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Just a politically-motivated web-only progaganda vehicle

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I've spent a substantial amount of time looking into this, and it's my very strong impression that this doesn't qualify as a "journal" in any conventional sense at all. It's a propaganda vehicle sponsored by anti needle-exchange advocates and law-enforcement groups on the political right. I could quote many opinions to say so, but here are two of the most concise and convincing:

  • Efforts to undermine the science specific to HIV prevention for injection drug users are becoming increasingly sophisticated. One new and worrisome trend is the creation of internet sites posing as open-access, peer-reviewed scientific journals. One such example, funded by the Drug Free America Foundation, contains a review of the research supporting needle exchange program and declares that the "effectiveness of NEPs [needle exchange program] to reduce HIV among IDUs [injection drug users] is overrated;" it further claims that the WHO position on needle exchange programs "is not based on solid evidence." — Canadian Medical Association Journal, 25 March, 2008.
  • At the CMA [Canadian Medical Association] meeting in August, he [Canadian federal health minister, Tony Clement] repeated his assertion: "There has been more research done, and some of it has been questioning of the research that has already taken place and questioning of the methodology of those associated with [the needle-exchange program named] Insite." When asked to clarify what evidence Mr Clement was referring to, Mr Waddell confirmed it was a commentary published in January 2007 in a non-peer-reviewed journal called The Journal of Global Drug Policy and Practice, which receives funding from the US Department of Justice. — National Review of Medicine, 15 September, 2007. ( Emphasis mine )

That "more research" that get-tough-on-drugs conservative health minister Tony Clement mentioned was an opinion piece funded by Canada's RCMP and written by Colin Mangham, the "director of research" for the Drug Prevention Network of Canada. No hypothesis tested, no study design, no controls, no statistical analysis; in fact, no research. Just a poorly written and inadequately conceived argument against a particular Canadian needle exchange program.

Anyone can put up a website, throw a few opinion pieces at it, and call it a journal. And that's exactly what's been done in this case. This purported "journal" is nothing but anti harm-reduction politically-driven propaganda.  – OhioStandard (talk) 07:47, 12 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, one more, from here:
It should be pointed out that the Journal of Global Drug Policy and Practice is funded by the Drug Free America Foundation and is an effort of the Institute on Global Drug Policy. Neither organization is a scientific body. The stated goal of the Institute is outlined clearly on the Drug Free America Foundation web site:
“The Institute is charged with creating and strengthening international laws that hold drug users and dealers criminally accountable for their actions. It will vigorously promote treaties and agreements that provide clear penalties to individuals who buy, sell or use harmful drugs. … The institute supports efforts to oppose policies based on the concept of harm reduction.” [1]
The bottom of the "about us" page for this purported online "journal" says, "This project was supported by Grant No. 2005-JL-FX-0128 awarded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. Points of view or opinions on this website are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice." Uh huh. Just another one of Alberto Gonzales' stealthy little disinformation salvos in the U.S. "war on drugs"; just another day with your tax dollars at work. Nothing to see here, ladies and gentlemen.  – OhioStandard (talk) 08:24, 12 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
And one last one, a journal-ranking site that speaks to notability, and I'm done.  – OhioStandard (talk) 08:46, 12 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]


Just seen this, I added in a critical source I found - should probably add some of these also.--Pontificalibus (talk) 17:06, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your addition, Pont. I've also added the first quotation I presented above (which user Steinberger discovered first, btw, without my knowledge) to the article, along with the associated ref. I haven't (yet?) done anything with the second or third quotes I presented, though: Anyone who has the time should feel free.
I do think that second quotation, the one from the National Review of Medicine, could form the basis of a nice new section in this article, btw. The current conservative Canadian government basing their drug policies on a bogus journal seems to me to merit its own section, and I know their are WP:RS that could be included about this in such a section.  – OhioStandard (talk) 01:13, 20 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Update: I've documented what the third quotation was citing in the article. Still haven't done anything with the second quote from the National Review of Medicine, though.  – OhioStandard (talk) 04:00, 20 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Where on Wikipedia is this journal used?

