum. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 04:24, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Incorrect. The Quorum is the lesser of "10 votes from eligible voting members" or "20% of the total number of Editorial Board members". Using your number (73), 20% of 73 is 15 members. Both metrics have already been met at the current stage, with 10 days to go.  OhanaUnited  Talk page  16:50, 16 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your comment! What we have done in the past, e.g., with G. Brian Whalley, was attempt contact during 2018, both by myself and with the Editor-in-chief. Whalley did not respond to emails but I was able to contact him at his university through a third party regarding his participation on finding reviewers for the Ice drilling methods submission. He indicated he had inquired of colleagues to review but none responded. This effort to contact took several days. Simply dropping an editor for no activity after one year may not be good. As you've noted above an attempt to contact each is needed but is time consuming. Expecting them to respond with email (that may no longer be active) may not be effective. On established journals, members of an editorial board are responsible for contacting the Editor-in-chief if they no longer wish to be considered for finding reviewers or as some have done with the WikiJournal of Science, they've just withdrawn from the board. Usually, a member is kept for obtaining reviewers for about five years, assuming submissions have occurred in their area of expertise and response has occurred in the past. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 17:56, 16 September 2022 (UTC)
 * While I realize we have agreed to what we consider a quorum, according to Wiktionary, somewhat modified, Def. the "number of people [members] required for a governing body or organization to actually vote or [group to officially] conduct business [and to cast votes, often but not necessarily a majority or supermajority]" is called a quorum. A majority of 73 is 37 which if half the boards are inactive is perhaps unrealistic though perhaps not required, but to contact 37 editors to see if they wish to be kept on our boards is a heavily time consuming task. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 18:48, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

Outcome: Approved. Valid points have been raised about the consequences of introducing a minimal activity requirement, but overall there is strong support for it, so I hereby mark it as approved. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 02:23, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

How should unsubmitted preprints be handled?
I've noticed that there are a number of old, incomplete articles under the WikiJournal Preprints namespace, many of which are unlikely to be suitable for publication even if they were finished and submitted. A couple of examples are:


 * WikiJournal Preprints/COVID-19 ELIMINATION AND CELLDIFFERENTIATION
 * WikiJournal Preprints/Cultural Computational Publishing: A Sprint
 * WikiJournal Preprints/Medical gallery of Aria Rad
 * WikiJournal Preprints/Parts of a Book
 * WikiJournal Preprints/Zoosemiotics

Does the WikiJournal project have any standing policies to reject these drafts automatically after some point, or do they just stay in the "unpublished pre-print" state indefinitely? (Is it possible that some of these pages have slipped under the radar, e.g. by not being in the appropriate categories?) Do all of them (especially the ones that never got beyond writing an abstract) need to be preserved for posterity, or can they be deleted after some period of time? Omphalographer (discuss • contribs) 22:13, 12 December 2022 (UTC)


 * Ping? I'm also curious about the status of the following two articles:
 * WikiJournal Preprints/Cryometeors
 * WikiJournal Preprints/Sunflower Trypsin Inhibitor
 * These two display a message claiming that they are "an editorial article and [are] published without peer review", which I don't think is intended. Omphalographer (discuss • contribs) 03:26, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Question regarding WikiJournal and duplicate content
Hi!

I have two questions. I searched around a bit and didn't find anything.


 * 1) When a stable WikiJournal article is the basis of a separate living page, say on Wikipedia or Wikiversity, do you know if it's possible to use a canonical link element to indicate the canonical version of the article for search engines?
 * 2) If so, do you know if the WikiJournal User Group has a policy regarding which version is canonical?

Thank you so much! Greg at Higher Math Help (discuss • contribs) 22:34, 13 February 2023 (UTC)


 * @Greg at Higher Math Help I don't think canonical link element is supported by MediaWiki. It's limited by the software itself. The canonical version of the page is the WikiJournal PDF, which is linked on the wiki page and on Wikidata.  OhanaUnited  Talk page  04:24, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you! Greg at Higher Math Help (discuss • contribs) 02:24, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Preprint Quality
I recently had an article accepted at the WIkiJournal of Medicine and was very disappointed with the PDF preprint quality/process (with no insult towards the editors). I know very little about how things work behind the scenes, but my understanding is that the PDF preprints are manually produced using MS Word. Though WikiJournal requires svgs, there is (to my knowledge) no way to retain the vector-ness of the svg files in Word and it generally results in poor quality rasterization. This can even be seen in the header images. I've made a little process to produce a preprint from the wikipedia page that relies on mediawiki2latex, and the editors have uploaded my preprint. You can see I tried to mimic the existing preprint as best as I could given my fairly shallow latex knowledge and the constraints associated with trying to make this as automatic as possible.

