At the moment there is a synonym [tag:publishing] $\to$ [tag:journals]. (With the tag [tag:journals] as the master tag.) I think that at least for some questions tagged [tag:journals]: * Using a tag called [tag:publishing] might be more suitable. * At least in some cases I'd guess that maybe the poster entered [tag:publishing] and the system changed the tag to [tag:journals] - because of the synonym. I wonder whether it might be more reasonable to have them as two separate tags rather than a synonym. Or if MO users want to keep questions from these topics under a single tag, maybe [tag:publishing] would be more suitable as the master tag instead of [tag:journals]? (If I had to choose between these two, [tag:publishing] seems more general than [tag:journals].) **Questions:** 1. Would it be better to cancel the synonym and have [tag:publishing] and [tag:journals] as two separate tags? 2. Or, if we still want a synonym, wouldn't it be better to have [tag:publishing] as the master tag? ----- According to [the list of synonyms](https://mathoverflow.net/tags/synonyms) and [this SEDE query](https://data.stackexchange.com/mathoverflow/query/1178483/data-about-a-tag-synonym?tagname=publishing), the synonym was suggested on 22 April 2015.and approved by a mod on 24 April 2015. The [list of synonyms](https://mathoverflow.net/tags/synonyms) shows 17 renames. [This number means](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/190477) that in 17 cases somebody actually typed the tag [tag:publishing] and the software changed it to [tag:journals]. (Admittedly, it is not that much, considering that there are currently 287 question in total. Checking the Wayback Machine [in March 2015](https://web.archive.org/web/20150330214110/https://mathoverflow.net/tags/publishing/info), it seem that the tag-info for [tag:publishing] was empty at the time. The tag [tag:journals] has a [tag-excerpt](https://mathoverflow.net/posts/386244/revisions): "Questions about mathematical publishing, including specific journals, peer review etc." And also a [tag-wiki](https://mathoverflow.net/posts/386243/revisions). Both the tag-excerpt and tag-wiki were created in March 2021.) > This tag is for questions related to publishing mathematical writings in mathematical journals, including which journal to choose for certain kinds of work, questions about peer review, preprint servers and related topics. Looking at the Wayback Machine around that time, ti seems that there were [3 questions tagged (publishing)](https://web.archive.org/web/20150316074255/http://mathoverflow.net/questions/tagged/publishing) and [73 questions tagged journals](https://web.archive.org/web/20150226105612/http://mathoverflow.net/questions/tagged/journals). It seems that the tags were merged by a moderator - the questions which had the tag [tag:publishing] now show [tag:journals] in their revision history: [181414](https://mathoverflow.net/posts/181414/revisions), [73463](https://mathoverflow.net/posts/73463/revisions), [176369](https://mathoverflow.net/posts/176369/revisions).