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I don't think it is a coincidence that references to an article of this journal was stripped from Needle-exchange programme now after this journal got an article. I don't dare to touch the user Minphies contributions as it could be "edit warring", something I have been blocked for already. But it might be useful for others to know that the Journal of Global Drug Policy and Practice is cited at Safe injection site and at Harm reduction. In both cases together with other sources of varying credibility. Steinberger (talk) 10:25, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I looked at those two articles and, like user Gabbe, agree the refs there to this "journal" needed to go. I've deleted them; you might like to double-check my work.  – OhioStandard (talk) 02:46, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
In looking at this I followed a broken link from Harm_reduction#Criticism to the web site for the Drug Prevention Network of Canada (DPNC) founded, as our article about him claims, by Conservative Party Canadian politician Randy White. I looked around the DPNC site, a little, trying to find the correct target page for the link, which seems to have just disappeared. I tagged the link, but kept on poking around. In the process I discovered some other things that I think are very interesting indeed. I'll break that out into a new section, though, to follow below.  – OhioStandard (talk) 19:45, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This "journal" a small part of major astroturfing of international drug policy

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As I wrote in the section above, user Steinberger's post prompted me to look more closely at our Harm reduction article and at the web site for the Drug Prevention Network of Canada (DPNC). One thing led to another, and I turned up some very interesting results. I'm going to apologize in advance here, for what will necessarily be a very long post.

The first thing I noticed was that the current director of the Drug Free America Foundation (DFAF), Calvina Fay, is listed as an "honorary board member" of the Drug Prevention Network of Canada (DPNC). That caught my interest, because she also appears to be the driving force behind this ostensible "journal" of ours, via two independently-named "divisions" of the Drug Free America Foundation, viz. "Institute on Global Drug Policy" and "International Scientific and Medical Forum on Drug Abuse". The DFAF site doesn't say so, but other sites I've seen name Fay as one of the founders of that organization, of the Drug Free America Foundation, and as one of its principal private funders, along with founders Betty Sembler and husband Mel Sembler.

The discovery that Calvina Fay is on the board of the Drug Prevention Network of Canada (DPNC) seemed the more interesting to me because our own article on her Drug Free Foundation of America (DFAF) currently lists no fewer than six divisions, many of which are cited in our articles as if they were independent organizations. So I began to wonder just how many "divisions" DFAF really has. I decided to satisfy my curiosity and I investigated further. I found a stronger connection between The Drug Prevention Network of Canada (DPNC) and the Drug Free Foundation of America (DFAF). Stronger than the presence of Calvina Fay in the management structures of both, I mean.

That connection consists of yet another apparent division of the Drug Free Foundation of America (DFAF), but this time one that's unavowed. It goes under the name "the Drug Prevention Network of the Americas" (DPNA), and bills itself as "a network of concerned citizens and organizations". One of the five listed duties expected of board members of the Drug Prevention Network of Canada (DPNC) is "To participate with and support the Drug Prevention Network of the Americas". Indeed, this page on the DPNA web site discloses a "partner coalition" with the DPNC.

But guess who owns the domain name for the ostensibly independent organization "Drug Prevention Network of the Americas" (DPNA)? If you're feeling cynical by now you're right to. The Drug Free America Foundation owns the DPNA domain name. So the Drug Prevention Network of Canada, where Calvina Fay is a board member, is charged with supporting the Drug Prevention Network of the Americas. And the domain name for the Drug Prevention Network of the Americas is owned by the Drug Free America Foundation, which Calvina Fay also runs. Indeed, she's listed as the contact e-mail recipient for the dpna.org domain. Big surprise.

( Late-edit update: I just noticed from DFAF's "about us" page that DFAF lists DPNA as one of its six avowed "divisions".  – OhioStandard (talk) 18:00, 23 March 2011 (UTC) )[reply]

That same link, immediately above, also reports that the Drug Free America Foundation owns around 35 other domains. Now wouldn't it be interesting to know which ones those are? I don't have subscriber access to perform that kind of DNS search, but I bet some friendly editor one at our computing reference desk would, and might be willing to help out anyone who'd be willing to try to answer that question.

I'll also just mention that, despite its regrettable cloak-and-dagger tone, this page might be a good starting place to try to document this whole network of interrelated websites that purport to represent independent organizations, but apparently don't. My guess is that if anyone can devote the substantial time that would be required to sort this interconnected web of "front" or "shill" organizations, that most of them will tie back to with Calvina Fay and Betty Sembler. Note, btw, that the foregoing link is from the page history at Sourcewatch; the current page there about the Drug Free America Foundation is a whitewash copied directly from DFAF's own site that expunges, among other things, Sembler's ties to the George Bush presidency.

