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Talk:Foreign relations of North Macedonia

International Reactions
These are useful to understand geopolitics and international perceptions, and the reasons and change of these perceptions through time. Perhaps a corresponding section should be created in these articles. I'll start with a quote.

«ἡ κυβέρνησις τῶν Η.Π.Α. θεωρεῖ, ὅτι συζήτησις περὶ «Μακεδονικοῦ ἔθνους, Μακεδονικῆς πατρίδος καὶ Μακεδονικῆς ἐθνικῆς συνειδήσεως» ἰσοῦται μὲ δημαγωγίαν, ποὺ δὲν ὑποκρύπτει ἐθνικὴν ἢ πολιτικὴν πραγματικότητα, ἀλλὰ ὑποκρύπτει ἐπεκτατικὰς διαθέσεις κατὰ τῆς Ἑλλάδος».

"The United States government holds, that any discussion of a Macedonian nation, Macedonian homeland, or Macedonian national identity, to be demagoguery, that does not hold ethnic or political reality, but expansionary attitudes towards Greece."

- Edward Stettinius, U.S. Secretary of State, December 26, 1944

http://www.sartzetakis.gr/points/makedonia16.html

Naming dispute
What seems to be missing from this section of the article is the rejected diplomatic compromise attempt generally known as "Pineiro package" (named after the Portuguese Foreign Minister Joao di Deus Pineiro) that had proposed the "New Macedonia" name, and other attempts with proposed names such as "Slavic Macedonia" and derivatives. Etz Haim 16:43, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

To clarify, so Greece doesn't want "Macedonia" at all in the country name? Does it offer a suggestion? --Menchi 03:08, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

 * In 1995 they reached a compromise, and that was FYROM. It was a compromise, Greece didn't want Macedonia used at all, but it seemed at that time the FYROM compromise would be as good as it would get, so they accepted it, along with the FYROMians.  Now it appears as if FYROM wants to go back to their original name and forget the compromise.  Greece offered alternatives such as Skopje, the capital of FYROM. -- HawkeyE 07:13, July 19, 2005 (UTC)

Concerning Greece's objection to article 49 of the constitution of fYROM: my understanding is that it was based on the fact that the Republic of Macedonia is ascribed as caretaker of "Macedonian people", a term which in Greece refers to ethnic Greeks living in the northern Greek province. In this article it is mentioned that the objection of the Greek government concerned Slavic-Macedonian minorities in Greece, an unlikely case since the Greek government does not recognize such a minority exists within Greece. Rather, the objection refers to the ambiguity concerning to whom the term "Macedonian people" refers to, Greeks or Slavs?--Alx bio 01:56, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Neutral Wikipedia?
Dear all

I am writting about the issue of Macedonia, Republic of Macedonia, Macedonian Slavs (like Wikipedia calls the Macedonians) and the problem between Macedonia and Greece about the term Macedonia. I am aware that this issue is largely discussed here, at Wikipedia, and Wikipedia claims that it is trying to take a neutral side. But, that is not the case. Wikipedia is everything except neutral in this question. In the following lines I will explain you why.

From the text in Wikipedia most of the people will conclude that Macedonian nation appeared during the World War 2 and Tito was the one who 'invented' us. The family of my wife (she is Mexican) read this and asked me is it truth. That was actually the first time I read what Wikipedia says about my nation, which was a direct reason for my reaction. My grandfather is born in 1911th. Yesterday I had a talk with him. He took a part in the strugle for independence since 1925th and he took a part in the 2nd world war. He is alive and personal prove that Wikipedia is full of bullshit and lies about our origin. He spent half of his life proving and fighting for that. He was shot 3 times, all 3 from the Bulgarians who wanted to ocupy Macedonia in the Balkan wars and in the WW1 and WW2. Just a 1 min with him will show you how many lies you suport in Wikipedia.

I tried to edit some of the text few days ago, but everithing I wrote was deleted. And all I wrote were facts. Fact 1. Macedonians (or Macedonian Slavs, like ONLY Wikipedia, Greece and Cyprus calls us) is the only nation of many living in the area concentrated inside the borders of the geographical region of Macedonia. This is a pure fact, something that you can even find on the CIA web page. Can you give any fact to deny my fact? If you can not, why you erased it from Wikipedia? Fact 2. Republic of Macedonia has diplomatic relations with about 150 countries in the world. Wikipedia says that "at least 20" countries recognize Macedonia under the name Macedonia. Guess what? That number is more than 100. And this is an officially confirmed by our ministery for foreighn affairs. Fact 3. Wikipedia says that my country Contraversialy calls itself Republic of Macedonia. This is a pure example of taking a side in the problem. Why you don't say that Greece contraversialy deny us the use of the name Macedonia? If you intended to be neutral, just write that we have the naming problem with Greece, but do not call my name "contraversial"!!! Fact 4. While explaining about the antient Macedonia, its kings etc. you highly support the claim for their Greek origin. I can give you 1000s of facts that that is not truth and I beleive that some Greek guy can give you 1000s facts that those claims are truth. That was 2400 years ago and there is no chanse for us to know the real situation. We can only guess. But, when you give the Greek suported version, why you ignore the version suported by the newaged Macedonians? In this moment I can give you 10 names of internationally respected scientist supporting our theory. If you are neutral, why you ignore it? Fact 5. Wikipedia says that the Turkish Empire were calling us Bulgarians. Strange, because the Turks were recognizing the uniqueness of our nation since the moment they occupied the teritory of Macedonia. Actually, the Turkish history archives are the biggest prove of our existance, history and culture. Did anyone of you ever read anything from those archives? Even on the birth certificate of Khemal Ataturk says that he is born in Bitola, Macedonia. And his autobiography is full of memories of his childhood spend with the Macedonians. Fact 6. Wikipedia ignores the egsodus of the Macedonian people from Greece and says they were running because they were supporters of the comunists. 1/3 of the Macedonians have origin from this part of Macedonia. They were runned away from there by force and you can find many historical proves for that. Again, big part of my family has origin from there. As a matter of fact, my grand-grand father was married to a Greek woman, my grand-grand mother. But, no matter of that, his house was burned and he was forced to run away for his life and the life of his family. How dare you deny this? Do you know that even today my grand father is not allowed to visit Greece, because he was a kid when his family runned away from there? Fact 7. There are about 500 000 Macedonians that live outside Macedonia, mostly in Canada, Australia, USA, Sweden etc. At least 1/3 moved there before 1930s. If we were a product of Tito, how can you explain that even they feel of Macedonian nationality? I have a family in USA which moved there in 1927th. Their ancestors (my cousins) do not even know how to talk Macedonian well. But, they still feel Macedonian. One of them is even one of the financiers of the party of the Macedonians in Bulgaria, trying to help their strugle to keep their national identity. I repeat, first time he visited Macedonia was in 1995th, far after Tito. And his family moved in USA in 1927th, far before Tito. Fact 8. Wikipedia claims that the book of Macedonian songs by Dimitar Miladinov is actually Bulgarian. Have you maybe seen a original copy of the book, printed in Croatia? IT says clearly "Macedonian". Not to mention that the same author wrote one of the most important books in the Macedonian history "For the Macedonian issues", again printed in Croatia, where it clearly talks about the Macedonian nation and non-Bulgarian origin.

All this was simply erased from the database. I didn't erase anything when editing these pages, I support the other side and I do not want to hide their facts. But why Wikipedia wants to hide our facts, which show that we are not a product of Tito's ambitions for the Aegean Sea. In Tito's time, the Yugoslav army was far superior in the region. If he wanted the Aegean Sea, he would get it very easily.

Many things in Wikipedia are very offensive for the nowdays Macedonians. Wikipedia simply ignores us, gives us a new name and supports the theories of denial of our existance, culture and history.

