When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream, and shout!
(Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough For Love)
Wikipedia editor
This is a Wikipediauser page. This is not an encyclopedia article or the talk page for an encyclopedia article. If you find this page on any site other than Wikipedia, you are viewing a mirror site. Be aware that the page may be outdated and that the user whom this page is about may have no personal affiliation with any site other than Wikipedia. The original page is located at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Randykitty.
For those who wonder, especially those more used to British-English usage, Randy does not reflect on my physiological state but is short for Miranda. Of course, I'm not a kitten and Miranda is not my real name :-) The original (adorable) Randykitty lived a full (cat-)life of 20 years during which she spread a lot of joy around her. According to some, I'm not a kitten but "a Jeffrey Beall". In principle, I never confirm or deny any attempt at outing, whether on- or off-wiki. In this case I am making an exception. Beall edits under his own name (Jeffrey Beall) and I am not him.
My editing interests are rather broad, but I currently spend most of my time editing articles on academic journals. A secondary interest are biographies of scientists, especially neuroscientists. I also regularly spend some time on new page patrol (and there, of course, encounter a wider variety of articles). If your interests are similar, you may find some potentially useful links below.
Notability: Not everything that is worthy is also notable, and the other way around. If there exist no good sources on a subject, then it should not have an article on Wikipedia. Even if sources exist, an article is still not justified if there is no encyclopedic information. For instance, if all we can say about a certain person is that she likes coffee and cookies, sings hymns, and lived a long time, then any useful information is better contained in a list.
Be brief. Don't use 300 words if you can say the same thing in 30. This is not about removing information, this is about presenting information.
Not everything that can be sourced merits inclusion. Don't include trivial stuff, this is an encyclopedia, not Facebook. Even if, for example, we would have sourced information that Einstein preferred his coffee with two lumps of sugar, that is not encyclopedic information that in any way increases our understanding of him. This means that existing text often needs pruning and rewriting.
Wikipedia is not a vehicle for promoting your company/journal/band/etc. Articles should be encyclopedic, meaning that articles should be presented in a neutral way. Words such as "famous", "renowned", "foremost", etc. rarely have a place in an encyclopedic article. Hence, our Einstein article starts with "Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist", not "Albert Einstein was the most famous scientist ever", even though one certainly will be able to find reliable sources saying so.
Deletion/Inclusion. I don't see myself as an inclusionist or a deletionist. Everything depends on the sources. If there are good sources, then an article should be written, even if our personal feeling would be that the subject is utterly trivial. If there are no good sources, then an article should be deleted (or, even better, should never even be created), even if our personal feeling would be that this is a subject of the utmost importance. We report what sources find notable, not what we find notable.
Academic journals. Some thoughts on the notability of academic journals can be found here.
My Ph.D. supervisor often remarked that only very few people are capable of "clean thinking", meaning applying logic uncontaminated by emotions and preconceived notions. I think he was right and, as in Real Life, this is often demonstrated during discussions on WP.
If I am in disagreement with an editor about including some trivial stuff in an article, the sooner they accuse me of being biased or pushing a certain POV, the more likely they are to be pushing a POV themselves. My POV is sourcing, sourcing, sourcing (and I hope that it is not necessary to specify that this sourcing should be independent of the subject).
A useful definition of discretionary sanctions is holy 'thou shall nots' issued on high by ARBCOM to deal with the worst shit shows of Wikipedia, giving licenses to admins to rain down holy fire on offenders without remorse. (Thanks, Headbomb).
