Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Law Practice Magazine

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 23:37, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Law Practice Magazine

Non-notable freebie magazine published by one of the twenty-plus subsections of the American Bar Association. There are several dozen such publications, and there does not seem to be any reason for each to have its own article, but one single editor rejects the idea of just rolling all these up into a single sentence in the ABA article, so I'm bringing it here for further discussion, since that page (which has no real external links) is never going to have any traffic to create a consensus. 9000 ghits, but most are law organizations or people mentioning that they were mentioned in the magazine. See also the related Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Law Practice Today. Finally, note also that Wikipedia does not have any separate articles for any of the six or so Federalist Society publications. THF 12:34, 9 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per nom --Javit 12:35, 9 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. (I created the article. And apparently I am the "single editor [who] rejects the idea of just rolling all these up into a single sentence in the ABA article".) The deletion nomination is not in line with Wikipedia:Guide to deletion (WP:GD). The nomination suggests a merge into American Bar Association (ABA) ("to roll up" = "to accumulate; collect") through the addition of "single sentence in the ABA article". If the content of the article (or some of it) should be preserved, then there is no reason to delete the article and its history. WP:GD says:

"Merge is a recommendation to keep the article's content but to move it into some more appropriate article. It is either inappropriate or insufficient for a stand-alone article. After the merger, the article will be replaced with a redirect to the target article (in order to preserve the attribution history)." (emphasis in the original)

If the content, or some of it, should be preserved, then I think an independent article would better present the topic, with corresponding external links to the ISSN entry, and so on. But, anyway, in this case, this issue should not be discussed here, but on the talk page of the article.

Secondly, IMHO, the magazine appears to be notable: see, for instance (obtained from a Google Scholar query on "Law Practice Management" - the old name of the magazine), citations in [1] (ref. No [4]), [2], [3] (ref. No 2.) These are just three random citations in apparently quite serious and renowned publications. A deeper exploration of Google Scholar would certainly reveal more citations. Having articles on sources such as specialized magazines is invaluable (please read the introduction in Wikipedia:List of missing journals). --Edcolins 13:30, 9 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep I think that any of the publications of such a major organization would likely be notable, and the fact that they publish 20 does not count against them. Many excellent trade publications are supported by advertising and available free either to all or to those in the industry (known as controlled-circulation)--this is not a negative factor either. Magazines are made notable by notable articles, and in some areas of life this can be seen at least partially by citation. Ulrich's lists it as "Law Practice" (and the article should be moved to Law Practice (magazine).)

From the data there it is free only to members, & otherwise sold by subscription, it has a circulation of 19,000, and, most important, is indexed by the services A B I - INFORM (American Business Information), Accounting and Tax Index, Current Law Index, Family Index, Inspec, Legal Information Management Index, LegalTrac, P A I S International (Public Affairs Information Service), and SoftBase --nine major services. (I've added all this to the article.)

This makes it quite clear that it's being taken seriously in several different fields. A principal indication of notability is the indexing, because it shows that all of these organizations thought it important. The profession determines the importance, and we just record the fact. DGG 20:37, 9 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Any of the publications? According to the ABA website, they offer 2000 separate publications. Even if you limit it to periodicals, newsletters, and law journals, that's over sixty publications that each merit their own article according to that crieria. THF 20:43, 9 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Right, I wasn't thinking critically. As with most societies, not everything sold on their site is even their publication, they sell Roberts Rules of Order, Freakonomics, and so on, & I wasn't thinking of their textbooks and practice manuals and education packages for continuing education, & committee reports, and so on, nor most newsletters. I was thinking only of their formal periodicals and magazines. But I would say that all established academic journals and substantial professional magazines from established publishers & listed in major indexes are notable. (that leaves probably 75% of purported professional or academic serials that are not notable--the low end goes very low, as with most things. ) That the major professional society in a very large profession should publish 50 or so seems very reasonable. My thoughts in general about giving them separate articles is that if they have separate titles, yes, if they are parts A, B, C. etc of something, no matter how substantial, then just sections, if they are pairs, such as Journal of XYZ, and Journal of XYZ Supplement, then sections at most. But this is their basic professional magazine, supplied to the entire membership, There have been a few academic or professional magazines brought to AfD in the last 6 months; I've !voted no on some, and the consensus held me wrong in one that was unindexed and not even found in the issuing institute's library--and the consensus was right. DGG 23:36, 9 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletions. -- John Vandenberg 01:49, 10 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment This is not the "basic magazine provided to their entire membership." That's the ABA Journal. This is a magazine provided to a single subsection. And again, there are literally sixty periodicals, journals, and magazines published by the ABA, not all of which are notable. So the fact that this one is published by the ABA means nothing by itself. THF 02:36, 10 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep, referenced by patents and held in many libraries in America and over seas, even russia and finland. John Vandenberg 03:26, 10 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep INSPEC-indexed professional publication. —David Eppstein 19:36, 10 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.