I will try to give you an example that includes with Mexico. I beleive that you know that the Maya civilisation was invaded by the Spanish kingdom. Spanish were ruling Mexico for centuries and millions of Spanish people moved at Mexican teritory. Later, after the liberation war, Mexicans formed its own country. Fact 1. Mayas were living in Mexico (same as Antique Macedonians). Fact 2. Spanish invaded them and great number of Spanish people moved to Mexico (The Slavs moved on the theritory of Macedonia and there was no reported fights or movements of people away from the teritory where the Slavs settled). Fact 3. Nowdays, everyone of the Mexican is aware that they are partly Spanish, but they still have Mayan origin (Wikipedia says that the people living in Republic of Macedonia are Slavs. When there was no reported resetling of the Antique Macedonians, how is possible they not to mix with the Slavs? It is a fact that the nowdays Macedonians are not same as the Antique Macedonians, but they certanly have a significant part of their genes. Same as I beleive that Greece has a part of their Genes, but they are definitly not their direct ancestors). Fact 4. Mexican speak Spanish. Reason: The Spanish culture was superior in that time. (The Antique Macedonians accepted the Helenic culture, including a variation of the Greek language. Reason: the Helenic culture was superior in that time. Everyone who knows at least little history will know that Hellenic and Greek are not synonims. Greek is nation, Hellenic is religion/culture. USA and England both speak English, both are mostly cristians, but they are SEPARATE nations. Aren't they? Same happens to Germany and Austria, or Serbia and Croatia, or Canada and France, or Brazil and Portugal, or the rest of Latin America and Spain)

And here is a comment about the claims of the Bulgarians, that the Macedonians are actually Bulgarians. If that is truth, I am going to kill myself. Bulgarians through the history made the worst for my nation. During the strugle of the Macedonian people for independence from the Turkish empire, at the end of the 19th and begginbing of the 20th century, the Bulgarians were the ones who killed the most of our revolutionaries, including 4 members of my close family which were members of the Macedonian revolutionary organization (VMRO). Whis is not something that I was told by Tito. My grandfather (the same grandfather from above) was in fact a member of the same organization. He personaly knew many of the revolutioners that Bulgarians claim are theirs, including 2 of the leaders: Goce Delcev and Gorce Petrov. They were Macedonians and they all gave their lives for free and independent Macedonia and they had nothing to do with Bulgaria. There was a part of them who were Bulgarians inserted in the organizations, who were actually the killers of the real Macedonian revolutioners, because it was in Bulgarian interest to weaken the organization, so they could take the lead in the organization and later put Macedonia in the hands of the Bulgarians. Thanks god, they did not succeed. Wikipedia claims that VMRO was pro-Bulgarian and the revolutioners were Bulgarian fighters. You suposed to see the face of my 94 year old grandfather when I told him your claims. Neurtal Wikipedia? I do not think so.

At the end I have to ask for Wikipedia NOT TO TAKE A SIDE IN THIS. I am not asking to remove the Greek and Bulgarian side of the story. But, why you ignore our claims, which are suported by many non-Greek and non-Bulgarian scientists and very largely through the web. There are just about 2-2.5 million Macedonians around the world. We do not have enought influence and strenght as Greece has, which is much more powerful and richer country than Macedonia. The Macedonian-Greek question is too hard and too complicated to solve. History can be interpreted in 1000 ways, especially on a teritory like the Balcany, where there are so many nations on so little space. Fortunately, DNA testings are getting more and more reliable and soon it will be possible to be used to acuratelly show the origin of our nations. I hope that then the denyal of me, my history, culture and existance will finaly stop. It is very disapointing that Wikipedia takes a part in all that.

With all the respect, Igor Šterbinski Skopje, Macedonia is@on.net.mk

ALL the Macedonian history (the one that the Macedonians, the one that Wikipedia calls Macedonian Slavs) before the 6th century is given in Wikipedia as Greek history. I am talking mostly about the Antient Macedonia. I do not claim that Macedonians (Macedonian Slavs in Wikipedia) have the exclusive right to this history. But, Greece can not have that right eighter. It is a history that this region shares and both, we (Macedonians) and Greeks have a part of our origin from those people. In the same time ALL the Macedonian history after the 6th century is given in Wikipedia as Bulgarian history. I am talking about the Wikipedia claims that in the 9th century the Macedonian Slavs got Bulgarized or assimilated by Greece, that in the 10th century Macedonia become a center of Bulgaria (which is not truth, because there are 1000s of hard proves and writtings found in Ohrid denying the Bulgarian claims), the tzar Samoil kingdom (which was everything than Bulgarian, because he had several fights with them and won in all and you can find again 1000s of proves in his fortress in Ohrod), then the Macedonian Ohrid Archbishopry which was clearly Macedonian and everything else than Bulgarian, with dressings and crowns with a completely different stile than the Bulgarian ones. Later Wikipedia claims that after 1018th Byzantine Empire makes Macedonia a Bulgarian province, but it doesn't say the reason for it (the Bulgarians were fighting at his side, so this was his reward towards them, something that will happen in the WW2, when the biggest part of Macedonia will be given to Bulgaria by the Germans. 3 of 4 sons of Samoil were actually latter killed by pro-Bulgarians Another reason is the wish of Vasili II to make a revenge towars Samoil and his people, with denying them, something that Wikipedia does NOW). Then, Wikipedia claims that the Ottoman Empire was seeing us as Bulgarians, which is completely not truth. You have incredible written archives in Turkish museums for this, so you can make a search by your own. All the Macedonian uprisings were characterised as Macedonians. Even the after-capture execution of the leaders was taking place in Skopje, the biggest town in the teritory of Macedonia and not in Sofija, which was the Bulgarian biggest town. Wikipedia says that the following Macedonian history is Bulgarian: IMRO, Ilinden Uprising in Krusevo (where the only newspapers that write about it as Bulgarian uprising are the ones who didn't have their Journalists in the region and were using the Bulgarian sources, which in that time was already liberated, who wanted to show the uprising as their own. Why you don't read some Russian sources which have their journalists in Krusevo and Bitola at the time? Some of the grand sons and grand daughters of the revolutioners are still alive, so you might ask them what their grand-fathers were fighting for. The Krusevo Manifesto says that their goal is FREE and INDEPENDENT Macedonia. Why would their form their own Republic, if they wanted to be part of Bulgaria? All Wikipedia claims simply have no sence), Goce Delchev and the other revolutioners (NOTE: Goce Delchevs nephews which are still alive all spent half of their life proving Goce Delchev's belongding to the Macedonian nation. NOTE 2: Why would he fight for Macedonia's independence if he was Bulgarian? If he was Bulgarian, wouldn't he fight for unification of Macedonia and Bulgaria? Why was he betrayed by a Bulgarian, which resultet in his death in Banica 1903rd? You are corupting our biggest revolutioner, something that we keep as a saint). Wikipedia says that the "St Cyril and Methodius" high school in Solun, where Delchev studied was Bulgarian. How come, when no Bulgarians were living in Solun?... A prove for the Bulgarian, Serb and Greek ambitions to assimilate the Macedonians and take their teritory is the deals and fights they had in the both Balcan wars. They were all exterminating the Macedonians, burning their houses and grabbing their lands, but Wikipedia completely ignores all that. I (and many more) have a living family members who were witnesses of that time. Then, the WW2, when 2/3 of Macedonia was given to Bulgaria by the Germans. Why the hell 100000 Macedonians were fighting against the Bugarians? 25000 died in that war, again many members of my family. And Wikipedia says that we have Bulgarian origin. Why they didn't fight at the Bulgarian side if that was the case? Wikipedia later claims that our country (Republic of Macedonia) was given to us by Tito. What a lie!!! As I said 100000 Macedonians were fighting for freedom. If Tito made us be under the Serbs again, that wouldn't be freedom and 100000 heavily armed Macedonians would continue fighting for it. Even my 94 year old grand-father, who took a part in the WW2 fighting for the partizans, and who was looking at Tito as a saint agrees with this, that he wouldn't rest till he saw Macedonia free. Wikipedia even denies the exodus of 250 000 Macedonians from Greece, saying they were running away by their own. Who the hell will leave his house and land if he was not forced to? My other grand father's house was burned and he was shoot at in order to make him leave his hometown.

On some places Wikipedia says that this 'Bulgarian part' of the history might be Macedonian, but that is very well hidden so it even can hardly be noticed.

On the other hand, Wikipedia says that 'In 2000 several teenagers threw smoke bombs at the conference of pro-Bulgarian organisation 'Radko' in Skopje causing panic and confusion among the delegates'. Yes, that is completely truth. But in 1000s of years, you find one incident that we caused against the Bulgarians and you wrote it. What about centuries of incidents, murders, wars, assimilation made by the Bulgarians towards the Macedonians? What about the fact that Bulgaria and Greece do not allow the Macedonian parties in those countries to register and take a part in the ellections? This is something that was taken even to the European court. HOW CAN WIKIPEDIA IGNORE THIS??? BTW, Radko had just about 50 delegates and members. Most of them born in Bulgaria and moved latter in their life in Macedonia.

In this case, Wikipedia is only a tool in the Bulgarian and Greek propaganda of denying and stealing the Macedonian history, culture and existance. Just search the internet and you will see that this kind of 'history' can ONLY be found on pro-Bulgarian and pro-Greek web sites. I am a living prove of the existance of the Macedonian nation. And that is not because I was told so by Tito. Macedonians were Macedonians far far before Tito. That is a fact that NOONE can change. How dare you deny everything what I am? How dare you to deny 1000s of killed people, who gave their lives for FREE and INDEPENDENT Macedonia?

