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Academic Organization notability guideline

Hello, This discussion is prompted by Discussion number 6 regarding the articles for creation process but specifically the discussion within about academic organizations and the observation by one AFC reviewer that "Basically academics seriously suck at publicity - pop singers, wrestlers, etc. (or at least their managers) are masters of the art." So, is there some objective notability criteria we can come to, which will guide in this area: For example: Listing by some respected international published guide(s)/directories (assuming there are such things); publishing peer reviewed journal or other similar publication(s); University press relationship; awarding prizes; some search test; etc. Thoughts? -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:15, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

  • Academic organizations do fall within the scope of the WP:WikiProject Academic Journals project. And like academics, such organizations are not often covered in mainstream sources (like newspapers and such), unless there is some scandal of sorts (also like academics...). I usually leave articles on such organizations alone, even it they're only sourced to their own websites, unless (and this happens actually quite frequently) they're horrendously promotional. But if someone AfDs one, usually all I can say is something like "this is a respected organization" or something like that and that basically boils down to WP:ILIKEIT. I'm certainly interested to start thinking about a specific guideline, although I admit not having much idea how to go about it. In contrast to journals where we have important selective databases, I don't know about anything equivalent for academic organizations. Perhaps one of the other editors here has some bright idea (DGG perhaps?) --Randykitty (talk) 20:58, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
I agree that this is a big problem. Even such large organizations as IEEE and the Association for Computing Machinery (to name two from my field) have articles here that are essentially self-sourced. My first thought is that organizations with membership over X are notable (for some reasonable choice of X: 10,000 maybe?) but that doesn't seem to fit the spirit of Wikipedia's notability guidelines nor address the problem of how to properly source these articles. And it also doesn't work for limited-membership national academies, which have the same issues. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:56, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
  • I was grappling with the same issue recently while expanding American Geophysical Union. I managed to find some independent sources after a lot of digging, but they were like a spotlight showing us glimpses of its early years and a few more recent controversies. For more complete coverage, there is no substitute for articles published by AGU itself. I would call these at least semi-independent because they have their own editorial staff made up of academic volunteers.
Another indicator of importance that might be more broadly useful is - does some important journal in a related field regularly report on their conferences? For example, the AGU Fall Meeting is covered by several media organizations including Science magazine (which has a special section on the conference). The coverage is of individual presentations, not the AGU itself, but they do provide some assurance that you will find independent sources if you look hard enough. RockMagnetist (talk) 22:33, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
Big groups like that are the easy ones, because, as you say, Science or Nature may report on their meetings, so these groups are not too difficult to get past WP:GNG. It's for smaller but still important groups that the problems become harder. For instance, in neuroscience there are two large groupings, the US Society for Neuroscience and the European Federation of European Neuroscience Societies. Both have not much problem passing WP:GNG, I think. But FENS consists of any different member societies, that are much smaller. Do we want to cover them? There's a neuroscience society in every European country plus several specialty societies, some large (British Neuroscience Association, others smaller, such as the European Brain and Behaviour Society, the oldest neuroscience society in the world. We could, of course, merge all those societies in the article on FENS, or a "List of FENS member societies", but then, what are we going to do with, for example, the Cognitive Neuroscience Society or the International Behavioral Neuroscience Society. These groups are not part of some larger federation, yet I think that they are important enough to be covered. (Note that I just gave these examples from the top of my head, some of them may actually pass GNG, I didn't check them, but we're talking the principle here, the actual details of these examples don't really matter). It's like with academics and academic journals: the really outstanding ones (Einstein, Nature, etc) will pass GNG without any problem. We need additional criteria for those cases that are less likely to pass GNG yet still important enough to need to be covered by us. --Randykitty (talk) 23:07, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
@Randykitty: It seems that the most pertinent existing guideline is WP:NONPROFIT, which seems in effect to be saying that an organization is usually notable if (1) it is national or international in scope, and (2) it meets WP:GNG. That doesn't sound like progress. Most of the organizations you mention pass (1) but have no evidence of passing (2). Even Society for Neuroscience is very weakly sourced. RockMagnetist (talk) 03:36, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
I do not think a merge discussion should get mixed up too much in this. Merge is a form of keep the (article) information but put it elsewhere - not so much a judgment, like delete, that 'this organization is not notable'. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:29, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
No, WP:NONPROFIT is helpful -- the second criteria isn't as hard as GNG. GNG is, "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject". WP:NONPROFIT is (a) national/international; plus (b) verifiability ("Information about the organization and its activities can be verified by multiple,[1] third-party, independent, reliable sources."). That doesn't have to be "significant" coverage, which is helpful. So a lot of things like routine announcements in newspapers or professional trade magazines, noting fellowship applications, elections, and so forth, count.
Also, if you see the beginning of the section, it notes that WP:NONPROFIT is one of the alternate criteria -- GNG, organization notability generally, or special criteria for types of organizations.
Academic groups that would properly be excluded under WP:NONPROFIT include most university research centers, and smaller niche academic societies, such as ones that publish one journal and have no other significant activities. If this new proposed guideline is intended to address that, okay; but it will be tricky to devise criteria that can parse the distinctions between the more notable and the less notable of the smaller niche academic societies and institutional research centers. OTOH if the problem is that academic societies are getting deleted even under WP:NONPROFIT, or because WP:NONPROFIT is not being brought up or used correctly, then maybe we just need to spread the word about WP:NONPROFIT more. --Lquilter (talk) 05:38, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
As noted in the discussion linked in my post, how should we view Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/International Association of Geoanalysts (and by extension organizations like it) which has been turned down three times for an article? Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:08, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
That one looks better sourced than most. I'd just move it into mainspace. I never pay much attention to AFC, I see too much cases there where unsourced promotional crap is accepted or notable stuff rejected. Remember, to create a new article, you don't need to go through AFC. As for Lquilter's remark above, I actually don't remember seeing an academic organization at AFD. Are there any recent examples of deleted societies? --Randykitty (talk) 13:25, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
I don't think that answers the problem, which is in one sense 'is there a lack of guidance by knowledgeable people letting non knowledgeable people know - 'this is what you should look for.' Some unsuspecting people who are not project regulars are going to submit to AFC and be judged at AFC - and some orgs are going to be discussed for deletion - and how should they be judged? Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:37, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
@Randykitty: Here are some recent AfD's for international societies: The International Society for Condensed Matter Nuclear Science Prizes, International Society for Philosophical Enquiry (2nd nomination), International Society of Automation, International Society of Genetic Genealogy. RockMagnetist (talk) 00:11, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
These examples are fringy or controversial in some POV generating way, so I don't think they are typical of societies that might come to AfC. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:29, 21 January 2014 (UTC).
Well, they are the ones that did come to AfC, so in that sense they're pretty typical! I only listed debates on international societies from the last few years, however. RockMagnetist (talk) 00:39, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/International Association of Geoanalysts makes a potential test case for discriminating between "significant coverage" in WP:GNG and "information about the organization and its activities" in WP:NONPROFIT, a distinction that is not at all clear in my mind. Putting aside its own publications and a few bare mentions, the case for moving this article to mainspace is that there are multiple independent sources for the work of the IAG on standards and standardized testing - enough for a paragraph or two. Maybe that's enough.
At the same time, I would think that in any list of notability criteria for academic societies, their impact should be considered. I could not find any evidence that geoanalysis exists as a field independent of the IAG. If I wanted to create an article on the IAG, I would start by trying to create an article on geoanalysis and see if that is notable. I'm not sure it is. RockMagnetist (talk) 00:46, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
RockMagnetist - We do have geochemistry and its listed subfields, so I am not sure I understand what you mean by 'is such analysis notable'? -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:27, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
@Alanscottwalker: According to the sources for the article on IAG, geoanalysis is specifically a field concerned with standardized testing of geological samples. It's not mentioned in geochemistry or any other Wikipedia article besides Geostandards and Geoanalytical Research, an article on a journal that is probably non-notable. RockMagnetist (talk) 15:57, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
That journal has a pretty large impact factor and therefore meets WP:NJournals. It ranks 36 out of 170 indexed journals (which all of them can be assumed to be notable, too). --Randykitty (talk) 16:06, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
@Randykitty: O.k., I'll grant the journal is notable (I thought I searched for it in WoS some time ago, but I guess not). That increases the likelihood that geoanalysis is notable. RockMagnetist (talk) 19:40, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
Some commenters here seem to be missing the point that this topic is basically a request from AfC for some help to formulate SNG criteria under which articles about academic orgs that do not clearly pass GNG can be accepted. Comments such as "ignore AFC" are not at all helpful. I wrote the comment that Alanscottwalker quoted in the first post. Some more of what I said may help clarify the issue: "The notability problem that many such "worthy" subjects <Academic orgs> struggle with is that their adherents hardly ever publish anything outside of their own walled gardens, thus genuinely independent reliable sources are hard to find." Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 10:36, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
  • I realize that "ignore AFC" is not helpful for AFC, but given that AFC tends to ignore most guidelines anyway, I don't really see why we need to make another one that they can ignore. As for the remarks by RockMagnetist, thanks a lot for those links. I feel stupid (I actually participated in one of those... Perhaps not stupid, just a bad memory... :-) Anyway, I agree with Xxanthippe that looking at them, those that should have been kept were kept and those that were fringy/fishy were deleted. And I agree that if a society's field of study does not really exist as a field outside of the society itself, that this probably signifies that the society is not notable either. All in all, I am not convinced that we should spend the effort to formulate a special guideline. Just have a look at the talk page of WP:NJournals to see how much effort is involved and how small the chances are that it will fly. (Although I do have the impression that WP has evolved too and that the differences between "inclusionists" and "deletionists" have become progressively smaller). --Randykitty (talk) 16:09, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

I think one minor change that would help a lot would be a clear statement that articles (not editorials) published in otherwise-reputable society journals can be reliable sources for their own societies. Because those articles often exist, and their authors don't usually think to create the appearance of neutrality by publishing in someone else's journals. For instance, I just added sources to an article on a smallish biology society, the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, and (although they just had a prominent piece in Science, which drew them to my attention) one of the claims in the article was best sourced by an article on the early history of the society, published in one of its journals. I don't think this sort of self-citation should be problematic, because presumably the article went through the standard peer-review process by the people who would be best placed to detect errors. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:58, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Something like that makes sense (but I think we would not put it in terms of reliability but notability -- although obviously reliability is a key concern - we want to know that the notability judgement is reliable). If we take the example of Geostandards and Geoanalytical Research, it appears it is actually published by Wiley-Blackwell. Thus, someone outside of the society (in this case WB) has taken notice of them. I don't know what, if any, oversight WB provides, but presumably WB did some due diligence when making its contractual relationship, and in that sense has wedded its reputation to theirs (ie., 'this is something the world should know about'). University presses also enter into such relationships. Moreover, the authors (and peer reviewers)of such articles, even presuming they are "members" would be laying their own reputation on the line, and have also obviously taken notice of the society. Since such societies exist for increasing communication among members (and also with the outside world) how they do so through with their own publications (published by another) makes sense (and as has been noted above there are some citation metrics above for how successful they have been in getting noticed). Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:30, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
I agree that journals published by (or in the name of) the organization should be considered reliable sources, as long as the articles are are peer-reviewed and the journal is independently notable. As for whether the identity of the publisher establishes notability of the journal, that is an issue for WP:NJOURNAL. Come to think of it, why is this discussion not occurring at Wikipedia talk:Notability (organizations and companies)? RockMagnetist (talk) 17:08, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
Given WP:SPS and WP:SELFPUB it's not a really an issue of whether a self publication is reliable about the subject; the issue is what is needed for notability and what is sufficiently "independent" (or not) to establish that. As to your process question - this was the project page that was mentioned on Jimbo's talk page (where this started) that dealt in a similar issue -- so that is why it is here. It is no doubt "interdisciplinary", though, and I will put a notice on that page, but will note that a notice at VPP; Jimbo talk page; and Journals, were already been placed. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:52, 24 January 2014 (UTC) (strike - you put the notice.) Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:58, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for linking this. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 21:30, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
This one was speedy deleted for copyvio. RockMagnetist (talk) 16:48, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
  • I came here as a resault of voting to keep on the Whitmer AFD. It is certainly likely to be difficult to find independent sources on many societies, as they exist to hold conferences and other meetings and often to publish an academic journal. The requirement for external sources is that an internal one may be OR. However, what society has any interest in publishing false information about itself? They may exaggerate, but thery will not tell plain lies. Peterkingiron (talk) 14:09, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Respectable societies: no, you're right. Fringe societies: I wouldn't be so sure. An there's a difference between outright lies and "not the whole truth". I once started a society myself (by now quite respectable, I'm happy to say) and our website said that we were an international society of blablabla. Well, that was correct. But the whole truth was that there were 2 members in 2 different countries... Likewise, bordeline notable societies may be likely to exaggerate their importance on their websites. After all, their websites exist to make publicity for the society. They may not be for profit, but almost any society (there are a few very rare exceptions) wants to grow and become larger and more important... So I would accept the society as a reliable source for things like when they were formed, where they are based, who is their president, and such. I would not trust them for a second when they claim to have a certain number of members, for example. --Randykitty (talk) 14:28, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
  • First, I don't believe that the prior discussion on this topic, Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(organizations_and_companies)/Archive10#Notability_of_learned_societies_with_weak_coverage, was linked, so here it is. Second, I support creating a guideline, with a note that we have to relax the criteria relating to coverage; as discussed previously, many academic organizations have very poor secondary coverage, but they are still notable due to their significance in the field. How to judge that significance is a good question. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 12:13, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
  • At this point, I can think of one criteria that might be useful: if a society (co-)publishes a notable academic journal, I think we can assume that the society is notable, too. Of course, notability for journals is a gray area, because WP:NJournals is only an essay. But in practice it works quite well and gets challenged only rarely (and never effectively, if I recall correctly). Of course we'll need additional criteria, because not every society of importance publishes a notable journal (or any journal at all). Come to think of it, we'll need to define "(co-)publish". Is it enough when a journal is an "official journal" of a society? Personally, I don't think so. I know of one society that has three or four "official journals", but has not the slightest share of ownership and no say at all in how the journal is run. It just means that the publisher gives them some money for an ad in their annual meeting program... --Randykitty (talk) 15:27, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Restarting discussion (April)

I am going to summarize the now-stale discussion (Pinging editors who participated in prior related discussions: User:Randykitty, User:RockMagnetist, User:Peterkingiron, User:Mscuthbert, User:Mark viking, User:Mscuthbert, User:Alanscottwalker, User:David Eppstein, User:PamD, User:Xxanthippe, User:James Cantor , User:Lquilter, User:Blueboar , User:Orlady, User:WhatamIdoing , User:Masem , User:Lambian, User:DGG). First, it appears we have a consensus for saying something along the lines of "Academic organizations are often notable, even if they do not pass other criteria outlined at GNG or ORG pages." In particular, we are concerned with point 2 of WP:NONPROFIT "Information about the organization and its activities can be verified by multiple, third-party, independent, reliable sources" which many organizations we agree should be covered in an encyclopedia are not passing. Second, the following suggestions have been made with regards to determining whether an organization is notable:

  • membership size over 10,000 (for international bodies; less for national ones?; also - presumably less for organizations whose membership is not individuals but other organizations?)
  • publishing a notable journal (Wikipedia:Notability (academic journals))
  • organizing a notable conference (Wikipedia:Notability (events))
  • affiliation with a major (notable) academic society

From me, I'd also add:

  • presenting a notable award (Wikipedia:Notability (awards))
  • being recognized in the field as having a significant impact (this is akin to WP:BIO statements like WP:ANYBIO#2: "The person has made a widely recognized contribution that is part of the enduring historical record in his or her specific field")
  • age (as in: the above should apply only to organizations that are 5 years or older, to avoid some new scammy ones being listed for promotional value)

Another suggestion I made two years ago was to update WP:NONPROFIT, "additional condsiderations" section, with the following sentence: "Learned societies/academic organizations are an exception, as they are notable provided one of the listed criteria is fulfilled."