I don't have any stats on how much people use preprint PDFs, but I suspect many people rely on them. It is essential that the print quality is up to par any other academic journal. The existing method, I think, it probably too manual and results in an obviously poor quality print that will limit author interest. I've put my basic process here:

https://github.com/mittimithai/wjlatexpreprint

and suggest it that it be used as a basis for coming up with a standard, essentially automated process across all WikiJournals for high quality pdf preprints.

WikiJournals should provide a baseline preprint and authors can then be responsible for custom typesetting. Using latex in this context is a bit different than writing one's own papers, mediawiki2latex output has to be transformed as reliably into PDF as possible. I tried to apply as much appropriate substitution as I could in the perl script but I am sure there can be some improvements made. Maneesh (discuss • contribs) 18:48, 30 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Please consider using the Century Schoolbook font as a "serif" for the paragraph regular text, and Franklin Gothic font as a "sans-serif" font for the headers (titles). Or use any appropriate font set for the text and headers that the journal adopted, but the fonts have to fit each other. Maxim Masiutin (discuss • contribs) 20:05, 1 May 2023 (UTC)


 * I am not terribly partial to any font, wikimedia2latex makes use of KOMA which does things in certain ways that are partial to the author's views. There does seem to be a lot of "religion" in typesetting with very little of it empirically justified. Feel free to add in a free font to the github repo, I think all one needs to do is change the two lines in maininc.tex. The current lines I think implicitly depend on font locations in an ubntu install. Maneesh (discuss • contribs) 20:55, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

Recent articles without reference deposits
Hello! I just wanted to flag that a few recent articles have not yet had their references deposited into Crossref: Thanks! Kindly —Collin (Bobamnertiopsis)t c 22:07, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
 * "Multiple object tracking" (WJS)
 * "Non-canonical base pairing" (WJS)
 * "Alternative androgens pathways" (WJM)
 * "Impact of xenogenic mesenchimal stem cells secretome on a humoral component of the immune system" (WJM)
 * "Loveday, 1458" (WJH)


 * Thanks . I'm tagging who's responsible for this task.  OhanaUnited  Talk page  14:17, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Can you check if the references for these publications have been deposited?  OhanaUnited  Talk page  03:36, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
 * yes, thanks for pinging me about this! It looks like "Alternative androgens pathways"'s refs have been deposited (see https://api.crossref.org/works/10.15347/WJM/2023.003) but the other four have not yet been deposited (compare with https://api.crossref.org/works/10.15347/WJH/2023.001 e.g.; you can always swap out the DOI at the back of this link to see the metadata registered for a particular article). Thanks! —Collin (Bobamnertiopsis)t c 15:24, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
 * The remaining 4 should be deposited now. Thank you.  OhanaUnited  Talk page  04:47, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Rejection rates
What are the rejection rates of WikiJournals? Juandev (discuss • contribs) 13:19, 5 September 2023 (UTC)


 * @Juandev Very good questions. We have not tallied the overall rejection rate (or individual rejection rate within each journal). Using 2023's data, my estimation is about 60-75% rejection rate in the medicine and science journals. But the overall % does not reflect the amount of work performed behind the scenes. Just over half of the rejected articles are "desk reject" or author filled out the submission form but never submitted the text. The rest are due to author abandoning submission partway (stale submission), rejection after peer review or author no longer has time to complete revision.  OhanaUnited  Talk page  03:06, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
 * OK. I see. Thx. Juandev (discuss • contribs) 10:17, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Peer Reviews
As per my understanding off WikiJournal of Humanities/Peer reviewers only qualified external professionals are allowed to formally peer-review articles.

Which seems a bit unnecessary considering anyone can write articles, also Nupedia vibes, this seriously hurts the journal's growth due to lack of volunteers.