Senceirly, Igor Šterbinski Skopje, Macedonia

JUST SEARCH THE WEB, YOU CAN SEE HOW WRONG WIKIPEDIA IS!!! ONLY THE PRO-BULGARIAN AND PRO-GREEK SITES HAVE THE SAME CLAIMS AS WIKIPEDIA. MOST OF THEM ARE ONLY CLAIMS THAT ARE CONFIRMED BY FALSIFICATED LETTERS. The TURKISH WERE SUPERIOR AT THAT TIME AND ARE A NEUTRAL SIDE. AND FAR BIGGER PART OF THEM IDENTIFY THE MACEDONIANS AS SEPARATE NATION, MACEDONIANS. WIKIPEDIA IS NEUTRAL??? I DO NOT THINK SO!!!

 * Igor, would you please stop flooding all FYROM-related pages on Wikipedia with your personal view on the issue? It is pointless to do so, I myself wouldn't consider a discussion with you worthwhile. If you wanted to discuss something, you would've done it the normal way. Yours is flooding, and a flooder's point of view is usually neglected, and I wouldn't even comment on your arguments. You see, FYROM and Macedonia is a controversial issue for everyone, especially in our region, everyone has a point of view, but by flooding you actually suppress the normal discussion. TodorBozhinov 11:42, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

 * While I definitely don't support flooding, I have to agree with Igor. This article has to be ultimate proof of the shortcomings od Wikipedia's policy. I hope we will be able to create a neutral article, satisfactory for all parties and FREE OF ANY POV. As it is, this article is nothing but pro-Bulgarian and pro-Greek propaganda worthy of a D.W. Griffith or Leni Riefenstahl movie.

Hmmmm, maybe we should make a Top 10 Articles Wikipedia admin's don't want you to see list. I hava an idea for No. 1. Pauderic 21:25, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

WIKIPEDIA I hope it is not an arena for propaganda: I am certain that most readers are interested in the truth and facts. So,In my research, I discovered that most major International Orginizations and Countries have recognized FYROM's existance ,INCLUDING GREECE,however,they have not yet recognized the name "Republic of Macedonia" pending resolution to the name dispute and objection with Greece. THE FOLLOWING ORGANIZATIONS HAVE NOT YET RECOGNIZED THE NAME "Republic of Macedonia".( in the member list of the orginizations below ,the name appears " Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" ( FYROM ) and NOT "Republic of Macedonia") UNITED NATIONS,NATO,EUROPEAN COMMUNITY, WORLD TRADE ORGINIZATION,WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION,OLYMPIC COMMITTEE, EUROVISION, and more.Long live the truth!!!!!The main article is full of lies and propagandas. I hope that the editors of Wikipedia are informed and courageous enought to side with the truth and correct this article,as they are loosing credibility.

Tony Vuccino

P.S. Name suggestion: North Macedonia ( As North Carolina ),New Macedonia ( as New England ) Nova Macedonia ( as Nova Scotia ) Slavic Macedonia ( as British Guiana ). Note: When you start a new corporation you cannot choose a name that someone else,is also using.Otherwise there is confusion. This new 2 million people new Country also used a Greek Symbol "the star of Vergina " on their flag. The international community forced them to changed it.THEY COMPLIED.Now they are using a Sun on their flag. OTHER FACTS: Greece is providing great economic assistance to FYROM. ( Greece's share is 65% of all foreign investments into the Country ) USA recognized the name "Republic of Macedonia" in return for a handfull of FYROM soldiers to go to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Different point of view
This entire issue would be much simpler if approached from a different point of view. Macedonia is first of all a geographical location. In modern times, a part of Macedonia belongs to the Republic of Macedonia, a part of it belongs to Bulgaria and a part of it belongs to Greece. Citizens of the (FormerYugoslav)Republic of Macedonia feel "macedonian" and citizens of Greece who live in the part of Macedonia that belongs to Greece feel "macedonian". That is simply because they BOTH are macedonians. The former are macedonians from North Macedonia and the latter are macedonians from South Macedonia (bulgarian people living by the borders who should feel macedonian are apparently from the north-eastern part of macedonia). There can hardly be any "true" descendants of people who lived 2,500 years ago in a place not completely isolated (and the balcan peninsula is definately not!). Things are as simple as that and everything would be much easier if people would just make use of the terms "north" and "south" when speaking of modern macedonia and its inhabitants instead of trying to find out who is the "true" macedonian and who is not.

Greek-centric
Greek identity should not judge by racial or ethical background. Do Chinese-Greek and African-Greek citizens are Greeks? Of course they are, its like people in US, Canada, and Britain. I dont believe that modern Greeks can claim that 100% of them are pure Greek genetically. After thousands years of invasion from Europeans and Asians, their gene pool are mixed. And this will continue in the future as their birth rate continues to drop, and they will force to adopt more flexible immigratnion policy. Also, it is wrong to claim that Alexander unify Greeks against Asian enemies. So, Greeks are good "civilized" and Asians are "barbarics" and uncivilized? It is purely unscholarly bias! Philip and Alexander's main intention was not to punish Perisans, but to conquer Perisa for their desire of power and wealth. It is simple as that!

 * It is not clear to me that the above is using a Talk page to discuss improvement to an article, or that it explains your removal of the Flag section. Jkelly 20:19, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Similar naming dispute section
Wow, that section is problematic. Not only does it violate WP:NPOV by uncritically presenting an argument that the situation is comparable in seriousness to, um, Luxembourg, it is also an egregious violation of WP:NOR in that it presents a completely uncited historical narrative. Is there any defense of this seciton within WP policy? Jkelly 03:25, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

 * I agree. It's a wholly inaccurate comparison, but fortunately one that as far as I am aware no serious historian or political commentator has made, so it should be (and now has been) removed as original research. --Delirium 00:56, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

/-greek side of view-

 * Could the "macedonian" guys in this site please explain to me how can he expect us "nationalists" and "liers" greeks to accept :that they are part of an ethnik group called "macedonian" if this group was historically led by someone who was talking ancient :greek -> Alexander in xxx BC and slavs are recorded in the regional area of EUROPE in general in xxxX AD? You and your country, no :offense, are the product of certain political circumstances:
 * 1. since the ancient slavs did not have any identity when they first apeared in the balkans they took on the history of the area    :   and adopted the identity of the ancient greek kidgom of maKedonia, of course the totalitarian communist state later on did not  :   want ethnik diversion as all totalitarians communists regimes those years did not. They expelled them, killed them or forced
 * them to convert to being serbs.
 * 2. tito wanted to expand, as every dictator-totalitarian leader wants and used the "macedonian" propaganda to enforce teritorial
 * claims 30 or so years ago.
 * 2. after the split of the united ygoslavia the "great powers" wanted stability in the region and granded u this name
 * 3. nowadays they seem to want instability and they seem to enforce "multinational" countries in the balkan region, a region which
 * has been in "almost" contant ethnical conflict for the last decade, the last one (the revolt of ethnik albanians in
 * slavomacedonia) was avoided at the last minute.
 * 4. MOST IMPORTANTLY name IS place in international diplomacy, those who know can understant this.

 * Noticed that i used the word SLAVOmacedonia which i thing is the most-descriptive name this country should have been given. It IS :regionally macedonia(in the ancient kind of way) but it is also populated with slavs. An ethicity which is VERY similar to the :other slavs in the balkan region. Ethnologically, in Europe for the sake of the argument, the french have DISTINCT characteristics :that distinguish them from the german lets say. The English have also distinct characteristics that distinuish them from the :spanish. In addition to that they have their own history which can lead to the definition of the terms spanish NATION, french :NATION e.t.c. This certain slavs majority, which by the way is less than 3/4 of the population in their own country DOES not have :distinct characteristics to distinguish them from the other slavs in the balkans NOR do they have a history behind, unless xx :years is a lot to you compared to xxxX years of the other european nations.

 * I was born in Greece, in particular thessaloniki, 26 years ago, and i have never seen a non-greek person anywhere in my country :claiming to be macedonian and NOT greek. I have seen Alexander the great and ancient Macedonian monuments with ancient GREEK :written on them. All the names used by macedonians to describe their army formations, e.g. phalanx -φαλαγγα, are greek and if :Alexander the great and all his people could be raised from the dead i could have a conversation with them and they could :understant me. I can see that for people from the USA for example this may seem a not-worthy argument but for me it is important :to speak a language that was first spoken not a thousand, not two thousand but 5000 years ago. As it is important to remember my :heritage and honour my history as the second most ancient alive nation in the planet after the chinese.