Let's discuss this with the aim of creating a section we can add to the article (so please copy the above, add/remove ideas, polish it and hopefully we will have something good in a week or two). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 13:43, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

@Piotrus: this discussion should really be at Wikipedia talk:Notability (organizations and companies). It was a mistake to start the original discussion here, and this restart would be a good opportunity to move it to its proper home. RockMagnetist (talk) 15:41, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
the point of doing it here is that it is more likely to get attention from people who know about the problems. In any case, based on working with recent submissions, I think that:
a. sub-national organizations are extremely unlikely to be notable, but not absolutely impossible
b. Student organization are less likely to be notable, but not at all impossible
c. a criterion of being the principal organization in the field in a country is very helpful; the principal organization in a major field is particularly so
d. size depends on field. Many fields have considerably fewer than 10,000 people in them altogether, sometimes by more than an order of magnitude. Being the principal organization is more helpful.
e. Age should not be a deccisive factor--some will clearly be very significant from the start, and anyway 2 rather than 5 years is a better guide. We also need to avoid applying it to name changes or mergers. Splits can be a problem, but if both groups have substantial membership, they can also be notable from the start.
g. I do not agree with the suggested criterion "affiliated with a major academic society". Typically many very small or local societies are in some manner affiliated with an important one.
h. The major prize criterion is a little difficult to use, as it tends to be circular. DGG ( talk ) 19:49, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
I'd like to see some people's views on a couple of practical issues:
  1. How do you writeNPOV-compliant articles for organizations, which requires giving WP:DUE weight to their views and the views of independent sources, if you have no significant coverage in independent sources? Don't bother telling me that academic organizations are immune to self-aggrandizement and mistakenly over-valuing their contributions, so whatever they say can be assumed to be "neutral" (in the dictionary-definition sense); I won't believe you, and even if it's true, it doesn't matter. An article that says only what the subject says about itself does not comply with NPOV, because NPOV requires representing more than the subjects' perspective.
  2. How do you verify that an organization is "the principal organization"? I assume that these are invalid reasons:
    • "because they said so, on their own website"
    • "because we, the editors, say so, because we just happen to know this/choose to believe some editor who says it is"
    • "because we, the editors, can't find any other organizations in this field"
    • "because we, the editors, decided that this organization was principal on the grounds that we looked over some self-published sources, promotional efforts, and publications by the people who belong to it, and decided that it was"
    —but what would are your valid methods for determining this, if there are no independent sources that say this (or something approximately like this)?
  3. Which important examples of orgs did we (allegedly) agree should be covered in an encyclopedia? Who has tried to find independent sources for these examples, and how did they search for sources? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:08, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
Also, this would directly contradict WP:V: "If no reliable third-party sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it." Has anyone announced this discussion there, so that people can think about what it would take to update the policy on this point? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:10, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing: Regarding NPOV, I don't see a major issue. We report facts, not opinions, and we attribute anything remotely controversial - which is what the policy recommends anyway. Regarding specific cases, from my field, International Sociological Association article is primarily based on its website and report self-published by that organization, which at least was authored by a notable scholar Jennifer Platt. I was unable to find any significant coverage of this organization in other sources (it's mentioned in passing), and I did reach out to ISA itself - they were not able to suggest any better sources. At the same time, every sociologist out there can acknowledge this is an organization of major importance in the field. So it boils down to "because we, the editors, say so, because we just happen to know this due to being experts in this field". To quote User:DGG: "a criterion of being the principal organization in the field in a country is very helpful; the principal organization in a major field is particularly so" seems like an obvious notability criteria. Regarding a challenge to WP:V, this is nothing new. Consider Wikipedia:Notability (academics) criteria 1) "high citation counts", 3) "member of a highly selective and prestigious scholarly society or association", 5) "The person holds or has held a named chair appointment or "Distinguished Professor" appointment at a major institution of higher education and research (or an equivalent position in countries where named chairs are uncommon)." or 6) "The person has held a highest-level elected or appointed academic post at a major academic institution or major academic society.", where sources used (cited in articles / AfD) commonly include Google Scholar-reported indices and CVs/personal webpages/bio statements at academic institutions. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 10:44, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
I'm astonished that you don't see any potential NPOV problem with presenting only those facts that the org itself chooses to publicize. Would you accept that for any other type of org? How about for BP and Exxon? How about for a religious organization? They're supposed to be pure or holy, so filthy lucre shouldn't be an issue, and we're just going to "report facts", like their claims about the number of members and what they're doing. No? But you're strangely willing to do so for this one category of org.
As for PROF's seeming disregard of major content policies, I think that it should be qualified. These qualities are often markers for the existence of independent sources: if you meet these requirements, there will probably be some independent coverage out there. (It's like high schools: there is almost always independent coverage for regular/government-run high schools, if only you look hard enough.) But if it happens that no such coverage is ever found for a specific case, despite multiple good searches over time, then it should be deleted or (IMO preferably) merged into a subject that does have independent coverage. NPOV is not optional, and it is not met by reporting only what non-independent sources say about themselves. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:42, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
Come now. It's not so black and white, as per WP:High schools, but sure there are issues to discuss, but, for example, an academic's peer reveiwed journal article published by a society (and an academic publisher/university) about that society's work/history certainly passes WP:V and WP:RS and should count toward WP:Notability. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:54, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
Alanscottwalker
Why?
No, really: Why on Earth would you think that the fact that I got a paper published counts towards WP:Notability for me? I understand why me publishing an article about widgets contributes to the notability of widgets: I'm providing you with good (we hope) information about those widgets, and I'm paying attention to widgets (and so is the journal). That's certainly a source "taking notice of" widgets. But how does me publishing an article about widgets turn into me publishing an article about me? How does me publishing an article about widgets provide useful information for writing an article about me? How does me publishing any article, even one entirely about myself, contribute to WP:Notability, given that said guideline explicitly and directly excludes sources written by the subject? I think you need to read the WP:SPIP section again. It's only six sentences, and it should leave you with no doubt that publications written by the subject do not count towards notability under any circumstances. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:42, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
You aren't publishing an article about you. The article author is publishing about something else, not themselves. The University or academic publisher is publishing about something else, not themselves. This isn't the society's website, we are looking at. --Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:47, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
I still don't get it. Why should the existence of a journal that publishes about widgets be proof that the world at large is paying attention to the publisher and/or sponsor of the journal?
Random House published more than 10,000 new titles last year: is the mere existence of those books on the library shelf, with no other information available, proof that we need an article on Random House? (We do; it's the largest book publisher in the world. But IMO the way that we know that we need an article is that fact that people write whole articles about Random House itself, not the fact that my library has some publications with the company's name on the copyright page.)
If I start an organization and produce "a journal" is that proof that we need an article about the organization? We're talking about a publication that is ultimately controlled by my organization: if the editor doesn't write what I want, especially all of the non-peer-reviewed content about "This journal is sponsored by the International Academic Society for Widget Research, which is the premier widget research society in the world", then I can (and should) fire him and hire someone who will run my publication the way I want it run. Just what kind of encyclopedic content do you think you could write about my organization from a source like that? Do you really think that the content in a section called "About IASWR" in the journal is going to be noticeably different from "About IASWR" on the website? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:54, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
You don't get that an academic is not an organization and a university or academic publisher is not an organization? Of course, a peer reviewed academic article about an organization is not going to be the same thing published on the organization's website. That's not how websites are written. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:39, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
In the analogy you posited, if it was the custom that Random House published only concerning an academic field, that it only published the peer reviewed works of academics, and a University/Academic Publisher published Random House, and that one of these works also detailed the work/history of Random House itself, your analogy would be more on point. Both the academic(s), and the University/Academic Publisher, have noted the workings/history of Random House. Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:56, 3 May 2014 (UTC)


Actually, for the sake of editorial freedom, you shouldn't fire him :-) Normally, publishers don't interfere with the editorial policy of a journal. Anyway, apart from that, I agree with what you are saying. All academics publish, that is what they do, just like painters paint and sculptors sculpt. Output is not what makes somebody notable, but only if that output has been noted. --Randykitty (talk) 18:01, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
  • Some of the criteria are not easy:
  1. Companies - I disagree that this should be part of a companies and organisations discussion. Some academic societies may technically be companies, but they are quite different from the typical trading company. On the other hand they may technically be clubs, but many (in UK) are constituted as educational charities.
  2. Membership - the only source will probably be an internal one. The best we may get is a newsletter or annual report publihsed by the Society. Even an apprently indepedent source, such as a newspaper, will probably only be republishing a press release from the society. The only merit such as source has is that a journalist indicates that he beleives his source. If we do have a membership criterion, I would suggest that for Societies that are nationally notable the threshold should be a lot lower than 10,000, this perhaps also for international ones.
  3. The issue over WP:V and WP:RS is that some people are inclined to exaggerate or even lie. However the newsletter of a society has the prime objective of providing accurate information to its members, for example to enable them to take part in the Society's activities.
  4. Notable journal: it may be better where a Society publishes a jounral to merge the articles on the society and its journal: some journals are published by a society; others are not.
  5. Notable conference: if a society is operating nationally or internationally, in practice the only way of the memnbership gathering is to have a confernece perhaps once or twice a year.
  6. Affiliation is a weak criterion, which we should certainly not use. Society A can claim to be affiliated to Society B because it pays a subscription to be a member of Society B.
Historical Metallurgy Society (of which I am treasurer) has 500-600 members, of whom about a third are overseas members. We have an article, but it is tagged as an orphan.
Category:Archaeological organisations has articles on a number of the English county archaeology societies, but far from all. There is generally one in each county, publishing a journal and some kind of newsletter and conducting a series of winter lectures and summer visits. Membership is likely to be in the low hundreds; this certainly applies to Birmingham and Warwickshire Archaeological Society, which has no article, but has published volume 116 of its Transactions. There are other more local societies, whose activities are superficially similar, except do not publish a substantial peer-reviewed journal. I would suggest that the distinction lies in the publication of a substantial peer-reviewed journal. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:47, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
@Peterkingiron: Regarding whether this should be part of a companies and organizations discussion: If we are discussing changes to Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies), we should be discussing them on its talk page. On the other hand, if we are discussing changes to WP:Notability (academics), then we are proposing a major change in their scope. The first paragraph of WP:Notability (academics) is explicitly about people, as are all the notability criteria. Moreover, we would be poaching on the territory of Notability. They already explicitly discuss non-commercial organizations and schools. RockMagnetist (talk) 23:25, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
WP:CLUBs are almost all charities, and that guideline explicitly includes educational organizations, so that guideline is certainly relevant. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:42, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
Regarding affiliation: As I said in the earlier discussion, some societies have selection criteria for affiliates (for example, AAAS, so affiliation is independent evidence that a society meets those criteria. Of course, it would be necessary to provide a source for the selection criteria. RockMagnetist (talk) 23:31, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
Where we discuss this is unimportant, but if another place would be more appropriate, a note should be placed there. This discussion is about academic societies, which is related to academics (people), though certainly not identical. The AAAS affiliation criterion is probably useful, but in my experience few societies have anything equivalent. I suggested above a membership criterion in hundreds. I still think that is about the right level for a society to which members pay subscriptions. The threshold would need to be much higher for toll-free on-line groups. Peterkingiron (talk) 11:50, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
(1) It is very often possible to find some sort of third party source for a society, though it is usually directory information. As mentioned, it is not necessarily more reliable than material published by the society itself.
(2) It is sometimes possible to get verified circulation data for the society's magazine, though not if it distributed primarily or exclusively online. This can in any case usually require access to a set of the print version, and that can be hard to find.
(3) We could appropriately add a section on notable members, just as we do for universities.
(4) I continue to think that the membership criterion depends primarily upon the field.
(5) I agree that it is much more difficult to judge online groups. In some cases it is possible to actually find 3rd party information on the influence, which makes it very easy, but this is rare. DGG ( talk ) 17:44, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

I will once again raise the idea that there is a distinction between "Notable" and "Note Worthy"... these are related concepts, but not identical ones. An organization (whether an academic society or some other body) that is only mentioned by its own members may well be Note Worthy (ie it is appropriate to mention it in an article on a related subject/topic)... but for it to be Notable (ie for us to have a stand alone article devoted to it) we need something more. I firmly believe that no organization can be Notable unless someone outside of the organization has made note of it. So... for Wikipedia to have a stand alone article devoted to discussing an academic society, there must be independent sources that discuss it (and do so with more than just a passing reference). Blueboar (talk) 02:15, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

I think it's helpful to provide practical alternatives. There may be a few newbies who are hung up on getting a stand-alone article on their favorite society as some sort of important milestone, but in many cases, especially for very small fields, more readers would see the information if the same paragraph were merged into a suitable parent article. An academic "Society for Asteroid Moon Discovery" could be merged into an article of Satellites of asteroids, without having to prove that anyone independent paid any attention to them at all. From our perspective, "we should have this material" is not the same thing as "we should have this material on a separate page", and not subject to the same requirements for inclusion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:15, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Discoverers of asteroids and other astronomical bodies

Discoverers of asteroids (and to a lesser extent as discussed, other items) are not inherently notable for their discoveries and need to have notability established through traditional means. Small clarification added to Specific Criteria -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 19:31, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

There are 315 pages in Category:Discoverers of asteroids. The great majority are little more than a table of asteroids, and most facts beyond the most trivial are unsourced. It seems likely that only a small fraction will ever meet GNG, which suggests to me that the notability criteria are not working well for these articles. I have looked at recent AfDs, and here is what I find:

Some observations:

  1. In Articles for deletion/Watari Kakei, @Quasirandom says "I think a better analogy here is WP:ACADEMIC, which requires showing that among the mass of all peers -- i.e., amateur astronomers -- he is known for his achievements as an asteroid hunter ..." That is a good point. But how do amateur astronomers recognize their peers?
  2. There are many claims that someone is notable because an astronomical body is named after them. However, in one page of Dictionary of Minor Planet Names, I see asteroids named after a couple of towns, a businessman, and a discoverer's granddaughters. List of minor planets named after people shows that asteroids have been named after all sorts of people, including fictional characters.
  3. There seems to be a consensus that a discoverer of 1 or 2 asteroids is not notable but a "prolific" discoverer is. How many asteroids must an astronomer discover before they are "prolific"? Judging by the above results, the cutoff is somewhere between 3 and 49. The IAU list of minor planet discoverers in order of number of discoveries might be used to decide what counts as "prolific". On this list, discoverers of 49 asteroids collectively rank 157th, but we are starting to see several names in each rank. Even names near the top of the list often have poorly sourced articles (e.g., Cornelis Johannes van Houten and Eric Walter Elst), although they might meet GNG if someone made an effort.

Based on the above observations, I have two recommendations:

  1. Under Criterion 1, we state that having something named after a person does not make them notable - unless a source can be produced that demonstrates that this is always an honor based on their contribution to the field.
  2. We should consider whether being a "prolific" discoverer of X is enough to establish notability. If so, does this fall under some existing criterion - is it a "significant discovery" or has the discoverer had a "significant impact" on their field? And how prolific do they need to be?

RockMagnetist (talk) 17:47, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

I think that discovering one asteroid is a claim of significance and importance, so these articles should not be speedily deleted under CSD A7, particularly if we have a list of miscellaneous minor planet discoverers. James500 (talk) 18:57, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

I agree that the speedy was not warranted. RockMagnetist (talk) 19:08, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Continuing my comments at WT:ASTRO: Merely discovering an asteroid (or even several asteroids; the same applies to comets) does not make someone notable. WP:NOTINHERIT applies. Even if the asteroid itself is notable (most are not), that does not necessarily mean that their discoverers are. I don't think that even a 'prolific' discoverer is notable, unless there are secondary sources about the person which establish their notability. Those are already covered under WP:GNG and WP:PROF. Modest Genius talk 11:15, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
A source that says "person x discovered asteroid y" is a source about person x. In the case of a prolific discoverer, you need to consider LISTN as well as GNG and PROF. Discovering an asteroid is far more noteworthy than any of the criteria specified in, for example, ATHLETE. James500 (talk) 15:27, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
  • @James500: You raise a number of issues:
  1. 'A source that says "person x discovered asteroid y" is a source about person x': Are you saying that a JPL Small-body database entry like this is really about the discoverer? All my example says about the discoverer is "Discovered 1997-Mar-03 by Comba, P. G. at Prescott".
  2. If we tried to invoke LISTN, we would need to find a list of asteroids discovered by a given individual. None of the articles I looked at cited any such list.
  3. As for the noteworthiness of discovering a single asteroid - in AfD discussions, there are lots of people who say it is notable and lots who say it isn't. But as my analysis above shows, discoverers of 1 or 2 asteroids generally get deleted. If you want to change the typical outcome, can you suggest a general principle? That's what I'm trying to do.
RockMagnetist (talk) 03:50, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
The JPL entry is about the discoverer as well as the asteroid. It is also about the date and the institution. It is coverage. James500 (talk) 15:52, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Individuals do not discover asteroids any more. It is a big team, community, facility effort. No individual personally builds the telescope, records the measurements, does the calculations, etc. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:51, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
  • I don't think we need discovery of asteroids as a separate notability point, any more than number of medieval letters uncovered or number of genes sequenced. The notability for WP:PROF comes from publications, mentions, citations in some fields, and awards. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 14:50, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
Spot on. Xxanthippe (talk) 04:06, 7 April 2014 (UTC).
  • I did! I agree that (1) having something named after a person does not, per se, make the person notable. However, it might be an "honor", which would be evidence of their notability. (Even if it IS an honor, that doesn't necessarily make them notable -- just adds evidence to notability.) So with appropriate wordsmithing I'd agree with your point on 1. ... As for (2) it seems okay in theory, but it would be hard to write it up to avoid original research problems. Let's take the extreme hypothetical: We can provide evidence that someone discovered 80 bajillion asteroids, way more than anybody else; but no third party has ever written biographical information about that person. Their only information is their claim in the Asteroid Database. ... That's the extreme example, but if we add in a new type of notability, there will be a lot of instances of this sort of thing. So I would take this proposal very, very slowly and carefully. --Lquilter (talk) 13:01, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
  • I did, but you're right, RockMagnetist, that I didn't reply very directly. I agree with No. 1 (having something named after them does not make them notable) for asteroids, but your second part ("unless a source can be produced that demonstrates that this is always an honor based on their contribution to the field") is important too. And I think that things like schools, major academic awards (e.g., the SmokeyJoe Award for Excellence in Landscape Architecture awarded by the American Landscape Architecture Association) tend to imply the latter, so I would caution against people saying, "well, there's no evidence I can find that SmokeyJoe contributed anything to landscape architecture to make the ALAA name their highest award for him." (Apologies to SmokeyJoe -- just wanted to cite a name from above). For #2, I think it would depend on the rarity and significance of these discoveries and how the field reacts to them; I've found thousands of unknown manuscripts and fragments of Gregorian chant, but my reputation in the field comes from the few (11?) pieces of fourteenth century art song that I discovered within them. Significantly, each discovery of the latter earned me peer-reviewed publications, awards, fellowships, faculty posts, citations, etc., which, not coincidentally, is exactly what we already use for notability in WP:PROF. So, regarding #2, I'd think we don't need an additional statement except perhaps to say that on its own, being a prolific discoverer of anything does not satisfy WP:PROF. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 18:04, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
  • OK, to respond explicitly to your proposals: 1. Agree with everything before the dash, disagree with the stuff afterwards (how on earth would we assess the reliability of such a source?). 2. No. Merely discovering lots of anything does not guarantee notability. In depth coverage in secondary sources is required. Modest Genius talk 19:08, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Since this discussion has had a month to play out, I think a summary is important. My sense is that consensus is that discoverers of asteroids (and to a lesser extent as discussed, other items) are not inherently notable for their discoveries and need to have notability established through traditional means. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 15:47, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

interesting article on writing about intellectuals

Of note, this NYT article: "Writing About a Life of Ideas" by Richard Reeves, NYT 2014/05/19. It hits a lot of themes that we who write / work on academic biographical topics often have to reiterate. From the summary: "When writing biographies of intellectuals, the life is secondary to the thinking." Just a sort of philosophical musing essay on the topic, but I thought y'all might be interested. --Lquilter (talk) 18:44, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

.9 + .9 + .9 = 0 or 1?

My sense is that we may need a note in the "General Guidelines" to say something like:

"Achievements, awards, and positions not sufficient to pass any one of the criteria above may still be considered as a contributing factor in establishing notability along with other evidence of notability."

I have seen at AfD cases where subjects are borderline on multiple fronts (for instance: slightly too weak publication record, awards of importance but not sufficient for Cat 2, a position such as provost that doesn't meet the president/vice-chancellor level, with a single RS demonstrating notability) for which the interpretation from editors was "No, No, No, + No" = "No". My sense has been that these articles tend to be kept, but the lack of guidance in voting in these cases leads to arguments, esp. among those who do not rely on the Average Professor Test as a fallback. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 19:51, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

  • Personally, I would say "0". The guideline says: meets at least one of these criteria, not meets several of them almost. And once we accept "almost", we're on a gliding scale. If .9+.9+.9 is enough, then why not also .8+.8+.8? And so on... As it is, we already have pretty lax criteria (honestly, I don't think for example that an h-index of 20 should be enough to get by in a heavily cited field). --Randykitty (talk) 11:24, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

Is having a honorary degrees enough for WP:N?

