Wikipedia talk:Notability (academics)

This discussion was begun at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Nicholas J. Hopper, where the early history of the discussion can be found.

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See Wikipedia:Notability (academics)/Precedents for a collection of related AfD debates and related information from the early and pre- history of this guideline (2005-2006) and Wikipedia:WikiProject_Deletion_sorting/Academics_and_educators/archive, Wikipedia:WikiProject_Deletion_sorting/Academics_and_educators/archive 2 for lists of all sorted deletions regarding academics since 2007.

Selected publication section in professor articles

Articles about professors often include a list of selected publications. In the guide I wrote on how to write such articles I recommend the section. One list that I included in an article is currently under discussion as inapproriate unverified material here. Since this has the potential to affect many articles, I would like to consider the issue here instead. StarryGrandma (talk) 00:32, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

A short list of a scholar's most important works is appropriate if the individual is notable for research and publishing their findings. Some editors would limit a publication list to books and six journal articles but I would go as high as ten or twelve journal articles if the publications are significant in the field or if the article represents significant scholarship or major discoveries. In other words, we can set a guideline but need to consider the subject and what is appropriate; I would not limit Albert Einstein to a publication list of six articles.

A Select Publications list does not require a citation for each item in the list, especially when the items are linked to a digital copy or have an ISBN. This practice is well-accepted and used in countless FA and FL class articles. MOS:LISTSOFWORKS notes that a publication list acts as [its own] citation, even though it is not technically a citation. Thus, it would seem out of line to remove a Select Publications list because it is unsourced.

Some editors believe a list of Select Publications is arbitrary and question how its contents are determined. To me, it is just like any other content that is included in an article. An editor reviews available information and decides what would be the most valuable to understanding the subject, while also fitting within the concept of being encyclopedic. One way to determine the importance of a published article is to see how many times it has been cited by other scholars. However, this can not be the only determining factor because it fails to consider important work in narrow fields or older works that lack digitized coverage. Rublamb (talk) 01:16, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Along with citation counts, other criteria I sometimes use to determine inclusion of selected publications are whether the publication has made a splash in popular media, or whether it has been given some significant award. But I agree with being flexible on the number while keeping the number small. It also depends on how senior the scholar is; for someone near or past the end of their career one would expect more publications to be significant than for a younger researcher. One way to make clear why some publications are selected is to include footnotes to them in the article text, distinct from the reference footnote numbering; see for instance the lettered (not numbered) footnotes in Ronald Graham (for whom six selected articles would be too few). —David Eppstein (talk) 04:19, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

David Eppstein, I'm going to have a look at that article but let me say right now that anything that can verify that there is a valid reason for selecting something is a welcome addition. Drmies (talk) 16:23, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

I see a lot of AfC drafts where I would agree with the comment that the Selected works section is "little more than resume building", but for an emeritus professor or someone who has published monographs I think it would be really quite strange not to have this section. -- asilvering (talk) 04:31, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Trimming lists of publication down to size is definitely something I've done more than once when a bio makes it to AfD. It's the opposite of "resume building": a resume is all-inclusive, whereas a short list of publications here is curated. XOR'easter (talk) 06:27, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

XOR'easter, in the example at hand there was no indication in the article or anywhere else that "curation" had taken place. Drmies (talk) 16:23, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

StarryGrandma, thanks for bringing this to wider discussion. I have always been of the opinion, not for terribly well-considered reasons, that including e.g. the three highest cited papers from GS is usually due. With reasons, that might be augmented to 4 or 5 papers; in rare cases more. If I'm putting in a selected papers section, then I usually include an html comment with the selection criteria I used. So the list in Laurence D. Marks seems overly long to me -- the selection criteria are unclear, and I'm not sure what a reader should take away from it. (But in a situation where the main notability comes from published papers, it does seem appropriate to include a short list of them.) Russ Woodroofe (talk) 07:37, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Russ Woodroofe, thank you. I am NOT against including a select number of publications: it seems clear to me, even in my own career, that some articles are simply more important than others--by which I mean cited, acknowledged, etc. Even if I may not agree with someone's selection criteria, at least we should be able to see what criteria, if any, were used. Drmies (talk) 16:23, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

In the LDM article it seemed odd to me that the 1983 article introducing the Marks decahedron (not actually a decahedron) was omitted. Selected publications should not merely be "highest cited papers from GS" (although that is often a good start); we should take into account other factors like prizes, whether the paper started or finished a Wikipedia-notable topic, whether it's the author's main work on some subtopic or duplicative of other selections, spread of dates over the author's career, and (in fields where this matters) position in author list. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:14, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

@David Eppstein: I don't know who selected the original list for LDM. I just remember reviewing and trimming the list, leaving major publications and articles where he was the main contributor. You are right about including his early work. I would also suggest his 2024 article on static electricity that was mentioned in The Guardian. Now LDM has retired, it would be great for someone to review this list, looking for the articles that best summarize his career. That may require looking at his CV as all of his early work may not show up in Google Scholar.

