Wikipedia talk:Notability (academics)/Archive 6

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Relation to the general notability guideline

Currently the opening to the guideline states that it is "independent from the other notability guidelines, such as WP:N,..., etc." and "failure to meet other notability guidelines is irrelevant". Whilst this makes perfect sense for other specific notability guidelines such as WP:MUSIC and WP:BIO I do not think there is currently a community consensus that this applies to the general guideline. The recent discussion at Wikipedia:Notability/RFC:compromise shows little - if any - consensus on the relationship between the general and specific notability guidelines. Specifically a proposal that SNGs override the GNG failed to gain consensus support. Whatever opinion any individual editor has I think viewing the extended discussion between dozens of editors it is hard to see any clear consensus about the relationship between the specific and general notability guidelines. Wikipedia guidelines exist to reflect consensus, in this case I do not think the consensus exists that failing WP:N is "irrelevent" when considering any specific notability guideline and I do not see WP:PROF as being an exception. Accordingly I would like to suggest that the reference to WP:N be removed from the second paragraph (and replaced with an example of another specific notability guideline such as WP:MUSIC, WP:BK, etc.) and "notability guidelines" replaced with "specific notability guidelines" - or something to that effect. Guest9999 (talk) 02:31, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

If it were the case that articles in Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Academics and educators were judged to pass WP:PROF but were being deleted because they failed WP:N, then I'd be moved that there was a new consensus policy. But WP:PROF seems a reasonably clear expression of the accepted standard by which deletions of the originators are judged. If there a proposal to make WP:N be the one and only standard then point me to it. If there is merely the absense of consensus either way, then I think I'll continue to use WP:PROF where it applies. my 2c Pete.Hurd (talk) 03:09, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I am strongly opposed to Guest9999's proposal for many reasons, most of which have been discussed above on this talk page at length, both before and duringestrictive or the revision of this guideline over the summer. There are very good reasons for WP:PROF to be independent from the other notability guidelines, including WP:N. There are significant differences between how academics are covered by reliable sources and how their notability is determined in practice and between how most other topics, such as movie actors, music bands, brands of cheese, etc, are covered by reliable sources. It is very easy to misread and misapply WP:N, either in an overly restrictive or an overly permissive way, if these differences are not taken into account. WP:PROF provides a much more precise, specific, realistic and practically useful set of standards for determining notability of academics than does WP:N. As discussed at length above on this talk page, notability in academia comes from influence of one's academic work on the research of other scholars. However, the standards and conventions in which such influence is manifested are very different in academia from general culture and societal topics. Academics, even very prominent ones, are rarely written about personally, until they are dead or about to retire, and even then the information is usually brief. What counts most is how and whether other researchers use and quote the work of a particular academic in their own academic books and articles. It is very counterproductive to have constant debates about the meaning of the WP:N phrase "coverage of" in relation to an academic. As I said, it is very easy to misapply WP:N here in either direction, especially if WP:N starts setting specific requirements for the number of sources needed and/or sufficient for establishing notability. That is the road straight to AfD hell, so to speak, in relation to academics. For example, for a WP article on a societal topic (or even a scientific concept), often having, say, 10 references discussing that topic would be sufficient to pass WP:N. On the other hand, if an academic has a paper that has been cited, say 15 times, that itself is typically far from sufficient for establishing academic notability. Yet I have seen WP:N applied in this sort of fashion for an overly inclusive reading in relation to academics (in fact, in my observations, when WP:N is invoked in academic-related AfDs, it is usually to provide a more permissive reading than that of WP:PROF). On the other hand, and this is just as bad, there are many cases where an academic has a number of highly cited papers and/or books (say with 400-300 cites each), or where the person holds a named chair professorship at a major university, where academic notability is in fact obvious and yet where specific biographical type coverage of the person is lacking. It is easy to argue that WP:N is not satisfied in this case while in real life the person is certainly academically notable. So basically WP:N is too blunt and imprecise a tool when applied to determining notability of academics and it is better to use a more precise and well-developed standard of WP:PROF. Moreover, WP:N is too much in the center of notability wars surrounding articles on fiction, episodes, characters, etc. It is easy for these wars to shift WP:N from side to side and to introduce some specific requirements there that would really be disastorous when applied to notability of academics. I would very much like not to have to contend with these changing winds here, at WP:PROF, which is a relatively stable and functional guideline, and which is far removed from those notability storms. Nsk92 (talk) 03:16, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I propose taking a more anarchistic approach than guest9999. Rather than Tulmudic deductions of interpretations of the guidelines to infer what WP:PROF ought to say, perhaps it would be more productive to ask first if WP:PROF "works" at doing what it is intended to do, and if not how it could be fixed. How can function be improved? IMHO, there are too many truely non-notable academics included in WP, but when I look at the fictional characters, trivial sports figures, and gundam inclusion, WP:PROF looks positively golden by comparison. Other than to suggest that "no consensus" default to "delete" for biographies of living people, I can't see any realistic prospect for dramatically improving WP's retention criteria for academics. my 2c more. Pete.Hurd (talk) 03:34, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I think it is wishful thinking to suggest that this guideline would act in isolation of any potential change to the general notability guideline. Any major change, either to adopt a more inclusionist or deletionist perspective would be a reflection on the shifting consensus of the community as a whole. If this guideline did not adhere to the new "ideological perspective" of the community it would either be changed, scrapped altogether or simply ignored. As it is, I am not suggesting any change to the guideline in the standard of notability it sets, just for its position to be clarified in line with community consensus. Based on the recent RfC I do not think that there is currently a consensus for the statement "WP:N is irrelevant when considering articles on academics". Removing the phrase from the guideline shouldn't weaken it if the actual content of the guideline does represent the standard of notability for academics that is accepted by the community. The statement would only seem to be of importance to the guideline if a large proportion of the community would imagine it not to apply... Guest9999 (talk) 05:15, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

This is an abstract ideological/hierarchical argument. I am much more concerned with the practical implications and various potential unintended consequences of the type I discussed above. If the RfC you mention showed anything it is that there is no global community consensus on anything in relation to notability at the moment. In a situation like that one needs to go by more local consensus for particular guidelines. It is certainly true that most people who participated in the RfC were there because of the ongoing notability wars in relation to articles on fiction, episodes, fictional characters, etc. Few of them have substantial knowledge of (or interest in) WP:PROF or the specific issues relating to academic notability. Given that WP:N is very much at the center of these ideological wars, I really do not want the battles over there to affect the reasonably orderly workings of things over here. If and when the dust settles and something reasonable and stable emerges from WP:N, there may be time to revisit this issue. But for now, no thank you. Nsk92 (talk) 05:34, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

On consideration I withdraw my proposal. Mainly on the basis that - as you say - there really is little evidence of any consensus regarding notability at the moment. Effectively if people think an article on an academic should be kept or deleted because of WP:N, WP:PROF or any other set of criteria then they will likely make comments/nominations/proposals based on their own opinions/ideologies not on the precise wording of different guidelines. I'm sorry if this discussion has taken up too much of anyone's time but in the end I think all avenues of discussion in this area are worthwhile on the basis that one day one of them will lead to a solution to an issue that has already taken up too much of the community's time. Guest9999 (talk) 06:16, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I have been bothered by WP:PROF, in how it goes far against the trend at WP:N to base notability on, and only on, the existance of reliable secondary sources. WP:PROF instead provides criteria tied to qualifications, expertise, and other direct measures. It is used for expert subjects, and the guideline is (well) defended and maintained by editors who don't seem to be teenagers. WP:PROF is a worry, if it could be used as an example for other subguidelines. However, it doesn't seem to be causing any harm by its mere existence, and with regards to academics, it does seem to work in practice. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:05, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Essay Rant about H-indexes

http://11011110.livejournal.com/155632.html The short summary: we shouldn't be using H-indexes or similar numbers to measure notability. If someone in an AfD has enough knowledge to actually evaluate the impact of someone's research, that's one thing, but in the hands of outsiders they're too unreliable, and we have better markers to use instead. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:45, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm. I must confess that I have warmed up to h-index a little. While I would hate to see our P&T Committees actually use or even consider it, Wikipedia is a somewhat different matter. Here in an AfD we do not have a lot of time for pondering the case and a decision needs to be made relatively quickly. H-index has the advantage of being a number that is quickly computable (subject to the limitations of the databases used to compute it, more on this below). I agree that self-citations are a problem, but I think this problem is actually solvable if one modifies the concept of h-index to discount self-citations. There are various free software programs that compute H-index using googlescholar data (e.g. Publish or Perish) and I would think that it is not too hard to modify them to disregard self-citations. In general, when an H-index is very high, it usually means something and I would be inclined to view that a significant positive indicator of notability (even accounting for a big margin or error, discussed below). Certainly, there are exceptions and people gaming the system, but as a quick rule of thumb, I think it works fine. Similarly, if h-index is very low, this is some sort of an alarm bell. While it does not necessarily mean that the subject is not notable, it does mean that the subject is not obviously notable and that the likelihood of notability is somewhat reduced (it may still be that a person has a few very important papers/results).

My own beef/pet peeve with h-index is based on other grounds. It is commonly assumed that an h-index is easy to compute. That is not in fact the case, since the databases used for computing h-index (WebOfScience, googlescholar and Scopus) are all hugely defective, in their own individual ways, in the what citation records they store and how they store them. WebOfScience is extremely sensitive to even minor variations in how a particular paper is listed in the bibliography when it is cited in another paper; a minute variation is enough and then WoS does not recognize the citation as referring to a particular paper and thinks that it refers to a separate publication. Perhaps this is also due to some deficiencies in how citation information is actually entered into WoS. The result is that the same paper has its citation record split into a bunch of pieces which WoS thinks are citations of different papers rather than the same one. When a paper is cited as "to appear", WoS makes no attempt to conflate such citations with the citations of the same paper after it has appeared. This is less of a problem in disciplines with very fast publication rates (a few months). But in subjects like Math, where it often takes something like 4 years between a preprint version of the paper and the time it has been published (and even after that people often still continue for a while longer to refer to it as a "preprint" or "to appear" due to LateX cutting and pasting of their bibliography records), this is a significant problem. This split citation phenomenon is also fairly pronounced in googlescholar, although googlescholar is a little better than WoS in dealing with the problem. In my observations, for mathematicians googlescholar usually over-estimates the total number of papers published by a factor of about 3.5-4 due to the split citation phenomenon. For WoS it is even worse. On the other hand, googlescholar can often inflate the results since when the same paper (say paper "A") gets cited by paper "B" where "B" is first an arXiv preprint and then "B" is a published paper, googlescholar often counts such citations of paper "A" twice rather than once. Then there are other problems: WoS does not have data on citations that occur in books and conference proceedings, while googlescholar does have some of this data. As a result, WoS and googlescholar do produce some values of h-index (and fairly quickly) but I think these values tend to be rather inaccurate and to have a wide margin of error (I think easily in the plus/minus 5 range for mathematicians) compared to the "true" h-index. I once tried to compute my own h-index using a compilation of WoS, MathSciNet and googlescholar data (only in papers/books that have already been published, and fixing the split citation problem). After about 10 minutes I realized that it is completely impossible and would actually involve something like 8-10 hours of really painstaking work to compute my "true h-index". GoogleScholar tells me that my h-index is 13. But it could as easily be 7 as it could be 18. (I can see, for example, that googlescholar splits the citation record of one of my papers into pieces of 14, 13, 4, 1, 1, 1 and another into pieces of 19, 8, 3, 2, 1 and yet another into 12, 3, 2, 1, 1, 1; but, of course, it also counts a lot of citations in not-yet published sources which should not in fact be counted and double-counts some citations that were first made in preprints that were later published). So what we do get from WoS or GoogleScholar is some sort of a random variable, which is related to the true h-index but in a rather mysterious way. I think that, for the moment, this highly imperfect nature of the databases that are used in practice to compute h-index is a bigger problem then things like self-citations or deliberately gaming the system. Nsk92 (talk) 05:04, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Still reading this and the blog article, but first thought was: "doesn't WoS have an option to calculate a self-citation measure?" I seem to recall calculating these for a small set of Psychologists recently. Pete.Hurd (talk) 14:29, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't think so, or at least I don't know how to do it and I just looked at the WoS interface a few minutes ago to double-check. Nsk92 (talk) 15:14, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Pete is partially right. If one clicks on "citation analysis" to calculate the h-index, the new screen has a link to something like "without self-citations" (no time to check the correct name, it's in the upper right-hand corner). However, if you click that link, you get all articles that cited all articles from the selected author, minus the articles on which this person or any of his co-authors was an author (I think...). To get an h-index from that would be hours of work.... Having said that, I don't think that "gaming the h-index" will be a significant problem. Suppose someone would try to do that. For the first few "h point", that'd be easy, but then it becomes increasingly difficult. For someone who has an h-index of 20, the next article needs 21 citations to add 1 point to the h index... And a certain amount of self-citation is normal and legitimate, of course, as everyone tends to build on previously-done work. It's difficult to see when self-citation would become self-serving... --Crusio (talk) 16:14, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

My concern is only partly about self-citation. I'm worried more about little logrolling communities that form walled gardens in academia with their own journals and conferences and papers all citing each other, and then form corresponding walled gardens of articles here. How do we distinguish the ones that are important from the frauds? Anything based purely on numbers of citations wouldn't help. Some measure of strength of connectivity from the rest of the web of scientific publication (maybe pagerank?) could work better. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:32, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

(ec) IIRC I remember coming across authors for whom >50% of the citations of their work were self-citations (I seem to remember some metric for journals that were based on proportion of citations to that journal that were internal to the journal, but that may be a false memory from a handcount as part of a debate about the pseudoscience status of some scientists work that happened here on WP). As for the El Naschie bruhaha, I'm with the bloggers who identify the publisher's willingness to countenance such poor editorial policies, and push such claptrap journals, as the prime culprits. Putting the blame on the scientific community for attempting use a quantitative metric for quality of scientists and journals just doesn't seem fair. There is a very real need for a quantitative measure of relative importance of impact, of scientists and journals. Everyone participating knows that there are many such metrics, and they are all viewed with some degree of scepticism by their users. It seems like a pretty classic problem of reliability of signals of quality, some exploitation of a signal most used by receivers will be selected for, receivers become more sceptical, signals may escalate in absolute value a la red queen, but variation ought to remain such that the correlation between signal and quality remains. If a more reliable metric emerges, then receivers will be selected to switch to that one, etc. It may be that no perfectly informative signal will emerge, but receivers may have an accurate probability distribution of signaller quality based on the signal. FWIW, tutorial on fine tuning WoK citation reports. Pete.Hurd (talk) 16:49, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Books published by leading academic publishing companies

I believe it should be added to the general list of criteria that academics who have published scholarly books at leading academic (high-prestigious) publishing companies with an international outreach (say, Palgrave Macmillan) are notable. An academic with such publications merits an article, in my opinion. Such a criteria would be comparable to several of the other criteria, including for instance no. 2 and 8. Jacq, C. (talk) 00:02, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

"The person has published scholarly books at leading academic publishing companies with an outstanding international reputation"? GVU (talk) 02:31, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't think this suggestion is a good idea, and it is not quite in keeping with the general spirit of the guideline. What exactly constitutes a highly presigious publishing company is rather debatable, and in general I don't think that simply publishing a book, with any kind of publisher, is sufficient for proof of notability (even for the book itself). If a book has made significant impact in the field, as demonstrated by references, citations, etc, that is a different matter. In fact, taking my own field, mathematics, I don't think there is any specific academic publisher, such that publishing a book with that publisher would automatically confer notability on the book or the author. Nsk92 (talk) 02:35, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

It may be different in other fields, though. I would say that an historian who has published books at Palgrave or a similar international company would be notable. GVU (talk) 02:37, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Nsk92. If publishing with Palgrave is such an important thing, then surely each and every book published there will 1/ rapidly garner citations and 2/ even more rapidly be reviewed in relevant journals, which would soon establish notability of the book and/or author.No need to change/add any criteria. --Crusio (talk) 10:08, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

In the humanities generally, the condition for tenure at the highest level universities at least in the US is in practice 2 books by major academic publishers. That corresponds to Associate Professor, which we still consider only sometimes notable. So anything beyond that would almost certainly be found notable here in any case, and almost always is. I would nonetheless not be opposed to a numerical standard for the applicable subjects--it can greatly simplify discussion. I remind people that in the humanities nothing happens rapidly, and citations take many years to appear, because they will not appear until someone has written another book citing them.--typically not even half of the ultimate ones will be in the first 10 years; even book reviews tend to be 1 and more usually 2 years late. DGG (talk) 14:17, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree that such a criterion, which of course should be carefully considered, could simplify discussions. I've seen several biographies of academics I would consider not notable, who have only published a couple of papers in addition to their PhD. Publishing books with major academic publishers is something usually done well after you have received a PhD, and will always have an international academic impact to at least some degree. It's not always easy to measure by citations found on the web in humanities or social sciences, as they appear slowly, are fewer than in other fields and not always so available (and also may not be in English), but a company like Palgrave is highly selective and academics with several (like two or more) books published with them or similar will generally be at the same level as a Professor. In Europe, the professor title is reserved for fewer academics than in the US, so books with such publishers would be a good supplementary way to measure notability of European academics, especially in humanities and social sciences. Of couse, it should not be the only criterion taken into consideration. GVU (talk) 15:33, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I think these kinds of arguments are perfectly fine when raised in AfD discussions themselves, e.g., if this sort of situation does come up, one could, perhaps properly, argue that such publications should count towards satisfying or partially satisfying Criterion 1 of WP:PROF. But I would not want to put this as a separate criterion in the guideline itself, at least not yet. There are too many differences between various disciplines regarding the matters of prestige associate with different publishers and the guideline is already specialized and complicated enough as it is (and people have been complaining about it in AfDs). The guideline itself should concentrate on more general principles and criteria, of the kind that even a person totally unfamiliar with the field should be decide on reasonably quickly. Most AfD participants do not have any academic background and they should be able to make their decisions (and rather quickly) on more tangible and objective evidence. Even among the WP:PROF regulars who are academics and who regularly participate in academic-related AfDs, many of us (such as myself and Crusio, for example), are not familiar with relative reputations of publishers in other disciplinces, particularly the humanities (or even other exact sciences, for that matter). It was great news to me, for example, that the mere fact of a publication in a particular publishing house in any discipline would automatically make one notable (and I don't know if I am willing to accept this argument even now). I don't remember such points being ever raised in AfDs before. In general, it is not a good idea to put novel arguments into the guideline until and unless they have been used in AfDs sufficiently often. So for the moment I think that arguments regarding particular publishers according automatic notability to the authors published there should be left to AfDs and treated on a case-by-case basis. If a coherent and successful theme of this sort does emerge in the AfDs, then it may be time to revisit the guideline and see if something should be added there. Nsk92 (talk) 16:06, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

This makes sense to me, and seems like an adequate solution. I would note, though, that there are several and easy ways to independently verify the prestige of leading publishing houses, e.g. by the prominence of their authors/books/journals, by awards (example) or by other sources which describe them as such, and because many editors active on the AfD pages are not familiar with these things, more specific criteria could, in time, be helpful, because number of citations found on the web is a bad way to measure prominence of academics in some disciplines. GVU (talk) 17:21, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

These are interesting points but I'd like to see how they play out in practice. I have to say that I am fairly skeptical of applying such transitivity argument from notability of publishers to notability of books they publish. The industry awards are given by the publishing industry, not by academics, and I don't know to what extent they reflect uniform superior academic quality. Unlike academic journals, book publishers do not have impact factors. Speaking from my own professional experience as a mathematician, we now have tons of publishers in math with very widely varying standards within each of them. E.g. Springer-Verlag is, generally, a very good academic publisher in math although recently their standards have been slipping because of change in ownership. But the quality of books published by Springer varies greatly, especially from one book series to another (and Springer has a ton of different book series), and even within any given book series. I have seen them publish very mediocre and even crappy stuff, as well as, of course, first-rate one. They do have a series called Classics in Mathematics where they reprint their older books that proved to be particularly successful and influential. If something is published in that series, I would be much inclined to view that as a proof of notability of the book and probably the author. However, as a practical matter, if a book makes it into the Classics in Mathematics series, it will already have had ten to the googleplex number of citations and notability would not be in question anyway. Nsk92 (talk) 17:43, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

FWIW, I agree with everything Nsk92 & Crusio have written above. Pete.Hurd (talk) 04:55, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

I would say that I agree that adding this to the guideline seems premature, but I'll say that it's not that far off for many humanities fields, and I would at least recommend that people who participate in a lot of AfD debates give some weight to the suggestion (at least when it comes to the humanities). I would think that people who get books published by top presses who would not pass the Notability guideline based on other criteria are the exception. Most people in history or musicology who get a book published by one of the three-letter abbreviation presses (OUP, CUP, HUP, Yale University Press, etc.) are notable or quickly become so (even if the book itself is not ipso facto evidence of it). People in the sciences need to recognize two things about humanities citations: (1) it can take a decade before they start appearing and (2) it's hard to know how often a book is being cited even if it is. So in the absence of other information, the press could tell you approximately how many citations the book is likely to have. Also to note that, contra DGG, two books is the norm only in very few fields in the humanities (and then as he noted only at the top top schools, those where many associate and untenured faculty are borderline notable and where often the title of associate professor is given long before tenure). Fields where the dissertation tends not to be published practically never require two books. When M.I.T. hired me, there was a suggestion that two books might be appropriate, but in negotiations we discovered that no one in the field could name anyone who had actually had two books by the time of tenure and the suggestion was quickly dropped. (I'm stating this at some length because WP Talk pages are now beginning to be cited by researchers and university officials and I don't want the notion that two books is the norm for all humanities to spread). I agree that it can be hard to tell what's a top press and what isn't, so this rule shouldn't be codified; but I think people should use their judgment and that for an Oxford University Press author, for instance, coming up for AfD there should be pretty clear evidence that the author is not-notable (not just "she doesn't even have a web page!") before casting a delete. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 08:37, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm not buying this argument that, because it takes ten years for the citation record to become clear, we should switch to some less-reliable inherited measure of notability instead. What's the hurry? Why can't we just wait the ten years? —David Eppstein (talk) 20:11, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree. In addition, notable books will garner (multiple) book reviews within 2 years of appearing. --Crusio (talk) 10:55, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Interesting that I should be on the conservative side this time. I think the general community accepts that full professorship at a major research university is a presumptive standard of notability Personally, i would accept tenure/associate professorship along with one major book at such a university as presumptive evidence of notability, but I am not at all sure the community will. There is usually a problem in saying that someone will be notable. DGG (talk) 03:54, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Agree with DGG that saying that reliable and verifyable evidence of notability (in the form of a demonstrable impact on the work of other academics) will almost certainly appear is to use the crystal ball. Pete.Hurd (talk) 04:25, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Re David's point about waiting 10 years: why do we allow for biographies of academics to be placed online based on less accurate sources such as their own webpages, promotional material, etc.? We've already acknowledged it's because we're not willing to wait until Festschrifts and memorial statements come in reliable sources at the end of the scholars' career or life. I don't really see the difference between not being willing to wait 20-25 years vs. not being willing to wait 10 years. I also would like to see Crusio's statement backed up about notable books garnering multiple book reviews within 2 years of publication -- unless we're going to have a much much higher standard of notability for books than the community has so far accepted, I don't see that in history or music history happening ever. I can't find a single reviewed book in Speculum (top journal of Medieval studies) that was less than 3 years old. 4 or 5 is pretty common. I found only about 20% of books reviewed in major journals in my field were out less than 2 years by the time they were reviewed. Just so long as we're throwing around numbers I think we should have them backed up. And regarding Pete's point, if evidence of impact is almost certain to appear then it would not be forbidden by the anti-crystal ball statute: in fact that is exactly the type of thing that is allowed by its first exception. I think the disagreement we are having is whether this impact actually is almost certain to occur. I see that mine (in all these) is a minority view from that tiny part of WP where academic press books are still the dominant force in the field, so I'll drop it at this point. Cheers, -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 17:51, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

"Independent?"