This guideline as written seems to imply that having any honorary degree satisfies C1. Thoughts? (I am asking this in the context of this AfD: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Oswald Leroy). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 04:34, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

  • I am inclined to think that it is probably sufficient providing it is genuine and based on reputable work. I would not favor an honorary degree given to a financial donor or for political reasons. The case you are considering is a marginal one. Xxanthippe (talk) 06:07, 28 May 2014 (UTC).
  • I think than an honorary degree from an accredited/reputable university (does not need to be a top one) is enough. I feel for Xx's caution about political or financial reasons, but I think that the burden of proving that would need to be on the deletion voter and it should be a tough hurdle. The implication of a donor relationship is not enough there unless the university has a reputation for being a pay-to-play doctorate system. (The other honorary degree that should not count is a pro-forma honorary degree. For instance, most Harvard full-profs, if not all, meet the WP:PROF guidelines, but they all get honorary masters degrees from Harvard if they don't have a Harvard degree already as the rules require a Harvard degree to get tenure/full-professorships. Hence the workaround. Again, it doesn't really matter for Harvard faculty, but if a school with a lower reputation followed the same system, we should be aware and not count it as an automatic pass) -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 23:23, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
  • Not as a per se rule. In any instance, an honorary degree is an award, and that adds evidence to notability, but is not per se notability. (With the exception of a very few honorees, like Nobel Laureates.) And I do not support Xxanthippe's idea about "Yes for these reasons, No for these other reasons": Honorary doctorates might be given by an institution for all sorts of reasons and it would be challenging for wikipedia editors to learn of those reasons, much less evaluate them in any kind of consistent way. It's not one single entity using words in all the same way, as it is with most awards; it's every kind of institution using words in their own way. So there's literally no consistent meaning and it would be very difficult to interpret them in the same way. --Lquilter (talk) 12:05, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
It is quite straightforward to evaluate if an honorary degree is based on academic work by consulting citation databases. It is when there is a disconnect, as in the case considered, that there is a problem. Xxanthippe (talk) 12:53, 29 May 2014 (UTC).
Given that the honorary degree itself has to be considered conditionally (what kind of institution, and what kind of criteria for the award), then I think it's just more accurate to say that receiving an honorary degree does not establish notability per se; but can in some circumstances be evidence of notability. --Lquilter (talk) 00:27, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
  • Comment. I don't think there will ever be an algorithm that infallibly decides borderline cases. These will always be a matter for the judgement of editors. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:51, 31 May 2014 (UTC).

Thank you all. You may also be interested in my proposal at Talk:Honorary_degree#Deletion_of_recipients_of_honorary_degrees. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 10:42, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

On the presumption of notability and SNG criteria

I invite interested parties to comment at WT:N#The application of the "presumption" of notability. --MASEM (t) 01:23, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Notable work done by a non notable person

There are many articles about academics where it could be argued that the work is notable but not the person. Such articles might contain almost no "traditional" biographical information - birthplace, early life, personal life, etc. (Is Prof. Brainic married? Where did he grow up?) - and concentrate almost entirely on the research work the person has done. Academic journals rarely say anything about the authors outside of their directly relevant work. In such cases we might be better off with an article about the professor's work rather than an actual biography. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 09:40, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

This is based on a faulty premise. Actors are notable for their acting work, not for their birthplace, early life, marriage, etc. Politicians are notable for the offices they've held and the accomplishments they made in their offices; again, not for their personal lives. Sportspeople are notable for their sports play, not for their personal lives. And academics are notable for their academic accomplishments, not for their personal lives. If an academic's work is notable (and is diverse or significant) enough to escape WP:BIO1E then the academic is notable. The notability is exactly in the work, not anywhere else. Of course, if there is nothing to talk about but the work, then the article will necessarily have to be focused that way, but it should still not have a different title, for instance. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:16, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Is a high h-index good enough?

As someone who has created a lot of articles about academics, I have historically been confused about these notability guidelines. For example, when I nominated Laura Hewitson for deletion, Xxanthippe said that "A GS [Google Scholar] h-index of 20 is enough to pass WP:Prof#1 in bio-med." However, I am not so sure that simply having lots of highly cited papers is sufficient to establish notability here, or as Cryptic C62 put it, "He could have written 80 zillion important scientific papers, but what matters is if he has been covered by third-party sources." (See Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/John_P._Abraham). I would argue that coverage in independent reliable sources as per WP:GNG is still required even for someone with a really high h-index, especially if that person hasn't met any of the other WP:PROF criteria. Does this seem like a good idea to whoever is reading this? Jinkinson talk to me 19:04, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

So the answer is "yes, it is good enough"? Jinkinson talk to me 02:48, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Well, that's the practice. The theory in that note is different: if there are no sources to base a bio on, then there can be no article even though the subject may be notable... However, if someone has a notable h, there usually are RS, too, even if they may not always be independent (such as faculty pages, journal pages about editorial-board memberships, etc), they can be used to source non-controversial info. --Randykitty (talk) 12:35, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
  • The Laura Hewitson case presents an interesting test of this rule. She has done research on the link between MMR and autism, the subject of a famous hoax (see MMR vaccine controversy), and there are allegations in blogs of a serious conflict of interest (particularly presenting her research without revealing that she was suing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for injuries related to vaccination of her own son - see Laura Hewitson's stinker). The current "non-controversial" statement in the article is "she has been researching the possible connection between the MMR vaccine and autism." However, presenting it this way arguably fails WP:NPOV because it may lead the reader to place too much weight on the possible connection. But I am not having any luck finding reliable, independent sources for the allegations. RockMagnetist (talk) 15:48, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
  • I'll note that I see a bigger problem on AfD of "a low h-index is enough to show non-notability," which is simply not the case for researchers in all fields working before say 1995, researchers in fields that are primarily book based, non-US researchers publishing in journals that aren't indexed in Google Scholar, etc. So while I agree with Randykitty that a very high h-index is generally enough for fields where such things are important, I think that moving away from citing h-indexes in general would be a good thing. At the least, they shouldn't be cited unless the average for the field/era is known and stated also. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 15:14, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
H-index is a very rough screen, and is field dependent--and also, as MSC points out, time-dependent. Quite consistently, every issue of JASIST has at least one paper proposing alternatives, none of which have been accepted either; I've stopped keeping track. However, when used properlt it does give some sort of preliminary discrimination between the people who are utterly insignificant and those who are quite significant--telling where the borderline goes is, a matter of judgment. To some extent we have to accept the interpretation of people who know the citation patterns in the subject, but this can be verified by comparisons with other individuals of clear notability. When judging people involved in fringe or debatable subjects, no criterion works, because everyone tends to interpret the data according to what result they think appropriate. DGG ( talk ) 23:53, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
I absolutely agree with MSC and DGG. While a high h-index is good evidence for notability, the opposite is not necessarily true. (Proving non-notability, in general, is really difficult if not outright impossible; all we can do is "fail to show notability"). I could for example imagine a young researcher who makes a really significant discovery, reports them in 1 or 2 highly-cited publications and (if it is really very significant work) also gets some coverage in multiple non-academic RS. That would give an h-index of 2 and still meet notability (in this case GNG as well as PROF#1 - the latter because of the highly cited articles). So, yes, unless an h-index is quite clearly well above average for a certain field, it should not be taken as evidence for notability and a low h-index should only be taken as not being evidence of notability, but not as evidence of non-notability. --Randykitty (talk) 17:09, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
Yes, it's the old "absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence" plank and a good example of a notable person having h-index of 2 is Évariste Galois, whose work founded several major branches of abstract algebra. That said, I think there's some context missing in this discussion. First, h-index is something of a false dilemma. The currency of the academic is scholarly publication, whether in journals, books, other periodicals, etc. We should never limit checking notability against just a single medium, based on the often-made but false assumption that scientists only publish in journals, humanities professors only publish books, etc. All types of publication should be checked in all cases, there are wonderful tools that make this task fairly trivial (GS, WoS, Scopus, WorldCat, et al), and having significant impact in any type of scholarly media is sufficient for WP:PROF c1. Second, h-index is kicked around a lot, but it automatically does some useful filtering that I doubt any of us has the time to do by hand. For example, it is very good at minimizing false-impact of self-citations on the author's own low-impact papers. (Self-citation is a definite problem within the academy.) So again, I think h-index is a useful tool, albeit only one within a larger toolbox. Third, regarding older publications and the statement above by Michael Scott Cuthbert, it is simply a matter of using the right indexing tool. WoS goes back eons and some institutions have online access back to the early 1900s. Empirically speaking, bios on academics of yesteryear of questionable notability are not a big problem on WP, so this issue is not even terribly urgent. Rather, the main problem lies with the oodles of articles on young-in-career academics (Google "assistant professor" or "post doc" on WP), who are not notable, but who yet have strong incentive to have a WP page for career advancement (Dear tenure committee, I forgot to mention I have a Wikipedia page), whose article is a fanpage started by a fawning student, etc. We delete these practically every week here! Finally, the assertion by Jinkinson that "extra" coverage per WP:GNG is required is also not true. In the absolute worst case that nothing else is available, the article could still simply be stubbed with some basic information about research contributions, places of employment, and so forth, as gleaned from the primary (cited) and secondary (citing) papers. This happens frequently, for example in the recent AfD on Norbert Pallua. Thanks, Agricola44 (talk) 21:44, 11 March 2014 (UTC).
Agricola44 notes the increase in academic AfDs of "oodles of articles on young-in-career academics (Google "assistant professor" or "post doc" on WP), who are not notable, but who yet have strong incentive to have a WP page for career advancement (Dear tenure committee, I forgot to mention I have a Wikipedia page)..." A properly interpreted h-index analysis cuts through the pretensions of such claims like a hot knife through butter. Another category of nominations that wastes the time of editors is by people who appear to be unable to understand the WP:Prof guidelines and nominate for deletion BLPs that clearly pass WP:Prof#C1 on the basis of citations. Often when the error is pointed out nominators make a graceful withdrawal to save other editors further trouble (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gary Roy Geffken), but sometimes they do not (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Christian Spielmann, [1], Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/David Hartley (computer scientist), Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mark Overmars (2nd nomination), Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tom Cohen, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John Wikswo, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bernhard Steffen (computer scientist).) Xxanthippe (talk) 06:49, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
While User:Xxanthippe may have been a bit obnoxious (both here and in the Laura Hewitson AFD), I imagine I can confirm that he is right, since I was one of those who "waste[d] the time of editors" by "nominat[ing] for deletion BLPs that clearly pass WP:Prof#C1 on the basis of citations." However, looking over this AFD again, I can't help but wonder: why, in Xxanthippe's view does Hewitson espousing fringe views automatically "make her more notable not less"? If scientists who push scientifically fringe views are more likely to be notable, then Judy Wood probably wouldn't be a redlink, nor would the pages of every quack selling bogus cures for cancer, or scientists who endorse young earth creationism. Jinkinson talk to me 22:42, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
Note WP:Articles for deletion/Laura Hewitson. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:24, 13 March 2014 (UTC).
Of the examples provided by @Xxanthippe, only two keeps (Christian Spielmann and Gary Roy Geffken) relied exclusively on the h-index, and (surprise, surprise) they are the lowest-quality articles (indeed, someone has already tried to PROD Christian Spielmann). The examples also highlight some common problems with debates involving WP:PROF. Some experienced Wikipedians use them as an opportunity to bite the newbies, but not to improve the articles. If an article relies on WP:PROF for notability, there is often a glaring problem that makes the nomination understandable (although wrong) - but often none of the keep voters make any effort to solve the problem. For example, the text of John Wikswo relies entirely on articles by Wikswo himself; and although @Colapeninsula provided links to independent sources, no one even added them to the article, let alone made any use of them. Ditto for Tom Cohen. This can lead to further nominations and further opportunities to bully newcomers. RockMagnetist (talk) 17:58, 14 March 2014 (UTC)
A problem with articles on academics is that the best discussion of their work tends to be in academic journals, which are often paywalled. So if someone has 5 reviews of their books in academic journals, or there are multiple articles called something like "A critique of X" where X is the academic, they probably meet notability requirements, but people without access to the appropriate journal cannot improve the article. This makes the h-index and other search results from academic indexes useful proxies until someone can develop an article from a stub.
Having said that, I'm sure there are cases where individuals have a high h-index and nobody actually discusses their work, which is why you need some indication of what's actually in some articles citing them, whether you look at the abstract, title, or actually read the article. --Colapeninsula (talk) 12:32, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
I think there are lots of cases where nobody actually discusses their work. In scientific articles, the vast majority of citations are attached to brief statements like "Correlations between westward drift and mantle rotation have long been suspected (see, for example Le Mouël et al., 1981)." Even citations in review articles tend to look like that (in fact, my quote is from a review article). RockMagnetist (talk) 15:28, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
I'm glad RockMagnetist specified the scope of his comment to be about the sciences. In the humanities, nearly every citation accompanies a discussion of a work or builds on a surprising or original fact that originated in the work under discussion. Citations such as "Fourteenth-century music has long been a topic of interest [1][2][4][6][17][22]" are nearly unheard of; I had to learn the style when I moved into computational musicology research. Hence citation counts are much lower. And the citations are often difficult to extract since they can be buried in discursive footnotes and repetitive information (two cites from the same journal, etc.) is often abbreviated (in my world, into Latin). -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 18:07, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
This point conflates the notability of the individual (per WP:PROF) with the content of the article. AfD only requires demonstrating the former. It is "good form" that recommends addressing the latter, which I think we're all probably guilty of failing to do at one point or another. Agricola44 (talk) 18:56, 17 March 2014 (UTC).
@Agricola44: If you think I have conflated anything, you haven't understood my argument. But maybe that's my fault for not being more clear - so I'll state it another way: WP:PROF is not a policy, but a guideline, "best treated with common sense". Yet some of the regular contributors to academic AfD's treat it as policy, and berate nominators for not being familiar with its arcane details. The h-index criterion is the most arcane and the one most commonly associated with minimally informative stubs. I am not disputing that the stubs are notable, but experienced editors should recognize that this is not obvious, explain it to newcomers better, and (where possible) improve the articles so they don't need WP:PROF. RockMagnetist (talk) 20:21, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
I agree with most of this, in principle. You're right about WP:PROF, although it has effectively become policy by virtue of its heavy use by the relatively small number of editors who do the yeoman's (and thankless) work at academics' AfD. I have witnessed some of the type of behavior you mention, but to play Devil's advocate, I will point out that it often seems to be a reaction against what is a growing stream of vanity or fanpage articles, with their attendant supporters and frequent sockpuppets. As Xxan mentioned above, a quick H-index check (when done appropriately!) can often dispose of these cases quickly, so that overworked eds can go on to other cases. I don't think WP:PROF is so arcane that a newcomer can't quickly get "the lay of the land" by reviewing a few dozen cases from the archive and I think we should expect this minimal level of effort. Anything less tends to waste the time of productive editors, a state of affairs we cannot afford! I also agree that improving content is something for which we should all be striving. However, as apparently an academic yourself, you'll no doubt recognize that folks outside of the academy do not tend frequently to write on folks inside. This was the motivation for WP:PROF. So, I don't think the goal of content improvement is necessarily to eliminate an article's reliance on WP:PROF, although that certainly could be a by-product. Agricola44 (talk) 20:51, 17 March 2014 (UTC).
(Reset to reference something above). Agricola said, "So again, I think h-index is a useful tool, albeit only one within a larger toolbox. Third, regarding older publications and the statement above by Michael Scott Cuthbert, it is simply a matter of using the right indexing tool. WoS goes back eons and some institutions have online access back to the early 1900s." I'll refer back to the research I did at [[2]] in 2008 on what WoS, etc. citations cover, and look at a search today and see that nothing has changed there w.r.t. humanities citations and h-indexes. I mentioned Nino Pirrotta as a scholar with numerous prizes named after him, many many festschrifts, conferences organized in honor of the ten-year and 15-year anniversary of his death, winner of the highest award in the discipline of musicology, prof. at Harvard, Princeton, etc. -- his WoS h-index is 2, with fewer than 20 total citations. When I look at the extracted citations from any article I've written in WoS, they get on average 1 citation correct out of 30. It's still not a tool for the humanities. Best, -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 18:18, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
And yet...if one does some quick searching in WoS, one finds quite literally tens of thousands of contributions from the humanities published in humanities journals. For example, "TOPIC: (poetry) Refined by: WEB OF SCIENCE CATEGORIES=(LITERATURE) Timespan=All years. Indexes=SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI, A&HCI" returns >10K hits from journals such as Comp. Lit., Poetics, Narrative, Victorian Lit. and Culture, and on and on. My favorite poet Mary Jo Bang has 57 WoS hits from journals such as Ploughshares, Kenyon Rev., etc. So, while I'm sure it's quite trivial to find individual cases where a notable humanities professor is not well-represented, the "coverage" is there in WoS for those people who's work appears in humanities journals. I don't think anyone argues that average citations aren't lower, but again, I think we already try to give reasoned consideration to different citation patterns among fields. (I'm sure this can always improve. Maybe someone will write a paper on this that quantifies the differences.) I stand by my argument against any philosophy that maintains "this or that tool is not useful for this or that subject". In all cases, we should (at least try to) cast the widest net by evaluating the totality of each person's contributions, not because most people will actually have contributions in lots of different venues (indeed, most will probably not), but rather because erring on this point and mistakenly deleting an article is an extremely expensive and unjustified blunder. Agricola44 (talk) 18:53, 17 March 2014 (UTC).
I followed this a bit more out of curiosity. I think that obtaining a comprehensive census of humanities content would be difficult, but here are a few examples to get a better idea of coverage, though the hits below are not mutually exclusive, I'm sure. For comparison, I've included some general science categories, as well. (Each query had the suffix "Timespan=All years. Indexes=SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI, A&HCI", which I've omitted for brevity.) While the number of science journal articles is vastly more than the number of humanities journal articles, the latter still number in the hundreds of thousands (just for these few topics). Agricola44 (talk) 15:47, 18 March 2014 (UTC).
Topic WoS Query WoS Hits
Literature TOPIC: (literature) Refined by: WEB OF SCIENCE CATEGORIES=(LITERATURE) 19,785
Sociology TOPIC: (social work) Refined by: WEB OF SCIENCE CATEGORIES=(SOCIAL WORK OR SOCIOLOGY) 20,008
History TOPIC: (history) Refined by: WEB OF SCIENCE CATEGORIES=(HISTORY) 91,139
Art TOPIC: (art) Refined by: WEB OF SCIENCE CATEGORIES=(ART) 37,649
Philosophy TOPIC: (philosophy) Refined by: WEB OF SCIENCE CATEGORIES=(PHILOSOPHY OR RELIGION OR HISTORY PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE OR ETHICS) 36,353
English TOPIC: (english) Refined by: WEB OF SCIENCE CATEGORIES=(LANGUAGE LINGUISTICS OR LINGUISTICS) 25,432
Chemistry TOPIC: (chemistry) Refined by: WEB OF SCIENCE CATEGORIES=(CHEMISTRY MULTIDISCIPLINARY OR CHEMISTRY ORGANIC OR CHEMISTRY INORGANIC NUCLEAR OR CHEMISTRY PHYSICAL OR MATERIALS SCIENCE MULTIDISCIPLINARY OR CHEMISTRY ANALYTICAL) 246,691
Physics TOPIC: (physics) Refined by: WEB OF SCIENCE CATEGORIES=(PHYSICS APPLIED OR PHYSICS ATOMIC MOLECULAR CHEMICAL OR PHYSICS MULTIDISCIPLINARY OR PHYSICS FLUIDS PLASMAS OR PHYSICS PARTICLES FIELDS OR PHYSICS CONDENSED MATTER OR PHYSICS NUCLEAR) 283,834
Engineering TOPIC: (engineering) Refined by: WEB OF SCIENCE CATEGORIES=(ENGINEERING CHEMICAL OR ENGINEERING ELECTRICAL ELECTRONIC OR ENGINEERING CIVIL OR ENGINEERING MECHANICAL OR ENGINEERING MULTIDISCIPLINARY OR ENGINEERING BIOMEDICAL OR ENGINEERING INDUSTRIAL) 109,713