 * Maybe that is the reason why 1,500,000 people were gathered not once but 3 times in a row in the center of my city just to say to :the world "macedonia is greek". And by the way the population of thessaloniki around those years was less than 900,000 and of the :whole northern greece around 1,200,00 . Why should the other greeks from the south support us if they think that we are not the :same nation? Also why should people living in a region liberated just around 1912 believe that if they could not see all the :evidence that they speak the same language with ancient macedons and generally belong to this nation?

 * What i cannot understant about u people is how can you be so dogmatically assured about things when ALL the REAL evidence, and not :what they teach you at school, is against you. Even the undisputable fact that the years that Alexander the great lived the :climate itself could NOT allow a person so white-skinned to survive. The climate was the same as it is in SAHARA desert today.

 * You claim to be friends with us but there are articles (linked to this page as well) which are not only offensive but false.
 * There are articles all over the net saying that modern greeks are not direct descentents of ancient greeks, all based in the :assumption that there never was a real greek state in ancient times. Also slavomacedonians say that for years after that the greeks
 * were under the rule of foreign nations and they were "changed". First of all Kidgoms and landowners all over history existed in ALL
 * nations around the world, e.g. during the middle ages around europe. Secondly the roman empire like all great empires during those :time did not convert the people in their territory like the Ottomans did in later time. Finally the ottomans did want to convert :the people in their territory under rule to the muslim regligion, and thats why the greeks in the area were revolting constantly, :and not only at 1821. The first revolt happened in MACEDONIA(chalkididki) and the people wanted to be freed by the ottomans rule :and :be called greeks not "macedonians". So the turkish brought over ottomans from asia to live there which never did accumulate :into the population of the area because they were of a different religion. We greeks, along with the jewish, were very self-aware :and "unmixing" with other nations, some may call it snobish...
 * Finally around those years 1453-1900 the population of the area was 1/3 GREEK, 1/3 jewish and 1/3 ottomans-muslims, where were U?
 * The greek nation was named "greek" by the name of the ottomans called us which literally means "slaves" or "lesser beings" in :turkish.
 * Since the global community falsy registered as as that, as they did with you, does this mean that our own name Hellas or
 * hellenes is automatically proof that we are not descentants of ancient greeks?
 * How is it possible for you people to say that you are descentents of alexander the great? isn't this claim MUCH MORE false compared
 * to our "claim" of being descentants of ancient greeks. At least we speak the same language with our ancient godfathers do u?

 * Finally i ask all people reading this, if they have met any greeks during their lifetime could they tell the difference by their
 * own facial or body characteristics if they lived in north or south greece?
 * I have studied in UK for my degree and i can tell you this, we (greeks) were like the fly in the milk! reagardless of geographical
 * origin.

 * P.S. there is no single truth only opinions and they too are biased...
 * just a dissapointed makedonas, please take no offence by the capitalisation, just emphasis.
 * sorry for the long post and the flooding, but u people do not include macedonia in the ancient greece history, is that normal?
 * or do u thing that there is a historical argument to the ANCIENT maKedonia as well?

-greek side of view- /

FYROM is not acknowledged acronym. It is just Greek POV
Talk:Republic_of_Macedonia

Correct article, but mostly irrelevant content
This article offers nothing of value on the realations between Skopje and Athens, Tirana, Sofia, etc... Are there really no serious citizens of the Republic who can give a correct profile on the country's foreign relations?Politis 15:24, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

 * Unfortunately there are few Macedonian editors and they are too busy "defending" the articles from nationalistic attacks. Furthermore most "Macedonian" articles are often burdened with all kinds of stuff but lack "normal" informations. But I will try to collect information concerning this page and improve it. --Realek 20:25, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

POLL: Introduction for Republic of Macedonia article
Given ongoing discussions and recent edit warring, a poll is currently underway to decide the rendition of the lead for the Republic of Macedonia article. Please weigh in! E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 01:04, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Македонија
First of all, I was shocked that after typing Macedonia in the Wikipedia search box, I wasn't automatically redirected to the Republic of Macedonia page. There should be an automatic redirect, or at least put Republic of Macedonia as the term number 1, and not 2.

A huge part of Macedonia was given to Greece by world powers after WWII. Almost no Greeks ever lived there. The "Greek" Macedonia has only been a part of Macedonia for these 60 years, I think the Republic of Macedonia represents Macedonia better than the region given to Greece.

Its fact, not opinion, that the Greeks don't even want to give Macedonia the right to use their ancient name, so that Macedonia won't ask for their territories back. Macedonia is the land of Macedonians, it has always been like that, just because they lost a part of their territory, you can't erase history. MACEDONIA SHOULD REDIRECT TO REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA, and then put "Macedonia redirects here, for other uses...". It's the right thing to do. -- serbiana -  talk  22:55, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Boris, read Macedonia (region) carefully. The "historical" region of Macedonia is a myth, and was invented by propagandists. To claim that Macedonia was divided is an anachronism, and as H.R. Wilkinson says that it defies definition. This perception of the "division" of a single area emerged as a historical hindsight. Furthermore, Greece annexed Aegean/Greek Macedonia after the Treaty of Bucharest, 1913, long before the WWII. Greece holds 51% of the present-day region called Macedonia, so it represents Macedonia better. In it is located Alexander the Great's birthplace, his capital city, and is where the Vergina Sun was discovered in 1977 (the fact that it was found on Greek soil enabled Greece to copyright it with UNPO so that FYROM could not legally use it on their flag like they once did). --Tēlex 16:01, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Hi everyone.I hope that this discussion-"wiki-podium" shall lead to a noble and fair 'unofficial',at least,solution.First of all i was shocked that u were shocked by the fact above..!just the fact,that wikipedia redirects u to a relevant list,strengthens its own neutrality and,if not anyone else(who doesn't really care at all about the whole thing except for the practical side of things!),u shouldn't ignore that there actually IS a controversy on the name macedonia and of course not a final decision has been taken... I think u should know that in antiquity ONLY Greeks-or more correctly people of the hellenic tribes could participate in the Olympic Games...and guess what?Macedonians took part too!They were actually very strong athletes too!REMEMBER:the ancient Olympic Games were EXCLUSIVELY for HELLENES to participate!so it would be a mere travesty to question the 'hellenicness' of ancient macedonians adding also other SCIENTIFICALLY historic facts that are mentioned by someone else above..Of course i'm not implying that my gene pool is the same as that of ancient macedonians but a Greek person is entitled to refer to them as his ancestors.they spoke GREEK for Christ sakes!there's a whole heritage along!!!Whatever finally happens that won't EVER change!insisting on just macedonia for your state's name means simultaneously an usurpation of this heritage...i don't understand why slavomacedonians isn't enough for you people!You are a slavic nation!You spaek a slavic language!You came here AGES after!I guess after all i do understand why.....!!u really want to be heirs of macedonians(ancient) to justify your (cultural)existence as a nation...u can't deny this fact after having the AUDACITY to use the Vergina Sun for your flag!An emblem that can only be seen in GREECE!!!where did u people find that??!...that really was a strike under the belt! Anyway i think the right thing is when referring to macedonians is NOTHING else but to the ANCIENT macedonians.(CLOSURE!)The Greek side should be aknowledged as Grecomacedonians and yours,of course,as Slavomacedonians. But the point is: MACEDONIA IS GREEK!!

Not just Greek terminology
Here is the US state department using the terms Macedonian and Slavomacedonian on an equal basis (for the people), and they also speak of a Slavomacedonian dialect. Here and here we have Bulgarian sources calling people "Skopian". --Tēlex 15:30, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

 * * Sigh* You really hate them, don't you?--Aldux 15:48, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

 * Actually, I don't, and hope for a settlement of this issue as soon as possible. Any settlement (including international recognition of the constitutional name, although this is extremely unlikely to ever happen) will do. I just don't like people painting the Greece as the ogre of this whole affair. --Tēlex 15:52, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Aldux, this is preposterous and impossible to prove. Unless you suggest us combing the Internet so see who uses what (it would only take a few years :p) I don't see on what you are basing it. We don't know how it is used (we only know that it is used), the article should state that. Anything else is POV pushing. --Tēlex 16:05, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

 * The point is that for everybody except Greeks and maybe Bulgarians, this is simply obvious. When I open a paper or read a magazine or a book I won't find "Repubblica di Macedonia"; as for FYROM, the fact I don't even now how they say it in Italian tells enough of his usage. I'll find Macedonia, yes, and will immediately connect it to the RoM.--Aldux 16:23, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I concur with Aldux. I don't see Greece as the "ogre" in this, but they're still likely to lose this dispute; no, they already *have* lost it de facto, since nearly everyone calls the RoM simply "Macedonia"... — Nightst a  llion  (?) 12:16, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

List of countries recognizing one name or another
Can anyone supply info/link about wich countries recognize Macedonia with the "RoM" name and witch with the "FYROM" name? Alinor 16:56, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Cut of "Transnational issues"
I just cut the following: ''The country is a major transshipment point for Southwest Asian heroin and hashish. It is also a minor transit point for South American cocaine destined for Europe.''

