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User:JL-Bot/Questionable.cfg

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This is the setup page of The Wikipedia CiteWatch, a bot-compiled listing of potentially cargo cult, conspiracist, denialist, fake, junk, not even wrong, obsolete, predatory, pseudoscientific, quack, or otherwise unreliable publications cited by Wikipedia through the |journal= and |doi= parameters of citation templates (see this Signpost article for details). It is based on several lists of unreliable or questionable publications (such as those compiled by Jeffrey Beall, the University Grants Commission, Quackwatch, or Wikipedia editors). See Q9 in the FAQ for the update schedule.

This list is a starting point to detect unreliable sources which are cited by Wikipedia, but it does not answer whether it is appropriate to cite them. Due to the somewhat arbitrary nature of what exactly constitutes an unreliable source, as well as imperfect matching algorithms, the list may feature publications and publishers which...

  1. are flat-out promoting pseudo/junk scholarship or quackery
  2. are flat-out predatory/vanity venues, with sham peer-review processes
  3. were once-reliable, but have since been acquired by predatory publishers
  4. were once-unreliable, but no longer engage in problematic practices
  5. reflect the sources' good but imperfect judgment of what is unreliable
  6. are problematic in some areas (e.g. pseudoscience), but reliable in others (e.g. news)
  7. are problematic in some other way (e.g. circular references, or deprecated sources)
  8. are problematic but used in an acceptable manner (e.g. primary sources about frauds)
  9. are misclassified because of a spelling variation (red links especially)
  10. are misclassified because of false positives, miscategorization, or flawed bot logic
  11. are reliable, but share names with imposter publications and publishers
  12. are about pseudoscholarship as a topic, rather than being pseudoscholarly themselves

While many, if not most, publications and publishers on this list have some questionable aspects to their publishing practices, these can still be reliable (or be otherwise acceptable) in limited circumstances. The CiteWatch cannot determine the full context in which a source is used, therefore use common sense and judgement before removing a citation from an article (see Q8 in the FAQ). When in doubt, discuss things on the article's talk page or at the reliable sources noticeboard – especially before a mass purge of a source. The Unreliable/Predatory Source Detector user script may also interest you.

Additions and removals from the listing – including false positives – can be discussed at WT:CITEWATCH. False positives can also be directly handled at WP:JCW/EXCLUDE.
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CiteWatch Setup Table of Contents
Overview Disclaimer Syntax Sources
/General Unreliable fields Mirrors and forks Self-published Unpublished Hijacked WP:RSP
/Publishers Misc A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
/Journals Misc A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Note: Many entries on these lists will be things that should not normally in found in a |journal= parameter. They are included for two main reasons:

  1. poor template usage – for example, if a website/publisher is put in a journal parameter by mistake (|journal=UnreliableWebsite.com) these will be picked up
  2. redirect detection – oftentimes Wikipedia will not have an article about a specific journal, but it will have a redirect to its publisher (Unreliable Journal → Foo Society of Nonsense) or some other relevant article (Unreliable Journal → Founding editor)


Syntax

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The format is

{{JCW-selected|<TARGET1>|<TARGET2>|...|doi=<DOIPREFIX>|source=<SOURCE>|note=<NOTE>}}

where <DOIPREFIX> is the doi prefix (the 10.xxxx part of 10.xxxx/....) associated with a publisher, <SOURCE> is any of the codes above, or a plain URL in brackets ([https://www.example.com]). Multiple codes should be separated with a comma BLJ, DOAJ, [1]. <NOTE> should be a short explanation if there is something special about that entry, like a legitimate journal sharing a name with a problematic one.

See {{JCW-selected}} for more information and tips on how to add entries to the CiteWatch.

Sources

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The CiteWatch is based on a variety of sources:

Many things listed won't be journals (e.g. magazines, websites, books), but it helps to list them in case they get cited as a journal by mistake. If someone has access to Cabell's blacklist, the journals listed there could be added as well.

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