Dear Agricola44 -- thank you very much for this fascinating data. I think that what one will find if he or she digs deeper though is that the citations in the humanities are of very low quality (i.e., the author is extracted wrong, the titles, journals, and years are corrupted) and that the linkages between them are thus not created. It comes from using traditional footnotes (which can vary hugely in format and mixed with discursive notes) over a reference section at the back of the paper. Those humanities papers that are extracted properly are from the few journals that use that format. More importantly, though, is that as far as I'm aware, citation numbers are never used as an indication of notability in the field. I have literally never heard of citation numbers brought up in a hiring or promotion situation in the humanities, so by emphasizing them we are creating our own WP idea of notability and not considering notability factors in the field (mainly letters of evaluation; quality of journals published in; reviews of books, etc.). -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 14:48, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

citation numbers are not used, but quality of citations is. If a person's work is referred to in every serious book on a subject, they are likely an authority. As some additional points: (1) the humanities citation data is extracted only for cites from the journals WoS covers. Until recently , there were very few humanities journals among them, and the situation is only slightly better. The citations then will be biased towards those publishing in fields which do have significant overage--if for example citations are from psychology or economics journals. (3)WoS coverage for non-English journals is extremely weak. In the humanities, many area-specific subjects are primarily published in journals of that language. The archeology of scandinavia is reported mainly in the scandinavian languages. The ancient history of Italy is primarily in Italian. WoS generally does not cover these. (4) WoS refused to give impact factors data in the humanities for many years, precisely because of the the problems noted in this discussion--the very wide spread of journals in which they appear, the appearance of many or most of the citations in books rather than journals, and the extremely long span during which citations appear. (I've had have some personal discussions with Garfield on this, because when I was a beginning librarian, I did not understand.) (5) I do however disagree that every citation in the humanities is meaningful. I'm looking at McCormack's already classic Origins of the European Economy, and he makes a point of citing every published report in its field (To be sure its field is AD 300-900), where every bit of original source is precious & studied). IN a sense, MSC is not wrong, for most books in the humanities do indeed indicate for the most important papers and books that they are important, and applicable quotations could be found. Such can be found in the sciences too, for at least some of the cites, especially if review articles are examined. If this were done exhaustively, we could probably prove essentially all assistant professors in research universities as notable. DGG ( talk ) 18:08, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
FWIW the long timespan of citations is also an issue in mathematics and related fields. For some reason that hasn't stopped them from publishing impact factors in those areas... —David Eppstein (talk) 18:23, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

We need to define a particular h-index value

I don't know what is a high h-index. 5? 20? 500? 5 million? And most people won't, either. We need to agree on a specific number here. @Jinkinson, Mscuthbert, DGG, Randykitty, Xxanthippe, RockMagnetist, Agricola44, and David Eppstein: --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:53, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

This is Procrustean and misguided. Different fields have different citation patterns and different thresholds for notability. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:17, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
I agree with David Eppstein. Different fields are extremely different. The only way to make valid comparisons is by comparing with others in the same exact specialty, which is more research than we usually do to establish notability--especially since such comparisons need to take into account the particular distribution of citations for the individual (eg. 6,6,6,6,6,6 has h=6, but so does 100,100,6,6,6,6 --and the implications for notability are very different) the types of journals published in, the time pattern of citations, the length of the scientific career, and even the specific articles; this intensive analysis can only be accurately done by someone who knows not only bibliometrics but the subject at hand. I keep track of the work on using simple numbers to measure scientific importance, and nobody has really found one that is satisfactory, especially across subjects, though there have been some interesting attempts to normalize and combine measures. DGG ( talk ) 05:27, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
I agree with David Eppstein and DGG. There are lots of obvious cases that can be disposed of quickly on the basis of h-index alone, e.g. a 50 is notable in any field. Beyond that, there's an enormous gray area. We have often used the rule-of-thumb that 10 to 15 is the borderline region, but even this depends on the field. Also (and very importantly), h-index can only be used in the "pro" sense to demonstrate notability. It cannot be used in the "contra" sense to disprove notability because there are so many other ways an academic could be notable. For example, we often find notability for academics in the humanities through WorldCat searches that demonstrate large holdings of published books, or of significant reviews of their books. All in all, I think we do a pretty good job here of recognizing that h-index is not a surgical instrument, but really more of a blunt object that can be useful when wielded in certain cases. Agricola44 (talk) 15:40, 27 August 2014 (UTC).
Guys, I am confused. The policy states that "high h index is sufficient", but if we cannot define what that means, it's useless. If I look at Google Scholar of an academic and see his h index, are you telling me it's meaningless unless I compare it to others in his field? At the very least, then we should change the wording of the policy to reflect that. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 17:05, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
(1) the guideline is quite clear already: "Measures of citability such as the h-index, g-index, etc., may be used as a rough guide in evaluating whether Criterion 1 is satisfied, but they should be approached with caution because their validity is not, at present, completely accepted, and they may depend substantially on the citation database used. Also, they are discipline-dependent; some disciplines have higher average citations than others." The most important two words of that sentence are "rough guide". Like any rough guide, it doesn't help much for close distinctions.
(2) "high", like "reliable" or "significant" is left deliberately imprecise. It is frequently the subject of discussion at afds in the field. Look: in some subjects, such as some biomedical subfields, many people work on a particular topic, people publish an enormous number of relatively small articles, and normally cite every pertinent publication from the last few years. This greatly increases the citation density in the field, and therefore the number of citations to any article will be quite high even for fairly routine work, but tapers off sharply with time. (and in fact , the impact factor was first devised with these fields in mind). In others, like mathematics, people publish relatively long papers at less frequent intervals, with usually a fairly limited number of citation to the directly pertinent work,and therefore the citation per article will be very low except for the truly famous papers, but often continuing for many years. In some fields outside the sciences, such as literature or history, most important work is published in books, appearing at long intervals, and even for journal articles, almost nobody publishes multiple articles a year, and what they choose to cite may be fairly limited, especially for journal articles., and may only include the works in their exact often very narrow topic. In some fields, like archeology, the number of workers on any given topic is very small, and therefore there will intrinsically be very few actual citations, as there is relatively little to cite. There are additionally historical changes: in many fields, the density of citation is considerably higher now than it was 30 or 40 years ago, so earlier scholars will characteristically have lower numbers.
(3) The "which database is chosen" factor means that google scholar will almost always give between 1.5 and 3 times the citations as Web of Science or Scopus, because Google scholar includes a considerably greater range of informal publications.
(4) the part about "doubts about validity" could be much further elaborated--for example, consider the numerical example I gave. What counts for notability is not as much the volume or work produced, but its importance. h factor especially does not differentiate because it uses a single simple uncorrected cutoff to give a single value.
(5) I try to never use the phrase h index unless I am replying to an argument that tries to use it. I rather say, for example, This individual has published 25 papers with 25 or more citations, of which 3 have more than 100.
(6) In summary , yes, I am indeed telling you not only that "it is meaningless unless you compare it with others in the field" but that it is subject to error unless compared with others doing the same sort of work for the same length of time. Tenure committees take account of this, but only in a preliminary way--they also try to judge the intrinsic importance of the work and the individuals promise for the future--but they do it on the basis of being experts in the subject, which we generally are not. This is exactly why I have always said that anyone who has received tenure at a major research university (at least in the last 50 or 60 years) should be considered notable. We go by what the experts in the outside world judge notable--we do not judge ourselves. In this case, the experts have made a judgment, and I am not about to say that a distinguished department at a distinguished university cannot competently judge who they think is important enough to attract other scholars to that department. DGG ( talk ) 19:06, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
I think references to the h-index should be removed from this guideline. As @DGG points out, it's only a rough guide and there are many caveats. It is a prime example of instruction creep: without it, the whole section on citation metrics would be unnecessary. And in the end, it just amounts to some Wikipedian's judgement of how an h-index applies to a given case. Such judgements are not verifiable, which is why we should not be making them. I think the tenure idea is worth considering. RockMagnetist (talk) 05:02, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
Using tenure could arguably be worse in this regard because different institutions grant it for different reasons (great teaching, important research, prodigious fund-raising, you've been here for a long time and we don't have anyone else to take your 3 course per semester load) and the processes/policies are basically confidential (and often political). In the end, I could see its usage basically evolving the same way as for h-index: a tool for easy confirmation in certain cases ("Keep. tenured at Harvard"), but not that useful in a deletion context. Plus, there is an added uncertainty: promotion to associate is not always accompanied by tenure, so status may be indeterminate in some cases. At least h-index (as a citation meta-statistic) can be debated fairly transparently. I don't think this is the case with tenure. Agricola44 (talk) 16:32, 28 August 2014 (UTC).
About tenure, for academics whom we might be considering here, it's really not a function of different reasons. It's research, with the accompanying funds taken in the same gulp. Despite all kinds of PR, there's really nothing else. (End of personal grouse.) That said, the guideline page already does discuss assistant/associate/full/named professorship, putting the criterion somewhere above full in many cases. Tenure commonly (not always) comes at the associate level in the US, so making tenure a near-automatic determinant of notability would actually lower the bar here, by a lot. We'd be keeping a potentially huge number of pages about associate professors. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:21, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
Re "it's research": I think that's true for major research universities. But not true for institutions that might like to call themselves research universities but are really more centered around teaching, etc. And re the idea to switch to this as a notability criterion, I think the use of criterion #6 in AfDs is instructive: it was originally intended to mean "president of a major university", but we often see attempts to use it to justify heads of minor community colleges, tiny seminaries, department chairs, etc. Similarly, if we change the criterion to one of being tenured, we would have to word it very carefully to specify what level of institution we mean. We don't want tenured community college professors to be considered automatically notable, I think. Nor tenured elementary school teachers. And another issue with switching from an accomplishment-based system (wrote a highly-cited paper) to a credential-based one (tenure) is that it leaves out many people who have made a big impact but for whatever reason are not employed as tenured faculty at major universities. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:40, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
I agree with you about how we would have to compose it as a guideline. As for research, I can tell you from WP:OR that it's very much at "institutions that might like to call themselves research universities", because there are a lot of those, and that's what they do. But that's, well, academic, and I think that undertaking a big rewrite to cover all those contingencies that you correctly identify would just end up being instruction creep. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:50, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
Hi Piotrius -- thanks for tagging me in the discussion -- I disappeared from this group about 9 months ago when I realized that I needed to temporarily spend less time thinking about whether tenure for others was significant and focus on making sure MIT granted it to me (:-) DONE!), so I appreciate being brought back to something I really care about. I agree with DGG, Agricola, and others that no single number can work well for notability based on h-index. FWIW, MIT's tenure process is, I think fair to say, over 90% (some would say 100%) based on research and I got it in musicology with a Google Scholar h-index of 3 and two of those three articles are in computational musicology; many traditional humanistic fields are almost entirely absent in GS because of their indexing system. My most significant article ("Tipping the Iceberg") only has five citations on GS, but it's already had a discussion symposium dedicated to it, so I think I'm fair in discounting GS citations as a mark of influence. Citation counts have never played a part in any promotion or hiring discussion I've been a part of (obviously I wasn't a part of my own). H-Index should never even be brought up in the humanities. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 16:37, 30 August 2014 (UTC)
Congratulations on getting tenure at such a fine university! RockMagnetist (talk) 23:41, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

The arguments against using tenure for notability are strong, and I agree it shouldn't be added. I would like to reiterate my proposal that the h-index be scrapped as well. As @Mscuthbert has emphasized, it is of little value in the humanities; and in the sciences its application is so loaded with caveats that it requires a whole section on citation metrics. Now that's what I call instruction creep! RockMagnetist (talk) 23:50, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

The h-index is mentioned only once in the guideline, in a warning that it can be difficult to use and is not universally accepted as valid. Are you proposing that warning be scrapped? If not, then what? —David Eppstein (talk) 00:02, 31 August 2014 (UTC)
I suppose what I am really saying is that the paragraph on highly cited research should be removed, along with the section on citation metrics. In practice, the application of this criterion generally boils down to quoting an h-index. RockMagnetist (talk) 00:17, 31 August 2014 (UTC)
The alternative, for people in high-citation STEM fields for whom we're unlikely to see book reviews etc., is to dig into the details of hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of sources that cite the work of the subject in order to determine which of them provide sufficiently non-trivial and independent coverage. That doesn't seem like an improvement to me. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:10, 31 August 2014 (UTC)
Let's look at it from a different angle: Suppose that someone is highly cited but doesn't satisfy any other notability criterion. Why does Wikipedia need an article on that person? RockMagnetist (talk) 04:47, 31 August 2014 (UTC)
Because by virtue of exactly their high citations they most likely satisfy WP:GNG thousands of times over? So that we can link to them from the articles on the subjects they contributed to in case readers are curious about where science comes from? To satisfy the aesthetic concerns of editors like me who think that an encyclopedia devoted solely to pokemons and famous-for-being-famous reality-show celebrities would be too superficial to take seriously? Because we don't require soccer players, politicians, and porn stars to satisfy WP:PROF so there is no logical reason why we should require academics to satisfy WP:NFOOTY, WP:PORNBIO, or WP:POLITICIAN? Because the night sky is dark? Because the researchers in some fields are too devoted to their research to spend as much effort at self-promotion, and we want our encyclopedia to have balanced coverage of all fields? Because it's the wrong question and an instance of the pathetic fallacy? —David Eppstein (talk) 05:02, 31 August 2014 (UTC)
Since we seem to agree that simply removing the caution about misuse of the h-index is not what we want here, how about, instead, strengthening the existing caution? Currently, it says in part that such indexes "may be used as a rough guide", before going on to point out the limitations. I think that may be the language that leads some editors to use the index as a sufficient indicator to "keep". How about changing it to something else? Perhaps "are of limited usefulness" (correspondingly changing "but" to "and" after the comma, with some further copyediting)? --Tryptofish (talk) 20:32, 31 August 2014 (UTC)
That seems like a reasonable idea to me. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:51, 31 August 2014 (UTC)
That works for me too. RockMagnetist (talk) 17:12, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Proposal

It sounds like that idea is of interest, so I'm going to make it specific. The current wording on the guideline page (under "Citation metrics") is:

  • Measures of citability such as the h-index, g-index, etc., may be used as a rough guide in evaluating whether Criterion 1 is satisfied, but they should be approached with caution because their validity is not, at present, completely accepted, and they may depend substantially on the citation database used. Also, they are discipline-dependent; some disciplines have higher average citations than others.

The proposal is to change it to:

  • Measures of citability such as the h-index, g-index, etc., are of limited usefulness in evaluating whether Criterion 1 is satisfied. They should be approached with caution because their validity is not, at present, completely accepted, and they may depend substantially on the citation database used. They are also discipline-dependent; some disciplines have higher average citation rates than others.

--Tryptofish (talk) 19:38, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

I don't know. Maybe someone else can answer that question. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:01, 1 September 2014 (UTC)
Web of Science includes a database called "Essential Science Indicators". It includes top-cited scientists, papers, journals, etc, based on the last 10 years of data from WoS. Its disadvantage is that it is limited to the last 10 years, only covers the sciences and social sciences, and is very selective (for top papers, it only takes the top 1% percentile, for example; haven't been able to figure out what the cutoff is for scientists, but probably similarly high). However, it also gives citation counts for 22 (broad) disciplines, per year, for the 0.01, 0.1, 1, 10, 20, and 50th percentiles. --Randykitty (talk) 11:14, 2 September 2014 (UTC)
The irony is that, selective as it is, the list contains a high proportion of researchers with no Wikipedia article. While we argue at AfD's over whether someone with an h-index of 15 is notable, Wikipedia has no article on Stacey B. Gabriel, the top of the list with 23 "hot" papers. I'm not sure how "hot" is defined, but she has at least 24 papers with over 300 citations each - and a mind-boggling eight with over 1,000. I think lists of highly cited researchers would be a great source for article ideas; I'll bet it would be easy to find enough on many of these people to satisfy GNG. RockMagnetist (talk) 15:57, 2 September 2014 (UTC)
That's a very good point.... --Randykitty (talk) 16:34, 2 September 2014 (UTC)
More - out of the 18 featured scientists with multiple "hot" papers, 4 have Wikipedia articles. That's one reason why I'm not very supportive of attempts to save stubs that do little but reproduce someone's home page - simply because they have an adequate citation count. If someone is bothered by all those Pokemon articles and wants to promote science, they should add more articles on important scientists. There are also plenty of major prize winners who don't have articles. RockMagnetist (talk) 16:45, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

That's a good discussion, thanks. Now, back to this proposal, should we implement it? --Tryptofish (talk) 17:13, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Relevant category-renaming discussion

Please see Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2014 October 20#Category:Fellows of Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (nominated as a rename to fix the grammar issue but seemingly morphed into a deletion discussion). —David Eppstein (talk) 02:42, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

RFC on Academic ranks

Pls see here: Talk:List of academic ranks#Request for comment: Splitting the academic rank topics. Thanks. Fgnievinski (talk) 19:28, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Web of Knowledge free index

The guideline says:

Web of Knowledge provides a free index of highly cited researchers, which may be of some value. In individual scientific fields, MathSciNet, SciFinder Scholar (Chemical Abstracts), and similar disciplinary indexes are also valuable resources, often specifically listing citation counts, but access to them is also not free and usually requires a university computer account.