The astroturfing strategy that these two champions of the war on drugs, Fay and Sembler, appear to have adopted is actually fairly sophisticated. For example, I've read that when their coercive brainwashing/cultlike drug "treatment" organization for adolescents, Straight, Inc. accumulated too much really horrible press, they renamed it and splintered it into a host of smaller organizations. Indeed, many sites on the web ( but no WP:RS that I saw ) claim that Straight Inc. was just renamed to become our familiar Drug Free America Foundation.

Similarly, they appear to create ostensibly "new" drug-criminalization "organizations" on a whim. These "new" organizations seem, in many or most cases, to be nothing more than just another web site or even a subpage devoted to their same theme of supporting the criminalization principles of the so-called war on drugs. But they do enable the appearance that the same theme is being independently championed by multiple organizations when the fact seems to be that these "organizations" are little more than shills acting on behalf of a single, well-funded group.

Even the web site for Drug Free America Foundation alludes to this strategy of astroturfing through the creation of ostensibly "new" organizations when it says, "On December 1, 2000, Drug Free America Foundation announced the establishment of yet another division..." (emphasis mine).

Now somewhere, probably locked in a file cabinet at the Drug Free America Foundation (DFAF) headquarters, there's bound to be an "organizational chart" that includes both the avowed and unavowed front organizations created to parrot its "war on drugs" theme. Since we don't have access to that, many of our articles about drug policy contain criticism that looks like it originates from multiple independent organizations and sources when that criticism really is properly attributable to just one source: the DFAF.

It might be that researching and documenting that "organizational chart" from the outside would be a more appropriate task for an experienced investigative journalist than a Wikipedia editor; there may not have been enough published in WP:RS about this whole web of ostensibly independent "organizations", in other words, for it to be able to be documented on Wikipedia. I'm not sure whether that's so or not, actually.

But at the very least, if our articles are going to quote from or cite to one of the multiplicity of organizations that Fay and Sembler appear to be responsible for then I think the connection back to the two of them and to their Drug Free America Foundation should be identified in some appropriate way.  – OhioStandard (talk) 00:22, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just noticed the domain name for the "organization" Save our Society from Drugs is also owned by the Drug Free America Foundation, and that "SOS" lists Calvina Fay and Betty Sembler as founders and directors. I've added this information to our article on the Drug Free America Foundation.  – OhioStandard (talk) 01:19, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]


WP:NOR applies. We should not "look up" domanins in order to make points about any organization - it is up to us to follow what reliable sources report only. Collect (talk) 12:01, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]


I've got to say this seems not very conspiratorial, and perfectly overt; these various organizations are linked, and why would anyone be surprised at that? DGG ( talk ) 03:58, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm 11 years late to the party, it seems, but I've been working on resolving this issue. I intend to merge Straight, Inc. into the Drug Free America Foundation and to properly map out the connections between these organizations using reliable sources, of which there are thankfully some more since you had this discussion. Gmarmstrong (talk) 04:00, 21 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

CMAJ quotation

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On 20 March, 2011, I added the following cited quotation to our article:

Also referring to this journal, authors in the Canadian Medical Association Journal wrote,

Efforts to undermine the science specific to HIV prevention for injection drug users are becoming increasingly sophisticated. One new and worrisome trend is the creation of internet sites posing as open-access, peer-reviewed scientific journals. One such example, funded by the Drug Free America Foundation, contains a review of the research supporting needle exchange program and declares that the "effectiveness of NEPs [needle exchange program] to reduce HIV among IDUs [injection drug users] is overrated;" it further claims that the WHO position on needle exchange programs "is not based on solid evidence."

