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High, you made 4 edits today on the page Oryctes elegans. Two of them are fine, thanks. However, in the other 2 you deleted 2 references to articles by Dr. Mohammed Zaidan Khalaf because they were published in "predatory journals", including a whole paragraph on date palm resistance against this beetle. I don't agree with these 2 edits and will reverse them. However, I will modify the text of one sentence on the resistance paragraph to indicate that the conclusion about the reason for the resistance is not well established. Dr. Khalaf is an internationally respected scientist and an expert on the beetle the page deals with. I trust the research results reported in these 2 articles, although the presentation of the results was clearly not perfect. The journals where these articles appeared may be rated as "predatory journals" on some lists, but this does not automatically mean any article written in them should be automatically discarded as unreliable. In developing countries, the choice of a journal is also often a question of available funds, since the charges in properly refereed journals can be unaffordable to these scientists. I am confident the research results described in these 2 articles would have been accepted by a higher quality journal, although he probably would have been asked to modify some text and improve the English.
Regards, Bernhard Zelazny (talk) 20:05, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Bernhard Zelazny: These still are predatory journals, and not reliable source. If you reintroduce them as citation, I will remove them again. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:13, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am not arguing about the journal, but about the scientist who published the results and about his research. It is not clear to me why anything published in these journals should be unreliable. Please see his publication list on Google Scholar

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=u-tzUFUAAAAJ&hl=en

Surely he has published many articles in refereed journals. At the same time, the results published in a refereed journal are not necessarily reliable. A referee can never not judge if the reported results are correct or not, how can he/she? Bernhard Zelazny (talk) 20:31, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is should be based on valid, peer-reviewed sources, not stuff published in unreliable sources. See WP:VANPRED. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:32, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For instance, a journal called Agriculture and Biology Journal of North America has no business publishing an article titled "Population density of Oryctes elegans Prell.(Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae) on some date palm varieties in South Baghdad Orchards". Emphasis mine. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:34, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It does not make sense to me to automatically label all articles in peer-reviewed journals as valid and all others as invalid. I now discovered that both references you have deleted have been cited in a reputable, peer-reviewed book published by Springer, see

https://doi.org/10.1007%2F978-3-319-24397-9_5

Does this make these articles now reliable? Bernhard Zelazny (talk) 21:08, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

These are not peer-reviewed journals, and self-citations are hardly impressive. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:19, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a forum in Wikipedia where the topic of "predatory journals" and "valid" research can be discussed? Bernhard Zelazny (talk) 21:21, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There's RSN for predatory journals. But we don't evaluate research. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 05:08, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

	The Technical Barnstar
	For writing a particularly useful, introductory user-script of excellent quality for a commonly overlooked issue. Keep up the good work. :-) Lee Johnston (talk) 16:17, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There was a broken wikilink at Citewatch that I fixed and was auto-reverted by JL-bot. Could you please fix it? I enjoy sandwiches (talk) 22:34, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@I enjoy sandwiches: There's no point in fixing any of those in the compilation, it's bot-maintained and gets overwritten every day. Instead fix the article. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:01, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Fix the article? I don't quite understand - it's just a misformated wikilink. There's no article issue that I can see. The bot keeps miswriting it every day. I enjoy sandwiches (talk) 23:42, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If there's no article issue, then there's nothing to fix! Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:50, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There's a broken wikilink in the compilation list that includes the foreign language text by mistake. With the foreign language included, it's a garbage link to nowhere. That's what needs to be fixed. Please look again at the change I linked. I enjoy sandwiches (talk) 23:59, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"it's a garbage link to nowhere"

OK, and? Why is that problematic. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:32, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, last year you had kindly removed some predatory sources from this draft and that had been immensely helpful for my edits at the time. I later abandoned the draft, but I wish to improve it further now. Can you help me identify if the following are predatory? I want to include them as sources in the "Product history" and "Controversies and criticism' sections; I got to both of them from searching up the company name in Google Scholar:

1. https://www.indianjournals.com/ijor.aspx?target=ijor:ajmr&volume=9&issue=2&article=003

2. https://www.indianjournals.com/ijor.aspx?target=ijor:ah&volume=12&issue=2&article=001

I know there are more research articles about this company and its products but it's hard to find them online, or if found, access the detailed texts of the research within. Trying my best, all helpful tips are welcome!

Unrelated, I have done my best to remove any peacock terms that were highlighted in the decline from yesterday. I will resubmit it soon. Thanks for your help! 219.91.178.34 (talk) 09:48, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Indian Journals/DIVA Enterprises have several questionable publications. The best ressources for them is to check the UGC lists of approved journals, e.g. [1]. I see Asian Journal of Multidimensional Research on the approved list, but I don't see Annals of Horticulture, so I'd avoid that one. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 10:09, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you so much for that resource! I will be sure to refer to it when adding in any further research. I wish to include the following ones as well, and both have their journals on the approved list:

1.https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ptr.2458 (Page 806 of the approved list)

2.https://www.cabidigitallibrary.org/doi/full/10.5555/20113312757 – You had previously edited this one out as a predatory source. Do you suggest I use this or leave it out? Pharmacognosy Research is on the approved list (page 799). I won't included it if it's failing the sourcing standards.

Thanks once again! 219.91.178.34 (talk) 10:44, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Pharmacognosy Research is on Beall's list, making it fairly questionable. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 11:54, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the information, I will not incorporate it. It is rather odd because as per Google search for this particular article, it has been cited 100 times. Bizarre to think other researchers may not do their due diligence for their sources. Thanks, once again! 2409:4042:4D96:100C:3823:95D9:9436:4842 (talk) 17:11, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I managed to incorporate some more studies, please see if they are reliably sourced or not. Thanks! 2409:4042:4D96:100C:3823:95D9:9436:4842 (talk) 19:22, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Note that being published in a crap journal doesn't necessarily mean that the paper is wrong or even bad. It's just that for Wikipedia's purposes, we can't use that journal and say 'look, it's reliable'. See WP:VANPRED for more. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:37, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Got it! I hope I can find secondary or tertiary sources about that study, and several other reliable offline studies to add to the article in the future. For now, I am just waiting for the draft to be reviewed. Thanks for all of your help, nonetheless! 219.91.175.234 (talk) 09:03, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I see you edited on the Module talk page and I have a question about Harv errors. Is the "ref=none" code on a Harv error unused citation deprecated or something? It is listed at Template:Sfn without any disclaimers and I've always used that to retain a reference without deleting it from a bibliography or reference section. However, I've come across an edit where an editor removed the ref=none code and in their edit summary cited the article being in the "Category:Harv and Sfn no-target errors". BUT there wasn't a Harv error sitting on the article when the ref=none was in the article and now there is a Harv warning on the article so I am puzzled... Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 18:17, 9 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Shearonink: |ref=none supresses anchors. Since Abraham_Lincoln#cite_note-FOOTNOTEMeacham202238-71 wants that anchor, there was an error emitted. Removing |ref=none restored the missing anchor, and the error was thus suppressed. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:37, 9 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I'm slapping myself with a trout. The Lincoln article does attract a lot of editing and not everyone gets the sfn nomenclature, so I keep an eye on it and I misread the edit in question. Need more sleep or more coffee... Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 03:23, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]