But when I try to access the Web of Knowledge index I get a 403 error: "You don't have permission to access /formBrowse.cgi on this server." Is that because I don't have an account there, and in that case should we describe it as free?

This came up because in WP:Articles for deletion/James M. Jasper, the nominator has questioned relying on citations in Google Scholar as a metric. I don't have access to university library accounts. Is 1000 citations of a sociology paper in GS not enough to be notable? – Margin1522 (talk) 19:42, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Request for Comment: paid fellowships as an academic notability criterion

There is consensus that fellowships, paid or otherwise, should not necessarily count towards the notability of academics, only where the fellowship is a highly selective honour, and that the guidance does not need amending. Formerip (talk) 16:31, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The question: should paid fellowships be considered when assessing an academic's notability? As an example, the Royal Geographic Society allows members to purchase fellowship status, and having such a status has been presented as evidence of notability in a deletion discussion (see here). As a corollary, and more specifically, should we have a statement on the notability guidelines for academics that makes clear whether or not such fellowships are a criterion? KDS4444Talk 02:57, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

It has nothing to do with whether membership dues or an initiation fee are involved. It's whether it's a highly selective honor, or whether it's something anyone with enough patience and interest (or an ordinary level of professional expertise) can attain. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:49, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
I completely agree with David. It's really simple: if you can become a fellow just by paying a membership fee, then that is not a highly selective honor, hence does not count toward notability. But, for example, being elected to Fellow status at the Royal Society cannot be bought and is such a highly selective honor. I'm not sure I see the utility of this RfC, this really does not need clarifying/amendment. --Randykitty (talk) 04:26, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
If payment occurs, it's in the other direction, i.e., many scholarships are called fellowships (e.g., NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship). Fgnievinski (talk) 14:06, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
Correct, but those fellowships are most often intended for rather junior scientists and although it shows that a recipient is promising, it rarely establishes notability. What is meant here is a special class of membership in a large and notable society/national academy/etc. --Randykitty (talk) 15:17, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

In the middle are Fellowships of professional societies where a member has to apply and meet certain criteria. Foe example I am a Fellow of the UK based Royal Society of Chemistry and the Royal Australian Chemical Institute. After several years as a member I applied to be upgraded. The decision was based on my achievements. It is not a question of just paying a higher fee. Whether it meets our notability criteria, I doubt. --Bduke (Discussion) 20:49, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

David Eppstein's comment is very much on the mark. Also to note that the fact of a payment being required does not in itself lower the selectivity. Friends in the group have told me that the American Academy of Arts and Sciences requires an initiation fee for new fellows, but of course one can't become a fellow just by paying the fee. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 17:05, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Per numerous editors above, what matters for determining notability are the selection criteria for the position, not the fee. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:35, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

  • Comment - I think we're looking at criteria 3, right? I think we're safe here with the language "for which that is a highly selective honor". I think KDS4444 is making a worthwhile point that a lot of fellowships aren't highly selective honors. NickCT (talk) 22:33, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Relevant discussion

See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Mass bio creation without establishing notability by Philafrenzy re a recent batch of creations of articles on historians, of disputed notability. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:25, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Further note about GScholar

The guideline currently warns about GScholar being incomplete for many fields; I have found this to be correct in the sense that much literature from the humanities is not represented in its index. However, I would also like to point out that in some fields, computer science in particular, GScholar is overcomplete: it doesn't distinguish grey literature from formal publications, counting bachelors' theses, reports, unpublished manuscripts and even course notes (when formatted as PDFs with references and posted on university websites) along with "real" publications when determining citation counts. Do other people have the same experience? Should we warn about this as well? QVVERTYVS (hm?) 08:29, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

  • In September of last year (Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(academics)/Archive_8#Proposal), @Tryptofish put forward a proposal for reworking this statement. There were 6 support !votes and 0 opposed, but it never made it into the page. I've added it now as a point of discussion to add to this. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 16:24, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
  • In computer science in particular, other sources (in particular ISI) are seriously incomplete, to the point where we have published statements from major computer science organizations warning against their use. In comparison the fact that GS includes tech reports, arXiv, and other literature that is published but not fully peer reviewed seems relatively benign. Yes, the numbers cannot be compared directly with numbers from other sources, but these comparisons are dangerous for a lot of other reasons as well. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:50, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
    I'm not disputing that other sources can be unreliable. What I'd really like is for the text to include the advice to check (a sample of) the list of publications and not blindly trust the figures. Here's a case where GScholar seems to be going completely haywire, although in a different way, by assigning publications to the wrong person. QVVERTYVS (hm?) 18:09, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
    Yes, I agree, Google scholar profiles and search results both need to be checked to make sure they aren't including publications by other people. You would think that authors who set up a profile would want it to be a clean record of their publications, but some of them (including some of my co-authors, sadly) don't seem inclined to clean out listings that are clearly not theirs but that boost their numbers. This comes up fairly regularly in notability discussions; see, for instance, the ongoing Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alan Collins (academic). It's a different problem than the one of counting preprints as publications, though. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:06, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

If I may make a proposal for amending the text, I'd like to replace

In essence, it is a rough guide only.

by

Other problems that sometimes occur on GScholar are duplicates (which artificially increase the citation score of all works they cite) and that publications may be assigned to the wrong author, and publications may appear multiple times. Don't put blind faith into its numbers, but do check a sample of the publications listed for a person, as well as the citing publications.

(Not my best English, copyediting welcome.) QVVERTYVS (hm?) 21:12, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

If you're going to complain about "duplicates ... and publications may appear multiple times" then maybe you should also eliminate the repetitious and duplicated redundancy from your comment? —David Eppstein (talk) 21:24, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Eyes needed on a few articles...

There are some articles that seem to be hinging on interpretations of the academic notability policy.

Matthew C. Whitaker is a BLP about an academic that consists entirely of items relating to plagiarism (thus there's very little BLP at all). There is an editwar going on between two other users, and I stepped in to take a look at it. I prodded the article after it became apparent that there wasn't anything of value in it, and started a discussion on the talk page. One of the users edited my sig and has branded me as the article subject by one of the editors, so that's now at ANI.

Bernard Haykel is an article created by the same user, and consists of two sources, one of which is a journalist saying something once. There's no vita, no nothing, and whether it meets NACADEMIC guidelines needs to be reviewed. MSJapan (talk) 05:18, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

The Haykel article seems fine and will probably survive any sort of war over sources or lack of (he's a Full Prof., Princeton); the Whitaker case is the more complex case. Normally a Full Prof. at a major research school will pass the NACADEMIC guidelines; he was full and then demoted which is interesting and rare enough in itself. I do see lots of sources covering this case, and good ones (Inside Higher Education, Arizona Republic, Chronicle) and there doesn't seem to be a separate article that we could move this BLP1E; I suggest moving to Matthew Whitaker Plagiarism Case to avoid it being a biographical article of undue weight and avoiding the appearance of NPOV; make this a redirect for now and someone can make a more rounded article later (that includes this case but also his work). I think that the "Steve Bartman" redirect to "Steve Bartman incident" is a good precedent. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 18:56, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
I added a little more to the Haykel article, and I agree that he looks quite notable. I think it's too soon to tell whether Whitaker will have any long-term notability as a result of the incidents described in his article. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:25, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
Yes, the Guggenheim helped Haykel considerably as far as meeting notability. I'm not sure why that didn't pop right out when I looked. I'm still certain that Whitaker is a case of WP:NOTNEWS, WP:CURRENTEVENTS and WP:RECENTISM, but part of the notability problem is claim inflation - he's been claimed as much more influential than the sources show. There were issues with his tenure appointment, issues with his lack of research productivity, apparently he had the Center he runs moved off the main campus, and the new plagiarism is just on top of everything else. So I think this is just a short-term problematic academician. MSJapan (talk) 22:07, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Norm Houghton (historian)

The above AfD could use some input from editors here. Thanks. --Randykitty (talk) 09:37, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Criterion #3

I'd just like to find out if being a member of the Institute of Medicine satisfies the criterion. Also, how do you do that thingie where you check the number of citations for a person's papers, and what's the approximate threshold number for a psychiatrist? Clarityfiend (talk) 09:08, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Re IOM: judging by this, yes, it satisfied the criterion. Re how to calculated the h-index or numbers of citations more generally: you probably need Web of Science access to do it right; you can get numbers from Google scholar but I think Web of Science is likely better for that field. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:10, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
Thanks. Clarityfiend (talk) 02:34, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
The IOM has recently changed its' name to the National Academy of Medicine; my assumption is that they did so to make life easier for WP editors (joke). Seriously, it is just as Epstein says.E.M.Gregory (talk) 19:15, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Department chairs

I have a question. Are heads of departments at universities generally presumed to be notable? More specifically science departments, as opposed to say English professors. ~EDDY (talk/contribs)~ 20:59, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Not by the standards of WP:PROF. The only criterion for administrative positions, #6, applies only to people at a much higher level such as presidents of whole universities or of major academic societies. Department chairs are frequently notable, but for other reasons (academic impact or holding a named chair) rather than ex officio. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:09, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
I wouldn't tend to make that presumption, no, and would echo mostly what David Eppstein has said. Department chairs may be appointed for any number of reasons that don't really reflect particular notability: "We couldn't get anyone else who wanted the extra hassles", "Alice is retiring in four years, and this will give her pension a nice bump", "Bob's a nice wishy-washy compromise who isn't going to annoy the major grant-holders who actually run the department", and other variations of "[university politics] blah blah blah". Chairs are expected to be respectable, but they don't have to be outstanding. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:50, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
Agree, agree! But I would say that if someone is the department chair of a department with a major reputation, look more carefully for evidence of influence according to the criteria that do matter before concluding that they are not notable. This not looking farther has happened with, for instance, the head of theater at USC a few years ago where Google Scholar was finding nothing but she was significantly cited in theater journals. Our "X is not a criterion for notability" discussions here sometimes become in AfD, "people who do X are not notable," which is just as bad of a conclusion. So let's not assume that TenOfAllTrades's reasons apply in the absence of other information. Many chairs are merely respectable, but just as many are outstanding. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 15:24, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
As Eppstein says, in American schools, certainly in arts and sciences where it is a rotating appointment, often seen as more chore than honor, and where many departments excuse those of their most most distinguished members who want to avoid the job - and don't make the cantankerous ones chair even if they are extremely notable. Where you might want to remember that it is a the very least an indicator of notability is in the bench sciences, and, especially in the life sciences and medicine where research budgets are enormous. Here we can be talking about department chairs who manage budgets in the tens or hundreds of millions (govt. grants and private donations) run independent building campaigns to construct research facilities; some medical school department chairs run multiple large hospitals; plus in medicine and certain other sciences, hiring is not done by faculty committees, but directly by the chair - all of which can makes department chair in certain departments at a first-rank university (UCSD or Stanford) a bigger job than being president of a small university.E.M.Gregory (talk) 19:35, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Named chairs

I propose removing criterion #5, "The person holds or has held a named chair appointment or "Distinguished Professor" appointment at a major institution of higher education and research (or an equivalent position in countries where named chairs are uncommon)." Whether someone donated money to the university to have a chair named after themselves or their loved ones is not a meaningful criterion to judge whether the person holding that chair is more notable than their colleagues. "Distinguished Professor" might be a little better since that's indeed meant as a honor for the person holding the chair instead of the person after whom the chair is named, but that clause is invoked comparatively rarely, and "Distinguished Professors" are extremely likely to meet other criteria, particularly #1, so removing that criterion would not have a measurable effect on determining who is or isn't notable. Furthermore, the "named chairs" criterion favors countries where such honors are common over those with a more egalitarian approach to professorship, thus promoting a systemic bias. Finally, "major institution of higher education and research" is uselessly vague and in practice means that any named chair is taken as an instant guarantee of notability. Huon (talk) 15:03, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

  • I would support removing it as vague and not really about the professor. Furthermore, I just want to point out that "or an equivalent position in countries where named chairs are uncommon" is also uselessly vague. Howicus (Did I mess up?) 15:32, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The motivations of the person or entity doing the endowing is not the point. The chair is still given as a reward for excellence within the faculty and as a result it is about the professor. It is especially useful in prior eras where the other criteria can be harder to calculate. It is not a perfect metric, but then none of the criteria are. Wasted Time R (talk) 15:44, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
This is the faculty of Yale Law School. Unless I miscounted, they have a grand total of five non-visiting, non-adjunct Professors of Law that do not hold a "Sterling" or otherwise named chair. Now go ahead and tell me that everybody but those five persons is "rewarded for excellence within the faculty". Huon (talk) 16:06, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
Yale's one of those few universities where you would expect each and every full professor to be notable, regardless of whether there position is a named chair or distinguished professorship. As for the named chair thing in general, I don't recall any case where having a named chair was the only reason that somebody turned out to be notable. Invariably, more evidence can be found (notable honorary fellowships or memberships of national academies, huge citation rates, etc). So in that sense, I guess that I don't care whether we keep #5 or not, because named chairs invariably satisfy multiple criteria anyway. --Randykitty (talk) 16:32, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
Yeah, Yale Law School is probably the furthest outlier you could find. A better case might be to take one of the big public universities with a huge faculty but also a reputation for academic strength – the University of Michigan or the University of Wisconsin, to pick a couple of examples – and then count how many professors have named/endowed chairs compared to the total faculty population there. Wasted Time R (talk) 16:38, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
Random example of an AfD where "named chair" is held out as the sole reason of notability. It's not that uncommon. Of his school of theology, six or seven out of fifteen non-associate professors hold named chairs (depending on whether "Joint Professor of Hebrew Bible" is a named chair, plus a few named associate chairs). Is Claremont School of Theology so important a center of learning that we can expect half their professors to be individually notable? I expect the ratio of named chairs is lower for public universities that don't rely quite as much on donations, but that only supports my point that "named chair" is a property of the university, not of the person holding that chair. Huon (talk) 18:35, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
You misunderstood my comment. I did not say that there are no AfDs where this is not the only argument. As explained below by Mscuthbert, we use these criteria as easy shortcuts. Let me clarify: I have yet to see a holder of a named chair that does not also fulfil other criteria once you look for it. In the example that you gave, do you really think that someone who has published multiple books with (very) reputed academic publishers will not turn out to be notable, regardless of whether they hold a named chair or not? Then just click on the Google Scholar link at the top of that AfD and remove "(theologian)" from the query. Somebody with several works cited over 100 times each (one even has 275 "hits") would be judged notable in a high-citation density field like physics, let alone a low-citation field like theology/philosophy. Clear meet of ACADEMIC#1... Most likely you'd be able to find multiple book reviews of his works, too, so he'd also meet AUTHOR. --Randykitty (talk) 08:57, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose -- I need to see some evidence that holders of named chairs would have otherwise failed the Average Professor Test before considering removing support. Part of the reasons for these criteria is to save time on what I've seen as the vast majority of AfDs for holders of distinguished professor chairs, which tend to be SNOW keeps for several reasons. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 08:16, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
I also want to ask, what has changed since the discussion at [3] or other places in the archive? -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 08:22, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Comment - the term "distinguished professor" is as far as I know only well known in the US system. From my own experience in the UK a named chair is a pretty strong indicator of a professor that has made a sufficient contribution to his field for a snow keep at AfD. For that reason I would probably suggest that keeping this critereon is a good thing - although perhaps we need more clear country specific information to develop this whole guideline, as at the moment it is a bit of a confusing jumble of terms used in different countries. --nonsense ferret 15:46, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose in British and American universities holders of named chairs are chosen in genuine and highly vetted/coveted/competitive recognition of real academic achievement. Theology schols, especially in the old mainline Protestant denominations, are a problem. Recall that Yale tried to dump its Div School a few years ago out of embarrassment over the schools' embarrassingly low admissions and academic standards. And yet I don't see a way to say: all holders of endowed chairs, except the Div School. Not to mention the fact that some of our leading scholars of Classics, Arabic, and archaeology are in Div Schools because it's a way to use those old endowed chairs to support scholarship. and if you want to learn classical Arabic, you cross-register.E.M.Gregory (talk) 19:57, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

can an academic meet WP:GNG but fail WP:NACADEMIC?

There was a heated discussion on a recent AfD here: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Rhonda_Patrick

My question here is about policy: can a researcher meet the GNG - if there have been sufficient reliable secondary sources found about him/her - even if those sources are about his/her status as a researcher and it has also been agreed has not met NACADEMIC? I think that's quite a difficult dilemma - I voted delete in the above discussion, but presented subsequently with evidence that the youtube channel had a large audience, I'm struggling to see how that fails the GNG.

I continue to believe that a researcher with a small number of citations over an extended period and low citations does not meet NACADEMIC - otherwise almost every researcher everywhere would have a wikipedia page. And as an ex science journalist, I don't really think that a lot of news articles about a piece of new research suggests notability of the researcher (because these are often led by press releases and all that yabber). But I think it is trickier when the researcher is getting coverage on a major youtube channel, and if this does suggest that she meets the GNG, then there is a problem of how to write the page without giving undue weight to her research which may/may not actually be particularly notable. Headache.