On 27 March, user Collect (talk · contribs), who often follows my edits and who had no prior involvement with this article, and with whom I'm currently in contention over an unrelated matter at AN/I, deleted the quote, saying it was a violation of NPOV. Partly because Collect claimed at AN/I that this journal is a reliable source, I restored the quotation today, saying in my edit summary, "Restored a very specific and highly-relevant quotation about this publication from a 'gold-standard' source." Several hours later, also today, Collect edited the quote to expunge the part of the quotation that's struck through below:

Also referring to this journal, authors in the Canadian Medical Association Journal wrote,

Efforts to undermine the science specific to HIV prevention for injection drug users are becoming increasingly sophisticated. One new and worrisome trend is the creation of internet sites posing as open-access, peer-reviewed scientific journals. One such example, funded by the Drug Free America Foundation, [this journal] contains a review of the research supporting needle exchange program and declares that the "effectiveness of NEPs [needle exchange program] to reduce HIV among IDUs [injection drug users] is overrated;" it further claims that the WHO position on needle exchange programs "is not based on solid evidence."

Collect's edit summary for the above was merely, "wp:undue". Please note that this change radically distorts the meaning of the passage from its original context, and that our policy on weight is mostly about not giving minority viewpoints as much emphasis as majority ones.

That policy says, among other things,

"Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represents all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint. Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means that articles should not give minority views as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views."

Collect is perfectly welcome to try find sources that claim this web site represents a sterling and unbiased example of the highest standards in medical research publishing, and to give due weight in the article to whatever he turns up. Perhaps it's won award after award, the medical equivalent of Pulitzer Prizes, whatever that might be. Given that it appears to receive (almost?) no external cites, I think that's unlikely, but whether he finds some presumably minority view to sing its praises or not, he has no basis for trying to suppress opinions about it that appear in gold-standard publications like the Canadian Medical Association Journal, which has been ranked at number seven by English-speaking physicians, btw, in terms of credibility and respect, from what I read recently.

I've restored the full quote. If Collect reverts that, or otherwise truncates it, I'd appreciate it if other editors who've shown an interest in this article would express their opinions. I will not be debating the question with Collect, however, as I've learned from previous experience that doing so is invariably unproductive.  – OhioStandard (talk) 17:58, 10 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Only the part of the quote directly related to the journal belongs in the journal article. The huge bulk is an accusation far beyond the journal entirely, and is UNDUE at the least. I did not delete any of the quote which actually dealt with the journal. Collect (talk) 18:14, 10 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
WP:NPA applies. Collect (talk) 18:15, 10 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • You're wrong. The whole quotation is obviously about the journal and clearly belongs in the article. Your selective deletion significantly distorted the meaning of the quote. --Crusio (talk) 18:20, 10 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at this after looking at the lede, Cusio is right once more. Full context is important on a quote. The entire quote is making a statement about the journal by using it as the prime example in the article of journals promoting what it considers to be false science. DGG ( talk ) 15:04, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • As an aside, it should be noted that this quote from the CMAJ is published in a section called "Salon", which on the journal's website is being described as "Op-ed pieces". This means that this piece has not been peer-reviewed and represents the opinion of its authors. Perhaps also of the editors, but in any case, it is being presented as an opinion, not as fact. --Crusio (talk) 21:35, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Do we have a source that say this journal is peer reviewed? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:50, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Tomorrow I'm going to start the Bordeaux Journal of Astrology. We'll only consider articles for publication that are based on research, which will show that astrology is real and powerful. The journal will be peer-reviewed by fellow astrologers (the appropriate peers). OK, sillyness aside, this new journal would be "peer reviewed". It would be correct to say "The Bordeaux Journal of Astrology is a peer-reviewed journal". Of course, most likely an article on my new (and of course very notable) journal would include a section saying something about the quality of the peer review. Similar here. The journal obviously is peer reviewed. Equally obviously, there are clear problems with this peer review. Clearly, only people adhering to a certain point of view (i.e. that needle replacement programs are harmful) are invited as reviewers. All of this should be presented in the article in a neutral way, without taking sides. --Crusio (talk) 03:34, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
But the material is presented neutrally. All reliable sources considered this journal to be bottom-of-the-barrel, no better than Australasian Journal of Bone & Joint Medicine or Journal of Cosmology. WP:NPOV does not mean "Wikipedia does not take sides", it means it takes the side of reliable sources. Reliable sources say this journal is shit, and so that's what the article says. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 03:44, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Nonexistent ISSN

