Star Trek: 10 Secrets About Spacedock One You Need To Know
7. A Different Class
Sovereign, Nebula, Constitution... all evoke images of starship classes and the same goes for space stations.
Memory Beta simply refers to this one as a Spacedock Type while several fan sites suggest it belongs to the Ournal Class. This is never mentioned onscreen and in official materials, aside from the Eaglemoss Starships Collection, there is no mention of this designation for this type of space structure. Even the graphics used to detail the ships of the museum fleet state it as a Spacedock Type. Furthermore, attempting to get a definition for the word "Ournal" also seems to be difficult with everything defaulting to "journal". Maybe the "J" just fell off.
The first reference to it as this class seems to appear back in Eric “Jackill” Kristiansen's Star Fleet Reference Manual: Ships of the Fleet Volume II from 1993. Fan association Starfleet International uses this as a class designation for its chapters choosing the design as their fictional base such as the UK's Spacedock Birmingham.
In universe these locations are only ever referred to as spacedocks. Some Beta canon sources list an Ournal II class station large enough for the Enterprise-D to dock through the main doors, which could include Starbase 47 and accounts for the identical design.