I'm really interested her in insights into the conflicts between GNG and NACADEMIC and how to weigh the one against the other in a situation like this, rather than further discussion of this particularly contentious AfD. Thanks. JMWt (talk) 12:15, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

  • I don't think that "coverage on a you tube channel" comes anywhere close to demonstrating a widespread interest in the biographical details of some ones life. GNG looks for examples of "significant" (ie not "routine") coverage in reliable sources. --ℕ ℱ 12:20, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
Right, that's what I thought initially: but I think there is a difference if this is a major youtube channel with a wide audience. Otherwise are we saying it is only notable if on a major broadcast TV show? JMWt (talk) 12:25, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
reliable sources are one with a widespread reputation for fact checking and editorial oversight. Few YouTube channels have a full time professional editorial staff or anything like it. Who checks the facts? Who is responsible for ensuring weight is given to the important issues rather than what silly story gets clicks. --ℕ ℱ 12:33, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
OK, that might be fair comment. Let's say instead an academic has a feature in the NYT about a single piece of widely reported news, but otherwise does not meet WP:NACADEMIC, what then? JMWt (talk) 13:26, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
In these days of decreasing journalistic standards I find myself asking a rule of thumb question: is this a person whose lifetime contribution to anything is likely to lead, based on current evidence, to a broadsheet national newspaper obituary. I appreciate that is not a guideline, needs a crystal ball, and people will no doubt argue it presents a higher standard. I would argue it is that level of notability that demonstrates a widespread interest in the biographical details of their life. A lot of 'stuff' appears in newspapers, but wikipedia isn't news. Can you point to the sort of details about a person published in independent sources showing when and where they were born and educated? Who their parents were etc etc. That's "significant biographical coverage" in my view and the sort of detail that fleshes out a biography, and without it whats the point of a wikipedia article that states "person X said a thing. everyone clicked on that thing". An exaggeration, but you see what I mean. --ℕ ℱ 14:58, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
And just to comment on my point, those subjects that are considered obviously notable MPs, congressmen, distinguished professors, are pretty much certain to have that sort of obit. --ℕ ℱ 15:02, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
Putting aside the question whether this particular academic meets GNG - see the lead of WP:N: A topic is presumed to merit an article if it "meets either the general notability guideline below, or the criteria outlined in a subject-specific guideline ..." The point of NACADEMIC is to make it easier to keep academics who are influential but not the subject of biographies; it doesn't override GNG. RockMagnetist(talk) 17:41, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
My thoughts about the specific case is that YouTube viewings are a weak case for notability, but a press report about a notably large number of viewings would make a stronger case (secondary versus primary sourcing). But for the more important broader question, it's obvious that an academic can pass GNG on the basis of notice for something other than academic scholarship (Barack Obama was a law professor, but that's not why we have a page about him), so the trickier question here is about how to apply ACADEMIC versus GNG to academic scholarship itself, as the opening question here makes clear. I can think of a couple of examples where it would be quite appropriate to use GNG for this. One would be where a non-tenurable academic gains notoriety when their scholarly publications become the subject of popular sensation or of a major scandal. Another is when the scholar does not really accomplish that much academically, but publishes a prominent book that popularizes their area of scholarship for a general audience, or is featured in the media as a popularizer or educator, or is chosen to give extensive governmental expert testimony. Those are cases where a person can properly pass GNG on the basis of accomplishments that arise from their academic work, in spite of failing ACADEMIC. On the other hand, it would be a mistake to determine notability on the basis of non-traditional criteria about academic work. By that, I mean things that might roughly resemble the YouTube example. Publishing on YouTube and the like ain't publishing in a peer reviewed professional outlet. So that is why any kind of possible notability of academic work that does not satisfy ACADEMIC needs to be well demonstrated in independent secondary sources. In a nutshell then, either satisfy ACADEMIC, or have very strong documentation of recognition by independent secondary sources. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:40, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

FYI The deletion has now gone to review JMWt (talk) 08:35, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Input wanted on a batch of bios

This links to a workpage to review a batch of 28 academic bios related to Columbia Theological Seminary. A 29th article was deleted already, which prompted a review of the full set. Seeking input from editors experienced in typical academic notability expectations. Thanx. Alsee (talk) 11:27, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Too inclusive?

I think these guidelines are too inclusive and will lead to the existence of hundreds of thousands and eventually millions of stub-like vanity-type articles (hundreds of thousands may already exist)...which is damaging to Wikipedia in creating/sustaining the perception that it can be frivolous and of low quality. It also encourages the creation of articles against policy (conflict of interest, autobiography, etc) because many of them are created/contributed to by the people themselves or people very close to them (family, grad students, etc)...the vast majority of these articles will be orphaned and never made to adhere to policy...and the vast majority of these articles will never be visited, particularly as the years go by...

For the most part, academics work can and should be cited within other topics of genuine notable interest (and their names will appear there) but they should not have their own personal article...In order to have their own personal article they should meet something far closer to general notability guidelines as established by third-party, independent sources...in extreme example of this might be Noam Chomsky...his work will be both cited within other articles and he is notable enough generally to have his own personal article (a person wouldn't have to be as objectively notable as Chomsky on a personal level to have a personal article, but it's an example)..

If you look at the numbered criteria, the problematic ones in my opinion are: 1, 3, 5, 8.....I think the guidelines should more align along the general notability of 2, 4, 7, 9......THOUGHTS??68.48.241.158 (talk) 13:42, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the note -- I disagree; if there's a chance of this passing, I'll give my concerns again, but I think the page's archives will give a lot of the arguments for why the guideline is where it is. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 16:10, 16 April 2016 (UTC)
I checked out the "list University of Michigan faculty" article as just an example because this was my undergraduate school...started randomly clicking on articles...almost all of them are a total disaster as far as being stubs and against editorial policy generally...almost none of these people are personally notable but most of them probably do meet the current guidelines....I don't think Wikipedia intends to a vanity who's who for academia (we're talking about potentially millions of stub articles as the years go on too)....68.48.241.158 (talk) 18:35, 16 April 2016 (UTC)
I glanced through the history; can't find anywhere that states/supports the philosophy of allowing hundreds of thousands and eventually millions of academic stub autobiographies....what is the philosophy behind this, anyway?68.48.241.158 (talk) 01:44, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
You are the one who says that there are "hundreds of thousands and eventually millions" of people who pass, so you tell me. The rest of us think that this is significantly more restrictive than, say, WP:AUTHOR or WP:GNG, according to which you are notable if only two or three reliable sources describe your work, something that is true of almost all academics. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:52, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
those links you just posted arrive at far more restrictive guidelines...look at just those four bullets for the "author" one...and the other requires the demonstration of actual personal notability via third party sources.....????68.48.241.158 (talk) 02:05, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
Those are disjunctions, not conjunctions. And most academics have *many* third party sources describing their work (i.e. citations to their publications). —David Eppstein (talk) 02:12, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
you're kind of missing the point as I state in my case that "citations to publications" as reason for a personal article is part of the problem (ie #1 in the current guidelines)..68.48.241.158 (talk) 02:35, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
No, it is you who miss the point. Citations do count towards #C1, yes. They are also reliable publications about an academic's work that (when in-depth enough) can count towards GNG. The criterion here (requiring significant impact) is considerably more restrictive than the criterion in GNG (requiring only multiple sources). —David Eppstein (talk) 02:39, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
To pass WP:Prof#1 typically takes around 1000 citations to a researcher's published work, although this depends very greatly on field.

I note that User:68.48.241.158 has started the same thread on the Village pump[4], and lost the argument after making nearly 20 edits. He has now forum shopped over here but I doubt if he will gain better traction. It is worth looking at this user's talk page User talk:68.48.241.158, which shows evidence of misbehavior. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:57, 17 April 2016 (UTC).

Oh, is this the Talk:Gödel's incompleteness theorems formalist crank again? If I had known I wouldn't have engaged. I guess I can always just disengage now. —David Eppstein (talk) 11:14 pm, Yesterday (UTC−4)
I've twice now had to restore David Eppstein's comment (above) after repeated removal (e.g. [5]) by 68.48.241.158, whose status as a crank who's made his own PAs and baseless COI accusations is indeed relevant. If he/she wants to comment on DE's comment, he is welcome to do so, but he may not remove others' comments. EEng 14:40, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
Further note: 68.48.241.158's continued removals of DE's comment have been reverted by multiple other editors. 68.48.241.158's status as a crank is on display via his 75 posts in the last month to the Goedel's Theorem talk page [6]. EEng 20:21, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
I was told in the Village Pump to move this specific discussion here....here I made a more specific/formal proposal...there was nothing "won" or "lost" over there as it was just general discussion....and most of those edits you refer to ended up being about a specific person's notability in terms of the current guidelines...so really, completely different thing altogether....68.48.241.158 (talk) 12:19, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
Yes, I suggested that this was a better forum for discussion of minor changes. It might have been a good idea to link that thread in your first post here to avoid the appearance of forum shopping. VQuakr (talk) 18:17, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Can anyone weigh in on the what the general philosophy is for allowing these kinds of articles (ie what the utility is etc to allow articles for people who aren't otherwise personally notable?)..considering all the problems it creates (as I explain above)...??68.48.241.158 (talk) 12:19, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Sure. The philosophy is very broad, 'the sum of all human knowledge' - that gets broken down into how to calculate the sum. This guideline is part of that - it generally accepts that no policy is ever likely to be adopted that all academics are un-notable, nor will there be one that all academics are notable - so of necessity there is something between those polarities. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:46, 17 April 2016 (UTC
of course, but I'm talking about the philosophy behind the current guidelines....I explained a reasonable philosophy behind altering them to be more along the lines of 2, 4, 7, 9....what is the philosophy behind how they stand now??68.48.241.158 (talk) 12:57, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
Well, 'along the lines of' is vague and ambiguous - so, as you have seen, response as should be expected is, 'what are you talking about' and 'there is nothing to respond to here' and 'your assertions are not making sense', etc. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:07, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
there would be different ways to go about this and if people agreed that the current guidelines are problematic they might go about making suggestions within this TALK about how to change them along the lines I suggest...For example, how about requiring academics to at least meet, say, 3 of the current guidelines instead of ONLY 1 as it stands now?? Wouldn't this be better? It would hugely reduce the problems I cite....what is the rationale for the current guidelines???68.48.241.158 (talk) 13:17, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
The guideline states the 'philosophy' and the 'rationale'. So, your question either needs improvement or we just are left to say, 'you are talking past us.' -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:29, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
please cite...the guidelines seem to state the guidelines, not the philosophy or rationale behind them..I'm arguing they're problematic and have stated a philosophy and rationale as to why...68.48.241.158 (talk) 13:47, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
The guideline is on the page that this talk page is attached to (so that's the cite) - perhaps you have not read it all, carefully? -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:51, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
I have read them...please cite..68.48.241.158 (talk) 13:55, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
What them? Read the whole page, I have given you the cite. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:58, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
very good, I won't engage with you along these lines anymore..68.48.241.158 (talk) 14:05, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
Can anyone weigh in on the what the general philosophy is for allowing these kinds of articles (ie what the utility is etc to allow articles for people who aren't otherwise personally notable?) Begging the question. You do not have agreement that that is the function of this notability guideline. VQuakr (talk) 18:20, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
what is the function? I've explained why I think the current guidelines are problematic and why they lead to a huge number of problematic articles. What is the argument that they're not problematic? That the benefit outweighs the harm..??68.48.241.158 (talk) 19:08, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
I'm afraid that between here and the Goedel's Theorem talkpage, you've exhausted your quota of AGF. EEng 20:21, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
What a surprise -- blocked two weeks. EEng 03:03, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Clarifying relationship between WP:PROF and the GNG

I added some information to the page about the relationship between WP:PROF and the WP:GNG (previously we only had information about the other subject-specific guidelines). It's a common error (I made it again recently, and I see it often) that the criteria here are a way of establishing that the GNG has been passed. Thus finding that someone has passed here but looking more closely and seeing that it doesn't pass GNG (via independent sources covering the subject's life) means that notability has not been established, while WP:Notability explicitly states that the subject-specific guidelines are alternatives to, not clarifications of, the GNG. I'm still not 100% happy with General Notes #1, which I think still gives the impression that this is a clarification of GNG, and I think can be worded in a better way. But I want to make sure that my most recent edits are uncontroversial before making another change. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 17:33, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Here's a sample rewrite of General Note 1: "An article's assertion that the subject passes this guideline is not sufficient. Every topic on Wikipedia must have sources that comply with Wikipedia:Verifiability. For instance, major awards listed must be confirmed, claims of impact in the field need to be substantiated by independent statements, reviews, citation metrics, library holdings, etc. (see below for specific notes), and so on. However, once the facts establishing the passage of one or more of the notability criteria above have been verified through independent sources, non-independent sources, such as official institutional and professional sources, are widely accepted as reliable sourcing for routine, uncontroversial details." I think that this would make it clearer that this statement does not conflict with Verifiability without requiring GNG to be satisfied. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 17:33, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
I think both of the ways you've characterized the relationship are roughly correct. The GNG is part of the WP:N guideline. An SNG should only have guideline status when it applies WP:N to a particular domain rather than define its own version of notability. There's room for gray area, but if an SNG consistently conflicts with the GNG, something is wrong. Nothing should be exempt from "significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject". There was an RfC a few years back in which there was a clear consensus that SNGs do not override the GNG, but in addition to that being old, lots of other conversations have taken place and more SNGs have been created. It seems like everybody who has an opinion about this is 100% certain they know how things are, yet opinions so often clash. I'm wondering if it's time for an RfC about that basic question at WT:N. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 18:33, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
time for an RfC I'd be interested in seeing this reaffirmed, if that requires an RfC or just enforcement of prior consensus czar 18:43, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
Hi Rhodo... Thanks! Are we talking about [[7]] RfC which ended in no consensus for anything except [can outline sources that assert notability]. The failure of the proposal "B.5: SNGs override GNG" might look like the community concluded that SNGs interpret GNG, but actually a bulk of the proposal was that an article in a subject area can't be notable just for passing GNG. For instance here's a sample oppose vote: "Oppose. I would say that if a subject passes either one of the GNG or the SNG, it is deemed notable." It may be time for another RfC, but I think that would need to happen on WP:N and notified on all subject guidelines, not just here. (btw, there are SNGs that consistently conflict with GNG, such as the sports one, which does not allow high school athletes with coverage in local papers to be considered notable. That seems like a no-brainer to me, but it's definitely a conflict. In comparison, the differences between WP:PROF and GNG are small, and both seem to fit well under WP:N). -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 21:11, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
The first indication of the current language on WP:N (about passing either GNG or a SNG) was added in February 2009, so it's been around for a while and seems like a rather stable part of the WP:N guideline. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 21:34, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Common outcomes and Festschriften

I am being bold and moving Festschriften and dedicatory volumes to a clear pass of C1 from the current state of "contributes to passing C1 but does not pass in itself" with the caveat "unless by a fringe, vanity, or non-respected journal or press." I've searched through AfD and haven't found a case where someone with a Festschrift has not been kept. The "specific notes" section here should coincide with clear outcomes from AfD and in its previous state it didn't. I won't be offended by a revert with discussion here. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 01:37, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

I see no reason to make this change. Just because it hasn't happened yet does not mean that it never will. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:49, 4 January 2016 (UTC).
By that logic, why list named chairs, presidents of universities, Nobel prizes? It could happen... -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 07:27, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Debates

I think debates with notable people (who have a page in Wikipedia) should be considered some evidence for the notability of academics (mostly in humanities). If X and Y have a debate and Y is notable in Wikipedia (provided that the debate is reported in some sources), then such a debate (one-to-one) will be reliable (because of the notability of Y). It will be independent too, because people in debates oppose each other. It shows that Y has acknowledged X's work. Can we add this to "Specific criteria notes" of criterion 1? --Ali Pirhayati (talk) 23:26, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

To the contrary, notability is WP:NOT INHERITED. --ℕ ℱ 23:29, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
@Pirhayati: I'm going to agree with ℕ. WP:ACADEMIC is a difficult criteria to meet, and I don't see the advantage here of making it easier. If a postdoc debates a full professor, that may just mean the postdoc was the best person out of those available to support their side (or maybe they know how to make a debate entertaining. I'm not seeing how their participation necessarily contributes to their notability in the wikipedia sense. Lesser Cartographies (talk) 04:12, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
@Pirhayati: -- I agree that "Not inherited" is the controlling doctrine here. However, I do think that coverage of the debate by others should be considered influence in a field in the same matter as citations. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 15:25, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

I didn't mean to say that it is enough for notability. I wanted to say that it can be considered one good source for showing "influence in a field" so that several debates with several notable people would be the sign of notability. --‍Ali Pirhayati (talk) 19:17, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

How does Wikipedia define scholar for sources

If someone is using a reference to support something like 'scholars say' what are we required to know about a person being cited to refer to them as a scholar? Wiktionary has some broad variations on this:

1.A student; one who studies at school or college, typically having a scholarship.
2.A specialist in a particular branch of knowledge.
3.A learned person; a bookman.

Should we avoid using this word since it has a lot of wiggle room and people may end up thinking "this person is a specialist" when they might just be included as a student?

If people are going to use 'scholar' to mean 'expert' then why don't we just use 'expert' and then hash out the more clear conflict of how we assess who an expert is and how much their opinion matters in relation to others? 184.145.18.50 (talk) 17:53, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Are you in the right place? This talk page is about our standards for having an article on an academic, not about what to call someone in other articles. Maybe you want WP:RSN? —David Eppstein (talk) 19:18, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Suggestion for the illustrations of criterion 8

In legal scholarship in the US, most of the major law reviews and law journals are entirely student-edited, and the editor-in-chief is a one-year position to which students are elected by their fellow journal members. I think a carve-out should be mentioned in the illustrations for that criterion that being EIC or on-staff of a student-edited law journal isn't sufficient to satisfy that criterion. From what I've seen, the people who make EIC even of the Harvard Law Review are definitely not notable just because they held that position. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 01:00, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Criterion 8 reads:
The person is or has been head or chief editor of a major well-established academic journal in their subject area.
I do see your point, but it's a little tricky. The H Law Review is clearly a major academic journal -- in fact it's probably the most prestigious law journal in the US. Having said all that, I'm not sure where to go next with this. Thoughts? EEng 01:25, 20 April 2016 (UTC)
Maybe add for a substantial period of time as students are likely to do this only for a year? Xxanthippe (talk) 02:10, 20 April 2016 (UTC).
I know for JD programs it's set up so that law students cannot do it for more than 1 volume: They only recruit new members between 1L and 2L years, and then only have editorial board elections at the end of 2L year. I don't think there are any exceptions for student-run law journals, except maybe for the founding editorial board (I know in 1L year I was on a moot court board briefly that was run entirely by 2Ls, only because the 2Ls had founded it during their 1L year). The other differentiating factor in legal scholarship is that, as far as I know, none of the student-run journals are peer reviewed. However, I'm not sure if the professor-edited journals are all peer-reviewed. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 02:23, 20 April 2016 (UTC)
I would think that 'major well-established academic journal' would imply peer-review. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:36, 20 April 2016 (UTC).
You would think so, but the major law journals aren't peer reviewed, and that's where all the highly-cited legal scholarship comes from... so I don't know. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 02:39, 20 April 2016 (UTC)
I agree -- great point; something we can look out for if it becomes a problem. There are journals in many fields like that. In musicology, for instance, "Current Musicology" is a long-established journal of high importance, that if it were a typical journal, I'd say the editor would count under C8, but the editorship rotates among the grad students at Columbia. If it becomes a problem we could simply say that editors of journals, regardless of prestige, where editorship rotates among students at a university, do not qualify under C8. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 17:33, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

notability of a otherwise undistinguished taxon author

I hope I am asking in the right place. I am contemplating writing about a zoologist Mr. James Reid Esq. (fl. 1836-1837) who's only claim to fame I know of is being the first person to describe and name the species Macrotis lagotis (Greater bilby) in 1836 (publictaion date 1837) and he was mentioned again in 1837, both in Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London. An email to the Zoological Society of London added only a little more info (he lived in Hammersmith and was mentiones in the "1837 List of Fellows", but not in the subsequent 1839 list) and I have no idea how to research 19th century Londoners. I assume this is enough for a wikispecies article (species:James Reid) but is it enough for enwiki? DGtal (talk) 07:29, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

  • I did a quick check of google books and google scholar and I'm not finding anything beyond the bare mention. In my opinion, and article based on just the sources you have would be deleted in short order. Certainly, if you find a few more sources we can revisit the topic. Lesser Cartographies (talk) 08:10, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
    Thanks. Is there any taskgroup or helpdesk where I can hope to find help on he subject? DGtal (talk) 09:55, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
  • @DGtal: Your question is what makes for a good day at the office for a research librarian. Contact your local university library and ask who you should talk to about Victorian Australian zoologists. Mention that you're writing a wikipedia article. They may not be able to help --- there may be nothing extant --- but that's your best bet. Lesser Cartographies (talk) 18:25, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
  • @Lesser Cartographies: I use to be a research librarian, so I know the drill quite well. I just don't have any idea where to begin. Victorian England (Reid described the taxon based on a speciment brought to England) is not of much interest where I come from. DGtal (talk) 21:57, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

What qualifies as a "major academic institution"?