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According to the front page of their website, the journal has an ISSN of 1934-4708. Curious to see what would result, I put this number into the ISI Web of Knowledge, but searching for both "19344708" and "1934-4708" (without the quotes) returned messages of "No matching journals were found". Nyttend (talk) 00:06, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Probably because this "journal" is not really a journal but a PR stunt.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:34, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That was the impression that I got; I would have been confused if I'd encountered an ISSN that wasn't in Web of Knowledge, but since I'd read the article and the discussion page already, I wasn't at all surprised. Nyttend (talk) 00:47, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • The ISSN is real. I just added it to the article with a template. Click it and you'll see the journal as listed in WorldCat. It's not indexed in WoK, so you wouldn't expect to get any hits there for its ISSN (but you might get some for its abbreviated name). --Crusio (talk) 07:05, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes magazines get ISSNs. The bar is not high. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:15, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the simple explanation is that it is not indexed by Thomson Reuters databases. However, that does not indicate this journal does not have an issn. Thomosn Reuters' journal selection process is explained here. ---- Steve Quinn (talk) 02:35, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Lead

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  • I have just edited the lead, which was quite tendentious and POV. The journal is open access. It also is peer-reviewed and it is covering public health issues. That the peers chosen for review by the editors are perhaps biased to a certain political point of view is a completely different issue, to be treated separately in the body of the article (or a criticism section) if sources showing this are available. --Crusio (talk) 07:09, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • The change of the lead that I made was reverted basically within seconds with the comment that the references in the article show that it is not peer reviewed. As far as I can see, though, those references assert that the peer review is biased, not absent, which is a different issue. --Crusio (talk) 07:31, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Crusio ask me to look at the article. I did, looking at the article only, not the talk p, and immediately removed the "claimed to be", without knowing Crusio's position or the above discussion. A phrase like "claims to be" in a lede is blatant editorializing, as much so as a lede sentence "Company X claims to be a civil-rights organization." The first sentence of an article is meant as simple identification. After doing that, I came here to the talk p.
Anyway, absent very strong evidence, normally a journal is considered peer-reviewed when it claims to be--the quality of the peer-review is another matter, & is discussed later in the article. Exactly as Crusio says, that a journal's content is biased does not mean it is not peer-reviewed-- the editor need only select reviewers who are known to agree with its policy.
The reminder of the article is a major problem. There needs to be a search for positive references. NPOV is a fundamental principle here and cannot be ignored. That probably 90% of WPedians would think the journal policy wrong-headed is irrelevant entirely. I was considering speedy-deleting the article under criterion G10, "attack page" -- if it were a question of BLP I would have done so already, but the criterion also applies to pages on other topics. organization. I am holding off to see if a neutral article can be written.
The check on the quality of a journal is to see what journals and what authors cite the articles. This fact can be reported simply, and it implies what it implies. I have absolute confidence in Crusio as an editor on this subject. DGG ( talk ) 14:50, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Seeing that the ref says "Rather than supporting the unfiltered consideration of evidence-based policy, the Institute on Global Drug Policy supports “efforts to oppose policies based on the concept of harm reduction”. Of particular note, the Institute on Global Drug Policy's website presents itself in the form of an online open access journal. To our knowledge, this is the first time a lobby group such as the Drug Free America Foundation has created for itself a venue for the dissemination of opinion essays, which to the untrained eye could easily be mistaken for a scientific journal" PMID: 18291331 I have reverted this change.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:14, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • That's what a letter in the Lancet Infectious Diseases says. It's completely appropriate to cite this criticism in the article. It is inappropriate to use this as a justification for a strong POV lead. As an aside, those authors are wrong, this is absolutely not the first time that some group has created a journal to publicize views they can't otherwise get published (Mankind Quarterly being a prominent example). As an (unnecessary) aside, let me say that I belong to the 90% of Wikipedians mentioned above by DGG. Needle-replacement programs have been very successful in my birth country, The Netherlands. But my (or your) personal opinions are absolutely irrelevant here and the article needs to be encyclopedic and NPOV. --Crusio (talk) 07:17, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes personal opinions are completely irrelevant. We go with what reliable sources say. We do not have a reliable source which states that this paper is peer reviewed. We do have reliable sources that questions if it is peer reviewed. Thus if we wish to state that it is peer reviewed and open access we would need a ref to back it up. Neither one of the refs at this point do so. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:07, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
These two articles are used at the Insite article to support what is said on the bad quality of the journal:
  • "When asked to clarify what evidence Mr Clement was referring to, Mr Waddell confirmed it was a commentary published in January 2007 in a non-peer-reviewed journal called The Journal of Global Drug Policy and Practice, which receives funding from the US Department of Justice." [2]
  • [Garth Davies and Colin Mangham have written papers critical of Insite.] "But neither review was published in a peer-reviewed journal, the usual sign that an academic paper stands up to expert scrutiny. Instead, they appeared in 2007 on a website called Journal of Global Drug Policy and Practice, a site supported by U.S. groups that advocate a strict line on illicit drugs." [3]
But I can't tell where on the trustworthy scale they fit, more then they are well over bloggish standard. Steinberger (talk) 17:02, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The National Review of Medicine is reliable for medical politics.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:14, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This is a question of politics not a question of health care. Thus the absence of peer review is not surprising. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:49, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]