I'm very uncomfortable with this idea. If a subject does not have substantial reliable sources, we ought not have an article on it. Conversely, if it does, we shouldn't exclude it based on a subguideline. That's why they're called subguidelines, they do not and cannot override the general principle, just clarify when it's likely to be met. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 22:18, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

This has been discuissed several times already, including three threads up and when the guideline was being revised last summer. There are good reasons for keeping this guideline independent from the notability wars affecting WP:N and making WP:N rather unstable, especially in relation to the fiction and episodes&characters controversies. The actual requirements of WP:PROF also, of course, require evidence of notability to be demonstrated by independent reliable sources (look at the text of WP:PROF). However, the way academics and their research is in practice covered by reliable sources is significantly different from most general topics and it is beneficial to have the WP:PROF guideline being independent from WP:N to prevent instability of WP:N and possible unintended consequences of what happens there affecting the functioning of WP:PROF. Nsk92 (talk) 22:35, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

IMHO, WP:PROF aims to establish (through reliable sources) whether an academic has had a notable impact on thought in their discipline. The "independent" part aims to escape the WP:N/WP:BIO requirement that the academic be the subject of those reliable sources, as that would eliminate virtually all truely influential (but not newsworthy) thinkers. Pete.Hurd (talk) 23:13, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

This is largely correct, but there is another side to the story also. The problem with WP:N is that is is rather easy to misapply and misuse it in either more restrictive or more permissive way than what the actual consensus in relation to evaluating notability of academics is. For example, it is pretty easy to make an argument that having an academic's work is cited by independent sources several times (say 3 or 4 times, or whatever), is already evidence of that academic being covered by multiple independent reliable sources (true, in a sense) and hence sufficient for establishing notability (the basic WP:N standard). E.g. there is a current AfD, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Eric Schechter, where somebody tries to make essentially this argument (that multiple citations of an academic's work are always sufficient for establishing notability). They are trying to invoke (obviously incorrectly) WP:PROF for this argument, but the argument itself is actually fairly easily supported by a possible reading of WP:N. It could also happen (there have been suggestions of this sort), that WP:N decides to include some sort of a specific numerical requirement for the number of sources that are necessary and/or sufficient for establishing notability. If they do something like that (say, decide, for argument's sake, that at least three sources are always required and that 15 sources are always enough), what would that imply here? Actually, it would create a real mess. I just don't want to have to deal with potential unintended consequences of some such changes, which are quite possible, that are motivated by some wars refarding fiction articles and that could cause messy fallout here. Nsk92 (talk) 23:31, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

However, we never should have an article on a person unless that person is indeed the focus of several reliable sources, so that we can write a full biography. If a person's ideas are notable, but the person is not, we should write about the ideas, not the person. As to anything else from N, subguidelines can't excuse themselves from it or weaken it, even if they say they do, so it seems misleading. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 23:35, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

On the contrary, that is the very point of WP:PROF: academics are notable for their academic work, namely for their ideas. When their work is covered extensively, that is what makes an academic notable in the real world, as well as here. Unlike movie actors, athletes or politicians, academics are almost never written about in person until they are either dead or are about to retire, and even then only briefly. That is the nature of academia: the traditions there are different and wrting about a person is simply not done. That does not mean that articles about academics whose academic work has made substantial impact are not needed. On the contrary, they are a whole lot more encyclopedic than articles about some teen pop star, where there is extensive info about that pop-star's favorite color, favorite tooth-paste and their ongoing boyfriend/girlfriend problems. Nsk92 (talk) 23:51, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

I think, in that case, the important thing is to cover the ideas of the person, not the person him/herself. It's not to say we shouldn't cover academic topics, nor that they aren't of much more value than $TEEN_POPSTAR's latest idiocy, as I'd very much agree on both counts. But if the sources we've got cover the concepts and not the person, we should follow their lead, covering the concepts and not the person. That's exactly why we have the idea of notability, that we cover a given subject in depth if reliable sources choose to do so, and don't if they don't. Anything else is going to require original synthesis, and that's particularly bad in biographies. We should only have a biography if we have ample source material to have a full one. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 00:02, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

That is a rather radical view that does not correspond to the current consensus or common practice (and not just in relation to academics) and, if followed to the logical conclusion, would eliminate close to 90% of articles about academics, both living and dead; a very counter-productive outcome encyclopedically. WP:PROF takes the view that when the source says that a person X introduced an idea Y in some scholarly publication, which is important for such and such reasons, that constitutes coverage of both X and Y. A good article about an academic will necessarily concentrate on that academic's academic work. It is quite possible to write decent articles about academics of this sort, and I have written a few of them myself, e.g. John Stallings and Karen Vogtmann. They do not have much in a way of personal information (such as childhood, personal and family life, etc), so are not, in a sense, complete biographies. But articles like that have significant encyclopedic value and benefit the project. Nsk92 (talk) 00:19, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree completely with Nsk92. In addition, I often feel that all those articles concentrating on personal life, early childhood, girlfriend/boyfriend problems, etc. are just some kind of voyeurism and only marginally better than what one can find in any tabloid. Unless important to understand a person and her/his work, those details are trivial. Concerning the reliable sources, as WP:ACADEMIC recognizes, university websites may not be independent third-party sources, but they are usually reliable sources about someone's career. --Crusio (talk) 00:30, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Nsk92, I had a look at the articles you mentioned. I'm having a difficult time seeing what an improvement is over having a pseudo-"biography" at the person's name, basically stating "They came up with this idea", rather than simply mentioning them briefly in the article we (at least should) have on the notable concept. The idea is notable, but several dozen name drops don't make a person notable. In-depth information about them does. That's exactly why that requirement exists, to ensure that the subject of an article, in and of itself, is also the subject of the sources. If the idea's the focus in the sources, with the person mentioned as a footnote, the idea should be the focus here, with the person mentioned as a footnote. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 02:53, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Not sure I am following you here, but the point is to represent an overall picture of a particular person's academic contributions in a single article about that person. Such contributions are almost never limited to a single concept or a single result. In a good article about an academic one can see both the different ways in which this academic influenced the subject they worked in and, to some extent, the evolution of the interests of the academic and how it interacted with the evolution of the subject the academic worked in. As a practicing academic myself, I find these kinds of articles about academics interesting, useful and attractive and I am fairly sure that many others do too. (In fact, if I remember correctly, these types of articles were, in part, what attracted me personally to Wikipedia in the first place. I was on the colloquium committee in our department for a couple of years, and frequently had to introduce our colloquium and named lectures speakers before their talks. On a few occasions, I found Wikipedia to be the only place where one could find coherently presented info about some of our speakers and their contributions.) Of course, articles about individual notable concepts are valuable too but ideas-oriented articles about academics provide a valuable complimentary part of the picture; this, in my opinion, is the essense of what a good encyclopedia should be about. Nsk92 (talk) 03:18, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

A guideline should not go against the policy: WP:CONEXCEPT Consensus decisions in specific cases do not automatically override consensus on a wider scale - for instance, a local debate on a WikiProject does not override the larger consensus behind a policy or guideline. The WikiProject cannot decide that for the articles within its scope, some policy does not apply, unless they can convince the broader community that doing so is right.

In other words, this guideline cannot be independent of WP:N, regardless of all the arguments listed in previous threads. Ask for wider consensus. 212.200.243.165 (talk) 17:43, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

I restored it. Perhaps it could be better put, but this and the other special notability guidelines should not be interpreted to contradict the general guidelines. What they do is explicate the word "substantial" and in practice there are no problems The word "independent" is clearly not being used here to contradict the wider guidelines. (Answering one of Seraphimblade's concerns above, this paragraph says that this guideline can't be used to exclude.) Perhaps it should say it supplements WP:N & WP:BIO and is independent of other SNG's like WP:MUSIC.John Z (talk) 19:48, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

From comments above by few other editors you can see that this guideline is precisely interpreted in the way that you say it shouldn't be. That's why I think confusion should be removed from the lead. [1] 212.200.240.232 (talk) 16:17, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

FYI

There is a discussion going on at Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)#WP:ATHLETE needs updating that is also about WP:PROF. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 19:03, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

New reference for impact analysis in computer science

I just added a new reference (footnote 5) regarding how to assess impact for computer scientists. Of most relevance for WP:PROF, it states very emphatically that ISI should not be used for CS. I think it makes for interesting reading more generally in connection with discipline-specific standards for our criterion #1, scientific impact. Something else from the reference that may be worth saying somewhere (I've seen it discussed in AfDs though it doesn't seem to be present in WP:PROF itself: in many disciplines, author ordering is significant, but in CS (and also in math) it's generally not. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:33, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

My concerns about WP: PROF

I recommend giving some merits (5% or 8%of merit?) to someone co-authoring with some Wikipedia (notable) in the same filed. Erdos number falls in this discussion. Someone having Erdos number 1 is some what prestigious (5%-10% merit?).

Last but not least, teaching experience (15 years or more) at higher education is accounted to decide notability along with some scholarly work (research). Math and science have never been more important to the future of our children in the US. Many universities in the US are prioritizing teaching over research. I believe the same thing holds true elsewhere. I don’t see this clause being noted anywhere in WP: PROF. In short, lots of things that people do that are highly valuable do not count towards making them more notable.

On the other hand, someone has seen articles about academics where the case for notability rested on teaching performance rather than research or textbook writing or whatever, but they're quite rare. I’m just a beginner to make a note of all these.

I would like to see these things are included in WP:PROF documents. Thanks.

--Athos, Porthos, and Aramis (talk) 12:31, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Disagree. I am in agreement with previous discussion here that Erdos number amounts to inheriance of notability. Also, I don't think that teaching ought to be included in WP:PROF, if impact of teaching is truly notable, then it ought to be demonstrable through WP:BIO means. It is my impression that WP:PROF is intended to assess the impact of a person's ideas on the world of scholarship, and therefore ought to be limited to research, or research analogues.Pete.Hurd (talk) 17:16, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

“I am in agreement with previous discussion here that Erdos number amounts to inheriance of notability’’- Can someone help me to find this discussion? Thanks. --Athos, Porthos, and Aramis (talk) 21:23, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Is this you are referring to from WP:PROF:? Having a small collaboration distance from a famous or notable academic (e.g. having a small Erdos number) is not, in and of itself, indicative of satisfying Criterion 1. Many would think that Erdos number 1 has some meaningful significance for notability check. Erdos number 2 or more could be a fun. The followings what I’m writing to applies to math and science disciplines only: I've seen articles in math/science academics where the case for notability rested on textbook writing or whatever. As far as merits are concerned, I wonder how writing books could be much different than teachings at higher education. Is writing a good book equivalent to writing a good research paper for a good publication? Writing books is a kind of an art, likewise the teaching too. What is that scholarly activity we find in writing books, but not in teaching at higher education? It is understood that those who are good in teaching tend to write good books in math and science. What makes a good math/science teacher and what does not make a good book writer in Math/science? I see some mismatch in WP:PROF for academia especially in math/cs/science/engineering/medical science under the present situations across the globe. Thanks. --Athos, Porthos, and Aramis (talk) 01:04, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

The point is that we cannot evaluate quality of teaching in most cases. We don't have the information to do so. On the rare occasions that we do (third-party published articles attesting to the exceptionality of someone's teaching) these articles are usually taken as satisfying WP:BIO, so the more specific requirements of WP:PROF are not necessary in those cases. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:26, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

• I think that this discussion is misguided. Notability is not the same thing as deserving. Many very deserving people are not notable and the other way around. Think of mass-murderers, war criminals, and what not. Those people are notable but not deserving. A good teacher is very deserving (even though in most Western countries they are sorely underpaid) and, as far as I am concerned, worth her/his weight in gold. But if that does not result in publicity (i.e., articles in reliable independent sources), it does not lead to notability. Even if we would somehow throw overboard all current notions of notability and decide that "quality" and "deserving" merits a WP article, it would be impossible to write such an article for lack of sources. --Crusio (talk) 07:17, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

• The notability articles in academia for example start with “John Doe a Professor at ….”. What is the definition of a Professor at a higher education and in wiki? WP:PROF begins with the words ‘Professor Test’. Professors are involved with teaching, research and working on some grants. I do not know how ‘grants’ are hooked to WP:PROF definitions. Grants could be any thing. Every faculty has to get going in some kind of research activities whether his/her department has a PhD program or not. Also everybody has responsibility of teaching 1 to 4 courses in the US. In England, and India, there are professors who teach just graduate classes (Departments or Graduate centers). I've seen articles in academics where the case for notability did not rest on someone are strictly a Professor. We find here lots of variations in the definition itself.

--Athos, Porthos, and Aramis (talk) 12:26, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

• The teaching requirements indeed vary enormous (when I was a professor in the US, my contract stipulated a maximum of 6 hours teaching... per year! Some seminars, Grand Rounds, and such counted towards those 6 hours. I think I only taught 4 hours of regular classes in the 5 years I spent there... Some professors teach a lot and consequently don't have much time for research, for some it is the other way around. Some get lots of grants, others hardly any. Some publish many articles, some only a few. None of this, I surmise, makes a professor (or whatever title the person in question has) necessarily notable or non notable. If someone publishes 10 articles in Science, none of which ever gets cited, then I don't think that this persons has made a lot of impact in the field and consequently is not notable. That doesn't mean that the research was bad or not important (after all, Science found it important and good enough to publish). It just means that the work (and hence the researcher) has not impacted the field and is therefore not notable. If someone writes a textbook that is widely used in teaching, then that person has become noticeable to a great many students and hence is notable. Whether the textbook is any good is immaterial. I repeat, whether the accomplishments are good or bad, someone only gets notable when (s)he is remarked and reported upon. --Crusio (talk) 13:16, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) Agree with Crusio here, the intent is not to identify Academics that are particularly good at their job. The reason we have WP:ACADEMIC and don't have WP:ACCOUNTANT is not that we are going through the list of professions alphabetically and identifying the criteria that mark someone as being outstandingly good at their job, and havn't gotten past ACB yet. Academics *do something* particularly relevant to encyclopedic topics, they generate knowledge, and it is that role that we are attempting to assess with WP:PROF. Erdos was just this guy, a notable mathematician, for certain, but as David Eppstein (IIRC) has argued elsewhere, far from the most important. The Erdos number is a historical accident, rather like degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon. Far more notable mathematicians could be substituted for Erdos if one really wanted to use a degrees-of-separation metric for academic impact. Those mathematicians who have made a notable impact on the practice of mathematics ought to pass WP:PROF, those that havn't, but have co-authored a paper with someone who has, should fail it. Good teachers should fail it, good teachers, who are verifiably the subject of extnsive coverage in reliable secondary sources discussing their excellence as teachers, should pass WP:BIO, because they are notable teachers. Pete.Hurd (talk) 17:32, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Just to clarify: Erdos is a good choice for Erdos numbers because he was a very good mathematician, worked on a wide variety of different problems, and had a huge number of co-authors. He is not "the most important" mathematician of his century (Grothendieck comes to mind as an example of someone more important) but I don't think it's accurate to say that he's "far from" the most important. Anyway, my main argument with respect to Erdos numbers is that they have more to do with what field you're in than with the impact of your own research: e.g. most computational geometers have Erdos numbers of 2 or 3, while typical numbers might be larger for say algebraic topologists, not because computational geometry is more central to mathematics (it isn't) but because it has closer connections to Erdos' own interests. It's too indirect to be useful as a measure of individual impact. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:48, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, didn't mean to overstate your point (I took a quick look to see if I could find your comment to link to, but it must have been in an AfD I didn't come across it). Pete.Hurd (talk) 18:12, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, It would be more appropriate if we change WP:PROF to WP:researcher or WP:research-academia. --Athos, Porthos, and Aramis (talk) 12:23, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

WP:PROF is just one of the short nicknames for Wikipedia:Notability (academics). The nutshell description on that page includes "[...] scientists, researchers, philosophers and other scholars (collectively referred to as "academics" for convenience) ". Pete.Hurd (talk) 21:51, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

It reads like this - "This guideline, sometimes referred to as the professor test,..". That is confusing. Here is the explaination - Not all professors (including full , assistant etc.) fall ih this. It just covers a portion of that. Also not all philosophers, researchers, scientists etc. fall in this - So it's good to pick something like WP:Scholars. We may abbreviate it to WP:SCHOL. We need to update the guidelines which currently reads as 'This guideline, sometimes referred to as "the professor test,..". This test is not about professors or full professors. Again not all professors are philosophers etc.

--Athos, Porthos, and Aramis (talk) 23:05, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

the use of the term Professor test is something I havent seen in a good while now, perhaps "formerly known" ?? DGG (talk) 01:49, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm finding this page really helpful.

I've been editing (mostly copyediting) for a couple of months, pretty seriously. I've really gotten into the Wikipedia-thing and I am so grateful for what it does. But I've been mystified about notability issues on academic bios. This page helped more than anything so far, so your discussion is quite valuable. I learned a new criteria that explains one of my own problems with many academic Bios:

• Criteria 3 -5: Contrary to WP:N. Attempts to legitimise transfer of notability from the works to the person

Thanks for that.--Levalley (talk) 01:39, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Actually, my feeling is that criteria 2, 3 and 5 are the ones that most directly translate WP:N into academic terms. Someone else has already noted them; therefore, they are notable. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:38, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

exactly. Researchers are known for their research., as athletes for their athletics, and so on. Criterion 2, awards, is in fact not just for academics: significant awards at a national level in a persons field are the easiest way to show notability. DGG (talk) 02:47, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

UK use of professor

I am looking at creating a page for a deceased professor in the UK, and I was pointed to this page. In the UK, lecturers and researchers are called lecturers and researchers, although with variations of rank and standing. Professorships are awarded on the basis of their work, often after many years, and most departments tend to have a single professor who is often to that department as a dean is to a school. A professor is a formal title that reflects both rank and an established basis of work. Will creating a page for a UK professor be unproblematic - because unless they have done what you require for a valid entry, they would not be called professor here. Mish (talk) 09:10, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

• I don't think the comparison with a Dean is correct, it is more like Chair of a department in the US. Neither automatically qualifies for notability under this guideline. To create an article on this person, it would be best to include as many sources as you can find and, for example, include some of his most important publications. An indication of how often his/her work has been cited can also be helpful. Also, if there are any awards or such, that would go a long wazy to establishing notability, too. Hope this helps. --Crusio (talk) 10:24, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

I think Professor#Most other English-speaking countries describes the situation in the UK pretty well. It's no longer true that most departments in the UK have only a single professor, and successful large departments at research-orientated universities can have a dozen or more. I don't think a UK professorship would be thought to confer an automatic pass of WP:Notability (academics). On the other hand it's often easier finding independent reliable sources for deceased academics than living ones, as obituaries are a good source. An obituary produced by their own university wouldn't be considered independent, but those in national newspapers or academic journals would certainly count, and I think magazines, newsletters or websites produced by learned or professional societies would too. And such an article would naturally be free of any suspicion of being an autobiography. Qwfp (talk) 14:05, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

OK, thanks for the help. Yes, chair would be closer. OK, I believe there were obituaries (I was invited to write one, but declined at the time), and publications which are cited. Not sure about awards, but certainly an award was established in her name posthumously, which presumably would count in her favour. Thanks again. Mish (talk) 16:20, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

What is actually closest then is named professorship in the US. Most large departments in major research universities of high standing have several of these, and they are all almost always or always notable--I cant think of one that has been deleted in years. When you get outside the major universities, then it becomes much less automatic. Same I'd say in the UK. DGG (talk) 02:40, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

thanks for the help - I have created the page Tamsin Wilton. It is my first page, so would appreciate any suggestions for improving it and ensuring that it doesn't get put up for deletion. I have included bibliography and referenced the biography. Should I inform the WP:biography folks as well? Mish (talk) 16:50, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Law school deans (in the U.S.)

