Talk:Chellapilla Venkata Rao

Deletion tag

I strongly object - the lack of easy to find references have no reflection on the notability or importance of a botanist - many Australian botanist articles have never been challenged and they have less weight of references... The very nature of their dedicated careers is they are not movies or pop stars - they are notable hard workers who might labour heavily just to stay in their positions, and not see that much of a publication hsitory. Not their fault, there are cultural issues. JarrahTree 14:35, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

That's fine... then if they were notable in their field, they should have a higher citation count, which is why there is the WP:NSCHOLAR criteria as well. Which this person does not seem to meet. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 14:45, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Citation counts are an ironic metric which might work in some particular cultural contexts, but as I have just said - ignore all rules I say for botanists - (if you have ever spent 20 years or more of your life on a narrow topic in a post colonial bureaucratic civil service with limited outlet or capacity to be published - I can think of some government geologists in India and Indonesia that would simply be unfindable under the tyranny of oggle search), wp scholar is about irrelevent as you could possibly imagine when it comes to certain fields of research in some countries. JarrahTree 14:57, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

He wrote a monograph on an important plant family. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 21:57, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

A monograph published by one of Australia's premier research organisations CSIR or CSIRO as it is now known. MargaretRDonald (talk) 00:21, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

I started the article originally because I was sick of seeing scientists, botanists etc come up in red. (I think that most (every?) IPNI author name should have a (brief) article on Wikipedia.) Perhaps we should start a project called Scientists in Red?MargaretRDonald (talk) 00:21, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

I note that of the tribes he authored which are still current: Macadamieae is found in the Spanish wikipedia, and also, quite rightly, on Wikispecies. and in the English wikipedia in Grevilleoideae. Searching Google scholar for articles containing the words "tribe" & "Macadamieae" gave 139 hits and all those I glanced at were on target. This man died in 1971, and direct citations to his work would have largely ceased by the 1980s since scientists are encouraged to cite the latest research, which is why he is not found on google scholar. His works are out of print but not out of copyright, hence the difficulty of even finding out whether he largely worked in India while collaborating with Australians in Australia.MargaretRDonald (talk) 05:22, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

He is cited in the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation database AGRIS: http://agris.fao.org/agris-search/search.do?recordID=US201302389800 Studies in the Proteaceae. XIV. tribe Macadamieae [1970]. I think it is difficult to deny his notability... MargaretRDonald (talk) 05:30, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Citation counts: He is particularly difficult to find, because some of his work is published under "C.V.Rao" (see updated article). MargaretRDonald (talk) 21:30, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Chellapilla Venkata Rao

This man was important in the history of the Proteaceae. It may be that most of his work has not lasted, but people did have to argue against him to reach current consensuses. His work has not been republished, nor has it yet found its way into online repositories. He was prolific and influential in his time. MargaretRDonald (talk) 20:44, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

still struggling

Had hoped to find him in Taxonomic literature : a selective guide to botanical publications and collections with dates, commentaries and types v. 6 (1986) Authors Sti-Vuy, but this was published in 1979, and I failed. Had he lived half a century earlier, I might have found him. Also failed to find him at https://huh.harvard.edu/ searching "Venkata Rao" and "Rao" and also his botanical abbreviation "Venk.Rao". (The fact that no botanist came up using the search on Rao was ridiculous as IPNI lists many Raos.) MargaretRDonald (talk) 23:47, 30 May 2018 (UTC)MargaretRDonald (talk) 05:26, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

A whole generation

of botanists is presumably missing from Wikipedia because their work has not yet made its way into online repositories, and because those who once cited them are also dead and their works equally inaccessible. Take for example, T.S.Sadasivan, the editor in chief of The Journal of the Indian Botanical Society, Vol xxxvi, 1957 https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.99846 , who was presumably a notable botanist of the period, where can he be found? Or indeed any of the other editors and authors of that 1957 volume? Perhaps the non-referencing of secondary sources rule should be revisited for scientists of this pre-internet generation? MargaretRDonald (talk) 02:20, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Stub? Expand...

I think this is now better than the term 'stub' implies. I have removed the template.

I do think it needs expansion (if possible) about his life. What did he do other than botany? Did he have a family? Where did he live? Hobbies? Any political involvement? etc.... Just ideas, Regards, Ariconte (talk) 23:22, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Hi @Ariconte: Hoping to find these out when I get a copy of his eulogy in the next day or two. (The facts about his life so far have been gleaned from IPNI and the headers and references in his articles. He is, as has been said, a hard man to find.) MargaretRDonald (talk) 01:26, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

Citation counts

A count on Google using phytomorphology + "Venkata Rao" (most of which target this Chellapilla Venkata Rao - the first two pages did) gave 508 hits (5 June 2018). (ignore those to do with phytochemistry a later C.Venkata Rao, but a plant chemist). This man's work is hard to find as are citations to it (precisely because there are many Raos), but difficult to find is not the same as non-existent. MargaretRDonald (talk) 20:18, 4 June 2018 (UTC)