Although most criminal activity is thought to be domestic and not a financial center, money laundering is a problem due to a mostly cash-based economy and weak enforcement (no arrests or prosecutions for money laundering to date).

...as there is no source provided. Does anyone have a reference for this? Jkelly 23:49, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
 * CIA WorldFact book most probably is the source. 199.64.72.252 10:31, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Naming dipute
How about creating a new article for Republic of Macedonia naming dispute? This section is getting a bit big for this article. AndrewRT - Talk 15:52, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
 * It seems that this is already done - Macedonia naming dispute. But I can't find nowhere in the articles or links to them a full list of the "106 countries that have recognized the country under that name". 212.36.8.100 10:29, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi. I think that we should edit "List of countries and entities not yet formally recognizing the country" article. In the past 3 monts Paraguay ,Suriname and Swaziland recognized Republic of Macedonia as Republic of Macedonia. Also Canada recognized Macedonia as Republic of Macedonia ,before that they called us Former bla bla bla Republic of Macedonia. So ,may I edit the article and erase that 3 countries ? (Paraguay ,Suriname and Swaziland) It will be my pleasure:) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mo1981 (talk • contribs) 12:07, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Here is one article about that issue.

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.news.macedonia/browse_thread/thread/15da2075c8f45bbe/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mo1981 (talk • contribs) 12:10, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Contradiction
We're having a discussion about Macedonia at Talk:List of states with limited recognition. The issue is that this article says first that "The UN's member states all recognise the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia but are divided over what to call it. ", and then goes on to list "countries and entities not yet formally recognising the country" - including several UN member states.

For those unaware, there is a significant difference between diplomatic recognition and diplomatic relations. If Macedonia is diplomatically recognised by Country X, that means that Country X accepts that Macedonia exists, whatever it thinks of the Macedonian government. Country X may accept that Macedonia exists, but may be unwilling to talk to the Macedonian government. Country X would recognise Macedonia, but would not have diplomatic relations with Macedonia. Which is it in this case? Do South Africa, Monaco et al recognise Macedonia? Pfainuk talk 23:41, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

 * perhaps this is a matter of semantics. Recognizing and accepting are two different things but are often incorrectly interchanged.  One can recognize something exists, but does not necessarily have to accept that it exists.  Recognition is the acknowledgement of the existence of a thing, whereas Acceptance is the approval of the thing (the preceding is taken from the "New Collegiate Dictionary, Paperback, 2002".
 * Is there the possibility of changing some of the words to achieve a better understanding of the concept? Kjnelan (talk) 18:44, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Is there any information floating around that would clarify why such states, namely the generally recognized states, do not have any relations (or recognition of) with macedonia? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.33.138.221 (talk) 03:55, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Syria Diplomatic Relations
Macedonia & Syria have established diplomatic relations under Macedonia constitutional name. It apparently is the 129th according to the MFA website. Can someone please update the recognition map? Thanks. --69.203.217.91 (talk) 02:51, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Plan B
The Republic of Macedonia can challenge the legality of the United Nations registering its name by a “label” [redacted] From what I understand the UN defied its own laws when it accepted Macedonia’s entry by use of a “label” instead of its constitutional name.

If that were so, then Macedonia had better talk to the UN and have this matter sorted out or failing that, hire a team of good lawyers familiar with international law that can point at the UN’s mistake.

Based on the number of countries that have already recognized the Republic of Macedonia, the UN or any other international institution has no reason not to accept Macedonia by its constitutional name. You can’t have 2/3 of the membership recognizing Macedonia by its constitutional name while the organization itself does not recognize it. It defies logic.

However, nothing is going to happen unless the Republic of Macedonia makes its move. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.92.187.253 (talk) 16:21, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

 * They can also choose a compromise name with Greece and stick with it. Otherwise Greece has much more leverage to apply if need be. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.4.105.33 (talk) 09:14, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

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text:
Talk:Montlake Cut

Untitled
I took this picture of the totem pole at the Montlake Cut but cannot determine what park it is in. There are signs that say park closes at such a time but do not give a name for the park. There are also signs nearby that say Lake Washington Ship Canal Waterside Trail. A plaque at the bottom of the totem pole states that the totem pole was carved in 1937 by John Dewey Wallace a Haida Chief in Waterfall, Alaska. I suppose I could put the picture with the Haida article.

 * If it's where I think it is that's East Montlake Park.

--Lukobe 03:27, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The width of the Montlake Cut seems to be overstated. I travel through it regularly and it appears far less than 350 feet wide. A quick measurement using Google Earth suggests that it is approximately 150 feet wide for most of its length. | NOAA Chart 18447 lists the horizontal clearance of the Montlake Bridge as 146 feet. That's the most official number I can find, so perhaps that's what we should use in this article.

--JWaters (talk) 03:18, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Online Communities
— Assignment last updated by JulianaRios11 (talk) 22:35, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:Montlake Cut


text: User talk:70.48.5.115

title: User talk:70.48.5.115


text:
Impact factor

The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a scientometric index calculated by Clarivate that reflects the yearly mean number of citations of articles published in the last two years in a given journal, as indexed by Clarivate's Web of Science.

As a journal-level metric, it is frequently used as a proxy for the relative importance of a journal within its field; journals with higher impact factor values are given the status of being more important, or carry more prestige in their respective fields, than those with lower values.

While frequently used by universities and funding bodies to decide on promotion and research proposals, it has been criticised for distorting good scientific practices.

History
The impact factor was devised by Eugene Garfield, the founder of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) in Philadelphia. Impact factors began to be calculated yearly starting from 1975 for journals listed in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR). ISI was acquired by Thomson Scientific & Healthcare in 1992, and became known as Thomson ISI. In 2018, Thomson-Reuters spun off and sold ISI to Onex Corporation and Baring Private Equity Asia. They founded a new corporation, Clarivate, which is now the publisher of the JCR.

Calculation
In any given year, the two-year journal impact factor is the ratio between the number of citations received in that year for publications in that journal that were published in the two preceding years and the total number of "citable items" published in that journal during the two preceding years:

$$\text{IF}_y = \frac{\text{Citations}_y}{\text{Publications}_{y-1} + \text{Publications}_{y-2}}.$$

For example, Nature had an impact factor of 41.577 in 2017:

$$\text{IF}_{2017} = \frac{\text{Citations}_{2017}}{\text{Publications}_{2016} + \text{Publications}_{2015}} = \frac{74090}{880 + 902} = 41.577.$$

This means that, on average, its papers published in 2015 and 2016 received roughly 42 citations each in 2017. 2017 impact factors are reported in 2018; they cannot be calculated until all of the 2017 publications have been processed by the indexing agency.

The value of impact factor depends on how to define "citations" and "publications"; the latter are often referred to as "citable items". In current practice, both "citations" and "publications" are defined exclusively by ISI as follows. "Publications" are items that are classed as "article", "review" or "proceedings paper" in the Web of Science (WoS) database; other items like editorials, corrections, notes, retractions and discussions are excluded. WoS is accessible to all registered users, who can independently verify the number of citable items for a given journal. In contrast, the number of citations is extracted not from the WoS database, but from a dedicated JCR database, which is not accessible to general readers. Hence, the commonly used "JCR Impact Factor" is a proprietary value, which is defined and calculated by ISI and can not be verified by external users.

New journals, which are indexed from their first published issue, will receive an impact factor after two years of indexing; in this case, the citations to the year prior to volume 1, and the number of articles published in the year prior to volume 1, are known zero values. Journals that are indexed starting with a volume other than the first volume will not get an impact factor until they have been indexed for three years. Occasionally, Journal Citation Reports assigns an impact factor to new journals with less than two years of indexing, based on partial citation data. The calculation always uses two complete and known years of item counts, but for new titles one of the known counts is zero. Annuals and other irregular publications sometimes publish no items in a particular year, affecting the count. The impact factor relates to a specific time period; it is possible to calculate it for any desired period. For example, the JCR also includes a five-year impact factor, which is calculated by dividing the number of citations to the journal in a given year by the number of articles published in that journal in the previous five years.