I'd like to propose that the notes regarding criteria #6 be expanded to include law school deans, at least in the United States. A law school dean is simply not comparable to a department chair. The American Bar Association sets forth regulations on the operation of law schools which must be followed for such an institution to receive and maintain ABA accreditation. These regulations specify that "A law school shall have a full-time dean, selected by the governing board or its designee, to whom the dean shall be responsible". ABA Standards for Approval of Law Schools, Standard 206(a).

Thus, a law school dean may not simply be a professor selected by fellow professors, nor even by the President of the University. Various provisions in the ABA regulations act to require that a law school will have substantial independence from the university with which it is affiliated, so the law school dean effectively holds the highest post within a distinct academic institution. As an anecdotal matter, no one arrives at the decanal position in an American law school without achieving some status in some aspect of the legal community.

I'd add that similar standards are probably applicable to medical school deans, although I have nothing specific to cite for that hunch.

Cheers! bd2412 T 01:29, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Further to the above, I did a bit of research and, unsurprisingly, found that similar standards exist with respect to medical school deans. Specifically, the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), which accredits medical schools, thereby making them eligible for federal grants and state licensure, sets forth the following conditions:

IS-7. Administrative officers and members of a medical school faculty must be appointed by, or on the authority of, the governing board of the medical school or its parent university.

IS-8. The chief official of the medical school, who usually holds the title "dean," must have ready access to the university president or other university official charged with final responsibility for the school, and to other university officials as are necessary to fulfill the responsibilities of the dean's office.

IS-9. There must be clear understanding of the authority and responsibility for medical school matters among the vice president for health affairs, the dean of the medical school, the faculty, and the directors of the other components of the medical center and university.

IS-10. The dean must be qualified by education and experience to provide leadership in medical education, scholarly activity, and care of patients.

...

FA-12. The dean and a committee of the faculty should determine medical school policies.

Taken together, these requirements indicate that appointment of a medical school dean is outside the reach of the university president, and that a medical school dean must also be a scholar in the field, and must have policy-making authority within the school. Hence, it should be clear that both law school deans and medical school deans are, by dint of their position, inherently notable. bd2412 T 17:24, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

What is the particular issue that these proposed additional guidelines will help clear up? I don't believe that there has been a problem of notable academic deans being deleted at AfD, has there? I feel that we should add guidelines only when they help prevent likely (or persistent) wrong AfD outcomes; otherwise the guidelines become too unwieldy. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 17:56, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Actually, exactly this topic came up at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/David Epstein (law professor), where another editor asserted that these guidelines exclude law school deans as the equivalent of department chairs (which I then did the research to address). bd2412 T 16:51, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but in his case there was little doubt that he was notable anyway by other criteria. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:02, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Still, the point was raised, and his holding of that position should have been dispositive if these criteria were implemented correctly. bd2412 T 19:51, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

• (unindent) As far as I can see, the point was brought up by yourself. I don't yet see any reason to change this policy for law deans. I have to admit that I find the "precedence" for that (the named chair rule) the weakest part of this policy. --Crusio (talk) 20:09, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

  For the record, Niteshift36 was the first to bring up the fact of this person being a law school dean, and my research was in reponse to Amthernandez going ballistic over the assertion that law school deans are inherently notable (which, pursuant to the above-noted ABA regulations, they clearly are, as are medical school deans pursuant to the above-noted LCME regulations). Deans of medical schools and law schools are nothing like "named chairs" (whom the Dean typically has power to appoint), and if the rules are ambiguous enough to allow such a frivolous argument to be made, then the rules need to be clarified. bd2412 T 01:11, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

• Oops, my bad about who brought it up first in that AfD. The point is rather immaterial, though. As for Deans having the power to appoint a named chair, that goes for any school, Law, Medical, or other. No Dean however, will be able to make such an appointment on her/his own: there is always a search committee and basically it is they who decide. --Crusio (talk) 07:36, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

• Part of the distinction arises from the nature of law schools in the United States - every American law school is a wholly postgraduate institution, meaning that an applicant must have already received a four-year bachelor's degree from a college or university in order to even be considered for admission to a law school (medical schools have the same restriction). Of course, no law school graduate may practice law in the U.S. without passing a state bar exam, which is why bar associations wield such expansive influence over the operation of law schools. This is why those law schools that are affiliated with a university tend to operate as institutions functionally separate from the university itself. They have their own libraries and other facilities, graduation ceremonies, distinct alumni associations, etc. The substantial restrictions imposed on the operation of law schools is one reason why, with over 5,750 accredited institutions of higher education throughout the United States, there are only 200 accredited law schools. Think about that - in the entire country, which has well over 5,000 colleges and universities, and over a million lawyers, there are only 200 law school deanships. bd2412 T 08:50, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

If there are no objections from anyone familiar with American law schools and medical schools, I will specify in the appropriate section that in the United States, deans of law schools and medical schools are likely to be inherently notable. bd2412 T 18:38, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

• I don't think this would be a good addition (and I have been a faculty member at an American medical school). --Crusio (talk) 18:45, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
  • Agree with Crusio. I don't see that it matters how many or few there are. I think this rationale confabulates "important person at work" with "historically notable" Pete.Hurd (talk) 21:47, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
    • Then why have criteria number 6 at all? Our standards explicitly hold that a person is "notable" if they have "held a major highest-level elected or appointed academic post at an academic institution"; I have bothered to perform the labor of providing evidence that law school deans and medical school deans hold exactly such a post (and no contrary evidence has been introduced here). Perhaps no amendment to the language of the criteria is necessary, as I can constantly keep a lookout for deletion debates regarding deans of such high-level, independent, professional institutions, and I can duplicate the evidence of this standard being met in each such debate. But that seems an awful waste of resources, since the criteria can simply be clarified to accept the evidence as provided. bd2412 T 22:53, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
      • You have not "provided evidence", you have asserted your opinion. The guidelines explicitly exclude deans and that exception has not been inserted by accident. --Crusio (talk) 00:24, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
        • What? I can assure you that the American Bar Association guidelines for accreditation of law schools are not my "opinion" - as great as it would be to be in a position to direct the level of independence with which all 200 such institutions are to operate, those are someone else's "opinions". Furthermore, those "opinions" are binding on every law school in this country. Those, along with the comparable rules governing medical school accreditation, constitute the evidence to which I was referring. bd2412 T 01:12, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

• Of course those are not your opinion. But it is your opinion that those ABA guidelines imply automatic notability for deans of law schools. --Crusio (talk) 01:32, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

• What the ABA guidelines do is make it clear that a law school dean is the "highest-level elected or appointed academic post at an academic institution". There is no place for opinion to enter into it, unless someone is proposing to remove criteria 6, which I have not heard yet. As you have been on the faculty of an American medical school, let me ask you, was the dean of that school lacking in notability? bd2412 T 01:49, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

• (unindent) The highest official is the president or chancellor, not a dean, regardless of what school. --Crusio (talk) 02:17, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
  • Albany Law School. William Mitchell College of Law. Thomas M. Cooley Law School. I could go on. bd2412 T 02:34, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

This discussion thread makes a case that academic standards for publishing and hiring in law might actually be significantly laxer than other areas. If so, we should apply more scrutiny to law deans, not less — if one can become a dean of a major school of law on the basis of a slim-to-nonexistent record of academic publication and jurisprudence, we'd need some other part of the record to shine in order to have something to say about the subject other than the mere fact of his or her position. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:46, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm not ready to base notability criteria on someone's rather spiteful blog post. I would prefer to refer to a source that at least meets our own qualifications for use as a reference, such as Daniel Rodriguez, The Market for Deans, University of San Diego School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper Series, No. 08-037 (July 2008), publication forthcoming in the Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues (2010), available on SSRN. It begins, "Deans are extremely important figures in the performance of American law schools in modern times. And given the growing complexity of legal education, we can expect that the importance of law school deans and deaning will only expand in the coming years". I also wouldn't put too much stock in an analysis of the academic qualifications of the Dean of Harvard Law School, because the school is prestigious enough that it can afford to roll the dice on a decanal candidate with an atypical background for the position. Paradoxically, it a Harvard Law School Dean would be inherently notable for having been the Dean of Harvard Law School (just as the newly minted CEO of Microsoft would be instantly notable for holding the position, even compared to someone who had helmed a lesser software company for decades. bd2412 T 21:43, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Basically, the argument that law deans are somehow more intrinsically notable than other deans strikes me as special pleading. Kagan's probably a bad example in this regard because she's clearly notable, but I just don't see the evidence for this as a general principle, and this case shows that in some cases law deans may be significantly less accomplished academically than one would expect deans in most other disciplines to be. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:47, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

It shows that in one case, not in "some cases". Provide another example of a law school dean who is similarly "less accomplished academically" and can not otherwise be shown to be notable based on general notability criteria, and you'll have "some cases". bd2412 T 22:10, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

You mean like Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Phillip Saunders? —David Eppstein (talk) 22:20, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Not to split hairs, but obviously the dean of a Canadian law school need not have the level of authority and autonomy required by the American Bar Association. I should qualify my initial statement, then, to say that American law school deans are inherently notable, which is a function of the unique nature of American law schools, as compared to legal education departments in other countries. bd2412 T 22:27, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

So now you're arguing for special treatment of American academics vis-a-vis those in other countries, as well as special treatment of legal academics vis-a-vis those in other disciplines? —David Eppstein (talk) 23:14, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Actually, no. This conversation is about law school deans, not "academics" by country or by discipline. Would you say that university presidents are deemed notable because they receive special treatment relative to academics in other disciplines? I would refer you, again, to the ABA requirements which set forth objective standards giving American law school deans greater authority and autonomy than deans of other departments typically enjoy. bd2412 T 23:29, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

You have documented standards for the authority that deans of law enjoy. You have not documented any basis for comparison between those standards and those of other disciplines. As for university presidents, I am not aware of any restrictions on the disciplines they might be drawn from. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:52, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Are you asking me to prove a negative, with respect to the lack of comparable authority and autonomy of deans of other academic units? As for university presidents, I do not contend that any such restrictions exist. In fact, a university president may come from a wholly non-academic background, perhaps coming straight from Congress or a major CEO position. Law school deans may also be drawn from wholly non-academic backgrounds. Plenty come straight from being a federal judge or head of a government agency or from the Congress. In that sense, they are the same except that the law school dean (typically) must have a law degree. Our criteria deem notable a person who "has held a major highest-level elected or appointed academic post at an academic institution or major academic society". Under the requirements set forth by the ABA, the deanship of an American law school is such a position, irrespective of the academic background of its holder. bd2412 T 00:21, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

So you keep saying. Maybe if you repeat it enough times it will become true. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:59, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

I invite you to read the ABA accreditation requirements, you'll see that they set forth precisely the criteria that I have claimed. These are not optional. A law school that does not meet them does not get accredited, and its students are unable to sit for the bar or practice law in almost all states. If you doubt that the dean is the "highest-level elected or appointed academic post" within a law school, that is also addressed by the ABA accreditation guidelines. bd2412 T 01:07, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

The part I doubt is whether most law school are independent academic institutions of the type intended by this clause. It is not supposed to apply to the highest-level post within an academic department or school or college or research center or program, only to the university as a whole. You are arguing that the clause should be extended, in this one case, to apply to an academic subunit of the university with what seems to me inadequate justification. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:14, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

The ABA accreditation requirements require that law schools be autonomous. As far as I know, this is exceptional (perhaps existing also for medical schools, but not much beyond that). However, I welcome you to provide evidence that such a level of autonomy is the norm for accreditation in other disciplines. In fact, there are several freestanding American law schools, not attached to any college or university. Would you agree that they are "independent academic institutions"? bd2412 T 01:24, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

The freestanding ones, sure. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:50, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

So you would agree that the dean of a freestanding law school such as the Appalachian School of Law or a Miles Law School - or even one of the unaccredited Lincoln Law School branches - would be inherently notable under our current criteria? bd2412 T 02:21, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

We have deleted articles about heads of schools before, if we were not convinced that the school was particularly significant. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:27, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Then the criteria needs to be reworded to indicate that. Right now, it fairly expressly states that someone who "has held a major highest-level elected or appointed academic post at an academic institution" is inherently notable, without incorporating the sort of qualifier that you have just added. bd2412 T 03:20, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Criterion 5: named/personal chair?

Criterion 5 currently reads:

"The person holds or has held a named/personal chair appointment or "Distinguished Professor" appointment at a major institution of higher education and research."

I'd like to propose deletion of "personal" from the above. In my understanding, a "personal chair" is just any full professorship other than a named chair or a departmental chair, i.e. as Professor#Most other English-speaking countries says, "a professorship awarded specifically to that individual". Are we really such a position at a major institution is automatically notable? This would seem to contradict Note 13, "Lesser administrative posts (Provost, Dean, Department Chair, etc) are generally not sufficient to satisfy Criterion 6". So a personal chair is notable, but being department chair isn't?? Unless the restriction to "major" institutions meant to be highly restrictive, rather than just meaning e.g. any accredited university? I'd welcome others' thoughts on this. Regards, Qwfp (talk) 17:35, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

my understanding of personal chair is a chair created specifically for a person or in honor of a person, as distinct from a ordinary chair without specific designation. Chair in department chair is not the same use of the word--normally, it means chairperson in an administrative sense only. DGG ( talk ) 23:17, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

The idea of #named/personal chairs" seems rather specific to the US academic context. I think this criteria should be changed as well to allow for better inclusion of non-American academics.·Maunus·ƛ· 15:53, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

My point was that named and personal chairs are not specific to the US, as both exist in the UK. However, named chairs and personal chairs are two separate and different things with different degrees of prestige associated with them (a named chair being more prestigious than a personal chair). As no-one has disagreed with my proposed change after 5 months i'm going to delete 'personal' from Criterion 5. Qwfp (talk) 19:37, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Then they are specific to an English speaking academic context - they certainly don't exist in Denmark. I'd like to propose a complete removal of this criterion or a rewording to something like "high level academic position" which would respect that not all academic traditions may even have the possibility of professorships. ·Maunus·ƛ· 17:56, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

There seems to be a problem with people trying to apply this criterion -- adapted, it seems, mainly to American academia with its apparent love for bombastic titles -- to professors elsewhere. Please take a look at Talk:Tommy Möller and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tommy Möller, where I have made an admittedly rather long-winded comment trying to explain how named chairs can't be used as a cut-off point for Swedish professors. OTOH, the water has been muddied in the last roughly 15 years through reforms of the academic ranking system. Not sure what the case is in other countries in Europe that have the Lehrstuhl type of professorships, or have had them in the past, but criterion 5 seems to be poorly adapted either to existing differences between systems or to differences over time in changing systems.

(As for Möller, he could possibly squeeze in under criterion 7 as a frequent commentator in media on Swedish politics -- I had heard of him before this discussion, but hardly more than that -- but "substantial impact" would seem to be going quite a bit to far.) --Hegvald (talk) 06:06, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I suggest adding to this criterion that it covers any holder of a professorial chair (that is permanent or has some degree of continuity) in systems where that is the highest available distinction within the university and where named chairs are either very rare or non-existent. --Hegvald (talk) 07:32, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

• I don't support this change. As it is, I already find the assumption that anyone having a "named chair" in the US is notable rather tenuous. The proposed change would basically make every European professor notable, which I doubt is the case. If an academic is notable, we really don't need this criterion, as other will be other accomplishments (awards, notable publications, high citation rates, etc) that will show this. --Crusio (talk) 08:04, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I was going to say the same thing. There are some charity-endowed named professorships at universities that usually must be given to someone. So, at those institutions you always have someone auto-notable based on that. On the other hand, I've not seen cases where notability depended solely on that, i.e. every prof biography I've see that met that criterion also met some other criteria. So the criterion appears pretty redundant to me, and I suspect it may be possible to game it, just that I haven't seen any biography like that yet. Tijfo098 (talk) 03:09, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

I might have created a test case with Paul Kettl MD. I'm not sure of any other reason for notability other than criterion 5. (not a named chair) Jesanj (talk) 03:39, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

I suspect I'm posting months after anyone's stopped watching this thread. I think I. William Zartman may pass under this criterion and for no other reason. Is there much encyclopedic to this article? JFHJr (㊟) 05:51, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

According to the source for his named professorship, he is the author of seven books, the former president of an academic society, has held named professorships at three different institutions. He's frequently quoted as an expert in the media. And 14 of his publications are listed in Google scholar as having 100 or more citations each. In short, he passes multiple WP:PROF criteria, and is a bad example for whatever point you might be trying to make, except possibly for the point that some of our articles don't adequately describe the things their subjects are notable for. That's a reason to improve the article, not to delete it. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:44, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Notability guideline for academic journals

• I have created a first draft of a notability guideline for academic journals. Please feel free to comment/correct/complete, etc. As it would seem to relate to this guideline, I am posting this notice here, too, so that interested editors can contribute either on the draft's talk page or here. Thanks. --Crusio (talk) 12:48, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
  • In case others are looking, this is now located at Wikipedia:Notability (academic journals). –Paul Erik ^{(talk)(contribs)} 05:33, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Presidents/chancellors of smaller schools

Curious — would the presidents of smaller private schools be considered to pass criterion 6? I have enough information to create stubs on several presidents of Geneva College who did nothing that would make them notable aside from being the Geneva president, but I don't want to do work for articles that will only be deleted. Nyttend (talk) 23:53, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Presidents of academic societies

The guideline 6 has been challenged at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Elizabeth Ann Nalley with respect to a president of the American Chemical Society DGG ( talk ) 21:39, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

will these do for notability?

1. Distinguished Scholar award from the Communal Studies Association 2. Myers Center Award

? 212.200.205.163 (talk) 15:44, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

a) This type of question should probably be raised on WP:Help desk.

b) Neither the Communal Studies Association or the Myers Center seem to be notable so I'd say no. That's just me though.--RDBury (talk) 13:58, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Article of interest

People who have been involved in this guideline might like to comment here: Talk:William_Connolley#WP:ACADEMIC. MickMacNee (talk) 18:55, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Membership to Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and WP:PROF#C3

There are a couple of new articles whose only claim to notability is the subjects' membership to the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. (Some of the articles in question: Helge Holden, John Grue, Erling Størmer, Kristian B. Dysthe.) Could someone help me to determine if membership to this academy is sufficient to pass WP:PROF#C3? Le Docteur (talk) 16:51, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Hooshang Heshmat

Claims of notability for the academic Hooshang Heshmat are not supported by any reliable secondary sources. This article could be saved from deletion if sources can be found, but if not, what should be the outcome of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hooshang Heshmat? --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 11:56, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

• If you look at the article, you'll see that Dr. Heshmat is not in academia -- having a doctorate doesn't make one an academic. Also, this talk page isn't for the discussion of the notability of individual academics, nor is it for asking leading questions about article deletion discussions, it's for the discussion of the notability guideline for academics in general. -- ArglebargleIV (talk) 18:11, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Connes on citation counts

From a recent interview with well-known mathematician Alain Connes [2] (p.14):

“ I think the number of quotations is a very very strange measure. If you look at citations in mathematics then it doesn’t make sense because there are very hard papers which very few people have read, and in fact there is really an inverse correlation between the difficulty of a paper and the number of people who actually read it, let alone quote it. ”

—David Eppstein (talk) 17:17, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

• How true, I love it! Especially since I am wrestling at this very moment with my presentation (10 days from now...) for the 4-year renewal of our institute, of which citation analysis and impact factors is an important part... :-) --Crusio (talk) 17:22, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Criteria for becoming a Professor in the UK

My understanding is that the typical criteria for becoming a professor in the UK at government funded institutions for higher education is that there is "sufficient evidence of sustained output of high quality, peer-reviewed research publications or other equally recognised forms of research output, and evidence that they have made a significant contribution to the discipline and earned an international reputation." This would seem to me to imply everyone in the UK who is a Professor at such an institution has been judged by an appointments panel to meet a requirment such as No 1 on our list: "1. The person's research has made significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources. " What are the substantial problems with this interpretation? Best wishes (Msrasnw (talk) 16:17, 20 November 2009 (UTC))

I don't know that there is a problem. Professors in the UK are like full professors in the United States, and full professors at research institutions tend to pass this guideline (though, of course, if one failed to do so they would still be non-notable, university appellation notwithstanding). RJC ^Talk_Contribs 19:58, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Failing the Prof test

I have been working on an article on Professor Matthew Watson which has been deleted for lack of notability - failing the Prof test. I have been trying unsuccesfully to get it restored and think I have lost the argument. Is it the intention of those working on the guidlines that such professors might be deemed to have failed the test? Comparing this Matthew Watson with the other Matthew Watsons it seems to me our standards with respect to academics are far more demanding than for US baseball players or US soccer players. Best wishes (Msrasnw (talk) 19:09, 21 November 2009 (UTC))

• Yes, that's true. However, the fact that the jocks can't get their act together is no reason for us to follow their bad example.... --Crusio (talk) 22:55, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