NPOV tag

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As the user who placed the tag has not started any discussion I will. This article reflects the opinions of third party sources. If people find opinions from third party sources that are not represented feel free to add them but not liking the opinions of the third party sources we have is not a reason to tag the article.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:44, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • I feel things are being overemphasized. The sources are pretty clear that several people think that the peer review in this journal is bad and that serious outlets find these concerns sufficiently serious to publish them. I absolutely agree that the article should have a "criticism" section that should address this issue. However, as I tried to explain with my silly astrology example above, the fact that the quality of review is low, does not mean it isn't there. I strongly feel that in the lead the words "claims to be" should be simply replaced with "is" (or "describes itself"). In addition, the statement on the goal of the institute (very clumsily written anyway, one has to back up to figure out which institute is meant) belongs (if at all) in the article on the institute, not here. I think the lead here should be short and factual: "The Journal of Global Drug Policy and Practice is an open access peer-reviewed public health journal. It is published quarterly online by the Institute on Global Drug Policy and the International Scientific and Medical Forum on Drug Abuse." This then should be followed by the criticism section. The sentence "It is funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention which is part of the U.S. Department of Justice" should either be removed or placed somewhere else. As it is, it insinuates that the Dept. of Justice is exerting undue influence on the journal's editorial line, although there is no source for that. Also should be changed: "authors in the Canadian Medical Association Journal": it's clumsy and it was an Op-Ed piece. Although it is not included in the online version, Op-Ed pieces almost always have a disclaimer that opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by the editors (it's probably somewhere on the CMAJ site, I cannot imagine them not having such a statement). This could very well be replaced with "others have written", followed by the same quote. Similar for the next quote about the Lancet. That the paper was published in the Lancet is incontestable. Putting it there in this way implies that this is the opinion of the Lancet itself, which is not what the source says.
Basically, I think the article as it currently stands is a hatchet job. For those who want to expose the nature of the journal, I give as consideration that an obvious hatchet job on me always has the opposite effect. A calmly-written, neutrally worded article, without any innuendo, is much more effective. It's late here, I'm going back to bed... --Crusio (talk) 04:34, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I will probably be returning to this discussion. For now, I wish to say that I believe the third reference [4] which is supposed to support that this is not a peer reviewed journal does not appear to be acceptable as a source. It appears to be someone taking the liberty to smear the journal as if it has no authority. This single sentence uttered by one person is not really a reliable source. This article is not about the peer review of this journal or the lack of it. Only one sentence merely implies something or other about peer review.
Also, this source is dated 2007. It seems to be too out of date, anyway, for basing any opinion about this journal - especially an opinion that is in the introduction. Wikipedia is not a place for promoting people's agenda. I think the NPOV tag is appropriate if these are the type of sources available for this article.
Also the first reference does not seem relevant to this journal as a topic of an article.
I am pretty sure this a peer reviewed journal and that it is open access. I don't see this as any kind of questionable claim. ---- Steve Quinn (talk) 05:41, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Another source [5], mentioned above, is about the Insite program, safe injection facilities, and some of the controversy surrounding these. In particular this source is reporting about the RCMP involvement in shaping opinion. It is not an analysis of this journal's peer review. It is less than one sentence that can be construed as a biased claim amidst a hot button issue. I don't think that this qualifies as support for the view that this is not a peer reviewed journal. There is no difference between this and me or some other editor stating their opinion on a subject in one sentence. Steve Quinn (talk) 06:03, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This article is the epitome of a NPOV violation. Propaganda it may be, but the people behind this journal are serious professionals and it needs to be taken seriously. Brmull (talk) 10:30, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That is not the position of the Lancet and the CMAJ. We need to base this one sources.I am happy with "says it is an" as while the journal claims to be a peer reviewed / open access independent sources disagree.