Talk:Journal of Indo-European Studies

Untitled

October 13, 2006. This article contains some rather obvious weasel words and certainly does not entertain an opposing point of view. While Roger Pearson's past does have its controversy, the original author(s) of this article do not mention all the highly qualified, scholarly editors who currently work for the journal (i.e. David Anthony (Oneonta, Vyacheslav Ivanov (UCLA), Douglas Adams (Idaho), Peter Schrijver (Munich), Scott Littleton (Occidental), Nicolas Allen, Andrew Sherratt (Oxford)). These individuals do not have (at least that I know of) a checkered past/involvement w/ rascist ideology. These editors all share different views/interpretations on the linguistic, cultural and archaeological aspects of the Eurasian continent during antiquity. The article also plays down just who JP Mallory is and how he has been a major voice of reason w/in the Indo-European debate. As a matter of fact in his In Search of the Indo-Europeans book he expresses his dismay of how racism entered the Indo-European debate and how such ideas should not be taken seriously.

Furthermore, the Journal of Indo-European studies has been a valuable source of reference for many scholars in multiple fields (i.e. language, history, archaeology, human geography etc.) and has served as a forum showcasing fair scientific studies concerning all sides of the debate. Finally there is no direct citation/quote for how the "...journal has been criticized for alleged connections with right-wing circles" but rather only quotes/citations that discuss Pearson's past. This looks more like a verbal maneuver to make the journal appear blantantly racist. Clearly this article as it stands does not present a very neutral point of view or comes anywhere close. I feel that the middle paragraph should be removed as the original author(s) appear to have a major bias against the journal. For whatever reason is unclear though it may be due to a lack of investigating the actual content featured in the journal and instead relying on only a few secondary sources for his/her/their info.

October 17, 2006. Ok the page looks much better than before though I feel that the article now somewhat resembles a public forum debate than an actual encyclopedic entry. Really all things concerned with Roger Pearson (this would include all right-wing oriented banter) should be under his article and not here at all. Only actual content of the journal itself and not its alleged history should be discussed. Again I feel that peoples' misconceptions regarding the journal are due more towards a lack of actually going out and reading any of the articles that were written for it. Instead, it seems that some of the views expressed towards the journal stem from a severe case of tunnel vision as a result of only focusing on Pearson's past. The whole case of the journal being allegedly racist thus only stems from a few secondary sources which should render such arguments as weak and thus not even worth mentioning. I've read nearly 40 of the articles of the journal from its early years all the way up to very recent times and can honestly say there is virtually no rascist/right-wing/whatever ideology being expressed. I'd like to see Wikipedia be a more formidable source of information than it is now and feel that knowledge of something from just a few secondary sources just shouldn't cut it yet lo and behold here it does.

I will be cutting this (irrelevant) stuff from the article, unless someone disagrees. Stuff about Pearson should belong to the Pearson article, which already describes his not so glorious past. --LC 00:57, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

August 14, 2007. I noticed someone undid LiberalConservative's edit. I am in full agreement with LC's original stance so I fixed it so it went back to what LC had before (there is a consensus here). TO LC: If this was your decision to revert to the other way (which I doubt) then please let me know...better yet I may contact you directly on this if that's possible.

IF it was anyone else: could you please explain why you felt it necessary to revert back to the unnecessary discussion regarding the Journal's nature/content? No need to explain though if you are Renfield/Rayfield or whoever that was who felt such a discussion was necessary in the first place (we already know what you think).

  -Geog

Criticism section

The Criticism section was removed by Geog1. I believe it is relevant to this article even if it is also covered in Roger Pearson. It may have been too long, but currently the article is written as if this was like any other anthropology journal, which it is certainly not. --Apoc2400 (talk) 10:11, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Hi Apoc. Yes the journal is like no other anthro/archaeo publication but is hardly "racialist". I've read Ardvisson's book and quite honestly I think he exagerated some things namely what Gimbutas's underlying objectives were and that sort of thing.

Really the journal has tried to serve not only as an open forum of debate for the IE problem but also as a voice of reason. Mallory, Chernykh, and Anthony have all been contributors over the years who spoke out against nationalism in archaeology elsewhere.