• • My worry is not that there are problems with other articles it is that wikipedia's coverage is good in sports and pop music and films especially US ones but for some reason the academic criteria is far harder than for other areas and indeed than it used to be. It used to be the case that writing a couple of textbooks with a good publisher and publishing lots of articles in peer reviewed journals used to be enough but not anymore. (Msrasnw (talk) 00:38, 22 November 2009 (UTC))

• As far as I can see, writing 1 single text book, as long as it is widely used, suffices to make an academic notable. Writing a bunch of papers doesn't: all academics publish. But if those papers are modestly cited (usually counts of a couple of hundred times in total, with top papers getting 70-80 cites, and/or an h-factor >15, -in the sciences, at least) then that is enough to satisfy notability criteria, too. And (again, in the sciences), anybody below that really isn't that notable. --Crusio (talk) 11:04, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

• I believe that the Professor test is so rigid and the bar set so high as to be dysfunctional. It is a common occurrence for me to notice an article or book or a reference to one by someone I don't know. Type them into google and their wikipedia page comes up. This is useful. Wikipedia has infinite space. I can see no reason why everyone in academia should not be included. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Broad Wall (talk • contribs) 16:39, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

h-index

I can see how h-index might be used for a delete argument, provided the article's only claim to notability is WP:ACADEMIC#1, but I'm unsure how it can be used for a keep argument. As far as I can tell, h-index is not weighted for depth of contribution to a journal article, and for all we know an academic may have contributed only marginally to a specific paper. I'm also unsure if h-index is calculated to account for self-citations. Currently, the project page discusses that the h-index can be used (with great caution) in evaluating whether #1 is satisfied, but I believe it should state that the h-index should only be used to help evaluate (again, with great caution) whether #1 has not been satisfied. Thoughts? Steamroller Assault (talk) 01:36, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, h-index has lots of drawbacks; you mentioned some of them and there are others. Still, a high h-index (e.g. 25+ for experimental sciences) is usually correlated with significant impact of an academic's work. I personally prefer not to base a keep !vote exclusively on a high h-index, but I think it is fine to use it as a contributing factor for a keep !vote. The one (utilitarian) advantage of h-index I see for the purposes of AfD discussions is that it can be quickly and easily computed using, say, GoogleScholar. Nsk92 (talk) 01:50, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

• I see the point, but as far as I am concerned, this discussion remains academic until someone shows me a researcher with an h of 25 who has never signed a paper as first or last author. While possible in theory, it is highly unlikely to occur in reality. Even if it would, someone inan AfD would be bound to notice that the hiugh h was obtained solely through minor authorships. --Crusio (talk) 04:30, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

• Professional lab techs often receive co-authorship on papers, and I'd have to imagine that there are plenty of lab techs with a high h-index. That being said, I bet there isn't a huge lineup to create lab tech articles on Wikipedia. As long as h-index is used as a guide rather than a standard (meaning, there is a convincing argument at AfD on top of the h-index value), I'm inclined to agree with these arguments. Steamroller Assault (talk) 08:09, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

• It'd come back to the same question, anyway—has the person been the subject of significant coverage in independent reliable sources? I'm not sure that all academics with a high h-index actually do meet this standard, and I could probably point out several who meet the "h-index" standard but do not pass the notability requirements. Given that, I'm not sure that the "high h-index" is necessarily good guidance as to when the notability standard is likely met. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 08:45, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
• True, I don't think I've seen an AfD where a "keep" decision was based on h only (but I haven't been following AfDs in this area closely, recently). --Crusio (talk) 09:21, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

• I think I've seen some "keep: h-index = 15" style !votes in the last few months. My impression is that h-indices are mentioned in AfDs as just one more component for the WP:PROF heuristic, in much the way that Steamroller is suggesting they ought to be. I've not noticed anyone claim to know what the threshold value of h-index ought to be (which would be a sure sign of badness). As for Seraphimblade's point, I think that is the age-old WP:GNG only vs WP:PROF argument. Either we delete academic bios for influential researchers, or we continue to try to describe existing rationale behind the emergent consensus for determining whether a researcher is influential and notable using the WP:PROF subguideline (of which one component correlates with h-index in a manner that WP:PROF regulars seem to be able to deal constructively most of the time). Pete.Hurd (talk) 21:10, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

RfC Using citation totals in articles on academics

Related to the above discussion is the RfC at Talk:Steve Shnider where citation totals have been quoted in the article lead. Your comments are welcome. Ash (talk) 09:11, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Academic society

Criterion 6 talks about holding a major highest-level post at a "major academic society", while Note 13 says this criterion can be satisfied by being "president of a notable national or international scholarly society, etc." Well, major is not the same as notable - which is it? I suggest we need to change one of these wordings to make it consistent. I found this conflict looking at the Society for Biblical Studies in India, which appears to be notable (since it has an article) but could hardly be considered "major". StAnselm (talk) 21:34, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Fundamentally flawed

Any notability guidelines that doesn't require any secondary sourcing at all is fundamentally flawed. An AfD I started is heading toward a Keep closure because of a high citation index for someone who has no secondary source coverage yet located. Surely that wasn't the intention of this guideline? We've pretty much turned the policy into "all well-published academics are inherently notable, regardless of secondary coverage" at this point. Gigs (talk) 13:56, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

I would change that to "most well-cited academics are notable, regardless of secondary coverage". Tkuvho (talk) 14:03, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Fine with me. That still presents a serious verifiability problem and a conflict with the somewhat accepted idea that we no longer tolerate completely unsourced BLPs. Gigs (talk) 14:08, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

I think you should distinguish between notability and verifiability. Somebody may well be notable, but if there are no reliable sources that can be used to base an article upon, article creation might still be impossible. However, note that "non-independent" sources (such as faculty pages) may be used to source non-controversial information. --Crusio (talk) 14:44, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

The purpose of notability standards on Wikipedia are to determine what is acceptable as a topic for an article. If, as you assert, there are subjects that pass the notability standard but are unsuitable for an article topic, then that notability standard is, by definition, flawed. Gigs (talk) 23:20, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

A citation from a refereed journal is an independent, reliable and verifiable source of notability and therefore almost ideal for assessing the notability of a publishing scholar. This is made clear in WP:Prof. Xxanthippe (talk) 06:41, 17 March 2010 (UTC).

INdeed, see Wikipedia:GNG#Notability requires verifiable evidence. If you're looking for notability criteria that don't require any sources at all, try Wikipedia:Notability (people)#Athletes. --Crusio (talk) 07:51, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

I have much the same issue with WP:ATHLETE and WP:PORNBIO as well. I'm not quite as concerned about those because porn stars and athletes rarely create unsourced and unverifiable flattering articles about themselves, unlike academics. Gigs (talk) 15:12, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Gigs, your statement that anybody who's published will pass suggests you haven't spent much time watching deletion discussions on academics. Standards regarding the degree to which they're published and cited, while amorphous, are enforced. Ray^Talk 19:14, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

It seems from this discussion and from the AfD debate Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/David S. Alberts that Gigs either does not understand WP:Prof or refuses to accept it as WP policy. In either case it might be advisable for a person in this situation to direct his AfD nominations elsewhere than to academic areas. Further, Gigs's arguments are not advanced by placing threats on my talk page. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:35, 17 March 2010 (UTC).

I already told you once to stop with the personal comments. Gigs (talk) 02:36, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Ray, I said "well published". The problem is not so much that too many are passing the standard, it's that the standard is divorced from the concept of independent coverage of the subject of the article that our primary notability guideline requires. Academic citations more indicate that the work of the professor is notable, not the professor himself. The assertion that using only self published (university bios might as well be self-published) sources is acceptable contradicts WP:SELFPUB #5. Gigs (talk) 02:50, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

This "notability for the work not for the person" is a bad argument that keeps coming up here, and you should feel bad for repeating it. Barack Obama is not notable outside of his work as a politician. Shakespeare is not notable outside of his work as a playwright. For the same reason we should not expect academics to be notable outside of their work. But some academics are notable for their work, others are not, and that distinction is what this standard is aimed at. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:30, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Plenty of independent sources have written about Barack Obama in a biographical capacity, same with Shakespeare. Being notable for your work and producing notable work are indeed two separate things, even if the two often do coincide. I suggest that if this argument keeps coming up it's because it's a logical one! Gigs (talk) 03:36, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

It is often, if not usually, the case that the work of a professor is notable, not the professor himself. The concept is entrenched in WP:Prof. The professor is notable for his or her published research or scholarship just as a novelist is notable for his published novels or a musician is notable for his performed music. In all cases it is required to be proved that the creative output for which the person is deemed to be notable has actually been noted. This is particularly easy for researchers because of the citation system. Xxanthippe (talk) 03:22, 18 March 2010 (UTC).

Confusion sometimes arises from a misunderstanding of what our notability guideline WP:N says. Many topics qualify as notable under its first section, the GNG of substantial coverage in multiple reliable independent sources, but WP:N says that wikipedia notability can come from satisfying either the GNG or a specialized notability guideline. Of course sourcing for everything is eventually necessary. If one wants to think about it that way, one can consider the sources used to prove satisfaction of a specialized guideline to be these independent RS's for the GNG. The special biographical guidelines cover areas where consensus has arisen that their satisfaction proves notability, even when direct biographical coverage may be lacking; where consensus has been that production of so much notable work defines being (wikipedia-)notable for this work.John Z (talk) 07:21, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Shorter version of what John Z said: WP:PROF has nothing to do with WP:GNG. They're independent guidelines, and WP:PROF does not require extensive biographical content. If you have a problem with the existence of the guideline, Gigs, you can try to get a consensus to overturn it, but I would suggest there are more fruitful uses of your time. Ray^Talk 17:42, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

It's only a matter of time until any notability standard that lets us keep unsourcable BLPs is amended to not allow such. I do have more pressing things to do in the short term, but if no one raises it I may get to it in a few months. Gigs (talk) 22:02, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

I would agree with Gigs, as the changes to WP:ATHLETE have shown - there is no value in having an article about any person in the absence of significant coverage. A person is not really notable unless it has been "noted" in accordance with WP:GNG. If there is no sigficant coverage about an academic, then they are not notable, not matter how much they have published. Sure, there are many worthy accademics out there, but if there is not enough content to write a decent biography, then I don't see the rationale for an article.

Cited as an expert in main-stream press

If a professor is often cited for quotations or such in the mainstream press, would that make him notable? Usually we don't consider name drops to be notable, but if someone's opinion or studies are often cited in articles, I think it is of a different nature and makes it much more likely they are notable.--Crossmr (talk) 07:22, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

This is covered by criterion #7, explained in Notes and examples #14.John Z (talk) 09:39, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

What's the general threshold for this? a dozen quotations? an article on him talking about his work and the studies he's done?--Crossmr (talk) 07:35, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Google scholar

Does this [[3]] establish accademic notability. Or do we actauly have to have sources?Slatersteven (talk) 13:12, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

• Several papers with hundreds of citations and thousands of citations in total? Absolutely notable. --Crusio (talk) 13:36, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks I had assumed that you actualy had to see the context of the citation (for example some of the citations are him citing himslelf.Slatersteven (talk) 13:42, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

• With this high number of citations, it's sheer impossible that even a significant proportion would be himself citing himself... --Crusio (talk) 13:49, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

On a realted note does work have to be soley his, or can joint papers count?Slatersteven (talk) 13:51, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

• Joint papers certainly count. How to rate them differs a bit for different fields. In the life sciences, the most important author is the last one, followed by the first one. In some other fields, authorship is purely alphabetical. I'm not sure about computer sciences, but given the fact that he is sole author on several very highly cited papers, this is not an issue here. In any case, even if he was a minor author on all these papers, the sheer number of citations would make him notable anyway. In general, it is highly unlikely that a researcher can build up this kind of citation record simply by traveling on somebody else's coat slips. That might be the case for someone who has one or two highly cited papers, but not for someone who has a string of them like this guy. --Crusio (talk) 14:25, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

OK thanks, I was not sure about this as it seems a bit more flexible then other notability areas (such as politicans). I was appply those same kinds of criteria.Slatersteven (talk) 14:32, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

unclear

If some one meets the Notability by holding a Chair of depratment and with a reasonable amount of publication but no sources to write a "biography" (anything beyond things on a CV). do we still have an article on them? The Resident Anthropologist (talk) 02:28, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Neither being chair of a department nor having any amount of publication will pass this criterion. Being president of a university or having well-cited publications will. There have been instances where someone clearly passes and yet there is not much to say about them that can be sourced, but it's unusual. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:37, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Criterion 1 and H-index

In a current AfD discussion, a h-index of 14 is considered enough impact to satisfy criterion 1 of the WP:PROF criteria. This is rather amazing to me. Many many regular scholars who have just done their normal work easily have an h-index of 14. I just checked some of my previous supervisors and colleagues, and if we take that cutoff value serious, we probaly can add every scholar active in the field for about 15 years to wikipedia. I am not sure that is what we want. Ideas? -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 03:51, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

H-index varies wildly by field, and is also, of course, confounded by age. Publish two papers a year and have each of those papers cited twice per year, and in twenty years you have an H-index of 20. The inventor of the H-index, if I recally this correctly, considered that an H-index of 16 was more or less reasonable grounds for giving a tenure-track researcher in physics an associate professorship (assuming that he or she has the age when this promotion is typically considered). In pure mathematics, H-indices are very small. In physics they are huge. In mathematics we tend to think that researchers who don't publish two papers per year on average are not doing very well. In physics it has to be half a dozen per year. On the other hand, in mathematics those are mostly one author publications, in physics usually by half a dozen or more authors. In mathematics quite a few articles keep being cited for many many years, while in physics the huge majority of articles are not cited anymore after one or two years - almost all research publications are very provisional and rapidly made redundant by later publications. And then forgotten altogether when the subfield goes out of fashion. Richard Gill (talk) 16:50, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Helpful (?) reformatting of criteria

An angel told me in a dream it was my destiny to integrate the "Notes and Examples" with the Criteria themselves, thus making it all easier to use. The angel also said that I probably wouldn't remember enough markup to make the new layout look really attractive, and that someone else might have to use his or her higher level of skill to do that. Or maybe people wouldn't like it at all and revert. The angel said I shouldn't be bothered if that happens.

Also (my own idea, not the angel's): Since many, many archived discussions refer to "Criterion 1," "Criterion 2" etc., I hard-coded the existing numbering instead of relying on #, which implies the numbering might shift around in future, which I think would be a bad idea.

EEng (talk) 22:30, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

WP:AUTH

I have added WP:AUTH to the little list of other subject specific notability guidelines on the grounds that this seems particularly useful and relevant for many academics. (Msrasnw (talk) 11:13, 20 January 2011 (UTC))

About routine coverage

The last sentence of the last bullet point under General notes says: "For the routine uncontroversial details of a career, official institutional and professional sources are accepted." If I understand correctly, that sentence is merely referring to sourcing those routine uncontroversial details of a career. However, it's been pointed out (at the RfC at WT:N) that the sentence has been used to argue for the existence of notability based soley on such sources, which seems to me to be a bad idea. Should this be corrected, either by deleting or by rewriting the sentence? --Tryptofish (talk) 23:49, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

It would seem possible to me that clear evidence of meeting WP:prof notability might be provided by these sources. For example one of our indicators is holding a named chair. This might only be mentioned at the uni. involved - and this may be enough for notability. However notability is possibly not enough, the subject still may not be an appropriate topic for coverage in Wikipedia because of a lack of reliable, independent sources on the subject. I think therefor your last line is not so helpful. To be more precise - at the moment your addition is as follows:

For the routine uncontroversial details of a career, official institutional and professional sources are accepted as sourcing for those details, but they do not establish notability.

But I think they may well establish notability!

I think this might be more what you have in mind:

For the routine uncontroversial details of a career, official institutional and professional sources are accepted as sourcing for those details, but although they may establish notability, the subject still not be an appropriate topic for coverage in Wikipedia because of a lack of reliable, independent sources on the subject.

Anyway - any thoughts? Best wishes, (Msrasnw (talk) 22:08, 26 January 2011 (UTC))

Thanks for pointing that out! I just made an edit to try to address that, using slightly briefer wording. Does that work? --Tryptofish (talk) 22:17, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Someone just reverted the changes, asking for further explanation. In addition to the talk above, please see WT:Notability#Do subject-specific guidelines override the GNG, where the issue first came to my attention. Is there anything else I can clarify? --Tryptofish (talk) 22:24, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I shot from the hip with my previous edit to the article. The meaning needed is that these institutional sources, by themselves, may or may not be sufficient for notability. What about this? For the routine uncontroversial details of a career, official institutional and professional sources are accepted as sourcing for those details. These sources may or may not establish notability by themselves. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xxanthippe (talk • contribs) 22:36, 26 January 2011

I think the concern raised at WT:N has been that it's problematic to claim notability based solely on sources that are not independent of the subject. As such, these sources, by themselves, may not have consensus at WP:N to have notability. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:46, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

My impression/memory is that "For the routine uncontroversial details of a career, official institutional and professional sources are accepted." was intended to mean that "official institutional and professional sources" would provide adequate sourcing to facts (uncontroversial details of a career), in the sense that these career related biographical details (e.g. holding a named chair, or academic rank, or institutional affiliation) are the sorts of non-contentious material for which explicit WP:RS sources are not required. If those facts are enough to establish notability (the precise institution, academic rank, etc) then I would expect that they also would be the sort of non-contentious material exempted from the wikipedia-wise WP:RS requirement. WP:RS sources are required to support any/all potentially contentious statements. That X is employed at Y in the position of Z not uncontentious and sourcing by Y's webpages is adequate. The second half of that sentence as quoted by Msrasnw above (Tryptofish's addition) makes no sense to me. It directly contradicts the commonsense interpretation of the first half, and insists that all statements are contentious. Pete.Hurd (talk) 22:49, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

From WP:BLP " Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced..." Pete.Hurd (talk) 22:51, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I think that all information must be reliably sourced per WP:RS, whether contentious or not. The issue as I understand it is that sourcing that is independent of the subject is required to establish notability. I don't think academic institutional sources are unreliable, but rather, they can have a biased interest in promoting the importance of their faculty members. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:05, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

I've just put back, only, the part about "as sourcing for those details." Actually, I would be satisfied with that. It clarifies how the sources are used, in a way that I don't think is controversial, and we can leave the discussion of what satisfies WP:N for another day. But do, please, be aware that editors at WT:N are paying close attention to subject specific guidelines that might be seen as contradicting WP:N. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:54, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

I think that institutional personal pages can be taken to be reliable sources. Although often written by the academic himself, they have to obtain the imprimatur of the institution before publication. A reputable institution would not allow unreliable information to appear on its web pages. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:20, 26 January 2011 (UTC).

• (unindent) I have to side with Tryptofish here. My own institution, the CNRS is undoubtedly reputable. However, I have near-complete control over my part of our institute's website (actually currently not "live", as we just created a new institute and haven't gotten around making a new web site yet). It would not be that difficult to sneak some self-aggrandizing stuff in there. If this is true for me, it'll be true for others. There is currently an AfD going on for Arno Tausch and some of the more overblown claims are also on institutional websites. Generally, stuff like chairs or positions will be correct on these institutional sites and that is info that we can source from them without any problem. That's the "details" mentioned in the guideline. I wouldn't go further though and if that is all we have, I would not even think that notability would have been established. --Crusio (talk) 06:37, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

International Math Olympiad and Criterion 2

Guideline says:

Victories in academic student competitions at the high school and university level as well as other awards and honors for academic student achievements (at either high school, undergraduate or graduate level) do not qualify under Criterion 2 and do not count towards partially satisfying Criterion 1.

I'm looking to find out what this means in respect to exceptionally successful participants in the International Mathematical Olympiad (i.e., participants with three or more gold medals), or exceptionally young participants. Of course, some of them already gained notability beyond their IMO success (e.g., László Lovász, Terence Tao), but some did not (yet). Question is whether these people meet notability criteria for their exceptional IMO results alone? (Keep in mind we're talking about a small group of people here; List of International Mathematical Olympiad participants is complete.)

This has been the topic of a number of AfDs now, and no clear consensus has been established. Some resulted in delete (i.e., Tiankai Liu, Darij Grinberg [note: Grinberg wouldn't have meet the criteria I'm proposing here, anyway]), some in keep (i.e., Reid W. Barton). Recently, Iurie Boreico has been nominated for deletion. So can we please find consensus here? --bender235 (talk) 22:48, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Related are multiple-time winners of the Putnam competition, like Arthur Rubin (see especially Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Arthur Rubin (2nd nomination)). The sense here was that the four-time Putnam record was not quite sufficient to meet the WP:GNG, but that his highly cited paper was a pass under criterion 1. In the case of Reid Barton, there was substantial coverage of the subject in independent sources (Science Magazine in particular). One basic necessary criterion for notability in such cases, as I see it, is whether such victories have been noted by multiple independent sources. This is consistent both with WP:BIO and even WP:ATHLETE (if we actually apply that guideline as stated, instead of ignoring it as seems to be the case in many articles about athletes, ironically). Sławomir Biały (talk) 23:06, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

My sense is that, well, it's a competition between some very very smart and talented high school students. The basic idea for notability of a person is that people must care about their accomplishments, consider them noteworthy, where by "people" I don't mean "there exist people" but there exists careful consideration (as in, usually published or through some other formal process) either of them individually (in the case of WP:BIO) or in the case of their academic accomplishments (in the case of this guideline). Winning the IMO, even repeatedly, as difficult as it may be, is not usually the sort of thing that gets you a detailed writeup in a magazine (Reid Barton being the exception). This doesn't get into any judgment of whether it should be noteworthy, but the practical fact is that the world doesn't much care - indeed, the world cares far less than for, say, an Olympic contestant who comes in 25th place once. So far as I know (and my acquaintance includes at least 2 or 3 IMO/IPhO types), they get no endorsement deals from Nike or Wolfram, have to dodge no papparazi, do not have to take their phones off the hook. Insofar as Wiki-notability is supposed to take its cues from the world, and not from our preferences, I don't think we can justify extending this guideline to include repeat IMO winners. Ray^Talk 01:07, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

I understand your "media test", but this, too, yields no consistent result. For example, there has been quite a lot of press coverage on German three-time gold medallist Lisa Sauermann. So is she notable, but East German Wolfgang Burmeister is not because we can't find any press articles from the 1960s anymore? And let's not forget Romanian Ciprian Manolescu or Moldavian Iurie Boreico hardly receive the media attention they would've drawn if they were American (or German, for the matter). This leads me to the conclussion that press coverage shouldn't be the (only) benchmark here.