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:51, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree that one look at the editorial board says that "serious professionals" are on this journal's staff. And apparently this journal is viewed as serious work by some such as the government of Canada. Therefore, contradicting NPOV in the lede is not helpful. ---- Steve Quinn (talk) 03:05, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The Government of Canada is currently very agenda-driven on this specific matter. (See [6], amongst others stories like it) Stephen Harper et al. are not drug experts, and their opinions are utterly irrelevant when it comes to the efficiency of needle exchange programs. This journal is as "serious" as Australasian Journal of Bone & Joint Medicine is. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 03:42, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That is no excuse for contradicting NPOV within the very first lines. This article is not a reflection of an acceptable Wikipedia article. This seems ridiculous to me. Especially - the sources that are being used are biased, opinionated, and lacking in fact. Take a look at the two references I discussed above and then read this reference [7]. Even this last reference is obvious editorializing. ---- Steve Quinn (talk) 04:17, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The article reflects what third party reliable sources say about the journal. That is the only thing that matters. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 04:25, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
OK you make a good point. Let me get back to you on this. I want to see if there are other issues involved.---- Steve Quinn (talk) 04:33, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Also, if this is useful to the Canadian Government and if that is a fact then it is OK to state that fact. That the Canadian Government is agenda driven may have nothing to do with this article, as it might be off topic. I haven't seen one of the sources in this article say there is a connection between an agenda driven Canadian Government and this journal. However, if you wish to place that in this article I would not object. So far we have all kinds of opinion in this article - I say the more the merrier. ---- Steve Quinn (talk) 04:24, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
See the National Review of Medicine article for exactly that. Or the CMAJ article by Wood and Kerr. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 04:34, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I have to admit that I did not have awareness of the issues involved. The National Review of Medicine article, the CMAJ article {Wood and Kerr}, this article, and the Wikipedia article on the Australasian Journal of Bone & Joint Medicine has cleared that up. The political agenda against "harm reduction" does appear to be fierce and not founded on scientific fact. This journal seems to have been created to play a pivotal role in promoting this adverse agenda. So, thanks for the sources. Also, your skillful editing, while I was reading, has made this a much, much better article than it was before. I am sure it was the original wording of this article that caused me alarm - but no more. Also, I am amazed that you are very informed about this issue. It seems that you have other interests besides physics. (But don't we all have other interests?) Thanks for all your time, and the work that you put into this article and this discussion. ---- Steve Quinn (talk) 05:42, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've added the NPOV tag back. There is a fair amount of evidence from I'm concerned that there's very little content to this article that isn't questioning the bias of this journal. GabrielF (talk) 21:36, 12 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There is a fair amount of evidence from what? Please demonstrate some examples of independent secondary reliable sources not questioning the bias of the journal. Then there would be a basis for the tag. The article is implying that most do, and if that's true, then the article is neutral. Jesanj (talk) 21:49, 12 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'd also qualify that with non-trivial coverage. Jesanj (talk) 21:58, 12 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The Lancet article is described as a "paper" when it is an opinion piece - it appears in the section ("Reflections and Responses") . The journal's editor wrote a letter to the Lancet responding to the article, but that is not mentioned on wikipedia. I've posted that response here if you want to read it.GabrielF (talk) 22:15, 12 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Peer review

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As with other academic journals' websites, perhaps this [8] shows that this journal does have a peer review process. This page also has submission guidelines. Also, the presence of submission guidelines may contradict the POV of at least one of the sources. (Please chime in) ---- Steve Quinn (talk) 06:16, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at globaldrugpolicy.org from about the time when the "Medical journal or marketing device?" article you refer to was written (1 September 2009) the submissions page are missing. I really can't help getting the impression that the folks at globaldrugpolicy.org wrote the submissions instruction page after the CMAJ articles publication, and only to fit the criteria they are said to fail. As an example, in comparison to say CMAJ's submission instructions theirs seem very thin. Steinberger (talk) 07:04, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
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