I have not been able to find this in the archives, so my apologies if I am raising an already decided issue. Have we ever defined what qualifies as a "major academic institution"? Is any university a major educational institution, or does it depend on size or some other attribute?

The specific issue that raised this is whether Brandon University (~3700 undergrads, less than 4000 total students) is a major institution. Thanks. Meters (talk) 01:36, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

It doesn't seem to do doctorates, or even Masters in most subjects, so no. Johnbod (talk) 03:59, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
For the US, I think the R1 and R2 universities would make a good starting list. But probably that's too snobby; California State University, Los Angeles for instance would probably also qualify as major by anyone's standards, but isn't on the list. On the other hand, I think doctoral-degree-granting isn't the right criterion either — it lets in too many small research-only institutes. I do agree with Johnbod that a place like Brandon that is neither sizable, nor particularly prestigious, nor active in doctoral research probably doesn't qualify. But for other cases maybe we'll just have to go by Stewart's test. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:18, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
I completely agree that Brandon is not a major university. I ended up here since another editor was arguing that that the president of Brandon would be considered notable under WP:NACADEMICS point 6 as having "held a highest-level elected or appointed academic post at a major academic institution". If it hasn't come up before I don't want to start a long, involved discussion to define something that we're doing well enough without. I can see trying to balance way too many factors... Thanks for the quick and informative responses. Meters (talk) 05:28, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
One criterion should be a significant contribution to research and scholarship. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:18, 3 July 2016 (UTC).

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kanwal Ameen

This AfD about an academic could use some help from editors here. --Lemongirl942 (talk) 07:57, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Systemic bias

There is a discussion here about whether notability guidelines should be relaxed to account for systemic bias. Several academic Afds are cited. Xxanthippe (talk) 01:13, 5 July 2016 (UTC).

University websites are not proof of notability

I keep hearing that university and academic websites are purely "objective" about their own staff and therefore proof of notability and self-sufficient sources for BLPs, but then I keep seeing things like this on actual university websites:

  • "his excellence as a teacher and mentor, for his significant and groundbreaking contributions to basic and applied science as a creative and prolific researcher"[8]
  • "highly respected by his senior colleagues and students for his groundbreaking science, his originality and for what a good person he was"[9]
  • "is known for his groundbreaking research as well as his dedication to students"[10]

Yup, they're all "significant" and "groundbreaking" and "dedicated". Oh, but maybe that's just press releases? They'd never do that to staff pages. Except, you know, for plain old staff pages like all of these:

  • "is internationally known for his groundbreaking advances in bone biology"[11]
  • "summarized two decades of his groundbreaking research in his critically acclaimed book"[12]
  • "recognized in the United States and internationally as an expert in academic nursing and a thought leader on key health issues"[13]
  • "most famous contributions stem from his groundbreaking studies....over 50 years of illuminating results that carry great theoretical importance" [14]

And these websites definitely have a tell-no-evil POV. Consider the case of Thomas Pogge, for a moment. He currently has the misfortune to be in the news because other academics in his field are publicly condemning him and shunning him after sexual harassment complaints.[15] His university has a mini-website about him here. And it says not a word about any of that, except what the subject himself wrote in his defense (and you'll only find that if you search for it).

Searching site:edu "renowned expert" gives me 15,000 Ghits. site:edu "thought leader" gives me 23,000 hits. site:edu "internationally renowned" produces 89,000 hits. Seriously: Wikipedia editors usually look at this kind of language and say that it's promotional. Words like "objective" and "doesn't have a POV" will not be included in their description of these sources.

This is exactly what I expect from a university or, indeed, any professionally run organization. It is, in the end, their actual job to promote their mission – and the most obvious way for them to do that is by promoting their continued existence, and therefore by providing a positive spin on everything associated with them.

I'm willing to agree that these bios frequently contain information that is useful in determining notability. But the notability comes from the part in which somebody other than the employer gave this prof an award or somebody other than the employer said that the prof is internationally renowned, not from the part in which the employer records favorable publicity from external sources or the part in which the employer decides that its own employee is famous. The university bio can be a useful pointer to sources that demonstrate notability, but the employer's own website is not, itself, a demonstration of that notability.

Or, to put it more succinctly:

  • an academic organization's own website or publication is not an "independent source" on the subject is its own members,
  • WP:NOT says that "All article topics must be verifiable with independent, third-party sources," and
  • NOT's requirement applies to articles about professors every bit as much as it applies to articles about CEOs or politicians.

I therefore believe that it would be appropriate and helpful (especially to academics who hope that Wikipedia will be useful in demonstrating their fame to their promotion committees) to explicitly acknowledge that NOT applies, and if absolutely no independent sources can be found, then the English Wikipedia must not have an article on the person. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:20, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

I do not know who you keep hearing all this from, but it is accepted by regulars to academic AfDs that University websites do not confer notability by themselves, this must be established independently by citations and other contributions to scholarship described by WP:Prof. However it is agreed that university websites can be a source of reliable information about positions held dates etc. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:11, 28 August 2016 (UTC).
Yes, this is already addressed very well in the guidelines:
...major awards listed must be confirmed, claims of impact in the field need to be substantiated by independent statements, reviews, citation metrics, library holdings, etc. (see below for specific notes), and so on. However, once the facts establishing the passage of one or more of the notability criteria above have been verified through independent sources, non-independent sources, such as official institutional and professional sources, are widely accepted as reliable sourcing for routine, uncontroversial details.
EEng 23:18, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
Indeed. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:44, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

Further on h-index...

A discussion on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/A. Muthama Muasya was, perhaps (perhaps not), ended with the closing of the AfD it was connected to; since I very much respect the opinions of Wikicology and DGG and it seems like something likely to recur in future professorial AfDs (and since it was a discussion on my !vote), I thought I'd bring it here in case it was something that we wanted to continue.

DGG, WP:ACADEMIC does not rate one scholarly field above the other. It doesn't rate medicine above botany, just as biochemistry is not rated above microbiology. If H-index of 23, is not sufficient to establish notability in the field of medicine, it's simply not enough to establish notability in the field of botany if we are to follow the WP:ACADEMIC guidelines which editors are expected to follow. Wikic¤l¤gyt@lk to M£ 20:22, 6 March 2016 (UTC)
Different fields have different citation patterns. The use of h index without taking field into consideration is like saying scientists are not notable unless they write books the way people in the humanities do. That's why the WP:PROF guideline does not specify h index--there would be too many qualifiers needed, as is in fact explained under WP:PROF in the specific criteria notes, point 1, "Generally, more experimental and applied subjects tend to have higher publication and citation rates than more theoretical ones. Publication and citation rates in humanities are generally lower than in sciences. Also, in sciences, most new original research is published in journals and conference proceedings whereas in humanities book publications tend to play a larger role (and are harder to count without access to offline libraries). The meaning of "substantial number of publications" and "high citation rates" is to be interpreted in line with the interpretations used by major research institutions in the awarding of tenure." DGG ( talk ) 20:30, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

My point in the discussion, in case it's not clear, was that the user was notable for a high h-index in a medium-cited field but not for having a standard botanic name. I agree in this quote, however, completely with DGG, that judging a field by the notability criteria it creates itself is not only not discriminating (or rating one field above another), to do it any other way would be discriminating. But I know we have lots of different worldwide viewpoints here on WP, and I'd like to hear Wikicology's if he'd like to respond. Thanks all! (and tell me "Shut up!" if we just want to be done with this until it arises again). -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 20:49, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

I also agree that we should judge the significance of the h-index or other bibliometrics in a field-specific way. To do otherwise makes no sense, given the wide variation in citation patterns from one field to another. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:17, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

It has long been the practice to weigh citation notability according to citation pattern in the particular field and most contributors to WP:Prof Afds follow this. A matter that concerns me more is a number of failed Afds made by nominators who appear to have no knowledge that WP:Prof#C1 exists at all. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 These waste the time of editors. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:12, 11 March 2016 (UTC).

People may also be interested in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Martha Black (art historian), where Xxanthippe is attempting to use h-index to rate an art historian and curator specializing in Artic Canada Inuit. Johnbod (talk) 15:11, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

I am curious if anyone knows a source for a listing of average H-index scores per academic field. I know that an H-index in itself will not establish notability, but it would be useful to know where authors rank within their field before attempting to create an article about them. Peaceray (talk) 18:07, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

The scale of h-indexes is not linear (it is much easier to increase by one when your h-index is low than when it is already high) so averaging is not a meaningful operation for these numbers. A median might be meaningful, but a median of what population? Full professors at R1 universities? All Ph.D.s? —David Eppstein (talk) 18:27, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, I have taken several statistics courses so I know mean, median, mode are all different & of different uses. I am really looking for guidance. What I have read about getting an H-index directs me to scholar.google.com & the World of Science (no access to the latter). While I think that there are pitfalls on relying solely on the former, I am looking for something that I could compare an author's H-index against. Right now, the only thing useful that I have found is H-index#Results across disciplines and career levels. If anyone could direct me to something else that's useful, I would appreciate it. I really would like to take the H-index out of the "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" realm for myself. Peaceray (talk) 18:58, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Asking for some other opinions

I just became aware of a fairly new BLP at Edward Wild, and my initial reaction is that it should go to AfD. Maybe I'm just being too cautious today, but I decided to post here first, and get some second opinions. (If you want to, please feel free to take it to AfD yourself.) --Tryptofish (talk) 22:52, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

On what grounds would you take it to AfD? Xxanthippe (talk) 23:01, 12 August 2016 (UTC).
On my reading that he sounds like a more–junior–than–tenured level academic. But I'm no expert on the academic appointment hierarchy in Great Britain, which often baffles me. And that's mainly why I figured I would ask here first. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:05, 12 August 2016 (UTC)
He's a doctor and medical researcher, not really an academic, which the lead could make a little more clear - an American career would not read very differently at all. Seems ok to me, though such reputations are often hard to assess. Johnbod (talk) 03:01, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
GS cites are adequate for a pass of WP:Prof. Article could do with substantial trimming. Xxanthippe (talk) 05:24, 13 August 2016 (UTC).
Generally speaking, in the US, a medical doctor with a clinical appointment at a medical school or medical research institute would need to be at a higher level to be considered on a par with an academic full professor; this level would be more like an assistant professor about to come up for tenure and maybe be successful. But again, maybe I'm not interpreting trans-culturally correctly. As for those cites, are you referring only to number of publications, or also to impact?
The way I became aware of the page, by the way, is when it was added to List of neuroscientists. He did not strike me as being in the same league with the other persons on the list. Maybe he should just not be characterized as a neuroscientist, so much as as a neurologist. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:39, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
The list says it is just for all notable neuroscientists, that in practise it probably doesn't have them all - that is just a problem with such lists. He is #2 in a reasonably large department of a top institute. WP:PROF is not at all about being "an academic full professor". Johnbod (talk) 04:06, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

I left notes at WT:NEURO and WT:MED, asking for more opinions. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:59, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

I've done quite a bit of trimming. Stuartyeates (talk) 23:26, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Yes - too much - you need to explain who "Carroll" is now. Please be careful. Johnbod (talk) 04:06, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

So there's

...and I'm kind of not seeing this[1]. Sure, we could say that he's in "the top 10%" of this rather run-of-the-mill team (medical research teams tend to be large, especially in a research area like this one, which is relatively popular with funders at the moment), but if "top 10%" is the standard, then there are about 50 "notable academics" solely among the currently employed neurologists at this one university – and there are another 59 departments here, and there are what, 25,000 other universities in the world?

  1. ^ on PROF grounds specifically; I've made no effort to consider the possibility that he's met GNG

On a more general note, I think that this guideline would benefit from specifically and directly addressing WP:WHYN and the requirement for WP:Independent sources. You cannot comply with NPOV and write a bio whose main source is the university website. It needs a section that says "I don't care how important you are in your field: if the only people who have written about you are the ones signing your paychecks, then you don't get an article (yet)." WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:32, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

What's University of Liverpool - this is London. Johnbod (talk) 12:01, 16 August 2016 (UTC)
Thanks; I fixed my link. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:11, 16 August 2016 (UTC)
agree w/ WAID--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:39, 16 August 2016 (UTC)
I do not think I agree, or perhaps your use of 'main source' is vague. A reputable university bio, is undoubtedly reputable (these are the same publishers, we rely on for most of our scholarly sourcing), and if they are important in their field there are mentions of them elsewhere. And would also knock out a bio of the president of a major academic society, published by the society? Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:41, 16 August 2016 (UTC)
The university's public relations department is generally in charge of the university's website, but not their scholarly journals – and if any publicity department is in charge of a scholarly journal, then you should re-consider whether that journal is quite so reliable.
You are correct in your conclusion: the bio of a president, published by whatever that person is president of, is not an third-party or an WP:Independent source. It may be reliable for any given statement, but it is not independent. It doesn't matter whether the org is a highly reputable academic group or a money-grubbing snake oil seller: all organizations have a vested interest in making the president and other people associated with them look good.
But please note the gap between "you cannot use this source, no, not even for a single sentence" (which I have never said) and "Base articles on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy" (to quote WP:V on the subject). As a very general rule of thumb, if less than half of the content comes from something published by the subject/subject's employer/etc., then you've probably succeeded in publishing a neutral article rather than the POV that the publicity department(s) wants to promote. And if you truly cannot find a single independent source on the subject, then the subject doesn't qualify for an article here. We have said that "If no reliable third-party sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it" since almost the first time anyone created a policy page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:11, 16 August 2016 (UTC)
(e/c) Your first observation is a bit silly. Your contention is that a reputable university (or society) will sacrifice its reputation by being bogus, so, that's wrong. (eg. Your saying that we could value the society or university writing about someone, just not the president, really is nonsensical). And it's certainly not a judgement that can be made by someone who has not even read the source. As for the rest, it just lacks some common sense and worldly and subject knowledge. A biography of a living is almost almost always written by someone with connection to the subject (and its the "unauthorized" bio's that are often the least reputable). Also, that they are married, grew up somewhere, have children, went to school, etc. is not puffery but it is very much the substance of biography. Your idea that someone is important in their field, so someone, somewhere will write their biography is without foundation - there will be a lot of mentions of them elsewhere, of course, even if not a biographical treatment. At any rate, this discussion is far beyond what this section is about, so I apologize. But no, I would not be in favor of changing this guideline from what it currently says. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:31, 16 August 2016 (UTC)
I think you are putting words in my mouth. I do not say that an academic organization "will sacrifice its reputation by being bogus"; in fact, I say quite the opposite: They may be so focused on preserving their reputation that they choose to omit or downplay any information that is less than flattering, and will overstate the significance of flattering information. At most, I accuse them of being understandably proud of their children; I do not accuse them of manufacturing falsehoods.
I also do not say that if "someone is important in their field, so someone, somewhere will write their biography". I say quite the opposite: I say that if "nobody, anywhere" except the employer has written anything significant about the person, then Wikipedia must not become the "someone, somewhere" to write the biography. I say this because notability on Wikipedia (=the qualifications necessary to have a stand-alone article on a person) does not care if a person is "important in their field". It only matters whether "reliable third-party sources can be found on a topic" – by long-standing, widely accepted policy.
Perhaps we should address the real annoyance this causes: Do Wikipedia's policies on inclusion mean that we exclude "important" academics and include "unimportant" entertainers? Yes, unquestionably. Do I like this? No, not really (except to the extent that this protects academic BLPs from having annoyed students vandalizing their articles). But even though I don't like the outcome, I understand that "employer's POV only" is not the same thing as a "neutral POV", and there simply isn't any other way to get from "the only significant source of information about this BLP is written by his employer" to "a neutral POV that is not overly focused on his employer's POV" (without violating NOR), no matter who the employer is or how important the subject is. (My preferred solution would be deleting all the unimportant entertainers, not spamming Wikipedia full of paraphrased copies of university staff pages.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:34, 18 August 2016 (UTC)
I did not mean to put words in your mouth, I thought you were being categorical without examination of the source and that does not fly. Or perhaps, we just have a different emphasis, as we are discussing vague concept like "main", so what matters is the totality of the sourcing, and yes that will include the bio information in their bio, that does not have a POV, except objective fact, as this guideline already makes objective fact of position, award and other such matters relevant in support of notability. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:32, 18 August 2016 (UTC)
And don't get me started on unimportant athletes. Oh, well. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:29, 18 August 2016 (UTC)
I don't think he has earned "notable" status. He's a relatively junior academic whose publication history since 2006 has been focused on Huntington's disease, with reviews over the past 5 years showing the foundation for a respectable career. But he's neither stellar nor particularly notable yet. Also, the current structure and content of the WP article are like a CV narrative which should be discouraged. Accordingly, I would vote for removal. --Zefr (talk) 14:15, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, everyone who has commented so far. I can see (perhaps not surprisingly, in the context of page notability) that there are differences in opinion. Given that there is at least some concern about notability from editors other than just me, I just tagged the page to encourage its improvement to better establish notability, and I figure I will give it a bit of time before deciding whether or not to take it to AfD, in case someone can make it better. So, obviously, further discussion as well as improvement would be welcome. Thanks again. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:48, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Edward Wild was created by User:Braydonowen who also created Sarah Tabrizi (his coworker), and appears to be a WP:SPA in this area (these two people and their research topics). User:Braydonowen appears to believe that AfC is the authoritative venue for notability. I have notified the user of our COI rules. Stuartyeates (talk) 00:08, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Subject will probably pass WP:Prof#C1 [16]. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:46, 17 August 2016 (UTC).
Thanks for that link. I examined it rather closely. The top cite is an invited book chapter, with Dr. Wild as first author, and a more senior investigator, [17], as second author. The remaining papers with 100+ cites are all multi-author papers (very multi), with Dr. Wild as neither first author nor senior (last) author. (I am quite expert in authorship conventions in neuroscience.) A comparison with the senior author shows that she gets far more citations than Dr. Wild does, and his citations seem to reflect hers. Thus, I see this as evidence of being at a more junior level in the field, albeit working with some high-powered collaborators and demonstrating a high potential for future independent notability. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:23, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
You are applying the guideline more rigidly than it is written. It says "The most typical way of satisfying Criterion 1 is to show that the academic has been an author of highly cited academic work". It does not call for the parsing of author lists for seniority. The top cite is the most widely cited book in the field. "Scholarly publications" certainly includes reviews, and being invited to write book chapters or reviews is evidence of prominence in the field. Later the guideline affords notability to those who have "pioneered or developed a significant new concept, technique or idea". The article details three such concepts: immune activation in HD, the quantification of mutant huntingtin in CSF and the discovery of novel causes of HD phenocopy syndromes. The article makes reference to all the original papers with Wild as first or equal-first author; all are highly cited and others have based their work on them, most prominently in the case of the immune pathway. A comparison with Tabrizi is not relevant - he does not need to be as notable as her, merely notable enough to meet the criteria in the guideline. Nor is it necessary to meet all the criteria - one is enough. Braydonowen (talk) 18:28, 18 August 2016 (UTC)
Edit to add, I think he also qualifies on the basis of having been awarded a "highly selective fellowships (other than postdoctoral fellowships)". He holds a Clinician Scientist Fellowship from the MRC. The diagram at http://www.mrc.ac.uk/skills-careers/fellowships/ makes it clear the MRC's postdoctoral fellowships for clinicians are 'Skills Development' fellowships. Clinician Scientists are more senior, in the MRC's "transition to independence" category. Braydonowen (talk) 18:42, 18 August 2016 (UTC)
I agree that he is at the career stage of "transition to independence", but I think that's exactly the problem. We don't keep biographical pages of academics on the basis that they are transitioning – they have to already "be there". As such, I think the comparison with Dr. Tabrizi is exactly apt. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:59, 18 August 2016 (UTC)
I agree with Tfish. The MRC fellowships are nothing like what the criteria contemplate -- not even in the same ballpark, or even on the same continent, to be frank. EEng 19:09, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