Use
While originally invented as a tool to help university librarians to decide which journals to purchase, the impact factor soon became used as a measure for judging academic success. This use of impact factors was summarised by Hoeffel in 1998:

"Impact Factor is not a perfect tool to measure the quality of articles but there is nothing better and it has the advantage of already being in existence and is, therefore, a good technique for scientific evaluation. Experience has shown that in each specialty the best journals are those in which it is most difficult to have an article accepted, and these are the journals that have a high impact factor. Most of these journals existed long before the impact factor was devised. The use of impact factor as a measure of quality is widespread because it fits well with the opinion we have in each field of the best journals in our specialty....In conclusion, prestigious journals publish papers of high level. Therefore, their impact factor is high, and not the contrary."

As impact factors are a journal-level metric, rather than an article- or individual-level metric, this use is controversial. Eugene Garfield, the inventor of the JIF agreed with Hoeffel, but warned about the "misuse in evaluating individuals" because there is "a wide variation [of citations] from article to article within a single journal". Despite this warning, the use of the JIF has evolved, playing a key role in the process of assessing individual researchers, their job applications and their funding proposals. In 2005, The Journal of Cell Biology noted that:

"Impact factor data ... have a strong influence on the scientific community, affecting decisions on where to publish, whom to promote or hire, the success of grant applications, and even salary bonuses."

More targeted research has begun to provide firm evidence of how deeply the impact factor is embedded within formal and informal research assessment processes. A review in 2019 studied how often the JIF featured in documents related to the review, promotion, and tenure of scientists in US and Canadian universities. It concluded that 40% of universities focused on academic research specifically mentioned the JIF as part of such review, promotion, and tenure processes. And a 2017 study of how researchers in the life sciences behave concluded that "everyday decision-making practices as highly governed by pressures to publish in high-impact journals". The deeply embedded nature of such indicators not only effect research assessment, but the more fundamental issue of what research is actually undertaken: "Given the current ways of evaluation and valuing research, risky, lengthy, and unorthodox project rarely take center stage."

Criticism
Numerous critiques have been made regarding the use of impact factors, both in terms of its statistical validity and also of its implications for how science is carried out and assessed. A 2007 study noted that the most fundamental flaw is that impact factors present the mean of data that are not normally distributed, and suggested that it would be more appropriate to present the median of these data. There is also a more general debate on the validity of the impact factor as a measure of journal importance and the effect of policies that editors may adopt to boost their impact factor (perhaps to the detriment of readers and writers). Other criticism focuses on the effect of the impact factor on behavior of scholars, editors and other stakeholders. Further criticisms argue that emphasis on impact factor results from the negative influence of neoliberal politics on academia. Some of these arguments demand not just replacement of the impact factor with more sophisticated metrics but also discussion on the social value of research assessment and the growing precariousness of scientific careers in higher education.

Inapplicability of impact factor to individuals and between-discipline differences
It has been stated that impact factors in particular and citation analysis in general are affected by field-dependent factors which invalidate comparisons not only across disciplines but even within different fields of research of one discipline. The percentage of total citations occurring in the first two years after publication also varies highly among disciplines from 1–3% in the mathematical and physical sciences to 5–8% in the biological sciences. Thus impact factors cannot be used to compare journals across disciplines.

Impact factors are sometimes used to evaluate not only the journals but the papers therein, thereby devaluing papers in certain subjects. In 2004, the Higher Education Funding Council for England was urged by the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee to remind Research Assessment Exercise panels that they are obliged to assess the quality of the content of individual articles, not the reputation of the journal in which they are published. Other studies have repeatedly stated that impact factor is a metric for journals and should not be used to assess individual researchers or institutions.

Questionable editorial policies that affect the impact factor
Because impact factor is commonly accepted as a proxy for research quality, some journals adopt editorial policies and practices, some acceptable and some of dubious purpose, to increase its impact factor. For example, journals may publish a larger percentage of review articles which generally are cited more than research reports. Research undertaken in 2020 on dentistry journals concluded that the publication of "systematic reviews have significant effect on the Journal Impact Factor ... while papers publishing clinical trials bear no influence on this factor. Greater yearly average of published papers ... means a higher impact factor."

Journals may also attempt to limit the number of "citable items"—i.e., the denominator of the impact factor equation—either by declining to publish articles that are unlikely to be cited (such as case reports in medical journals) or by altering articles (e.g., by not allowing an abstract or bibliography in hopes that Journal Citation Reports will not deem it a "citable item"). As a result of negotiations over whether items are "citable", impact factor variations of more than 300% have been observed. Items considered to be uncitable—and thus are not incorporated in impact factor calculations—can, if cited, still enter into the numerator part of the equation despite the ease with which such citations could be excluded. This effect is hard to evaluate, for the distinction between editorial comment and short original articles is not always obvious. For example, letters to the editor may be part of either class.

Another less insidious tactic journals employ is to publish a large portion of its papers, or at least the papers expected to be highly cited, early in the calendar year. This gives those papers more time to gather citations. Several methods, not necessarily with nefarious intent, exist for a journal to cite articles in the same journal which will increase the journal's impact factor.

Beyond editorial policies that may skew the impact factor, journals can take overt steps to game the system. For example, in 2007, the specialist journal Folia Phoniatrica et Logopaedica, with an impact factor of 0.66, published an editorial that cited all its articles from 2005 to 2006 in a protest against the "absurd scientific situation in some countries" related to use of the impact factor. The large number of citations meant that the impact factor for that journal increased to 1.44. As a result of the increase, the journal was not included in the 2008 and 2009 Journal Citation Reports.

Coercive citation is a practice in which an editor forces an author to add extraneous citations to an article before the journal will agree to publish it, in order to inflate the journal's impact factor. A survey published in 2012 indicates that coercive citation has been experienced by one in five researchers working in economics, sociology, psychology, and multiple business disciplines, and it is more common in business and in journals with a lower impact factor. Editors of leading business journals banded together to disavow the practice. However, cases of coercive citation have occasionally been reported for other disciplines.

Assumed correlation between impact factor and quality
The journal impact factor was originally designed by Eugene Garfield as a metric to help librarians make decisions about which journals were worth indexing, as the JIF aggregates the number of citations to articles published in each journal. Since then, the JIF has become associated as a mark of journal "quality", and gained widespread use for evaluation of research and researchers instead, even at the institutional level. It thus has significant impact on steering research practices and behaviours.

By 2010, national and international research funding institutions were already starting to point out that numerical indicators such as the JIF should not be considered as a measure of quality. In fact, research was indicating that the JIF is a highly manipulated metric,  and the justification for its continued widespread use beyond its original narrow purpose seems due to its simplicity (easily calculable and comparable number), rather than any actual relationship to research quality.

Empirical evidence shows that the misuse of the JIF—and journal ranking metrics in general—has a number of negative consequences for the scholarly communication system. These include gaps between the reach of a journal and the quality of its individual papers and insufficient coverage of social sciences and humanities as well as research outputs from across Latin America, Africa, and South-East Asia. Additional drawbacks include the marginalization of research in vernacular languages and on locally relevant topics and inducement to unethical authorship and citation practices. More generally, the impact factors fosters a reputation economy, where scientific success is based on publishing in prestigious journals ahead of actual research qualities such as rigorous methods, replicability and social impact. Using journal prestige and the JIF to cultivate a competition regime in academia has been shown to have deleterious effects on research quality.

A number of regional and international initiatives are now providing and suggesting alternative research assessment systems, including key documents such as the Leiden Manifesto and the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA). Plan S calls for a broader adoption and implementation of such initiatives alongside fundamental changes in the scholarly communication system. As appropriate measures of quality for authors and research, concepts of research excellence should be remodelled around transparent workflows and accessible research results.

JIFs are still regularly used to evaluate research in many countries, which is a problem since a number of issues remain around the opacity of the metric and the fact that it is often negotiated by publishers.

Negotiated values
Results of an impact factor can change dramatically depending on which items are considered as "citable" and therefore included in the denominator. One notorious example of this occurred in 1988 when it was decided that meeting abstracts published in FASEB Journal would no longer be included in the denominator. The journal's impact factor jumped from 0.24 in 1988 to 18.3 in 1989. Publishers routinely discuss with Clarivate how to improve the "accuracy" of their journals' impact factor and therefore get higher scores.

Such discussions routinely produce "negotiated values" which result in dramatic changes in the observed scores for dozens of journals, sometimes after unrelated events like the purchase by one of the larger publishers.

Distribution skewness

Because citation counts have highly skewed distributions, the mean number of citations is potentially misleading if used to gauge the typical impact of articles in the journal rather than the overall impact of the journal itself. For example, about 90% of Nature's 2004 impact factor was based on only a quarter of its publications. Thus the actual number of citations for a single article in the journal is in most cases much lower than the mean number of citations across articles. Furthermore, the strength of the relationship between impact factors of journals and the citation rates of the papers therein has been steadily decreasing since articles began to be available digitally.

