Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life/Newsletter/015

Ideas for this issue

None yet! Enwebb (talk) 14:34, 4 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Re Mammalian species being the most over-cited journal in Wikipedia

Refer section "News at a glance" in the latest issue of WP:TOL Newsletter (June–July 2020). Its interesting that this should happen to an non-open access journal. Its not surprising that its connected to mamals which get disproportionate attention in biodiversity issues in real life as well. The thought arises that just being open access isnt enough. Wikipedia editors go for the appropriate scientific references, using a variety of sources to get at the material to cite it, regardless of the open-ness of the journal. Open-ness does help in verifiability, and greater findability but finally it's the importance of a paper to the topic article that predominates. My subjective view, AshLin (talk) 06:48, 2 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

AshLin, yes, definitely caught my attention that it would be so overcited! Mammalian Species is pretty much the ultimate resource for writing a Wikipedia article about a mammal. The species accounts that they publish are great--very comprehensive, secondary sources. You could almost write the article without any other sources. Enwebb (talk) 22:37, 2 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]