As the page’s creator I only found out about this discussion 4 days after it was started - there was no mention of it on the talk page until yesterday and nothing on my user page until I got a conflict of interest message.

I was planning to stay out of the discussion, which I think is valid and interesting, but I want to comment on the allegation of COI from User:Stuartyeates. I have no conflict by any of the established criteria. I encountered Dr Wild through his YouTube presentations where he talks about Huntington’s disease research. I have not edited many pages but I don’t think having an interest in HD researchers and their work makes me a WP:SPA. I have a personal interest in HD which I don’t intend to discuss here. If that disqualifies me from editing pages for scientists associated with HD then I will refrain.

User:Stuartyeates also suggests that I “appear to believe that AFC is the authoritative venue for notability”. I don’t, but many of the points raised here were also made during the discussions and revisions for the AFC process, and I think they should be considered when the notability is revisited. Unfortunately I don’t know how to find or link to an old AFC discussion. The final view was that Wild (narrowly) qualifies as a standalone clinical academic on the basis of his publications and research prizes, but that his notability is further supported by his outreach work, assessed under general rather than academic notability.

I now have concerns that some of User:stuartyeates’ edits have, intentionally or otherwise, reduced the ability of the page to demonstrate its subject’s notability. In a recent edit, described as “removing some of the vanity stuff”, he removed mention (that was supported by a Google Scholar reference) of the number of publications and citations – standard metrics by which academic notability is supported. Similarly, User:stuartyeates removed mention of the book chapters he has authored, including a chapter in the very highly-cited Oxford Monograph ‘Huntington’s Disease’ (google). I understand if he didn’t like the wording but it seems disruptive to remove material supporting notability when a discussion about notability is in progress.

Right now I don’t know whether I should edit the page to restore the suitably sourced material supporting notability, or hold off. I would appreciate advice. Braydonowen (talk) 14:03, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

I would like to apologize to you for not notifying you right away. You are right that I should have, and I'm sorry. I also think that the COI notice was excessive. However, I think that the edits removing material from the page are largely reasonable, and I think it would be best for everyone to take things slowly in terms of editing the page, and avoid any reverts of edits already made. Instead, we need to discuss things in talk, either here or at Talk:Edward Wild. I really do think that this is a borderline case in terms of this notability guideline, and we need to keep in mind the fact that Wikipedia covers people only after it has been established that they meet our notability criteria, and editors tend to reject treating Wikipedia as a way to prematurely enhance professional notability. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:10, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for the apology - I accept with no hard feelings. I'm happy to continue to discuss, though I think the best place would be on the article's talk page. I am also OK with a notability template on the page. But I cannot accept the idea that a dispassionate statement of his number of papers, citations and book chapters, backed up by a google scholar citation, is "vanity". Indeed it is central to demonstrating his notability and to prevent its inclusion is to prejudice the very judgements your template asks readers to make. Accordingly I will restore it and ask that it not be removed, like the banner template, unless there is consensus. Braydonowen (talk) 18:32, 18 August 2016 (UTC)
My concern is not with the existence of these articles per se, but their content. I've probably created academic bios with less coverage, but we can't let them be promotional pages based on primary and unreliable sources. I suspect that HDBuzz may not survive, per Wikipedia:Notability (web), but I'm uncertain were to merge it to. Stuartyeates (talk) 21:30, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

I think there is some validity to the concern that discussion should move from here to the article talk page. At this point, I think we have pretty much dealt with the issues of how the page applies to this guideline, and we should move instead to how this guideline applies to the page. If there is a realistic expectation that edits to the page will establish the subject as meeting our criteria for notability, then I'm happy to let those edits continue for a few more days. But if things continue as they look to me now, I expect that this will go to AfD. Thanks for the feedback, everybody. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:15, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

  • The page is now at AfD. I was not going to mention that here, but another editor has selectively canvassed one editor in this discussion without contacting the rest of you, so I feel that I need to comment here now. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:35, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Academics or administrators?

I've noticed the recent edits over what to call university presidents and the like. At least in universities in the US, they are normally referred to as "administrators", and their responsibilities are not purely academic. They are expected to have academic credentials, but most faculty members would snort derisively if they were told that the administrators were "academic leaders". --Tryptofish (talk) 22:56, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

I thought the change to "administrative" was a good one since I have always found the wording of that criterion a bit confusing. The people who hold posts like Vice Chancellor etc. are (usually) academics, but the posts themselves are administrative and would be referred to as such here in the UK too. Our articles generally describe them that way too, e.g. academic administration. "Academic leadership" sounds like the kind of bureaucratic newspeak that only a self-described "academic leader" would use, so anything but that. Joe Roe (talk) 23:08, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
Agreed. I'm only familiar with US institutions; while leaders of research centers within universities may perform academic work, leaders of universities generally do not. The "highest academic post" at US institutions would usually be considered the chair of the faculty senate or similar. Regards, James (talk/contribs) 23:22, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
  • We're talking about the underlined word in
The person has held a highest-level elected or appointed academic post at a major academic institution or major academic society.
Though their responsibilities aren't purely (or even mostly) academic ("sex for the students, athletics for the alumni and parking for the faculty"), and despite derision from the faculty peanut gallery, lending whatever academic leadership there's time for is the presidents most important job. It's hard to not see Derek Bok and Clark Kerr as academic leaders
Maybe we should just drop the word academic, so that it's
has held a highest-level elected or appointed post at a major academic institution or major academic society.
EEng 03:31, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
But Bok and Kerr are pretty far from the typical presidents of typical universities. I can think of university presidents who were promoted from the admissions department. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:05, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
I know, but they were such interesting characters I thought I'd give them a plug. While I'm on the subject, and even if I do say so myself, reading up on the lives and work of Eliot, Lowell, and Conant is well worth it. Shame more people at Harvard know so little about them nowadays. EEng 22:05, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
I think the point of the qualifier is to rule out people who hold ceremonial but not actual head-of-university positions (chancellors instead of vice-chancellors, in the English nomenclature). —David Eppstein (talk) 03:57, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
  • "while leaders of research centers within universities may perform academic work, leaders of universities generally do not." I think this is true throughout the English speaking world. Subject to the university being a traditional university, with a history including both research and teaching, the following is also generally true throughout the English speaking world: "leaders of universities generally performed academic work, with distinction, earlier in their career." --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:48, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
  • I am surprised at a hint that chancellors might be excluded, I think that chancellors (ceremonial heads) are chosen with attention to their real world notability, and I would guess that all chancellors of major universities are notable. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:48, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
The issue here is really about how to describe them, not how to determine notability. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:05, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
Yes, sure. To me, the position makes a non academic into a pseudo academic. In extreme cases the word "honorary" can be slipped in, an "honorary" in the fine text makes the classification "academic" plenty palatable. I see a bit much semantics in this, along the lines of arguing that Queen Elizabeth is not a politician. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:02, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
  • Previous related AfD I'm aware of one AfD Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sushma Berlia, where the distinction between an "academic" and "non-academic" resulted in a delete. If I am not wrong, in Commonwealth countries, the actual academic head differs from the "nominal head". The post of a Chancellor is often an appointed post given to a high ranking civil servant who is otherwise not part of academia. --Lemongirl942 (talk) 05:56, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
    • My reading of that AfD is that it is not applicable because (to quote you) "subject is not the actual head of the university" but is "owner of the conglomerate which built the university".
Yes, it often happens that there is a ceremonial head, and a real head. Chancellor and Vice Chancellor, for example. The ceremonial head is a prominent citizen, and is not necessarily an academic. A ceremonial heads of "major academic institution" will be notable, as their notability is prerequisite to the appointment, so there is no point in excluding them from point 6. The ceremonial position may technically not be academic, but it doesn't matter. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:29, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
  • In Israel most universities are led academically by a Rector and the president is the most senior administrator (above the CEO), however the president has to be, but definition, a full prof., probably since you can't be the face of a university without actually being a serious academic. The CEO's are usually normal upper management posts open to any person with serious managerial experience. DGtal (talk)
In the US, it is also normal practice for upper-level administrators to be given full professor appointments, as a way of conferring tenure, but it's really a formality rather than an evaluation of academic attainment. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:05, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
Interesting. In Israel you can't even apply unless you are already a full professor. DGtal (talk) 05:39, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
  • I'd like to have a decision coming out of this discussion. Let me suggest changing "academic" back to "administrative", based on what I think the discussion indicates. Do other editors agree with that change? --Tryptofish (talk) 22:47, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
How about "highest-level elected or appointed leadership post at a major academic institution or major academic society"? EEng 22:52, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
Well, I'm not sure. That would be essentially equivalent to the "highest-level elected or appointed post", with no descriptor, because it goes without saying that the highest-level position leads. And, strictly speaking, most universities have something like a board of trustees or a board of overseers who actually outrank the president. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:07, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
I'm in favor of removing the criterion entirely. As has been discussed, university leaders do not necessarily have notability as academics, whether due to the growing neoliberalisation of higher education or their holding of a ceremonial post. BIO and GNG are adequate for determining notability of university leaders. Regards, James (talk/contribs) 22:52, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
I appreciate the point above, but the criteria have always been useful as a shortcut to avoid long and tedious investigations of notability. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:16, 24 September 2016 (UTC).
I'd really prefer to focus, for now, on whether or not to change "academic" to "administrative". --Tryptofish (talk) 00:21, 24 September 2016 (UTC)
I agree with changing academic → administrative. I think it's fair to say it's the most accurate and widespread description of the kind of posts the criteria refers to. With respect, EEng, you are the only person arguing for "leadership" and you haven't really explained what is wrong with administrative or why leadership is more appropriate. Joe Roe (talk) 00:48, 24 September 2016 (UTC)
No need for respect, I just thought leadership avoided the question of whether it's leadership of the academic or administrative variety. You'll notice that my earlier proposal was to have no adjective at all, and just say has held a highest-level elected or appointed post. Oooh, wait. Just to make it more confusing, there's this possibility: has held a highest-level elected or appointed executive post.
At this point, given Tfish's point that even the guy "at the top" has people above him (the trustees etc.), I'm losing hope this bullet point can be salvaged. EEng 01:33, 24 September 2016 (UTC)
There can be gals at the top, too. Anyway, I think we should give this another day or two, in case anyone else besides EEng has an alternative view, and if not, we should go ahead with "administrative". --Tryptofish (talk) 20:47, 24 September 2016 (UTC)
There can be gals at the top, too. Tryptofish, I'm surprised that a serious scientist like you isn't fully metricated yet. Anyway, why do I get singled out? I was just suggesting. I'm happy to go along. EEng 22:37, 24 September 2016 (UTC)
Well, you did say that you had no need for respect. Do tell me sometime what metricated means. I'm certainly fully medicated. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:37, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
You spoke of gals. I would have expected a scientist like you to work in liters. EEng 04:56, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
Facepalm Facepalm --Tryptofish (talk) 20:46, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
  • I would be in favor of either removing this criterion entirely or restricting it to academic leaders of major academic societies. I think that academic administrators should not be afforded automatic academic notability regardless of the type of the post they hold, and should be routed through WP:BIO instead, or evaluated on general WP:PROF grounds if they qualify for them. I have seen too many cases of university/college presidents/chancellors whose academic credentials are pretty weak and who would not be considered academically notable if evaluated purely based on their research accomplishments. Academic administrators often, and theses days typically, follow a very particular career path, leaving the traditional research career pretty early, and then entering the administrative track: Associate Dean, Dean, Associate Provost, Provost, Chancellor, President, or something similar. I don't see why we should treat these people under the same rubric as genuine academics. This criterion of WP:PROF is supposed to serve as a shortcut, but in this case I don't believe that in its current form it serves as a useful shortcut since it scoops under its umbrella too many people who don't deserve to be considered notable. Nsk92 (talk) 01:49, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
Please let me suggest that proposals to remove it completely be discussed in a separate talk section. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:51, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
Well, as far as the current discussion is concerned, I am strongly against changing the word 'academic' to 'administrative' or 'leadership', and would prefer to keep the current wording. Nsk92 (talk) 02:01, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
Do I understand correctly from your previous comment that this is because you oppose notability unless there is clear academic accomplishment? --Tryptofish (talk) 20:46, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
Yes, exactly. To the extent that we retain C6 in the guideline, I would like it to be applied narrowly, and only to people with genuine academic accomplishments. For presidents of academic societies we can basically take that for granted. But with administrators that's a different story. Sometimes they come from outside of academia, and sometimes they rise up the administrative ladder with little genuine academic accomplishment. There are other cases where the size of the institution is fairly small and too little is known about the person appointed President/Chancellor. I would much prefer that in such situations C6 be used sparingly and conservatively. E.g. here Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Namgi Park the discussion was closed as 'keep' basically on C6 grounds, while I think the case should have been examined more closely (the college has only 1,500 undergraduates) and perhaps routed through WP:BIO. There are other examples of this sort, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ronald E. Manahan, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Janet Dudley-Eshbach, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/De La Salle Brothers, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Joseph Fuwape, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/D.P. Singh (naturalist). Nsk92 (talk) 23:32, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
Seconded, per Nsk's excellent earlier comment above. — Preceding unsigned comment added by James Allison (talk • contribs) 22:16, September 25, 2016 (UTC)
OK, thanks, I understand. I feel like it's a bit complicated here, because the immediate reason for opening this discussion was some reverting back-and-forth between saying "academic" and "administrative", and you actually seem to be agreeing with me that most university presidents are indeed administrators, not academics. I don't think that the discussion here has been sufficient to establish a consensus to remove it entirely (and I'm not sure that I agree with you, because I think university presidents do not need to be notable for their academic qualifications, if they have administrative qualifications at a sufficiently major institution), but I'd like to wrap up the original issue.
So let me suggest this. Let's change it to "administrative", but also put a tag after it, indicating "under discussion". And then anyone can open a new discussion thread, about complete removal. OK? --Tryptofish (talk) 23:58, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
Hmm, OK. Nsk92 (talk) 00:15, 26 September 2016 (UTC)
Yes, I have this one watchlisted. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:30, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Adding to criterion 1 (significant impact) demonstrated by Ph.D. advisees hired by other universities

One of the major, if not THE major way for longterm impact on a scholarly discipline is the "production" of the next generation of researchers. Professors at Ph.D. granting universities advise students through their research. The quality of the student and the quality of the guidance received during the Ph.D. education is typically reflected in the career of the researcher. It is assessed by other universities when hiring new faculty. The long term impact of a researcher is thus visible in the number, the position and the standing of the universities hiring his Ph.D. advisees. This criterion is verifiable and not easily manipulated. I suggest to include it in the guidelines for "significant impact" and to encourage the listing of the most important Hh.D. advisees of academics to allow tracing of intelectual lineage. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Andrewufrank (talk • contribs) 11:52, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

That's an interesting point, and it does strike me that Wikipedia is particularly well-suited to categorizing and linking that kind of lineage between individuals. One way to do it is to list the trainees and advisor in the page infobox, something that is sometimes done already. To some extent, however, we also have to consider the extent of notability of the trainees, because I can imagine spammy ways in which pages might be created in order to promote the individuals listed as trainees. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:12, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

I agree that it is a good idea to list notable students in an article (and the infoboxes often do this) but using them for notability smacks of circular reasoning (especially if we also add students of famous advisors) and WP:NOTINHERITED to me. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:00, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

There is a danger of circularity, but it is modest as (first) the notability spreads only upwards, from the student to the professor (meaning students are not notable for having been a student of a notable prof but notable advisees demonstrate notability of advisors) and (second) the ph.d. student should (at least) be hired and promoted by another university, so not all advisees should be listed. To show the lineage of the development of ideas in science by tracing the connection between advisor and advisee over several academic generations seems a valuable information in a wiki. Andrewufrank (talk) 21:31, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

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