The effect of outliers can be seen in the case of the article "A short history of SHELX", which included this sentence: "This paper could serve as a general literature citation when one or more of the open-source SHELX programs (and the Bruker AXS version SHELXTL) are employed in the course of a crystal-structure determination". This article received more than 6,600 citations. As a consequence, the impact factor of the journal Acta Crystallographica Section A rose from 2.051 in 2008 to 49.926 in 2009, more than Nature (at 31.434) and Science (at 28.103). The second-most cited article in Acta Crystallographica Section A in 2008 had only 28 citations.

Critics of the JIF state that use of the arithmetic mean in its calculation is problematic because the pattern of citation distribution is skewed and citation distributions metrics have been proposed as an alternative to impact factors.

However, there have also been pleas to take a more nuanced approach to judging the distribution skewness of the impact factor. Ludo Waltman and Vincent Antonio Traag, in their 2021 paper, ran numerous simulations and concluded that "statistical objections against the use of the IF at the level of individual articles are not convincing", and that "the IF may be a more accurate indicator of the value of an article than the number of citations of the article".

Reproducibility
While the underlying mathematical model is publicly known, the dataset which is used to calculate the JIF is not publicly available. This prompted criticism: "Just as scientists would not accept the findings in a scientific paper without seeing the primary data, so should they not rely on Thomson Scientific's impact factor, which is based on hidden data". However, a 2019 article demonstrated that "with access to the data and careful cleaning, the JIF can be reproduced", although this required much labour to achieve. A 2020 research paper went further. It indicated that by querying open access or partly open-access databases, like Google Scholar, ResearchGate, and Scopus, it is possible to calculate approximate impact factors without the need to purchase Web of Science / JCR.

Broader negative impact on science
Just as the impact factor has attracted criticism for various immediate problems associated with its application, so has there also been criticism that its application undermines the broader process of science. Research has indicated that bibliometrics figures, particularly the impact factor, decrease the quality of peer review an article receives, cause a reluctance to share data, decrease the quality of articles, and a reduce the scope in of publishable research. "For many researchers the only research questions and projects that appear viable are those that can meet the demand of scoring well in terms of metric performance indicators – and chiefly the journal impact factor.". Furthermore, the process of publication and science is slowed down – authors automatically try and publish with the journals with the highest impact factor – "as editors and reviewers are tasked with reviewing papers that are not submitted to the most appropriate venues".

Institutional responses to criticism of the impact factor
Given the growing criticism and its widespread usage as a means of research assessment, organisations and institutions have begun to take steps to move away from the journal impact factor. In November 2007 the European Association of Science Editors (EASE) issued an official statement recommending "that journal impact factors are used only—and cautiously—for measuring and comparing the influence of entire journals, but not for the assessment of single papers, and certainly not for the assessment of researchers or research programmes".

In July 2008, the International Council for Science Committee on Freedom and Responsibility in the Conduct of Science issued a "statement on publication practices and indices and the role of peer review in research assessment", suggesting many possible solutions—e.g., considering a limit number of publications per year to be taken into consideration for each scientist, or even penalising scientists for an excessive number of publications per year—e.g., more than 20.

In February 2010, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation) published new guidelines to reduce the number of publications that could be submitted when applying for funding: "The focus has not been on what research someone has done but rather how many papers have been published and where." They noted that for decisions concerning "performance-based funding allocations, postdoctoral qualifications, appointments, or reviewing funding proposals, [where] increasing importance has been given to numerical indicators such as the h-index and the impact factor". The UK's Research Assessment Exercise for 2014 also banned the journal impact factor although evidence suggested that this ban was often ignored.

In response to growing concerns over the inappropriate use of journal impact factors in evaluating scientific outputs and scientists themselves, the American Society for Cell Biology together with a group of editors and publishers of scholarly journals created the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA). Released in May 2013, DORA has garnered support from thousands of individuals and hundreds of institutions, including in March 2015 the League of European Research Universities (a consortium of 21 of the most renowned research universities in Europe), who have endorsed the document on the DORA website.

Publishers, even those with high impact factors, also recognised the flaws. Nature magazine criticised the over-reliance on JIF, pointing not just to its statistical flaws but to negative effects on science: "The resulting pressures and disappointments are nothing but demoralizing, and in badly run labs can encourage sloppy research that, for example, fails to test assumptions thoroughly or to take all the data into account before submitting big claims." Various publishers now use a mixture of metrics on their website; the PLOS series of journals does not display the impact factor. Microsoft Academic took a similar view, stating that h-index, EI/SCI and journal impact factors are not shown because "the research literature has provided abundant evidence that these metrics are at best a rough approximation of research impact and scholarly influence."

In 2021, Utrecht University promised to abandon all quantitative bibliometrics, including the impact factor. The university stated that "it has become a very sick model that goes beyond what is really relevant for science and putting science forward". This followed a 2018 decision by the main Dutch funding body for research, NWO, to remove all references to journal impact factors and the h-index in all call texts and application forms. Utrecht's decision met with some resistance. An open letter signed by over 150 Dutch academics argued that, while imperfect, the JIF is still useful, and that omitting it "will lead to randomness and a compromising of scientific quality".

Related indices
Some related metrics, also calculated and published by the same organization, include:

A given journal may attain a different quartile or percentile in different categories.
 * Cited half-life: the median age of the articles that were cited in Journal Citation Reports each year. For example, if a journal's half-life in 2005 is 5, that means the citations from 2001 to 2005 are half of all the citations from that journal in 2005, and the other half of the citations precede 2001.
 * Aggregate impact factor for a subject category: it is calculated taking into account the number of citations to all journals in the subject category and the number of articles from all the journals in the subject category.
 * Immediacy index: the number of citations the articles in a journal receive in a given year divided by the number of articles published.
 *  Journal citation indicator (JCI): a JIF that adjusts for scientific field; it is similar to Source Normalized Impact per Paper, calculated based on the Scopus database. JCI is available for all journals in the Web of Science Core Collection (WoS CC) -- including the AHCI, ESCI, BCI, CPCI—while JIF is only available for the SCIE and SSCI; however, starting in June 2023, JIF will also be issued for all journals in the WoS CC.
 * JIF quartile ranking: a rank based on the four quartiles within a given subject or topic category.
 * JIF percentile ranking: a percentile rank computed for a particular subject category.

As with the impact factor, there are some nuances to this: for example, Clarivate excludes certain article types (such as news items, correspondence, and errata) from the denominator.

Other measures of scientific impact
Additional journal-level metrics are available from other organizations. For example, CiteScore is a metric for serial titles in Scopus launched in December 2016 by Elsevier. While these metrics apply only to journals, there are also author-level metrics, such as the h-index, that apply to individual researchers. In addition, article-level metrics measure impact at an article level instead of journal level.

Other more general alternative metrics, or "altmetrics", that include article views, downloads, or mentions in social media, offer a different perspective on research impact, concentrating more on immediate social impact in and outside academia.

Counterfeit impact factors
Fake impact factors or bogus impact factors are produced by certain companies or individuals. According to an article published in the Electronic Physician, these include Global Impact Factor, Citefactor, and Universal Impact Factor. Jeffrey Beall maintained a list of such misleading metrics. Another deceitful practice is reporting "alternative impact factors", calculated as the average number of citations per article using citation indices other than JCR such as Google Scholar (e.g., "Google-based Journal Impact Factor") or Microsoft Academic.

False impact factors are often used by predatory publishers. Consulting Journal Citation Reports' master journal list can confirm if a publication is indexed by the Journal Citation Reports. The use of fake impact metrics is considered a red flag.

title: Impact factor


text:
Lastminute.com

lastminute.com is an online travel and leisure retailer.

The company was founded by Martha Lane Fox and Brent Hoberman in 1998 and was a part of the UK internet boom of the late 1990s, part of the dot-com bubble and trading on the London Stock Exchange under the symbol 'LMN'.

In May 2005, LastMinute.com was acquired from Sabre by the Bravofly Rumbo Group which rebranded as Lastminute.com Group.

From foundation to flotation: April 1998 to March 2000
lastminute.com was founded in London by Martha Lane Fox and Brent Hoberman in 1998 to offer late holiday deals online. The founders were colleagues at media strategy consultants Spectrum.

By January 2000, the site had more than 500,000 regular users and its offerings had expanded to include travel, gifts and entertainment, with a specialisation in selling distressed inventory.

Prior to its flotation, the company raised a further $31m. It opened offices in Paris, Munich and Stockholm. During the ten months ending December 1999, the company handled £37m of transactions, which generated £330,000 of income.

The shares floated on the London Stock Exchange on 14 March 2000. The shares were placed at 380p, valuing the company at £571m. The price rose on the first day of trading to 511p, giving a valuation of £768m, before falling back to 492.5p later in the day. The paper wealth of the founders of the business went up to around £300m.