Ardvisson's book was mostly about calling for an end to the IE debate but really there is a legitimate question there that unfortunately has been politicized and misrepresented by some over the years (matter of fact some pretty extreme cases can be found here on wikipedia). Maybe there should be an IE culture history page created in lieu of all this I dunno, but again the journal has tried to be more of a voice of reason and to present ideas as to why or why not. Cheers.

Geog1 (talk) 15:14, 26 December 2008 (UTC)Geog1

I don't think Pearson's involvement should be brushed under the carpet: he was the founder, the general editor for a long time, and the journal is still published by his Institute of Man. This should all be mentioned - although admittedly it's hard to find sources that can establish exactly when Pearson stopped being involved, how many 'tainted' articles there are versus mainstream, nonracist ones, which is necessary for NPOV. —Joseph Roe^Tk•Cb, 10:22, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

This article isn't about Roger Pearson. Its about the Journal of Indo-European Studies. A link to the Roger Pearson article is good enough. The way the article is written is still ok with me.

Furthermore, its actually questionable whether or not Pearson contributed anything to the Journal at all. All the Ardvisson book did was claim that he wrote in the journal rather than actually provide any concrete facts or references clearly showing that he was a contributor.

Lastly, the Journal has showcased Alexander Hausler's and Colin Renfrew's viewpoints, as well as the whole Out of India school of thought, all of which provide vastly different views on the whole Indo-European problem. Basically everyone read the Ardvisson book, it seems, and decided from it that for some reason the burden of proof for proclaiming the Journal as non-rascist falls on the Journal itself rather than on Ardvisson and his minor blurb on this, which was not supported in a luculent factual manner to back any of this up.

I think people really need to go out and read the journal and do a background check on its contributors rather than rely strictly on Ardvisson as the only opinion that matters or holds actual weight. If people did that, they would find actual verifiable scholarly opinions from many different backgrounds and realms of academia featured in the journal. And even if you don't see it that way, its still NPOV like you said.

I feel like I'm beating a dead horse here.Geog1 (talk) 18:26, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Focus on RS

I see editors discussing what belongs in this article. I think the best WP article possible will reflect what RS sources say about the topic. Not what an editor or group of editors see as relevant to the topic. So if RS is/are tieing in ?Pearson to history of JIES then the article should reflect that. If not then it should be absent. Whilst I am confident of editors' intelligences, I am not here to read their view of a topic. 124.171.199.35 (talk) 07:47, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Would like to understand how an (apparent (unsighted)) specific section (index: "section, pg number", "Journal of Indo-European Studies, 304"), in an academic book (Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science) that critiques the whole field of IE studies, by a professor of religious history (Stefan Arvidsson https://translate.google.com.au/translate?hl=en&sl=sv&u=https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Arvidsson&prev=search), can be reasonably considered irrelevant to this article. Lets Ignore All Rules and work from basics. How does excluding this material improve the article? Are there no RS refuting or modifying Stefan Arvidsson's statements? If the history of JIES is seen as troubled by RS don't readers deserve to know?124.171.199.35 (talk) 09:05, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Journal ranking; JIES

I see JIES having a JSR as notable. http://www.scimagojr.com/journalsearch.php?q=5700176509&tip=sid gives for 2007-2014; JSR 0.11, Cites per doc 0.08, Total cites 3. {For comparison (searching for "journal" on WP:Rigveda) this betters Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies, Journal of South Asia Women Studies, Journal of the University of Bombay, and Journal of the Mongolian Society as none of these get a mention at http://www.scimagojr.com/journalsearch.php Journal of Human Values however gets 0,13, 0.05, 5. [Nature gets ~ 17, 26, 100000.]} 124.171.199.35 (talk) 08:32, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

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Discussion on the reliable sources noticeboard

There is a discussion at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Pearson_journals about the reliability of this journal. – Joe (talk) 07:30, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

Pearson's articles in the journal

According to Tucker (2002): none of Pearson's writing appeared in the...Journal of Indo-European Studies. However, a quick look at the JIES index shows that Pearson published 3 articles (two alone and one co-authored with Miriam Robbins Dexter) in the journal. Any suggestions on how to deal with this? Antiok 1pie (talk) 23:21, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Two of the three are obituaries, not scholarly articles.Bill (talk) 23:44, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

The third is a scholarly article though so the statement in this article is not correct. Hawesthoughts (talk) 20:37, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Let's discuss this yet again.....