Further, one may ask whether the press coverage of a current exceptional participant (e.g., Reid Barton, Lisa Sauermann) justifies the inclusion of every exceptional participant, because it simply establishes notablity for that "exceptional participant" status. --bender235 (talk) 11:00, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Ciprian Monalescu gets loads of Google News hits, more than Lisa Sauermann. "Reid Barton" gets about twice as many, but also many of those are not relevant. So this seems to contradict the point you're trying to make. Anyway, Ciprian is probably already notable under WP:PROF#C1 (he's authored some highly cited papers with Pete Oszvath).

As I see it, multiple independent sources are important, not just for establishing notability, but also for WP:V, and for having something encyclopedia-worthy to say about a subject. If someone is only notable for having won a student contest several times, we can mention that person in the main article about the contest, but it seems redundant to have a separate article about the individual if that's the only thing we have to say about them. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:46, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

"Ciprian Monalescu gets loads of Google News hits, more than Lisa Sauermann." Huh? I'm counting 16 results for "Ciprian Manolescu", and 5 for "Iurie Boreico", whereas Google News yields 38 results for "Lisa Sauermann". Are we talking about the same Google News here?

"'Reid Barton' gets about twice as many, but also many of those are not relevant. So this seems to contradict the point you're trying to make." Again, I'm counting 30 for "Reid Barton" (there's more than one Barton, therefore you have to add "Math"), that is also less than Sauermann. --bender235 (talk) 13:47, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Hmm... I did an archives search and got 74 for Ciprian, 38 for Lisa, and 149 for Reid Barton. But, ok, let's accept your search results. My point is that, even though the relative proportions are a little different in your search, these are all roughly in the same order of magnitude: it's not as stark a difference as your post suggested. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:30, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

My point was, that Lisa Sauermann received plenty of coverage for her IMO achievements (in notable newspapers like Süddeutsche Zeitung), whereas Boreico received basically no attention at all (I'm counting three articles in little known media, a Romanian, a Croatian, and a Chinese; the others are Harvard Crimson articles regarding his Putnam results). But still they're both three-time gold medalists, meaing both equally notable. That was my point, and Google News results actually support it more than enough. --bender235 (talk) 14:45, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

You're leaving out the fact that Lisa is a woman. Exceptional women in mathematics generally get a big boost in recognition because of this. Also, notability isn't determined by this kind of metric, that so and so, having achieved such and such is therefore as notable as someone else with comparable accomplishments. Notability requires that someone has noticed. It's not a fair measure, but it is what it is. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:56, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Let me add that I knew Ciprian as an undergraduate. At that time, he seemed to be more well-known as a Putnam than IMO winner. This is born out in sources as well, since the majority of coverage consists of Harvard Crimson reports about his prowess in this competition. My general sense is that IMO results are not really regarded as important. They should certainly be taken very lightly in assessing the notability of a subject apropos of this guideline. Substantial press coverage can make the subject notable more generally under WP:BIO, but that should be considered on a case-by-case basis. Sławomir Biały (talk) 15:22, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

My intention was to not make this case-by-case decisions. The guideline should say "exceptional achievements at IMO merit notability", just like winning the Fields Medal merits notability. There isn't a case-by-case decision, like one Fields medallist may be included because he received enough press coverage, and others don't. No, if win a Fields medal, you're notable per WP:ACADEMIC, regardless of press coverage (just out of curiosity, you might compare Perelman's and Tao's press coverage with Werner's or Lindenstrauss'). It should be just like that with outstanding IMO participants. --bender235 (talk) 20:13, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

This guideline is about professors and other persons who hold academic ranks, not about students. There are undoubtedly students who satisfy WP:GNG, but one should not look here for the standards by which their bio pages would be judged for notability. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:57, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, after all this notability guideline is for science & academia biographies, and in my opinion this includes students. --bender235 (talk) 20:05, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

No, absolutely not. WP:PROF is a guideline for people notable for their academic achievements in terms of scholarly contributions to a particular academic disciplines. That is why it expressly excludes, in several different places, student level awards from conferring academic notability. It has always been consistently interpreted to exclude students. Winners of various scholastic academic competitions must go through WP:GNG/WP:BIO provisions to demonstrate notability. Nsk92 (talk) 21:16, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

In case this isn't obvious, winning one those competitions 1000 times doesn't add anything to the "sum of all human knowledge" understood in this guideline as academic knowledge. While it is mental (athletic) performance, this guideline is not concerned with that issue, just like it's not concerned with chess players. Tijfo098 (talk) 03:01, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Ok, so I move this discussion to WP:BIO. --bender235 (talk) 10:39, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Clarification of criterion #6

I believe it is of much need that we define what is a "major academic institution" as the word "major" can be very subjective. Do we base it on student population? Endowment? International recognition/awards? I ask this in relevance to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/De La Salle Brothers. Moray An Par (talk) 06:10, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

In the absence of further guidance and precedent, it seems wise to interpret the word in context. In this instance, I can't tell you if that institution is "major" because my expertise is in U.S. higher education and I have no knowledge of the Filipino context. Some of the measures proposed in the discussion seem like reasonable places to start - enrollment, endowment, age, etc. ElKevbo (talk) 15:36, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Ok. I understand that we cannot define a universal definite criteria for what is a major university. I'll forward this to the Philippine WikiProject. Moray An Par (talk) 03:49, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Amos Megged

This article was created recently. Although it is stated that Megged is "Chairperson" of a "Chair", it is also said that he's a "senior lecturer". His website says he's an "associate professor". I am curious as to whether people here think this makes him qualify under criterion #5. --Crusio (talk) 08:29, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

It might be best to ask the article's author(s) or leave a note on the article's Talk page. I, too, don't understand the first sentence in that article. The English translation of this webpage says that he is an Associate Professor and doesn't say anything about being a senior lecturer. If he worked at a U.S. institution I could make some (well-informed) educated guesses about his status but he works at an Israeli institution. ElKevbo (talk) 15:41, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

From looking at his website and reading the details, my impression is that the word "Chair" in the "Latin American Chair" there is used in a somewhat non-standard meaning and basically means a program within the department rather than a named Chair appointment. E.g. it looks like beain the head of the "Latin American Chair" is not a permanet appointment, such as a named Chair designation usually is. So, IMO, beaing the head of that Chair, in and of itself, does not qualify under WP:PROF#5. Nsk92 (talk) 17:14, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

"Never use self-published sources" vs praise by established experts in blogs

In more than one case, we have an article about a relatively junior academic researcher ("Dr. X"), whose notability is supported in part because some very well established researcher in the same field ("Prof. Y") has posted in a personal blog that Dr. X's research results are of great importance. A couple of examples are Ryan Williams (computer scientist) and Larry Guth. I am inclined to give a lot of credence to Prof. Y's statements, much more than to the more frequently-used basis of establishing academic notability by looking at numeric citation counts. However, while our policy on self-published sources does allow expert postings on blogs to be used as sources in general, both it and WP:BLP specifically disallow using these postings as sources on biographies of living people. The possible choices here seem to be

1. We could agree that Prof. Y's blog postings cannot be used in article space, remove all such sources from our articles, also remove any statements that can only be supported by sources of this type, delete (or at least not oppose the deletion of) any articles for which there is no other basis for showing notability, and accept that this will cause us not to have coverage of young researchers who have made important breakthroughs that are too recent to be reflected in the citation record.
2. We could remove statements and sources of this type from article space but continue to use Prof. Y's blog posts to justify a pass of WP:PROF#C1 if and when the article gets taken to a prod or AfD. The drawback here is that it gives us articles whose notability is not obvious from the content of the article and leads to more unnecessary AfDs.
3. We could lobby to get the policy changed. Likelihood of success seems small, because a lot of the people who care about such things have little interest in seeing WP:BLP weakened.
4. We could try to find some creative reading of the policy that allows us to interpret it as not applying in these cases. It's written pretty clearly though, so this also seems difficult.

Are there any other possibilities I've missed? Any thoughts on the right course of action here? By the way, in both the Williams and Guth cases, some of the authors of the blog posts in question (Richard Lipton and Terence Tao, respectively) have already published books of older blog posts, and by so doing have magically made their writings usable as sources here. But the posts about Williams and Guth are too recent to have been included in these books. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:48, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

My understanding of "self-published" is published by Dr X. A source published by Prof Y would be "other published" with respect to Dr X (but "self-published" with respect to Prof Y). Nonetheless, such sources should be used with care and only if the blogger themself is is of proven notablity. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:00, 4 June 2011 (UTC).

Unfortunately WP:BLPREMOVE conflicts with that interpretation: it seems to imply that sources published by Dr. X might be ok, but the sources published by Prof. Y (if they say anything contentious) should be immediately removed. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:11, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Only if they are contentious. They are not contentious here, are they? Xxanthippe (talk) 23:20, 4 June 2011 (UTC).

Sort of they are. Today we've had an anon tagging the Williams article for notability and as a more long-going issue on the Guth page an editor there is arguing that on the basis of these policies we should remove all the blog sources. So they're contentious because of policy because of content. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:04, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

I think that you have raised a very interesting question here. I looked at the two bios that you linked, and they both strike me as borderline calls. First of all, what Xxanthippe meant about "contentious" wasn't whether Wikipedia editors are disagreeing about the pages. Rather, the point is that BLPREMOVE only applies if the blogging Professor Y is saying something defamatory about Dr. X. That's not the case here, so BLPREMOVE really is not an issue. Instead, the guideline here indicates that, in general, a beginning Assistant Professor (or someone who is only going to start as an Assistant Professor in the near future!) does not inherently meet the requirements for notability. Thus, either the pages should be deleted, or notability needs to be satisfied, instead, by WP:GNG.

So that brings us to the bottom-line question: does a blog by Prof. Y satisfy GNG? On the whole, I'd much rather see some sort of peer-reviewed source from Prof. Y, or an op-ed or other commentary in a published source. And it's made worse when Prof. Y is predicting that Dr. X's work will be important in the future, as opposed to saying that it is important today. And GNG generally requires multiple sources, so Prof. Y is only one. I think that editors would have to look at these factors, including making a judgment as to just how much of an authority Prof. Y is (such that a self-published blog by Prof. Y would be a reliable source), in order to judge these pages on a case-by-case basis. But the question to be asked would be: does this biography pass WP:GNG? --Tryptofish (talk) 19:31, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Tryptofish clarifies my meaning. There should be no objection to the blog quotes being included as they are not defamatory, but I do not think that they confer notability by themselves. This, as with all researchers and scholars, has to be done by the criteria of WP:Prof. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:17, 5 June 2011 (UTC).

I think this is one of those situations where the straightforward application of policy is pretty clearly wrong. The policy is intended to prevent harm to living people, not to stop us from reporting factual, direct commentary by experts on their work. It will be hard to codify something like that in the guidelines/policies, but certain blogs are definitely more reliable and useful than any number of pop-science magazines. Ray^Talk 14:55, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

I think we all agree here that this is not an issue of defamation, and BLPREMOVE does not apply here. As for how blogs stack up for WP:RS, that's complicated, but there are good reasons not to make it too easy to rely on blogs. When the hypothetical Prof. Y really is someone of great stature, it should be possible to find other sources reporting what she has said, even if she also has a blog. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:46, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Another question on Criterion 5

The above discussion doesn't quite get at my question...I found a new article on Jody Armour, and tagged it with a notability template. In response to my talk page comment, another editor said that because Armour is holds a "named chair" position, that he automatically meets criterion 5. Is that really what that criterion means? I starts scanning through the faculty pages at USC (where Armour teaches), and my scan through the first third seemed to indicate that the majority of full professorships at that school are named (or the people hold a higher position like Dean or Vice-Dean). Is this test really supposed to imply that being a full professor at USC Law necessarily makes one notable? I question this, especially since this guideline says that people meeting any one of these criteria are notable, unlike most of the other field specific guidelines that have the much softer "are presumed notable". Am I misunderstanding the guidelines, or are the criteria for academics just that odd? Plus, if I'm not misreading, isn't this actually providing notability to the professor, in part, by the type of school they're teaching at? That is, private, wealthy institutions are (as far as I know), far more likely to have named chair positions; does this mean that someone is simply more likely to be "notable" because that's the type of institution the become a full professor in? Qwyrxian (talk) 12:38, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

• I agree and actually think that we could do away with this whole criterion. If a certain named chair really amounts to something, then the person occupying it will have many well-cited articles/influential books/conference contributions which will serve as a pass on #1. #5 is just superfluous, IMHO. --Crusio (talk) 13:21, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

• Agree. Let's delete Criterion 5, or at least removed the "named chair" bit and leave only "distinguished professor". Named chairs are unusual and (usually?) prestigious in the UK, but for US universities they're more common and often just a device to help with fundraising ("give us enough money and we'll name a chair after you"). Qwfp (talk) 14:05, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Since Qwfp says that they're still prestigious in the UK, we could split the criterion...but would it be getting into WP:BEANS territory to make the rule for UK professorships only? Personally, I'm inclined to agree with Crusio--essentially, that the "named chair" is just a red herring. That is, that at some universities, being a named chair really does mean something, in which case only those professors who meet other criteria will get it, while at other universities it means nothing other than "someone has to fill this chair we named after a wealthy benefactor, and you're the best we have here, so...." In an attempt to further dialogue, here's a question: do universities with named chairs actually go out and recruit a professor to specifically fill a certain chair position? Or is it a matter of internal promotion? Or something else? Answering this helps imply whether or not it is actually a measurement of notability in a Wikipedia sense. Qwyrxian (talk) 23:26, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Certainly some named chairs are specifically recruited externally and unavailable to internal promotion. The ones we have in my department happen to be that way, for instance. I doubt that there's a consistent rule about that at any university, though. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:50, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Actually, I want to correct what may be a misconception here. At US universities, it is indeed typical for named chairs to be named for donors, but it's not like the donor gets to pick someone to fill the chair, or that the chairs are filled with second-raters just because it keeps the dollars flowing. At least at significant research universities, there are full professors, and full professors who have been given named chairs, and the latter are just about always chosen as the most distinguished, on academic principles. Commonly, appointments to named chairs are made through external recruitment instead of internal promotion, but that is typically done in order to be able to recruit someone who is more distinguished (notable) than the full professors already in the department. Personally, I think a case could be made that we should consider anyone with tenure notable, but if we want to be more selective than that, then full professors are usually more notable than associate professors, and full professors with named chairs are usually more notable than full professors without named chairs. Admittedly, there are cases where a position is filled with "the best person we could get", and that's true at any academic level. Anyway, subject-specific notability guidelines like this one should (ideally) be regarded as ways to quickly identify who would pass GNG, rather than as ways to get around GNG. In theory, a named chair professor who doesn't pass GNG and who wouldn't pass GNG even with very thorough editorial research probably shouldn't have a bio page (and probably shouldn't have gotten the academic appointment). --Tryptofish (talk) 20:57, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

I would like to keep criteria 5 - it's a great heuristic. Bearian (talk) 20:58, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Please don't use "criteria" as a singular noun. Nails on chalkboard.... --Trovatore (talk) 21:01, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

There are some named chairs which are ex officio (e.g. held by the current department chair) or reserved for more junior faculty. I don't think those should count for notability. But for the ones that really are reserved for the more distinguished of the full professors, #C5 is a good way to shortcut AfDs and avoid relying on beancounting. And also unlike most of the other criteria it fulfills the spirit of notability: by giving the named chair the university has noted the recipient, so ipso facto they are notable. I also would like to see this criterion remain, but possibly it could be more tightly circumscribed. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:03, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Allow me to revive this if I may. The problem I have with David Eppstein's point is that it requires us to somehow "know" which named chairs confer notability and which don't. That is, how can I, as someone who doesn't work at University X, look at a person's profile page, see that it says that they are the George Gerogian the Third Chair of Ethnographic Legal Psychology tell me, a Wikipedia editor, whether or not that position actually has anything to do with what we mean by notability? I don't like the idea that this exists solely to provide a shortcut in AfDs--if we have strong reason to believe that having a chair makes one notable in a Wikipedia sense, then I haven't seen it yet; seeing it would possibly help explain my and others objections to the criterion. Note, also, that you say that having a named chair means that the person was noted by the university--however, I would argue that being noted by only one's employer is not sufficient to meet Wikipedia's much higher Notability standards. I mean, getting an Employee of the Year Award from Joe Random employer certainly wouldn't qualify one for a Wikipedia page. I don't mean to say that these are so low, but just to say that I feel that a shortcut is only useful when we can be fairly certain that the shortcut reliably signifies the underlying goal; in the case of named chairs, I'm beginning to doubt that they do. Qwyrxian (talk) 00:52, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

You certainly have a point here, but the estimation of notability of #5 is not nearly so fraught as in the case of citations. I am inclined to keep #5, as per Bearian, because it can shortcut much tendentious discussion. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:19, 14 July 2011 (UTC).

I suppose a case could be made that any academic appointment, at any level, is simply a case of being noted by one's employer. However, academic appointments are (generally) made based on criteria other than things that would apply to employment in other job sectors. High level professorial appointments are (generally) based upon research reputation, the evaluations by academic experts at other institutions of the candidate's publications and so forth. In other words, universities evaluate candidates for named chairs by pretty much the same criteria that Wikipedia uses for biographical notability. In that sense, then, the analogy to Joe Random employer is incorrect. I suppose an alternative approach would be to scrap all of this guideline, not just the one criterion, and have GNG govern, but I think there's consensus that having a heuristic is (generally) helpful. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:19, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

I note that Criterion 5 is one of the few criteria that do not have a detailed note following it. Perhaps a solution to this concern would be to write such a note, pointing out the ways in which caution should be used in applying the criterion. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:24, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

After going through some academic BLP articles, looking for poorly sourced BLPs, and articles on people who were generally not noteworthy, I found this "has a named chair" criterion rather curious. I agree with many of the above comments that if the academic of the "named/distinguished" is actually worth something, at least one of the other criteria will be met. I suggest that #5 be removed. aprock (talk) 07:29, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

• The criterion should be kept because it a useful shortcut--every single article on someone who meets this criterion has been kept, as far as i can tell, and would always be kept. Having it saves considerable useless discussion at AfD , where we need the time to concentrate on the actually questionable articles. It's like the criteria for major awards. People who win one would also be kept on the basis of publications also, because that's the basis on which they got the awards. But having the criterion leds us make simple decisions on easily citable information. Academic appointments to senior ranks at universities are always made on the judgment by numerous outside referees--one university I've been connected with requires 12 such references for even an ordinary full professor! I'm not prepared to outguess the judgment about notability made by those qualified to make it and prefer our own opinions. DGG ( talk ) 03:46, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

• I find DGG's argument concerning named chairs rather compelling. By analogy, I'm sure that it is stated somewhere (didn't take the time to look it up) that getting an Oscar or a Nobel will make someone notable, although getting such an award guarantees, of course, an abundance of sources. Named chairs are rather rare and indeed prestigious appointments, universities won't recruit just anybody for that. An explanatory note as proposed by Tryptofish could perhaps be helpful. --Crusio (talk) 08:38, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Alright then, let's look seriously at creating such an explanatory note. What specifically should it include? --Tryptofish (talk) 20:12, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

• Well, I think one point that should be addressed is whether named chairs at any institution are covered by this item. There are some very small colleges/minor universities out there and if they have named chairs, we perhaps don't want to include those. Formulating that unambiguously and clearly will be tough though... --Crusio (talk) 20:21, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

I'd be happy to draft the note, and I'm kind of thinking out loud here. I think we need to be careful about basing this on smallness, as that could be a matter of dispute. I do think, though, that the research status of the institution is relevant. Each explanatory note starts with the criterion in bold, so this one starts with: The person holds or has held a named chair appointment or "Distinguished Professor" appointment at a major institution of higher education and research. The talk in this thread has focused on ex officio and on fundraising-driven appointments as possibly not qualifying for notability, as well as named positions for faculty at positions lower than full professor. I certainly think that an explanatory sentence saying that this criterion only applies to persons who are tenured at the full professor or equivalent level, and not to junior faculty, would be appropriate. I think it also might be useful to add a sentence about how named positions at some minor non-research universities may not be notable – that it really has to be "a major institution of higher education and research" – but I'm not sure how to frame the ex officio and financial aspects, especially since we cannot expect editors to engage in original research on those points. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:44, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Why does the size of the institution matter? I see the assertion above that it might matter but I'd like some examples or other empirical evidence, please. ElKevbo (talk) 21:19, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

It wasn't my assertion, of course, but I agree that size doesn't matter. (Wait a minute, that sounds like something else...) Of course there are major institutions that have smaller numbers of students. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:30, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

The point behind the rule of thumb that an Oscar or Nobel prize makes a person notable is specifically the fact that those awards practically guarantee that we will have an abundance of reliable sources about the winner. And, importantly, if that abundance of sources does not materialize, then the person is not notable.