Two hundred and fifty thousand private investors had applied for shares in the flotation. 33m shares – 25% of the company – were being offered for sale, the bulk to institutional investors. Private applicants received just 35 shares each.

Public listed company: March 2000 to May 2005
Two weeks after listing, the share price had dropped to 270p. In the first week of April, the shares dipped below 190p, half the issue price. On Monday, 17 April 2000, after the biggest ever one-day fall in the New York stock market the preceding Friday, £35bn were wiped off the value of the London Stock Exchange. By now, lastminute.com was trading at 30% of its flotation price.

Its share price was rising again when the firm announced its first quarter's results on 6 May 2000. The company had handled £7.16m of transactions, up 68% compared with the previous period. During this period, the company had invested in a new version of the website as well as international expansions. These factors pushed pre-tax losses up from £6m to £11m. The market responded to the better-than-expected figures and the shares closed the day up 8p at 245p. Two weeks later, however, the shares closed at 141p, as concerns over dotcom stocks increased, after boo.com went into liquidation.

The introduction of a new website – allowing late deals to be targeted according to users' personal tastes – was delayed but finally unveiled on 27 November 2000.

Meanwhile, on 14 August, lastminute.com announced the acquisition of Degriftour, a French online travel agent, for £27.1m cash and 19.7m new shares, worth 162p each at the previous day's close.

Allan Leighton, the former head of Asda and president of the European division of Wal-Mart, joined the company as non-executive chairman on 20 October. The role was unpaid but he was granted options over 1m shares at a strike price of 137.5p. The market reacted with a 9p drop in the share price to 128p. The firm's shares sank below 100p for the first time on 8 November and closed at 80p on 10 November. Full year results to 30 September 2000, announced on 4 December, were slightly ahead of expectations. Losses increased from £4.5m to £35.7m, while transaction value increased from £2.64m to £34.2m, excluding transactions by Degriftour. The company generated more revenue from interest payments than from ongoing business activities. Shares rose 4.9% to 75p. In November 2001 the company reported a £54m loss.

In November 2003, Lane-Fox announced that she would step down as managing director at the end of the year – in which the company made its first pre-tax profit of £200,000, short of analyst expectations of £4m. The company was acquired in 2005 by Sabre Holdings, owner of online travel company Travelocity, paying 165p per share, a 57 per cent premium to the share price prior to the takeover talks, but less than half the flotation price. The deal valued the company at £577 million.

Up until 2005, the company had not made a net profit since it floated five years earlier. In February 2005, it reported pre-tax losses of £26.5m. Hoberman stayed with the business until spring 2006 when he handed over the reins as CEO to Ian McCaig.

Post-acquisition
Following acquisition, a number of Sabre/Travelocity executives joined lastminute.com between 2005 and 2007, including Ed Kamm (former CFO of Travelocity, who was to succeed McCaig as CEO at the end of 2010), Damon Tassone, Josh Feuerstein (who are now co-founders at Intent Media) and Arun Rajan (now CTO at Zappos).

The team was further increased by the arrival of Brian Murphy to head up Holiday Autos and MedHotels (he had previously been at Hertz, Thomas Cook and American Express) Simon Thompson as CMO (who had previously been at Honda and Motorola and subsequently went to Apple), Joe Kenny from Cisco and Arnaldo Munoz from easyJet.

In April 2007, Coolgorilla released a downloadable version of the Talking Phrasebooks for Nokia and Sony Ericsson mobile devices with lastminute.com branding.

During 2008–2010, hires included Alistair Rodger (formerly Commercial Director at Hilton) and James Donaldson (who joined from News International to replace Kamm as CFO) and Mark Newton from AMEX.

It was the above teams of executives that led the business through a five-year period after the acquisition which was characterised by increased profitability and in January 2009, lastminute.com released nru ("near you") a GPS-based restaurant search application for Android in the UK. A US version was released in May 2009, together with restaurant review guide, Zagat.

In 2009, lastminute.com was among the first online players to offer limited inventory 'flash' sales which it branded 'WIGIGs' (When It's Gone It's Gone). During this period the company also divested itself of its travel agent 'bed booking bank' for hotels, MedHotels, which it sold to Thomas Cook for an undisclosed sum. The successful leisure car rental business, Holiday Autos, remained in the portfolio.

Structurally, the business also began to look quite different through the 2006–2010 period. Its technology hosting was moved to the US, offshore technology development became prevalent through use of Sabre's facilities in South America, North America and India and lastminute.com itself opened a new centre in Poland to handle much of its back-office and customer fulfilment functions.

2011–2015
In early 2011, lastminute.com launched a pan-European marketing campaign called 'Stories Start Here', to position the brand as an online leisure, entertainment and travel retailer.

More recently, the company's communications strategy focussed on a return to its 'last minute' roots, promoting the customer savings that can be achieved when booking at the last minute. A revisited focus on 'the weekend' has also been an important development for the company, which created a dedicated section of their website in August 2011, providing weekend-specific offers.

In August 2014, lastminute.com ranked in 6th place in a Travel Brand Index conducted by an independent market research firm.

In December 2014, the firm was bought by Bravofly Rumbo for £76 million, a fraction of the £600 million Sabre had paid for it in 2005.

2015–2018
In 2015, Bravofly Rumbo Group (SIX: BRG), changed its corporate name to lastminute.com over the course of the year. The change of the corporate name reflected the new brand strategy of the group, following the acquisition of lastminute.com. While the existing digital brands Bravofly, Volagratis, Rumbo and Jetcost continued to target online growth, lastminute.com will now become the core brand supported by increased marketing investments. An advertising campaign, with more than double the investment versus 2014, was launched early June and ran across three key markets – UK, France and Italy – representing 65% of revenues of the group at that time.

In September 2016, the lastminute.com group, acquired WAYN, Where Are You Now?’ to implement a content factory within the Group and differentiate lastminute.com positioning against other online travel players. WAYN, the world's largest social travel network, has been integrated with lastminute.com group's new media business and aims to boost the ability to engage a young and captive audience with the addition of WAYN’S 20 million registered members and 2 million monthly unique visitors.

In November 2017, lastminute.com group announced the acquisition of hotelscan to diversify its metasearch value proposition. Founded in 2012, hotelscan has created a search engine for Hotels, Bed & Breakfasts, Hostels, Apartments and other types of accommodations, Its daily updated database has around 1.3 million properties, with data from over 100 online booking websites, provides travelers with relevant content to find room availability.

In December 2017, lastminute.com group decided to scale up its positioning in Germany and bought Comvel GmbH, founded 2004 in Munich, which operates the travel website weg.de, one of Germany's best-known online travel sites which had been a wholly owned subsidiary of ProSiebenSat.1 Group since January 2014. weg.de offers its customers the entire range of travel options, with its primary focus on package holidays and all-inclusive vacations.

Criticism
In 2009, lastminute.com attracted much criticism on consumer sites and blogs regarding their association with highstreetmax.com, a brand owned by Adaptive Affinity, in turn owned by US corporation Vertrue. The company was accused of subjecting customers to negative option selling, whereby if they click or do not untick a certain box they find later that they were subject to unauthorised credit card withdrawals for membership schemes they had not signed up for, whose details they were not advised and whose supposed benefits they did not see. This attracted the attention of BBC Radio 4's consumer affairs programme You and Yours on 30 January 2008 and the consumer pages of the Daily Mirror in July 2008.

The firm responded by discontinuing the relationship with highstreetmax.com and saying, 'Once our customers leave our site they are given an option to sign-up for a third-party cash back programme. When they sign up within the terms and conditions it is made clear that further payments will be taken. However we have had some feedback from customers who have inadvertently signed up. On this basis we feel that it is the right thing to do to take this off our site.'

On 18 May 2020, Lastminute.com was listed 49th worst of 53 Travel Companies in giving refunds for cancelled flights and refunds by Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis. They were given a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of -87 calculated by subtracting the percentage of respondents who rated their experience with the firm as 'Poor' from the percentage who rated their experience as 'Great'. The number who rated their experience as 'OK' is not factored in. Only 4 others out of 53 were given poorer scores.

In 2020, Lastminute.com and competitor GoToGate attracted criticism from consumer group Which? after the company failed to meet its promise to refund customers for Covid-impacted holidays. The online travel agent was investigated by the Competitions and Market Authority (CMA) in December 2020, as a result of this failure. A survey conducted by Which? in the same month ranked Lastminute.com as "the worst booking site in the UK", with the year "being an even worse bet, because of the way it has treated customers during the coronavirus pandemic".

title: Lastminute.com