Talk:Meredith G. F. Worthen

WP:NPROF C#1

Hi David Eppstein, JoelleJay, Russ Woodroofe, XOR'easter, and Xxanthippe, I have pinged you all due to your regular participation in academics/educators AfDs, because I am wondering about notability based on citation records. For example, her SCOPUS profile preview lists an h-index of 17, which seems high for social science. Any thoughts you may have on this and/or the notability of the subject generally are greatly appreciated - I am trying to determine whether this article seems ready for mainspace or if it would be better to wait a few months to assess further support for notability based on her recent work. Thank you, Beccaynr (talk) 14:53, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your question. The topic of citation numbers has been much discussed over the years. My impression is that sociology can be a highly cited field and an h-index of 17 is rather on the low side. For the very high profile topic that she works in I would have expected a higher number. It may be WP:Too soon. Xxanthippe (talk) 21:47, 4 December 2022 (UTC).

Thank you, Xxanthippe, your perspective groks with my overall impression of the article and the sources currently available - it seems too soon to rely on WP:NPROF, and WP:AUTHOR notability is not yet clearly supported. Thanks again, Beccaynr (talk) 23:09, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Agree that this looks too soon, perhaps by a few years for a really solid case. I agree with Xxanthippe on citation numbers for her field; I'm ideally looking for three works with high citation numbers, and I see two with moderate numbers. OTOH, I'll point out that combined notability cases are permitted, and if we had a few book reviews plus a modestly better citation record, then I probably wouldn't !vote delete. I might even come to weak keep. That is, if we had a review record that was just short of NAUTHOR together with a citation record that was solid progress towards NPROF, then it might add up to a marginal pass of notability. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 10:19, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, Russ Woodroofe - I was wondering if there is more support available than I could discern, essentially as a combination with what I have found - for this subject, the various factors that can support notability do not yet appear to have aligned, and I appreciate your insight and review. Cheers, Beccaynr (talk) 17:34, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Ok, so my approach of looking at coauthors' citation metrics for comparison doesn't work at all in this field, since Scopus doesn't generally capture the book chapters, reviews, and policy statements that seem to be big in humanities and there aren't nearly enough coauthors to compare to. For example, I googled Worthen's 20 coauthors with >4 papers to see how their professional positions relate to Scopus citation metrics and found that, first of all, the graduation-to-tenure-track pipeline is real fast in criminal justice sociology, but more importantly, someone with a Scopus h-index of 10 and 280 citations can hold a distinguished professorship at the same time a 2018 graduate with 150 citations and h-index of 8 is an assistant prof. So I looked up the faculty profiles of the two NPROF C5-passing distinguished/named professors among Worthen's collaborators to see what qualities were highlighted, since clearly Scopus wasn't giving the whole story. One person's bio states "The impact of his scholarly activity on law and public policy is evidenced by the numerous courts that have relied on his work. Eight published judicial opinions have cited his work..." The other "served on the executive board of the American Society of Criminology and was the founding editor of Feminist Criminology, the official journal of the Division on Women and Crime of the American Society of Criminology". Another coauthor with an h-index of 5 who is a full prof in the UK features a running list of news articles quoting her expert opinion on her profile (13 items in 2022 alone).

Anyway, all of this leads me to recommend the antithesis of my STEM scholar AfD approach: don't trust Scopus citation metrics at all. Instead, look into other NPROF criteria that might correspond to distinguished professorship at major universities in the field and see how she stacks up there. JoelleJay (talk) 00:53, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, JoelleJay - I had compared her career to distinguished professors Hilary M. Lips and Susan Kingsley Kent, and it is because of how she stacks up that I asked about her citation record, just in case it might compensate. Your data and recommendation are very helpful and appreciated! Beccaynr (talk) 03:56, 6 December 2022 (UTC)