There are practical and ethical reasons for this:

1. No person should be subjected to a Wikipedia biography written on the basis of just one or two incomplete and possibly wildly biased sources.
2. Wikipedia should not be subjected to any biography written on the basis of just one or two sources written or controlled by the subject (e.g., the official bio at the university).

I believe this is a good rule of thumb, because 99% of the time, a person holding a prestigious chair in modern times is a person for whom many WP:Independent sources can be found. However, it's just a rule of thumb, and in the 1% of chairs without sources—including many appointees to such chairs in previous centuries—we should not have an article about the person. Notability is not an automagical quality of being employed in a certain fashion: Notability always requires independent sources, even if your title is the Queen of England or the President of the United States. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:29, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

I agree with that, but is there any reason to think that the issue of independent sources applies in some special way to named chairs? I would think that it applies to all of the criteria in this guideline. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:42, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

• My use of the word "small" was indeed not correct, Tryptofish corrected that well. As for the comment by WhatamIdoing, notability is independent of verifiability. Somebody can be notable, but an article can still not be written unless there are verifiable sources to base the article on. That's alsready covered in this guideline and WP:GNG. --Crusio (talk) 08:15, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

No, that's not true. Notability requires verifiable evidence. Nobody and nothing qualifies for its own article on Wikipedia ("is notable", to use the wikijargon) unless there are verifiable sources to base the article on. (Those sources need not be mentioned in the article, but they must actually have been published in the real world.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:24, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree with removing Criterion 5 altogether:

1. Its elements are incapable of adequate delimitation.
2. This is partly because it refers to an institutional judgement which, necessarily, is largely opaque to WP editors and therefore should not be counted as sufficient.
3. BTW, I would not have thought that being Dean, Vice-Dean or whatever of such ilks would meet Criterion 5 anyway. If it does, then I think Criterion 5 must go since it is increasingly common for people to become Dean or the like merely through a willingness to spend their days counting beans.
4. Yes, Notability requires verifiable evidence - the problem here seems to be that fulfilment of any of the academic criteria seems to constitute "verifiable evidence". Or, if it does not, then the sufficiency of fulfilling Criterion 5 creates a conflict with Notability requires verifiable evidence both in general and because it can be far easier to fulfil Criterion 5 than to fulfil some (and perhaps any) of the other academic criteria.
5. As long as Criterion 5 is counted as sufficient, articles will survive that are deficient in every other respect in terms of the academic criteria - that is, deficient in WP editors' direct judgement regarding the person who is the subject of the article. The article Jody Armour is, to my mind too, a startlingly plain example - but there are others and some of them are evidently self-promotion.
6. If alternatively Criterion 5 were to be counted only as supplementary, for the foregoing reasons it would not actually do that job.
7. Criterion 5 is hugely biased toward the USA, where to my knowledge named chairs of any kind - and especially those named for a donor - are far more common than in any other part of the world. --Wikiain (talk) 01:07, 12 December 2011 (UTC) On further thought: that point is not intended to be anti-American; there is something to be commended about the US cultural tradition, reflected in supportive tax laws, of donating to educational institutions and in particular to one's alma mater. --Wikiain (talk) 11:54, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

• The whole point of these criteria is that they are a kind of "shortcuts": if a person meets one of them, there are bound to be reliable sources covering them. Concerning your "startlingly plain example", this is indeed an excellent example! Did you try a Google search, for example? Or a GScholar search? --Guillaume2303 (talk) 16:31, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Above, I raised the possibility of adding a note to #5, but the discussion subsequently meandered. Any interest in that, still? --Tryptofish (talk) 21:22, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

I think your suggestion would be helpful. "Major" being taken as referring to reputation rather than size. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:21, 12 December 2011 (UTC).

OK, I wrote something. I'm very sure that it can be improved upon. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:07, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Tryptofish - this comment will interrupt your train, so please feel free to rearrange so that the prospect of a note to Criterion 5 can be pursued for its own interest. I'm pessimistic, but will be interested to see if anything can be done.

Guillaume - By "startlingly plain example" I meant, similarly to Qwyrxian who introduced it, that the article Jody Armour itself contains no indication of notability other than that the subject holds a chair that bears a name, which for that institution turns out not to be a mark of special distinction - all of the "named" chairs in the department seem to bear donor names. That the name is a donor name does not, of course, mean that the occupant is not distinguished - Armour's colleague Andrei Marmor is well known in legal philosophy and perhaps should have his own article. But it's surely not enough for notability.

These criteria don't seem to serve as "shortcuts" if each of them can be sufficient by itself. If only one criterion is fulfilled, the information that fulfils the criterion will not cut to anything else. And, if that information does not actually support notability - as, I am contending, can be the case with Criterion 5 - the article will not be based on notability and should not be kept. If fulfilment of one criterion points the article author to fulfilment of others, then fine. The other fulfilments will show notability and fulfilment of the first criterion can just be included information. And, in that case, it need not have related to a criterion in the first place.

Since what looks like a donor name on a chair doesn't do anything for me, I didn't Google for Armour. However, I have now done so: here is his homepage. The homepage shows one book, which is in the article, and a handful of journal articles. Some of those articles are in good law journals - although one might be careful about US university law journals, since they are run by students - but there are only two articles after 1999 and the book is 1997. Where I work, Armour would not come close to being classified as "research active". When I then go from his homepage to his curriculum vitae, I can see evidence that he is a fine activist on civil rights. That information, if verifiable from independent sources (because we do need such evidence), might make him notable for WP, but I don't think there should be a WP article unless the article contains it. One might say that the WP article should be kept but tagged as a stub. But then just about every professor - in the broad US definition of "professor" - could have one. But - at the risk of sounding ex cathedra - this is an encyclopedia and not just a directory. Or, at least, we might merely be back in the place where this discussion began: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Nicholas J. Hopper. (And I don't have a problem with omitting most professors but including Pokemon characters - this encyclopedia is not only for professors, however nifty some of us might be with a Confuse Ray.) --Wikiain (talk) 02:14, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't understand your point. Essentially all named chairs bear donor names; that fact has little or nothing to do with whether their occupants are notable. As for your second paragraph: they are "shortcuts" in that they allow us to avoid wasting time carefully researching our responses to stupid deletion nominations when there are so many worthier targets for the deletionists; I don't see what that has to do with allowing each criterion to be sufficient. As for your third paragraph: we aren't trying to compile a list of "currently active" researchers, nor even of researchers who were active at any other time, but rather of researchers who have made an impact at some time in the past. So looking at publication counts, without trying to measure the impact of those publications (e.g. by citation counts) is pointless. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:21, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikiain, I'm OK with the train being interrupted, no problem. And, actually, I'm pretty sympathetic to your argument that a subject who has an endowed chair, but who (I'm basing this on what you said, haven't checked it independently myself) has a single book and an absence of recent publications might not really be notable. On the other hand, what was the impact of the book and articles in the time when they were published? Perhaps the academic promotion was based upon a very high impact of that work in its time, and it's not unusual for highly notable academics to eventually reach an age where they would no longer be considered research active. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:00, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Apparently I didn't scroll down far enough; apologies for the redundancy. I. William Zartman might be a case in point for an article that depends solely on criterion 5 and doesn't appear to have much encyclopedic value. I think other criteria are much better indicators of actual notability, and I support the idea of removing criterion 5 altogether for the reasons stated above by User:Wikiain. JFHJr (㊟) 05:58, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Citation numbers in regards to notability

What minimum number of citations should I be looking for in Scopus, Web of Knowledge, or Google Scholar to show notability? Is there a rough threshold that is agreed on? (It would be helpful to hear individual opinions if there is no general agreement.) And if an individual meets any such threshold, should it somehow be indicated in the article? Or are citation metrics just a tool for Afd discussions?? Cloveapple (talk) 20:26, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

• That's not an easy question. Citation rates vary heavily by field. What would make a mathematician highly notable would be laughable for a neuroscientist. So no clear figures can be given and, on top of that, even within fields people differ. For neuroscience, with which I'm most familiar, some people think that an h-index around 15 is enough for notability, whereas I feel that 25 is a better cut-off. Same for citation rates: some feel that a researcher is notable if he has two or three papers that have been cited 50 or 60 times (still referring to neuroscience here), whereas I feel that several with around at least a 100 is required. As for inclusion in bios, these statistics are often used in job evaluations and such, so I presonally don't see anything wrong with including a ball-park figure ("John Doe' articles have been cited over 2500 times, giving him an h-index of 30"), but, again, other people feel that we should leave this out. On a more technical matter: Scopus should only be used for people that started publishing after 1996, because that's when its coverage started. GScholar is very unreliable (see the story of [[Ike Antkare])). It has some coverage where Web of Science is a bit deficient, though (such as computer science, for example). I don't think all this helps much, but I hope I didn't obfuscate too much... -) --Crusio (talk) 20:38, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

• I tend to create and edit science based articles (including scientific journal articles). I suppose this includes scientific researcher's biographies. When I do a biography I don't concern myself with citation rates. To me it appears there are much stronger indicators of notability presented in WP:PROF (the notability of academics). If I can meet any one of the criteria I it is a good bet that this person will have accomplished, and contributed a remarkable amount of research to his or her respective field. I believe the citation rates will take care of themselves in these instances. Persoally, citation rate is not the first thing I that I concern myself with when writing a biography article. Hope this helps. ---- Steve Quinn (talk) 02:43, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

• For me, I guess I'm unlikely to create a new article based only on citations; I'll look for a named chair, a major award, a separately notable topic named after them, a festschrift, something like that to anchor the article. But if I see an article that someone's already created, and that is undergoing some sort of deletion process, then I'll look at citations as a way to test whether it's worth saving. In that case what I usually look for is several papers with 100+ citations. As Crusio says, though, how many are good enough depends on the field. In some cases fewer citations will be sufficient, if the search results show that the subject really is the top expert in some significant but low-citation subject. And in some cases having very high citation counts isn't good enough, for instance if it's for a small number of papers that all have the same more famous coauthor, or if the only sourceable facts about the subject are the publications. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:49, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

• Thank you for all the responses. I had thought citation metrics might be of use in article creation when looking at somebody who "work[s] outside academia (e.g. in industry, financial sector, government, as a clinical physician, as a practicing lawyer, etc" but I see it's not as simple as I'd hoped. Cloveapple (talk) 15:03, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

• The citations issue most often comes up in AfDs of academics who have created articles about themselves or have had articles created by partisans. The criterion from WP:Prof for notability of academics is that they should be "above average". It is difficult to determine what the "average" is and standards have arisen in an ad hoc manner. Looking back at past decisions on these academic AfD pages I find that to clearly satisfy WP:Prof#C1 500-1000 citations in the scientific literature have usually been needed with an h index of greater than 15. Those with an h index of less than 10 rarely pass. There is no formal policy on this; it is just the way that decisions of editors have evolved over the past few years. In the past year attention has been directed to the differences between academic fields, as Crusio notes above. Bio-med is highly cited, physics and chemistry in the middle, maths low and theology even lower. My impression is that the boundary mark (h index) for bio-med is currently taken to be 20, physics and chemistry 15, maths 12 and theology 10. Cases which are around those values tend to get much discussion, the further away in either direction the clearer the case becomes. These numbers provide a rough guide and may well be overruled by detailed circumstances. As always, local knowledge helps. Xxanthippe (talk) 09:40, 27 July 2011 (UTC).

I do not think we normally accept "above average" in AfDs and if that's in the rule, it's misleading. The problem with above average is: with respect to whom? All people who have ever published a paper or received a PhD? All people with any university position? All people who are full professors? All people who have novel prizes. The average person in the sciences who receives a PhD publishes a paper based on it. The average number of citation a published paper gets from anyone except the original author is between one or two. The rule as applied literally would mean that anyone who published a paper which got three citations is above average for academics, and that's broader than has every been suggested here. Actual numbers are misleading. I disagree with Xxanthippe that raw citation counts mean anything exact--the two of us have argued it back and forth a probably dozens of AfDs by now. . We customarily use the h index, but a person with 4 published papers with 4 citations each has an index of 4; and so does a person with 4 published papers with 4 citations each and 3 papers with 100 citations each. Applying it as is suggested in the above paragraph to fields like theology where people normally publish books, not papers, is particularly absurd and I do not think is accepted in any field of the humanities. The only people who have ever applied it are bureaucrats in granting agencies, who want a number, without the least concern over whether it is meaningful--and I think even this is no longer the practice is the few countries that tried to use it as a formal criterion. The actual criterion that normally matters in WP:PROF, is being an authority in one's subject and high citations, properly interpreted, are one way of helping to showing. DGG ( talk ) 02:05, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Proposal to Delete Criterion 5

Given the large variability in the value of titles such as "Distinguished Professor", and what appears to be general consent among the editors (see here and here), I think we should remove Criterion 5. If the academic is truly notable, the other criteria should be more then enough to establish them as such. I would go ahead and change it now, but I think it would be good to give the opportunity for debate if it is needed. --Djohns21 (talk) 07:13, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia! You will find that there is a discussion of this matter in the sections above. Xxanthippe (talk) 09:40, 27 July 2011 (UTC).

Existence of sources

Xxanthippe reverted this addition of two links a while ago. I assume that Xxanthippe had some actual objection, rather than a trivial, bureaucratic procedural goal of obtaining written permission in advance (something Xxanthippe doubtless knows is directly disclaimed by policy ("It is not necessary for editors to seek written permission in advance to make such changes, and the absence of a prior discussion does not prove that the change is not supported by consensus").

The text says, "Every topic on Wikipedia must be one for which sources exist".

Technically, it is not enough for the source to exist; the source must actually have been WP:Published. If you find a letter written to your great-grandmother in her attic, then that letter is "a source" and it "exists", but it is utterly worthless for Wikipedia's purposes.

Additionally, it is not any old source that demonstrates notability, but specifically an WP:Independent source. For example: a university professor normally has a web page at his or her employer's website. That webpage is useful for verifying information, but useless for showing notability. What shows notability is third-party or independent sources, not any source at all.

If there are no substantive objections forthcoming, then I will eventually restore these links for the sake of providing greater clarity. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:20, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

I think this is not the place to be including redundant descriptions of what is and what is not a source. The problem with incorporating statements like that, in every other guideline than WP:RS that mentions sources, is that then whenever WP:RS changes somebody will have to track down and change all those other copies of what it says. Or worse, they won't get changed and then we'll have incompatible guidelines. Better just to keep it simple ("sources", rather than "sources published in independent newspapers, magazines with national circulation levels, peer-reviewed scientific journals, or non-print-on-demand traditional-author-payment-model books") and refer elsewhere for the details. And even more, your proposed text is already inconsistent with WP:RS, which unlike what you wrote here allows some self-published sources in certain circumstances. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:27, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

It's best to keep things simple. Also, I don't agree that university web pages are always unreliable sources. Any institution of repute will bear down hard on an academic who puts false material up on one so these sites are subject to implicit independent editorial control. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:18, 9 September 2011 (UTC).

Actually, I can say from first hand experience that (at least some) universities allow tons of stuff on their web pages that would totally fail Wikipedia's standards for sourcing that is independent of the subject. For that reason, I agree with WhatamIdoing's concern in making the edit. At the same time, I agree with David Eppstein's point about avoiding incompatibility. So let me make a suggestion, of an alternative edit that gets at the same issue: keep the current wording, but link the word "independent" (in the phrase "reliable, independent sources on the subject") to WP:PSTS. Would that be acceptable? --Tryptofish (talk) 17:17, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

David, did you look at the diff? Here are the changes:

• Every topic on Wikipedia must be one for which sources exist
• Every topic on Wikipedia must be one for which independent, third-party sources have already been published

Does that look like "redundant description of what is and is not a source" to you? The change (1) adds five words, (2) changes one word, and (3) adds two links. There is zero possibility of this resulting in discrepancy between this notability guideline and the sourcing policies.

Xxanthippe, as I said above, university websites are perfectly reliable for verifying information. "Verifying information" and "deciding whether we should have an article about this person" are completely different things. The fact that a university puts up a bio on every single faculty member does not demonstrate that Wikipedia should have an article about any of them.

Tryptofish, WP:Secondary does not mean independent. A requirement for third-party or independent sources should point to WP:Third-party sources (the current choice at WP:V) or WP:Independent sources (the likely target of the proposed merger of those two pages), not to PSTS. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:03, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

As for the point of what you said to me, you are right, and those would be fine with me as alternative links. As for what you said to the other editors, I'll wait to hear what they say, but I'm receptive to some kind of edit to address the issue. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:17, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

There is no such rule as the second rule cited. For a great many types of articles, including articles about living people, we accept primary non-independent sources if there is reason to consider them reliable. For businesspeople, academics, public servants, we accept their official web pages at an institution. Yes, they are not by themselves a proof of notability--though the events reported in them may be. But they are presumed reliable unless contested for routine facts, and can be cited as references for such. This has been discussed dozens of times on the RS noticeboard, It is a rare and newsworthy event for a official CV on a university website to be false in what it says . Yes, they contain fluff, Yes, they may omit details. But the actual facts reported are as reliable or more so than biographic facts in any secondary source (which are almost always simply copied from there in any case.) Cases of gross inaccuracy in such CVs are very rare: they are usually newsworthy , tho sometimes the university involved manages to deal with them quietly, and almost always they lead very quickly to the loss of the position. They're treated as academic fraud: it happens, but not all that often. In the US they almost always make the Chronicle of Higher Education, though I know about a few unpublished ones also. At Wikipedia in the 4 years I've been working on this subject, I've encountered one such: there were reasons to be suspicious, I found after a project that the doctorate could not actually be verified--that it fact it was almost certain it had not existed. We deleted the article, of course. This is different from exaggeration--the most common case is degrees specified correctly, but which turn out to be from a diploma mill. That's not very uncommon, especially among non-academics who think the credentials will be helpful and don't expect them to be investigated. If it's a public figure, they make the general newspapers. DGG ( talk ) 01:53, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

You seem to have conflated "can be used" with "can be used exclusively". WP:V demands that all articles be based on third-party sources. If zero third-party sources exist, then you may not have an article about the subject. Assuming some third-party sources have been published, you may certainly also use non-independent sources, but you may not write an article exclusively from non-independent sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:27, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Please see

Please see a discussion at Talk:Jennifer McCreight#WP:NOTRESUME. Thank you. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:45, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Too strict criteria

These criteria strike me as far too strict. An academic who has written several books is an expert with some influence. When you evaluate sources, articles about academics often give relevant information, and we are impoverished by the exclusion of many deserving names. WP treats authors of fiction less strictly. Swedish WP includes all professors, as well as docents, among the criteria for notability. German WP talks about academics who have made a significant contribution to their area of expertise, but add that this usually applies to full professors. --Jonund (talk) 13:28, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

If you were a professor, would you want to have an article about you or your colleagues on Wikipedia based on gossip, rumors, and hearsay? Or would you want it to be based on properly WP:Published reliable, WP:Independent sources?

If such sources exist, then the article can be written under the normal rules for any subject. And if no such proper sources have ever been published about you, wouldn't you prefer to not have any article at all to one based on hearsay? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:06, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

WP:GNG has always been grounds for inclusion of academics. Xxanthippe (talk) 21:39, 11 January 2012 (UTC).

But it doesn't have to. When judging notability, we can use GNG, or a more specific criteria, or both. We can use the more strict one or the the less strict one. There's no set rule either way. In fact, I'm fairly certain people have tried, on numerous occasions, to clarify the exact relationship between GNG and more specific notability criteria, and each time, no consensus has been reached (in part because some subject specific criteria are less strict while others are more strict than GNG). Qwyrxian (talk) 00:35, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't question the need for reliable, independent sources. What I object to is the idea that academics who don't meet these criteria should not be deemed notable.

If WP:GNG is grounds for inclusion of academics, why do we have specific criteria for academics? They bring confusion and may discourage editors from writing. --Jonund (talk) 12:39, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

It's the other way around. WP:PROF is a shorthand to show that an academic is likely to be notable, even if this person would not completely satisfy WP:GNG at first sight. For instance, there are likely to exist reliable sources about someone who is president of an international learned society or occupies a named chair at some major university. If someone does not meet WP:PROF, but there are reliable sources, that person may get included through GNG. So PROF should actually encourage editors to write about academics. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 19:12, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Charles V. Hamilton

I'm not that familiar with the criteria on this page. Could someone better versed in them please take a look at the article in the section title? I'm trying to decide whether or not an AFD is warranted. There are a number of claims on the page, but I'm not really sure how they stack up against the WP:PROF criteria. If WP:PROF notability is met, then an AFD would be a waste of time. - TexasAndroid (talk) 20:06, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, it appears that he was a tenured professor who held a named, endowed chair so he meets our criteria. The article is quite scant, though, so your suspicion is justified. ElKevbo (talk) 20:20, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

TYVM - TexasAndroid (talk) 21:05, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Plank high

Why do I have an impression that professors, who arguably have a higher impact on the humankind than, say, high school athletes, have to jump through the hoops hung high to get into wikipedia? The guideline is littered with the superlatives: "highest", "highly prestigious", etc. How about toning it down? At least I would suggest to eliminate an absurd double whammy: "...a major highest-level elected or appointed academic post...". Otherwise let's be systematic and thorough, and write "...a major highest-level highly prestigious elected or appointed substantial academic post...". Logofat de Chichirez (talk) 02:16, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, your question hits on a point that is a sore one with quite a few of us, and has been discussed extensively. Part of the reason that the threshold is set high for academics is the tendency for self-promotion otherwise. And the reason given for lower standards for athletes is that, for the totality of our readership, more people want to look up athletes than to look up scholars. If it makes you feel any better, high school athletes actually do not qualify for articles, unless they are otherwise notable. The intention of all of these guidelines is to predict who would, actually, pass WP:GNG. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:33, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

• One could also see it this way: WP:GNG is valid for everybody, athlete or prof, making the bar the same for all. However, newspapers and such will routinely write about even minor athletes, but rarely about academics. WP:PROF allows academics to pass, even if they would have difficulties to pass GNG, so PROF actually lowers the bar. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 09:14, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Would you even want to have such a low bar? If you were a professor, would you really want to have a biography written about you that could be edited by the student you just flunked, or that emphasized some transient, trivial event merely because that's the only thing that the WP:Independent sources thought exciting enough that it would sell newspapers?