I believe that editors on wikipedia who've written extensively on related topics, should also be invited to peer-review articles, this would add a lot more volunteers (thus making the whole process faster and smoother), and get qualified people from wikipedia over to wikiversity. Crainsaw (discuss • contribs) 11:55, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Current status of WikiJournals
I hate to say this, but so far, I've yet to see WikiJournal revolutionize academic journals in the way that Wikipedia affected encyclopedias severely. Furthermore, WikiJournals have been kinda slow to publish articles. Also, there have been many other open-access journals, especially ones using CC-BY-NC-ND. Also, many published articles happen to be adapted from Wikipedia articles and then copied (if not adapted) into Wikipedia articles, especially same ones. Maybe these are reasons for WMF to be reluctant to approve further development of WikiJournals.

I did have high hopes for this project, yet my interests in the semi-project has.... waned. George Ho (discuss • contribs) 23:54, 3 January 2024 (UTC)


 * I appreciate all the work that went into the publication of an article I worked on last year, without insulting the editors, I was overall disappointed (though they editorial team was able to get outstanding reviewers that were very patient with a very deficient initial draft). I proposed a mostly automated pdf workflow (see above) with no uptake/feedback.  Good quality PDFs, I think, are a very very high priority. The current quality is very low and suffers from (what seems to be) a fairly manual process and immediately obvious rasterization artifacts which look unprofessional. Automation to bring the journal to a professional standard is essential before greater aspirations. Maneesh (discuss • contribs) 18:35, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I should also add that WIkiJournal of Medicine articles don't appear properly indexed by Google Scholar, they don't look like proper journal articles. When I search for the title of my article:
 * [PDF] Alternative androgen pathways
 * MG Masiutin, MK Yadav - upload.wikimedia.org
 * Steroidogenic routes to androgens have been discovered and characterized over the last two
 * decades that fall outside the Δ4 and Δ5" classical androgen pathways" to testosterone and …
 * Save Cite Related articles All 2 versions
 * [HTML] wikiversity.org
 * [HTML] WikiJournal of Medicine/Alternative androgens pathways
 * MG Masiutin, MK Yadav - History - en.wikiversity.org
 * … This expository review uses "alternative androgen pathways" to include what has been …
 * lack of clear and consistent knowledge of alternative androgen pathways; the authors hope this …
 * Save Cite Related articles
 *  [PDF  wikimedia.org]
 * [PDF] WikiJournal Preprints/Alternative Androgen Pathways
 * MG Masiutin, MK Yadav - upload.wikimedia.org
 * … This expository review uses "alternative androgen pathways" to include what has been …
 * lack of clear and consistent knowledge of alternative androgen pathways; the authors hope this …
 * Save Cite Related articles All 2 versions
 * Ensuring that the wikijournal articles don't look like some sort of second rate article in google scholar is very important.
 * Maneesh (discuss • contribs) 07:30, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I think the quality of the journals is fine ...IMO, what I have noticed is that the process is a little slow--Ozzie10aaaa (discuss • contribs) 13:50, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Notice about proposed deletion
It has been proposed to delete some unused files at Requests_for_Deletion. Someone suggested that WikiJournal might be interessted in the discussion so I made this notice. Feel free to join the discussion. --MGA73 (discuss • contribs) 17:21, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
 * It might help if I put forth two questions. There is no need for answers to both, since an answer to one of them would allow us to delete a large number of image files:


 * 1) Are the files at Category:Files uploaded by PCano - unused of any use to the WikiJournals?
 * 2) I vaguely remember an issue with Wikiversity image files that involved the WikiJournals and files that are imbedded in WikiJournal pdf files, but don't remember the details. The question is this: If a file is not used by any WikiJournal page, is it OK to delete it? --Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 19:13, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

WikiJournal article nominations is dead
Hello, I wanted to get in touch with you about a part of this process. The submissions board at WikiJournal article nominations is no longer being maintained. Evolution and evolvability has been inactive since November 2023 and has not responded to multiple attempts of mine to get in touch with him. I submitted an article there more than 4 months ago and have not even received confirmation of its submission. I notice the previous section on the status of the WikiJournals, and I must say that I am also disheartened by my attempt to contribute. I hope that someone on this end of the process will come over to English Wikipedia and fill in this gap so that the article pipeline is no longer so flawed. Fritzmann2002 (discuss • contribs) 16:12, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

Reporting and affiliate expiration
Please see: meta:Talk:Proposal:_WikiJournal_as_a_sister_project. mikeu talk 04:15, 4 April 2024 (UTC)