As I mentioned years earlier, there has been waaaay too much focus in the article placed on Pearson's involvement and how its allegedly a racist journal which it clearly isn't if you pick up a journal volume and actually read it. I see legitimate text has been removed to defending its position as a journal with academic merit. I 100% agree with the flagging this article has been given in regards to it being given unfair weight meant to discredit it. It is a linguistic journal first and foremost and the constant bias given to the journal in this article needs to stop.

Sincerely,

Geog1 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 22:12, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Removal of 2nd paragraph.

I decided once again to remove the discussions about Pearson. Its proving to cause too much unbalance in this article as now people are cherry picking what they want to see. For example, the Tucker article quote had everything removed in it which was the only sentence in this wiki which shed a favorable light on the journal. The reason was that some of the info presented was allegedly dubious. Meanwhile, the highly biased Arvidsson book has served as the primary source for painting the journal negatively here is filled with quite a bit of misleading information. Its quite obvious the intent here is to paint the journal negatively without discussing all the good scholars who participated in the journal throughout the years. This goes against wiki policy and enough is enough already. Geog1 (talk) 13:09, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

This removed a tonne of factual information and per WP:BIASED we do not expect sources to be unbiased, only reliable – the Arvidsson source is a full length book on Indo-European studies, by a professor, writing in his area expertise, and published by a university press. Saying you're removing it because it's a socialists [sic] publication is... odd, to say the least.

I do agree that the Tucker quote should be retained in full. – Joe (talk) 13:35, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

There's nothing odd about pointing out an author's political ideology which can have a biasing effect on whatever the author chooses to publish. What's odd is the way this article is written. It is very one sided and biased. The removal of the Tucker information went unchecked for quite a while. That is quite odd in and of itself and helps underscore the bias here as well. Bottom line, this article needs improvement. Its not even about the journal. Its all about Pearson. Geog1 (talk) 14:37, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Pearson founded the journal and published it for ~50 years, so the relevance is quite obvious. The source also specifically mentions the Journal of Indo-European Studies in the cited and quoted passage. We we don't require sources to have a neutral point of view and it's clearly a reliable source, so I don't see any reason at all to exclude it. Your edit removed all historical information from this article entirely. – Joe (talk) 15:04, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

There is hardly a NPOV here and Pearson's involvement in the Journal is vastly overstated. The 'historical information' presented in this article is not really all that relevant or significant. Pearson's past needs to be discussed where it rightfully belongs: in the article about him. The way this article is written is nothing more that point of view pushing and against NPOV given the undue weight. Geog1 (talk) 15:12, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

It's very difficult to suggest a critic is being given undue weight when no source with an alternative position is being presented. As per the discussion at WP:RS/NWP:NPOV/N I would recommend you could improve the WP:NPOV balance of the article more by finding sources that discuss the impact of the journal beyond its association with Pearson rather than trying to redact mention that one of its founders also founded Mankind Quarterly and formed organizations that promoted neo-Nazi ideologies. Simonm223 (talk) 18:51, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

Concerning the article as it stands.

I would be for improving the journal by finding secondary sources that could improve upon it and shed greater light on the fact that Pearson's involvement is minimal. The journal has largely been a beacon of good scholarly research and debate within the confines of Indo-European studies. However, given the way things stand, I think its probably best to delete this article as it is unlikely that any source will be capable of properly portraying the journal due to reliable source issues. In addition the journal's low significance as stated on the current deletion board for it, would further buttress this stance. It also seems to go against WP:NJOURNAL. If anyone else can come up with decent sources to help counter balance the undue weight currently given, then I'd welcome it. However I doubt this can be done. Geog1 (talk) 21:27, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

That's how to fix the article: find sources, and thoroughly read the cited ones to see if they support the text they are cited to. I found one citation that failed verification on my reading, and have tagged it as such. ꧁Zanahary꧂ 01:17, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

Sourcing is currently a mess

After seeing another editor point out that a source used in the article failed verification, I started to take a closer look at the citations we have here. First, they were a complete mess to approach, and second, many don't even include page numbers. We need to check all of these to ensure they actually say what our article says they say and anything without page numbers just needs to come out. :bloodofox: (talk) 03:26, 12 December 2024 (UTC)