Let me give you an example: we have a scholar in the UK who has had articles written about him pretty much only in relation to a minor case of plagiarism. He's also an expert on Muslim–British relations, so he's quoted in multiple sources talking about that subject, but none of that tells you anything about him (unless you think a long string of "was quoted once in a newspaper saying..." is biographical material). Our sources are unbalanced: "Hey, there's this guy who's an expert on a subject" doesn't sell newspapers and therefore doesn't get written about. "Hey, they're making this huge stink at the university about someone failing to copyedit a couple of sentences" does. If that was you, would you really appreciate a Wikipedia biography that reflected exactly what the independent sources said about you, i.e., an entire article about a trivial, one-time plagiarism dispute? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:14, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Lots of people in any field would prefer not to have an article about themselves. I'm sure any OTRS volunteer could tell you that.

As for newspapers being the basis for articles about academics, that just suggests badly written articles. Surely a notable academic would have reviews of his or her work in academic journals? Wouldn't those reviews be used as sources? Wouldn't those reviews show something about his or her expertise? What am I missing here? Cloveapple (talk) 17:32, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

• Sounds good in theory. In practice, however, people write reviews about a certain subject, not a person. So, yes, a scholar would get cited in such reviews, but each single review would not tell you much about any given single academic or her/his work. If you would put the notability at "should have had at least one review written about her/his work", then my bet is that even many Nobel winners would fail... --Guillaume2303 (talk) 17:55, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

I think I was unclear above. When I said "reviews" I was thinking of book reviews in academic journals. I can see why you would have thought I meant "review articles" of the sort that summarize the state of research on a particular topic. Cloveapple (talk) 18:00, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

• Ah, I see. That still doesn't solve things, though, because publishing books is not all that common in the life sciences, for example. I know several highly-influential and notable scientists who have never written a single book... --Guillaume2303 (talk) 18:23, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

I can think of Nobel Prizewinners in the sciences who have never written a book. What makes them notable (apart from the Prize) is the recognition of their work by others. This is ascertained rather easily from the citation databases.Xxanthippe (talk) 21:53, 11 March 2012 (UTC).

And even if you're written a book and that book was reviewed in any detail (most books aren't), the review might not say more than a short paragraph about the author. Fairly often, we only have a couple of WP:Independent sources about a professor, and what we have is mostly problematic (e.g., about a single incident) or inadequate (e.g., a passing mention). That's why we don't even attempt to write articles for most professors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:47, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

All this good and well and I understood what you wrote. I see the controversy here. At the same time I also see that you all were happy to rehash whatever was disputed, so that you forgot to actually answer my question. Let me trim it a bit, so that you will not get excited again:

The guideline is littered with the superlatives: "highest", "highly prestigious", etc. How about toning it down? At least I would suggest to eliminate an absurd double whammy: "...a major highest-level elected or appointed academic post...".

I fail to see why simply "prestigious" is not enough and I am curious what "minor higest-level academic posts" are excluded by this policy and why. Sorry for being obtuse. Logofat de Chichirez (talk) 20:59, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I guess it was really the rest of us who were obtuse! I went back and looked again at those superlatives now. The double whammy you cite is in number 6. I'd be open to deleting the word "major" in that case. What do other editors think about that? More broadly, I'm not as bothered by the superlatives as you are. That's because of the way that AfD discussions go. One person's "prestige" will be another person's puffery. Someone will write a bio of an academic who really falls short of the guideline, but they will defend it because the subject won some award that no one heard of, etc. In order to reply to those arguments, it's helpful to point out that not all honors are equal. The more that one can point to requirements for high standards, the less people will argue about what the requirements are. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:33, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

I'd be open to deleting the first "major". But the second "major" serves an important role in distinguishing the head of an Ivy league university from the head of a local community college. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:39, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with that, just the first "major" in that sentence (and I enjoyed your edit summary). --Tryptofish (talk) 22:18, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Hah, so major CS professors keep track of internet memes. Cool. Logofat de Chichirez (talk) 22:36, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

A reference to a novel that was published before I was born counts as an internet meme? —David Eppstein (talk) 23:28, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Silly me: in my brain it immedialety rhymed with "badger badger badger badger". The next thing was buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo... Now I know all about majors, too :-) Logofat de Chichirez (talk) 23:45, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

P.S. to whoever is fond of Catch-22: In a bizzarre chain of events, a minor chat in this page seems to have triggered a major rewrite of Major Major Major Major :-) Logofat de Chichirez (talk) 19:50, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

notability question

Does this seem notable enough to merit and article: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=0&q=author:%22R+Marmulla%22&hl=en&as_sdt=1,33 many papers published, but I'm unable to find much biographical content. Nonetheless, seems like a notable academic. --KarlB (talk) 18:15, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Looks kind of borderline to me. When I search GS for tomogram accuracy (related to his most cited paper) I see some other papers with citation counts 1294, 767, 520, 441, 373, 313, 295, 290, 286, 285, etc compared to Marmulla's top-cited 118. So this looks like a fairly highly cited area, and the numbers don't convince me he's one of the top experts in it. It's at the level where I probably wouldn't object to someone else creating an article but it's below the level at which I'd be willing to create it myself. In any case we need more than just citation numbers to have some content with which to write an article — what is there in this case? —David Eppstein (talk) 19:12, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

for now just this: [4]. he's actually a user here, i came across him when doing a AfD on an article about one of the softwares he has created, which doesn't seem to be notable, but looking at his work, I figured he actually might be. In any case, any content about him is likely to be in German I suppose. --KarlB (talk) 19:33, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

published

David, WP:V says (in the WP:SOURCES section)"Source material must have been published (made available to the public in some form); unpublished materials are not considered reliable."

There are zero exceptions to this, not even for self-published sources. And if an experienced editor like you believes that unpublished sources are useful for demonstrating notability, then we really do need to mention that "redundant" fact here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:13, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Self-published sources are made available to the public in some form. But they haven't been independently verified so they should be used with great caution unless they become cited or reviewed by reviewed sources. However, a public lecture which does not make it into print can sometimes be considered in notability -- for instance, the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, would be notable even before it appeared in print. Similar things happen in other fields, especially those slower fields (humanities for instnace) where an important discovery can take years to get into print but which already inspire other research based public lectures. But the existence of the lecture and its claims should usually be able to be found in print somewhere. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 22:45, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Actually, self-published sources are verified (for purposes of WP:V), but they aren't peer-reviewed. Anyway, I'm having trouble understanding what the issue is, for the disagreement to which WhatamIdoing refers. It seems to me that, if the required sources "exist", then they are not "upublished". The act of publishing them makes them exist, although they need not always be published in the traditional paper way. I guess I'm missing something: what am I missing? --Tryptofish (talk) 23:33, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

See discussion above, Wikipedia talk:Notability (academics)#Existence of sources, and in particular DGG's long comment there. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:03, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks: giving myself a dope-slap, since I participated in that discussion. But then I still have largely the same question with respect to the edits/reverts discussed here. It seems to me that WhatamIdoing is making the reasonable point that self-published material should not be used to establish notability of a page, whereas other editors are replying that self-published material can be used to source certain kinds of routine information on a page – which is also reasonable, but a different question. The sentence being edited ("Every topic on Wikipedia must be one for which sources have been publishedexist; see Wikipedia:Verifiability.") sounds to me like it's mostly about page notability, whereas the sentence that comes immediately after it ("For the routine uncontroversial details of a career, official institutional and professional sources are accepted as sourcing for those details.") is clearly about, instead, routine information. Perhaps this is where the confusion lies? --Tryptofish (talk) 20:54, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Actually, my goal is to update this to more accurately reflect the policy at WP:V.

Unpublished sources do "exist": if you find Grandma's old love letters tied up in a ribbon, those letters exist. They are not published, but they exist: you can see them, read them, touch them, burn them, or use them to wallpaper the kitchen. But they are not published, that is, they are not made available to the public in any form.

This really has nothing to do with self-published sources, except that David reverted the change—the change that made this page match the wording in the policy—with the rather strange claim that self-published sources were somehow not published, despite being, by their very definition, sources that were actually published. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:40, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

I restored WhatamIdoing's edit when it was reverted. I was reading "unpublished" as meaning "not curated and releases by an independent publisher." (Given that meaning, I felt adding "published" was appropriate because self-published sources, while sometimes useful for verification, say nothing about notability, the topic of this guideline.) However, she means the more obvious understanding of the word, made available to the public - not sitting among a bunch of letters in a drawer, or an email from the subject, etc. I endorse the inclusion of "published" as a simple and worthwhile clarification of WP:V. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 02:29, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

At this point, I find myself in agreement with WhatamIdoing and Anthonyhcole. Would it perhaps be simpler, and less controversial, to change "exist" to "verifiably exist"? That way, we don't try to interpret what WP:V means, but simply refer to it (without allowing Grandma's private letters). --Tryptofish (talk) 19:34, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

It don't see any reason to object to changing "Every topic on Wikipedia must be one for which sources exist; see Wikipedia:Verifiability" to "Every topic on Wikipedia must be one for which verifiable sources exist." I prefer making "verifiable" modify the sources, rather than modifying their existence, because it's their content and not just their existence that we need to verify. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:23, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Technically, in the wikijargon, sources are not verifiable. Information is verifiable; sources are reliable.

And you have still not dealt with the major problem, which is that the policy already requires that the sources not merrely "exist" but that they have been "published". Why should this page disagree with the policy? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:30, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Saying "published" requires no interpretation of WP:V. "Source material must have been published (made available to the public in some form)" is a direct quotation from that policy. My change only repeated the exact word that appears (repeatedly) in that policy, without adding any interpretation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:27, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

By removing the parenthetical "(made available to the public in some form)" you are making added interpretation very likely, if not doing it yourself. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:31, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

The parenthetical definition appears only once in the policy, but the requirement that sources be published appears repeatedly, and also in other policies (e.g., NOR). Omitting it is no more a distortion that WP:V's omission of that definition in its first four uses. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:17, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't care for the quality of expression in "Every topic on Wikipedia must be one for which verifiable sources exist." Correct expression would be "Every topic on Wikipedia must be one for which verifying sources exist. But it won't do anyway because there is a difference between verifiable and published. Published is more than just verifiable, it implies ready availability, a meaning not carried by the usual English understanding of the term, verifiable. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 20:45, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

To me "published" implies having the imprimatur of a specific type of corporation. It may not have anything to do with ready public availability — being published in a limited edition only available to millionaires is still published, and being made available for free on the web for anyone to read does not necessarily imply being published. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:50, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

What we might call "properly published" sources make a far stronger case for notability than others, but my goal here is to clarify that if a soure is unquestionably unpublished, that it absolutely does not count. It is not enough for a source to exist. It must have been published. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:17, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

You keep insisting that, and I don't see that in the policy you keep citing. If you want to say "publically available" why not say that instead of using terms with connotations of commercial bookselling? —David Eppstein (talk) 22:22, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't understand this reply.

I choose the word published because it's the term that appears repeatedly in WP:V. "Publicly available" does not appear in that policy, or any other policy about sourcing. However, what does appear is this: "unpublished materials are not considered reliable". Do you mean to keep advocating for the use of sources that WP:V explicitly defines as being unreliable? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:06, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Now you're just playing silly word games. The exact phrase "publically available" may not appear in that exact word order in WP:V, but the phrase "available to the public" does appear. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:20, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't happen to share your rather "pre-Internet" definition of publication, but I could live with "publicly available", although I suspect that it will cause some disputes over whether a source available only at a university library is truly publicly available, and I have a general preference for making policies and guidelines match, since if all the relevant pages repeat exactly the same words, they cannot possibly be construed as contradicting each other on a given point.

My main goal is that we quit using the ambiguous "exists", which you have been opposing. Will you accept "publicly available" as a replacement for "exists"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:34, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

My main goal is to head off overzealous deletionists reading the word "published" and starting AfDs for most of our articles on active academics on the basis that their main sources are university faculty profile web sites and pages about the awards on academic society web sites, neither of which is a book or newspaper publication, as occasionally happens even now and seems a lot more likely if your preferred wording gets into the guideline. We already have a mismatch in standards where a pro athlete can be assured of an article by walking onto a field once while a professional researcher typically has to have dozens of high-impact publications; I don't want to make that worse. But "publically available" seems unobjectionable to me. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:10, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

How many citations are needed to pass WP:Prof#C1?

Newcomers to the academic BLP AfD pages sometimes ask how many citations and/or size of h-index are needed to satisfy WP:Prof#C1. There is no clear answer to this and there is no Wikipedia policy on the matter. One can judge only on the basis of past practice. Looking back at decisions on the academic BLP AfD pages over the past few years, I find overall that to clearly satisfy WP:Prof#C1 500-1000 citations in the scientific literature have usually been needed with an h index of greater than 15. Those with an h-index of less than 10 rarely pass. There is no formal policy on this; it is just the way that decisions of editors have evolved historically. The acceptable number of citations varies by subject. Some indications of this are given in the report "Citation statistics: A report from the International Mathematical Union (IMU) in cooperation with the International Council of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM) and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS)". Statistical Science 24 (1): 1–14. doi:10.1214/09-STS285. MR2561120. Project Euclid. The average paper in mathematics gets cited about once, in life sciences about six times, with several subjects in between those limits. Bio-med/life-sciences is highly cited, physics and chemistry in the middle, maths low and humanities lower. My impression is that the boundary mark (h index) for bio-med is currently taken to be 20 with typically 1000 citations, physics and chemistry 15, maths 12. These numbers are not finishing posts, which, if reached, give an automatic pass of WP:Prof#C1. They are boundary markers: cases around these values tend to get much discussion, the further away in either direction the clearer the situation becomes. It is also the case that notability is diluted by a large number of co-authors; for a person who publishes with a large research group evidence would be needed that the the person stands out from the crowd, particularly for early career researchers whose work is often done under the supervision of senior colleagues. It is hardly necessary to say that these comments represent my views alone and do not constitute Wikipedia policy. Xxanthippe (talk) 03:21, 7 May 2012 (UTC).

If you have rigorously performed this research, it sounds very interesting and should be shared with others or published! I am not advocating using a count or index of citations as a means of judging notability but if others in Wikipedia are and there are interesting and informative trends then please consider writing this up more extensively so others can learn from it. ElKevbo (talk) 20:57, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Comment: The report can be downloaded as a pdf if one uses the doi to go to the Project Euclid site. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:58, 7 May 2012 (UTC).

I made the doi into a hotlink to make this easier for people to follow. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:07, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Comment: I have made similar remarks before in several AfD debates but they have disappeared into cyberspace, so I thought it useful to put them here where most inquiries about the matter would be likely to arrive. The data giving the h-indicies of all previous AfD debates is in principle available. Others might like to perform the important though tedious task of collating them. Editors with experience of academic AfD debates over the past few years are welcome to give their views on the criteria I have suggested. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:11, 11 May 2012 (UTC).

It would be more interesting if it were not presented during an AFD on a food scientist who meets several other notability criteria in which a newcomer asked about apparent h-index of 10. As to Xx's question I have no experience that would lead me to dispute her data; but of course this should not be taken as rejecting other notability criteria when they apply. JJB 21:16, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

There are always contentious AfDs going on, so asking for this data to be presented at a time when there isn't one is close to an impossibility. If she had meant this to be used as an argument within that specific AfD, I'm sure she would have posted it there rather than here. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:25, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

That last is fair enough. JJB 21:59, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Related question

At the AFD mentioned above, there is argument that h-index 10 in food science is an automatic fail of PROF 1. However, the guideline doesn't mention h-index there, it deliberately uses ambiguous words like "extremely highly cited". Please help me understand how this applies:

Should this page be construed as having automatic h-index fails built in, or should it be construed as open to a wide latitude of interpretation without automatic fails? If the former, it should be edited to reflect this; accordingly, in the event of WP:SILENCE we can reasonably construe the latter and that each AFD should determine its own context for "extremely highly cited". JJB 16:34, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Minor comment about "major"

I see that there were some recent edits about the word "major", and I think there may have been some confusion about previous edits before those. There's a discussion above at #Plank high about removing a different occurrence of the word, and that's already been done. The word there now has previously been uncontroversial. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:04, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

I think "uncontroversial" is also a good description of why that word is there. Heads of major research universities are uncontroversially notable. Heads of small seminaries, community colleges, high schools, small liberal arts colleges, etc. may well be notable as well, but not without controversy, so to keep them in an AfD we need more evidence than the mere fact of their heading a school. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:30, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Rewrite of notability standard

I have rewritten the notability to make it easier to understand, and to create a definitive test of which academics are notable, and which are not. I retained all of the former criteria for notability, but split it into two assessments for notability: (1) status tests -- an academic is notable because they are a "distinguished professor", the lead editor of a well-known academic journal, etc, the winner of a major prize, etc. (2) citation test -- an academic is notable based on an assessment of how frequently their academic work is cited. NJ Wine (talk) 11:53, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

• I appreciate your effort. However, you cannot just step in and do a huge rewrite like this, after all, this is an official guideline. Please discuss any issues first here on the talk page before changing the guideline itself. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 12:32, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

I admit that I was bit too bold in making the changes without previous discussion, but I think that the current guideline is confusing and self-contradictory. The current guideline doesn't flow properly when you read it, and creates endless exceptions and exceptions to exceptions. It is by far and away the most subjective of Wikipedia's notability guidelines.

I am proposing (see text below) that we keep the crux of the academic notability standard, but split it into two separate assessments -- (a) a status test; and (b) a citation test. The status test will be a list of clearly-defined achievement (e.g., distinguished professor, lead journal editor) that will give a presumption of notability. I expect that most claims of notability will be based on the status test. The citation test, which requires more a detailed assessment of how widely cited the subject is, can grant notability to an academic who has made substantial contributions to their field but doesn't have a laundry list of titles or awards.

---

An academic/professor is notable if the person's research has made significant impact in their scholarly discipline, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources. Because scholarly research is not frequently by covered newspapers, magazines, and other popular media, assessing the impact of an academic can be challenging. Two tests are available to determine if an academic is notable or not.

(1) Status Test – an academic is presumed to be notable if any of the following are true. However, notability may be rebutted if it can be shown that the individual has not made a significant impact in their scholarly discipline, or if there are a lack of verifiable sources about the subject.

(a) The person has received a highly prestigious academic award or honor at a national or international level, such as the Nobel Prize, MacArthur Fellowship, the Fields Medal, the Bancroft Prize, the Pulitzer Prize for History, etc.

(b) The person is or has been an elected member of a highly selective and prestigious scholarly society or association (e.g. a National Academy of Sciences or the Royal Society) or a Fellow of a major scholarly society for which that is a highly selective honor (e.g. the IEEE). Elected memberships in minor and non-notable societies do not fulfill this requirement.

(c) 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). This criterion can be applied reliably only for persons who are tenured at the full professor level, and not for junior faculty members with endowed appointments.

(d) The person has authored several books that are widely used as textbooks at multiple institutions of higher education.

(e) The person has held a highest-level elected or appointed academic post at a major academic institution or major academic society. This criteria is satisfied if the person has held the post of president or chancellor (or vice-chancellor in countries where this is the top academic post) of a significant accredited college or university, director of a highly regarded notable academic independent research institute or center (which is not a part of a university), or the president of a notable national or international scholarly society. Lesser administrative posts (e.g., provost, dean, department chair) do not meet this requirement.

(f) The person has made substantial impact outside academia in their academic capacity. This criterion may be satisfied if the person has authored widely popular general audience books on academic subjects provided that the books deal with that expert's field of study. Likewise, this criterion may be satisfied if the person is frequently quoted in conventional media as an academic expert in a particular area. However, a small number of quotations, especially in local news media, falls short of this requirement. Patents, commercial and financial applications do not satisfy this requirement.

(g) The person is or has been the head or chief editor of a major well-established academic journal in their subject area.

(h) The person is in a field of literature (e.g writer or poet) or fine arts (e.g. musician, composer, artist), and meets the standards for notability in that art, such as WP:CREATIVE or WP:MUSIC.

(2) Citation Test – an academic is always notable if the academic has been an author of highly cited academic work -- either several extremely highly cited scholarly publications or a substantial number of scholarly publications with significant citation rates. The citations need to occur in peer-reviewed scholarly publications such as journals or academic books. Differences in typical citation and publication rates and in publication conventions between different academic disciplines should be taken into account. 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. Please review the following section on citation metrics before attempting to evaluate a subject's citations.

NJ Wine (talk) 23:24, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

When you write "I expect that most claims of notability will be based on the status test." it makes you look inexperienced in academic AfD cases, because at least in my own experience criterion C1 of the current guideline is very frequently used. I also don't think your subdivision into groups of criteria makes sense: criteria (d) and (h) look like impact rather than status to me. And while citation counting can be a useful way of assessing academic impact, I object to your rewrite which makes it the only way of assessing impact. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:44, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

I think that the grouping makes sense, but I agree with you that the term "status" does not apply to criteria (d) and (h). Instead, maybe we should rename them "intrinsic" and "extrinsic" criteria? Intrinsic criteria is the citation test since it is a true measure of the person's research. Extrinsic includes criteria (a) through (h) which are reactions or outcomes of the person's research.