AGRICOLAlist of journals covered; <ref name=AGRICOLA>{{cite web |url=https://agricola.nal.usda.gov/jia/ |title=Journals Indexed in AGRICOLA |publisher=[[United States National Agricultural Library]] |work=[[AGRICOLA]] |access-date=2026-04-20}}</ref>
Atla journal listings; <ref name=Atla>{{cite web |url=https://www.atla.com/products/titles/Pages/default.aspx |title=Title and Product Update Lists |publisher=[[American Theological Library Association]] |work=[[ATLA Religion Database]] |access-date=2026-04-20}}</ref>
Jeffrey Beall's list of predatory publishers (references: <ref>{{cite web |url=http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/ |title=LIST OF PUBLISHERS |work=Scholarly Open Access |last1=Beall |first1=Jeffrey |authorlink=Jeffrey Beall |access-date=2016-09-21 |deadurl=yes |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20170111172306/https://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/ |archivedate=2017-01-11}}</ref>) and standalone journals (archive 2017-01-11)
CASSI (CODEN, ISSN, journal abbreviations); <ref name=CASSI>{{cite web |url=http://cassi.cas.org/search.jsp |title=CAS Source Index |publisher=[[American Chemical Society]] |work=[[Chemical Abstracts Service]] |access-date=2026-04-20}}</ref>
CINAHL coverage list; <ref name=CINAHL>{{cite web |url=https://www.ebscohost.com/nursing/products/cinahl-databases/cinahl-complete |title=CINAHL Complete Database Coverage List |publisher=[[EBSCO Information Services]] |work=[[CINAHL]] |access-date=2026-04-20}}</ref>
Directory of Open Access Journals, DOAJ has significantly cleaned up and can be used as an RS that a particular journal is not predatory; <ref name=DOAJ>{{cite web |url=https://doaj.org/toc/eISSN-HERE |title=JOURNALNAME |publisher=[[Directory of Open Access Journals]] |access-date=2026-04-20}}</ref>
EconLitlist of journals covered; <ref name=EconLit>{{cite web |title=Journals Indexed |url=https://www.aeaweb.org/econlit/journal_list.php |website=EconLit |publisher=American Economic Association |access-date=2026-04-20}}</ref>
Ei Compendex source list; <ref name=Compendex>{{cite web |url=https://www.elsevier.com/products/engineering-village/databases/compendex |title=Content/Database Overview - Compendex Source List |publisher=[[Elsevier]] |work=Engineering Village |access-date=2026-04-20}}</ref>
Inspec content and coverage; <ref name=Inspec>{{cite web |url=https://www.theiet.org/publishing/inspec/inspec-content-and-coverage |title=Inspec content and coverage |publisher=[[Institution of Engineering and Technology]] |work=Inspec |access-date=2026-04-20}}</ref>
ISI (Clarivate) Master journal list; <ref name=ISI>{{cite web |url=https://mjl.clarivate.com/search-results?issn=ISSN-HERE |title=JOURNALNAME |publisher=[[Clarivate]] |work=Web of Science Master Journal List |access-date=2026-04-20}}</ref>
JCR: According to the ''[[Journal Citation Reports]]'', the journal has a 2024 [[impact factor]] of x.x.<ref name=WoS>{{cite book |year=2025 |chapter=JOURNALNAME |title=2024 Journal Citation Reports |publisher=[[Clarivate]] |edition=Science OR Social Sciences OR Emerging Sources OR Arts and Humanities |via=[[Web of Science]] |title-link=Journal Citation Reports}}</ref>
JCR with ranking: According to the ''[[Journal Citation Reports]]'', the journal has a 2024 [[impact factor]] of x.x, ranking it xxth out of xxx journals in the category "CATEGORY". ref same as above
JournalGuide: maintains white- and blacklists of journals and lists reliable databases in which journals are listed
Library of Congress, reference to catalog record (LC Catalog): <ref name=LC>{{cite web |url=http://lccn.loc.gov/LCCN HERE |title=JOURNALNAME |work=Library of Congress Catalog |publisher=[[Library of Congress]] |access-date=2026-04-20}}</ref>
Lists: [[WP:WTAF]]/[[WP:LSC]]/[[WP:CSC]]
MathSciNet, lookup journal here; <ref name=MathSciNet>{{cite web |url=https://mathscinet.ams.org/msnhtml/serials.pdf |title=Abbreviations of Names of Serials |publisher=[[American Mathematical Society]] |work=[[MathSciNet]] |access-date=2026-04-20}}</ref>
MEDLINE, reference for inclusion (NLM Catalog): <ref name=MEDLINE>{{cite web |url=http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog/NLM ID here |title=JOURNALNAME |work=NLM Catalog |publisher=[[National Center for Biotechnology Information]] |access-date=2026-04-20}}</ref> Note: if indexed in MEDLINE, also check for inclusion in the Index Medicus
MIAR: Information Matrix for the Analysis of Journals: lists indexing services for most journals (link to search for indexing info); <ref name=MIAR>{{cite MIAR |title=JOURNALNAME |issn=ISSN-HERE |access-date=2026-04-20}}</ref>
General PROD message for journals: Non-notable journal. Not indexed in any ''selective'' databases, no independent sources. Does not meet [[WP:NJournals]] or [[WP:GNG]].
Example of a journal rapidly becoming notable: ECS Journal of Solid State Science and Technology, established in 2012: already in 2014 indexed in Science Citation Index Expanded, Current Contents/Physical, Chemical & Earth Sciences, Current Contents/Engineering, Computing & Technology, Chemical Abstracts Service, and Scopus. Also a 2013 impact factor was released in summer 2014.
Short trip (up to 3 weeks; excl. airport stopovers):
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United Kingdom and dependencies
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Committed identity: f3d53ebeade76befad657306a1dc167a33fdd924fd1fadd8396bb5bb09558a92d22237379de0ee2da6716252df5a06eb59ccc857595dc1806a4afe20aabaa0ae is an SHA-512commitment to this user's real-life identity.
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