Nowhere do I propose that we engage in "citation counting." The language I use for the citation test is directly from the current article. Based on the language list above, there is no specific amount of cited academic work that is required. A professor could have a single discovery or publication that is so momentous in its impact that it gives the academic notability by itself. If you want, we could rewrite the citation test to make it more clear that we are looking at the impact of the academic work, and not the quantity. NJ Wine (talk) 02:15, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

The most important issue in assessing notability of an academic, scholar or scientist is how their ideas have influenced others; other things are subservient to that. So WP:Prof#C1 is the most important criterion. The other criteria are shortcuts that tend to indicate that WP:Prof#C1 has been achieved without the need for detailed analysis and argument. I don't see that the changes to WP:Prof that have just been proposed are any improvement. As they stand, the guidelines have worked well for some years. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:44, 23 May 2012 (UTC).

I fully agree with you that criterion C1 is the most important, as the first sentence in my proposal states: An academic/professor is notable if the person's research has made significant impact in their scholarly discipline. The current guideline does not make it clear that the influence of the scholar's ideas is the most important attribute. To make matters worse, the detailed description of criterion C1 is at points convoluted, redundant, and self-contradictory. Let me give you a few examples.

(a) See also notes to Criterion 2, some of which apply to Criterion 1 as well. This is the first sentence of C1, but it is not clear what aspects of C2 (major prizes) have to do with the scholar's intellectual impact.

(b) For the purposes of partially satisfying Criterion 1, significant academic awards and honors may include, for example: major academic awards (they would also automatically satisfy Criterion 2) Why bother having criterion 2 if we are going to include this material in criterion 1.

(c) For the purposes of satisfying Criterion 1, the academic discipline of the person in question needs to be sufficiently broadly construed... Overly narrow and highly specialized categories should be avoided. Arguing that someone is an expert in an extremely narrow area of study is, in and of itself, not necessarily sufficient to satisfy Criterion 1, except for the actual leaders in those subjects. This entire paragraph doesn't relect modern academic research, and then contradicts itself. First it prohibits using very narrow categories of expertise as grounds for notability, despite the fact that many academics are extremely specialized. Then it says that this rule can be ignored if the subject is "actual leader" in that field. For example, I knew a prominent chemistry professor at a university who had done extensive research into tin compounds. I'm not sure whether such a person meets C1, since even if he is an "expert" in tin compound, who knows if he is an "actual leader" in tin compounds?

While I agree with the crux of the current C1 to C9 criteria, the actual layout of this section, and the explanatory notes need to be substantially revised. A notability guideline should be clear and understandable even to someone who has no experience with AfDs or DRVs. A user who is considering the creation of a new article about an academic should be able to read Wikipedia: Notability (academics), and have a good idea whether or not the subject of the article is notable. NJ Wine (talk) 03:31, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

While it would be nice the criteria seem to be stated in the form of either A or B or C must be satisfied. The reason for the fudging is that for instance someone may have written a number of cited papers and some books and be mentioned in the press but not qualify under any single one of those criteria and yet be clearly notable. As to the actual leader I would have thought that such a person would have written a book or have their papers cited outside the field a lot, but even so there are leaders in their fields who have done such things and contributed in a substantive way to the modern world but I'm not at all certain the criteria should be changed to include them. It is just a messy business. Dmcq (talk) 10:50, 23 May 2012 (UTC).

Dmcq, I'm slightly confused by the last part of your comments regarding "actual leaders in those subjects." My reading of that subsection of C1 is that if a person is an actual leader in an extremely narrow speciality, they are notable, whereas if they are an expert in an extremely narrow specialty, they are not notable. I'm questioning the hair-splitting difference between an actual leader, and an expert. NJ Wine (talk) 22:12, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

What, exactly, is the problem we are trying to solve? If the idea is to create some tests, is there actually a problem with AfDs where the absence of tests is creating confusion? --Tryptofish (talk) 00:10, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Tryptofish, I think that for AfDs for academics, there is a huge gray area. While all notability guidelines have some degree of subjectivity, this one is unusually vague. Under the current guideline, if a professor or researcher is leading expert in their field, they are clearly notable. If a person is an instructor or assistant professor, has never won any awards or honors, has not made any discoveries, and has not written any books, they are not notable. Then, there is a huge pool of academics in the middle. Beyond thinking that much of the current guideline is confusing, I personally have seen multiple AfD problems with criterion 2, wherein there is a dispute of whether a award or honor is "prestigious". Once you get past Nobel Prize and the top layer of honor, the current guideline offers little help is determining whether an award grants notability or not.

For the purposes of Criterion 2, major academic awards, such as the Nobel Prize, MacArthur Fellowship, the Fields Medal, the Bancroft Prize, the Pulitzer Prize for History, etc., always qualify under Criterion 2. Some lesser significant academic honors and awards that confer a high level of academic prestige also can be used to satisfy Criterion 2. Examples may include certain awards, honors and prizes of notable academic societies, of notable foundations and trusts (e.g. the Guggenheim Fellowship, Linguapax Prize), etc. Significant academic awards and honors can also be used to partially satisfy Criterion 1 (see item 4 above in this section). NJ Wine (talk) 14:28, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Logical unfathomability

Probably a waste of my time keep bringing this up, since no one else seems to care, but this page (like other notability guidelines) seems full of logical contradiction. For example, the nutshell begins: "Subjects of biographical articles on Wikipedia are required to be notable; that is significant, interesting, or unusual enough to be worthy of notice, as evidenced by being the subject of significant coverage in independent reliable secondary sources." And yet many of the criteria on this page specifically do not require evidence in the form of "significant" coverage, just some evidence of particular levels of achievement or status. Can we not sort these matters out so that people might at least have a chance of understanding these guideline pages? Victor Yus (talk) 07:02, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Ah, I see two threads above (thanks NJ for the talk page notice) that an attempt has aready been made to address some of these issues. I think this is worth pursuing - both on this page and on the other notability pages. They're called guidelines, and should therefore guide people, but they won't do that as long as the various statements they make continually appear to contradict each other. Victor Yus (talk) 10:55, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. All notability guidelines have some degree of subjectivity, but this one is unusually vague, and contains a large number of self-contradictory statements and hair-splitting criteria (see above). NJ Wine (talk) 14:35, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Existence vs publication

So now Xxanthippe has unilaterally decided that unpublished sources are just fine. His edit summary says that this is the "agreed version".

Attention: I do not agree to this version. It is therefore not the "agreed version". It is, in fact, the seriously and strongly disputed version, because it confuses the important concept of whether a source has been WP:Published (an absolute, non-negotiable requirement established in both WP:V and NOR, and defined at WP:SOURCES as "(made available to the public in some form)") with whether the source exists, e.g., could be touched. If you find old love letters in your great-grandmother's attic, then those sources exist. They are not published. It is the fact of their non-publication that makes them absolutely unusable for any purpose on the English Wikipedia.

The specific change was agreed upon above: See David's final comment at 19:10, 17 May 2012: 'But "publically available" seems unobjectionable to me." He preferred "publicly available" to "published" so that there would be no quibbles over whether websites or non-commercial publications were "published". (They are, but how people might misunderstand it is reasonable thing to worry about.)

I'd like to add a historical footnote: the fact that the ambiguous word exists has ever appeared in any of these policies or guidelines in this context is my fault. I suggested it originally. Since then, I (and others) have learned that it is confusing to people. I'm trying to clean up my own mess here. I'd appreciate some cooperation, or at least a good reason why Xxanthippe believes that unpublished letters are acceptable sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:52, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

WP:V is absolutely clear: sources must be publicly available and not just simply inferred to "exist". The "published" aspect is to allow us to provide a point of reference/citation for the source. --MASEM (t) 23:42, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Particularly with respect to establishing wp:notability, it should say "published". North8000 (talk) 00:07, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Definitely prefer "published". Am willing to accept "publically available". Strongly disagree with "exist" Blueboar (talk) 00:54, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Seems to me that the sentences in dispute are just brief summaries of the WP:Verifiability policy. So as long as that policy says published, these sentences should also say published. Victor Yus (talk) 06:50, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

I agree. "Exist" is too low of a standard. Sources should be published. Otherwise WP:PROF is in contradiction to WP:V. Based on the comments here, I have updated the guideline to use the word "publicly available". NJ Wine (talk) 14:38, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Notable people are known to give, sell or bequeath their private papers to national, university or private libraries. Often these documents are available to scholars who might wish to consult them. Sometimes, for various reasons, the donor requires that the papers be kept unavailable for a number of years, so that they are known to exist but are not available to the public. In neither case can the papers be said to be "published". That is why the word "exist", put in by the original framers of the guidelines, is better than the "publicly available" being proposed. Xxanthippe (talk) 06:08, 5 June 2012 (UTC).

Point of fact: The "original framers of the guidelines" did not put this word in this (or any other) guideline. It was added years later, when we were trying to make the point that notability doesn't depend on whether someone has already WP:CITEd the published sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:55, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes but documents that are only known to exist in a broad sense but are not available for anyone to independently verify can't be used to document or even assert facts in this project. I'm not sure where this conversation is going, however, as anyone important enough to have documents in a library or archive surely has many other descriptions, documents, and accounts that are publicly available. It would be a very, very strange case where an editor is asserting that a subject is notable and the only evidence is unavailable in a sealed archive.

The bottom line is that material cited in this encyclopedia needs to be available for readers and editors to independently consult to verify the accuracy of our articles. Mere existence is insufficient to meet that requirement; the documents have to have been published and be available in at least a theoretical sense (e.g. out-of-print or otherwise rare documents are generally acceptable as "available" doesn't have to mean "easily available"). ElKevbo (talk) 06:19, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Xxanthippe, verifiability is a core tenet of Wikipedia, and it states the following: Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. Source material must have been published (made available to the public in some form). I was recently involved in an AfD where the article's creator stated that the subject had published lots of articles in law journals. Unfortunately, very little of it was verifiable, and so the article was deleted. If we cannot verify the material, there is no way for us to determine its significance.

In terms of documents bequeathed to a university, the content of those materials may really run the gamut in terms of being independent sources. From what I know about university archives, often bequeathed documents include the person's diary, pictures, and other non-scholarly material. Unpublished material is not peer-reviewed, and should not be used to gain notability. Even if the word "exist" was included by the creators of this guideline, you cannot create a local consensus in a guideline or article which contradicts a core Wikipedia policy. NJ Wine (talk) 12:20, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

No library is likely to accept for storage, let alone pay good money for, papers that they have not had professionally assessed. Yes, such papers often contain non-scholarly items. But such material can often be used for scholarly purposes, for example the archive of Dylan Thomas held at the University of Texas at Austin is used extensively as a source for Thomas scholarship. Agreed that it is unlikely that notability will hang on one source of this nature, but many of them will contribute towards it. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:33, 6 June 2012 (UTC).

To my mind, requiring that sources be published (rather than "merely" existing) is redundant, because reliable sources by definition must be publicly available. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:57, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

The word exists is ambiguous. There is no need for this guideline to be vague on this point. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:57, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

It is the words "publish" and "publicly available" that are ambiguous in this context. They beg the question: publicly available to whom? In addition to library holdings of private papers, discussed above, there are some sources, for example the Vatican and KGB archives, that mostly can only be consulted by restricted scholars in person in another country. Do these count as publicly available? Much of the scholarly and scientific literature, including the two most important citation databases are, regrettably, published behind a pay wall. Do these count as "publicly available"? In my view the criterion is best left as "exist" and arguments about verifiability made on an individual basis. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:33, 6 June 2012 (UTC).

"Publicly available" means "available to the public". "The public" includes anyone willing to pay for access. A source available solely to special groups of people (e.g., university employees, spies, members of a religion) is not available to "the public". This is explained at Wikipedia:Published and related pages.

This matters: unpublished sources are never acceptable for any purpose per policy. This is an absolute, non-negotiable rule. If the papers are locked in a time vault, then we cannot use them. I'd have thought that this was pretty obvious, but just in case it isn't: Wikipedia has hundreds of thousands of editors each year. If it is absolutely impossible for even the most dedicated of them to actually read the locked-up sources, then we cannot use them! Not we "don't choose to" use, but we "cannot" use these sources. If no editor can actually read a source, then we are UNABLE to use the source, because no editor will be able to find out what the source says. Standing in the building next to the vault and pretending that you can magically read the locked-up sources doesn't work for us, and neither does interviewing people who are alleged to know what the sources say. You have to actually read the source, or you can't use the source. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:14, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Calm down, please. Have a cup of tea. I don't think any of us are in disagreement about what counts as a source that can be the basis of an article, and what doesn't count. At least, I haven't seen anyone here arguing in favor of confidential and limited-access documents, nor have I seen anyone arguing against documents whose publication consists solely of an academic institution putting something on the web. I think the example above of papers whose access is limited to scholars is misleading: they're still available to a large class of people that has a large overlap with the Wikipedia editorship (and I think someone who has no official academic affiliation but can make a solid argument about being an active Wikipedia editor who needs access for an article would have a good chance of gaining access to such documents). The point is: how do we translate our consensus on what the requirements should be into a consensus on what the wording should be, so that everyone else who comes to this same discussion can reach the same conclusions most directly? —David Eppstein (talk) 20:14, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Xxanthippe does seem to be arguing that completely inaccessible papers are acceptable: "Sometimes, for various reasons, the donor requires that the papers be kept unavailable for a number of years, so that they are known to exist but are not available to the public."

He appears to believe that these personal papers, which are not only unpublished but also plainly non-independent, primary sources, should be counted towards notability. I'll grant that nobody else agrees with him, but Xxanthippe does actually appear to be saying that papers that are, in his words, "known to exist" but unpublished and, indeed, not available even to serious scholars, should count towards notability. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:01, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

The surprising vehemence of some of this discussion makes me suspect (I hope wrongly) that an anti-academic attitude may be present. The phase "A source available solely to special groups of people (e.g., university employees, spies, members of a religion) is not available to "the public"., used by one editor, makes me think that there will be an attempt to exclude academic publications behind a pay-wall from being reliable sources. Be advised that such a contention will never get off the ground. I ignore various other straw-man arguments. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:00, 7 June 2012 (UTC).

If the papers (or interviews, etc.) are not available but they've been consulted by an expert in the field and she or he has convinced a peer-reviewed journal (or other RS) to accept their account of the papers (interviews etc.) then it may look like we'd be relying on non-publicly available sources, but we'd actually be relying on the journal (or other secondary source) for verifiability, which is okay. My only objection to "publicly available" is that it is so often misinterpreted to mean "freely available on the Internet"; which we clarify in a number of places, but it still doesn't always get through to people that an RS is publicly available even if you need to go to a research library and look at it on paper. It may be this interpretation that Xxanthippe is trying to avoid (I don't think we should go with his/her wording, but I'm reaching for good faith here) -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 01:24, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Although I've been holding back from commenting for a while, I've been following this discussion, and I really wish we could find a reasonable middle ground here. On the one hand, a source that is locked away in a vault does "exist", and if it isn't even available to scholars who can be quoted reliably (perhaps because of a donor restriction, for example), then we shouldn't accept it for our purposes here. On the other hand, a source that requires payment for access, or is only available to persons with access to a particular library, still meets our requirements, and we shouldn't require that it simply come up as full text on a Google search. It seems to me that this comes down to "published" being a better choice of word than "exists", but also that we might best omit "publicly available". But maybe we should make clear that "published" does not mean "freely available". Would a footnote saying that be a solution? In other words: "published (footnote: A source need not be freely available to be published.)" --Tryptofish (talk) 00:06, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

I think that sources that are "verifiable" is a better choice as it avoids ambiguities about what "publish" actually means. There is one contributor to this debate who holds that a source available solely to university employees does not count as being published. It would be undesirable to allow quibbles of this sort to gain a foothold. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:27, 8 June 2012 (UTC).

Tryptofish, I think that at least an abstract (listing the title, author, location (e.g, Journal of XXX), publisher, and date) should be publicly available, so that we know that the document actually exists. If an Internet search shows that a book, journal article, etc. exists, and was authored by the individual in question, I'm fine with the fact that the entire article may not freely available. However, from a pragmatic perspective, I don't think that material which is totally non-public can be used to assess notability. If an article refers to a bunch of references who existance cannot be verified, then I don't see how we can fairly use that material. I think we should keep the term "publicly available" but make a note that the entire article need not be free. NJ Wine (talk) 02:10, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Like Tryptofish, I've been holding back, but this interpretation of "published" is totally unacceptable. If something is in a rare book, of which only a limited number of copies exist, then it is published, even though you may perhaps have to take a plane to go see it. If something is published in a peer-reviewed academic journal, then it is a reliable source, even if it is published in one of those rare journals that don't even put abstracts on the web for free. Inconvenient? Certainly. Admissible as a reliable source? Absolutely! --Guillaume2303 (talk) 02:24, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Guillaume2303, If there is no evidence online that a rare book or article in a rare journal even exists, then I don't think that we can count it as a published source. By the term "abstract", I'm just talking about the title and author, not a summary of the work done. NJ Wine (talk) 02:33, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

That view is totally and absolutely unacceptable. You mean that pre-1990 newspaper articles cannot be used any more? You mean that printed sources can only be used if they have some online presence? Move your eyes away from your screen, I have a surprise for you: Look, there's a whole WORLD out there! If your view would ever become accepted wisdom here, I would leave this project. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 02:39, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

PS: I just see that you tried to insert this nonsense into the guideline itself. Please refrain from further attempts to insert this in any guideline, as it is absolutely not an opinion shared by even a sizable minority here on WP. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 02:42, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

An editor has written in the article that sources are unacceptable unless they are published on the internet. I have reverted this view which is totally outside consensus. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:46, 8 June 2012 (UTC).

Guillaume2303 & Xxanthippe, I apologize if I offended anyone, but I think we need to have policies which are realistic. The hard reality is that articles for totally non-notable individuals are routinely created, and the misuse of references does occur. These types of shenanigans are more common in other areas (e.g., bands, start-up companies) than they are for academics, but it is not a "fringe view" or "totally outside consensus" to believe that sources should be checkable. Perhaps instead of requiring that a least a title be mentioned somewhere online (my initial proposal), we require that a location of the material be cited. So instead of just citing "XXX book", we cite "XXX book, available in YYY Library"

This is an encyclopedia, not a web directory. Requiring internet sources would cause severe Wikipedia:Recentism problems and for that reason among others it has long been completely contrary to consensus, not just for articles on academics but in Wikipedia in general. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:08, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Xxanthippe, I am irritated at your selective quotation of my comment. I say ""The public" includes anyone willing to pay for access", you quote the very next sentence in that paragraph, and then you imply that I think that publicly available documents don't include documents that cost money. I hope you will do better in the future.

I also oppose the Internet-verification idea. But I agree with NJ Wine on this point: from a pragmatic perspective, material which is totally non-public cannot be used to assess notability. I mean, really: it's locked in a vault somewhere and nobody's allowed to look at it (or at least nobody except certain specially authorized people). How exactly are you going to figure out what the document says?

Publication is the act of making things available to the public, not the act of locking them up in a vault and saying that nobody's allowed to look at them for 50 years.

To give an example: Nobel Prize nominations are locked up for 50 years. Let's say that some Wikipedia editor asserts the existence of a nomination as proof that the person is notable. How exactly do you turn that assertion into verifiable evidence (which is required for notability)? How do you figure out whether that nomination contains useful, useable, or significant information? How do you know what that source says? How do you use that source to write an article? By finding someone with psychic powers to tell you what it say, maybe? By breaking into the Nobel org's archives?

This is just a practical issue: if nobody is allowed to read the document, then it cannot be used as a source because nobody knows what the source says. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:23, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

This discussion is out of line and out of place. Those who want to change how Wikipedia uses sources need to do so at the appropriate places (e.g. WP:RS, WP:V). Trying to make such a change here is a waste of time because such a change will never fly in the face of accepted policies that supersede this one. I don't see where this is going and I'm tempted to unilaterally close it because it's just a waste of time that is getting everyone's hackles up. ElKevbo (talk) 17:34, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

The point of this discussion is to change this guideline so that it clearly lines up with the requirements of the sourcing policies, i.e., to clarify that the mere existence of sources is insufficient; the sources must be WP:Published, which WP:V defines as meaning "available to the public". I believe that at this point, everyone except Xxanthippe agrees that the mere existence of sources is insufficient.

IMO changes to this guideline should be discussed at this guideline's own talk page. But if you wanted to leave a note at WT:V at WT:RS to invite interested people to join this discussion, that would be fine with me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:03, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

I just re-read the note as it currently written: Every topic on Wikipedia must be one for which sources are publicly available; see Wikipedia:Verifiability. This verbiage is in line with Wikipedia's other policies, and if a person has a question about what "publicly available" means, we provide a link to Wikipedia:Verifiability. I agree with ElKevbo that it is time to close this discussion. The note is good as is. NJ Wine (talk) 22:05, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

I agree; whether or not anyone likes it, the policy on verifiability does require that sources be published, so when this page is telling people what the verifiability policy says, that's what it needs to say. Any proposals for change in this regard should be made on the verifiability talk page. (Though anyone giving consideration to this topic should probably take note that there is rather a large space between a source being available "publicly" and its being available to "nobody".) Victor Yus (talk) 09:51, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

An editor has changed the verbiage to the following: Every topic on Wikipedia must be one for which sources comply with Wikipedia:Verifiability. I'm good with this. It just states that we follow the policies in WP:V. NJ Wine (talk) 13:00, 9 June 2012 (UTC)