Now that many months have passed, I would back your original idea of cutting the list, especially so that it can really showcase his career. However, list curation is very different from completely removing a Select Publications list, which is what happened here. This current list is not horrible; it just could be better. But as with anything in Wikipedia, it is a process that takes time. Rublamb (talk) 19:22, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Curating such lists takes a certain level of subject-matter expertise, which I for one do not have for the research area of LDM. It would be good if an editor who knows this subject well could take charge of any such trim. I do not know offhand who might be likely. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:14, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Wonder if flagging for an expert would help? Rublamb (talk) 20:24, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

@Drmies: Just because you don't "see" the selection criteria, doesn't mean one does not exist. The criteria could be articles in publications with a Wikipedia article; given the tough road to get a journal listed in Wikipedia, that can be a way to determine notability. It might be based on citation counts, a connection to the text, or a combination of all three. These are all reasonable approaches, but I would be challenged to "see" them. I rely on the principle of Good Faith, especially when looking at contributions by experienced editors.

In a perfect world, all academic articles would be B class or above, with extensive details of scholarly work that connects to the publication list. However, Wikipedia is a process, and everything is not added simultaneously. Removing a Selected Publications list is not particularly helpful when that content could contribute to expanding the article. The current list may be flawed, but with a quick scan, I can see that LDM was published in Nature and Science at a time when that meant a scholar's work was significant had become mainstream. Rublamb (talk) 19:53, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Rublamb, I'm not looking for a perfect world--I'm just looking for a citation, a footnote, just like we do with all things that we put in articles. If there's no note, no explanation in an edit summary, then it looks like "selected" is OR/editorial attitude. And what you are explaining here is indeed a kind of editorial overreach: you are outlining possible criteria which may or may not have been used but were certainly not explicated. And the road to get a journal listed is really not that tough: we have hundreds if not thousands of articles on journals; I think I wrote a few myself. "Article published in journal with Wikipedia article" is not a valid criterion: there are tons and tons of articles on journals and those journals publish tons and tons of articles, some of them with tons and tons of co-authors. As for good faith, sure, but is this not an article with a COI past? Drmies (talk) 20:06, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

It's no different from any other editorial decision we might make. We include World Cup and Olympic appearances of footballers but don't detail their performance in minor games; do we need a footnote every time to a reference that specifically states that for this person these are their most important performances? —David Eppstein (talk) 20:16, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

@Drmies, You have said: Anyway, without proper citations that prove noteworthiness, it's an arbitrary selection., and you are removing such lists when you see them. However WP:NNC says that notability guidelines do not apply to content within articles. "Selected" just means a short list. I use the list to illustrate a scientist's development over time. Its an editor's choice of what to include, not original research. The list is self-referencing. A short bibliography of the subjects work is common in scientific encyclopedias such as the Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Wikipedia is many types of encyclopedia rolled into one, and over here in the academic and technical section we can follow the style of those encyclopedia. StarryGrandma (talk) 20:40, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

What you're saying is you can insert material whose importance is unverified just because you think it's worth including. I didn't say "notability", by the way. By the same token, you could insert a list of every single YouTube video some influencer has ever made, or a bibliography of every single article some journalist ever wrote--or every single opinion article some columnist ever wrote. If "editor's choice", without any kind of sourcing on which to base that, is going to be the new guideline, we might as well turn into Wikia. Drmies (talk) 23:12, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Now I am confused. I think you are talking about "verifiability doesn't mean inclusion", rather than importance, and we don't have problems keeping that stuff out. We have articles about people who are notable. Does every event in the life of a such a person have to be important to the wider world, with a source that shows not just that it happened but that it was an important happening, before it can be in a biography? Wikipedia has never required that. If a person moved to a new university all we need is a source that shows that it happened, not a source that shows that it was important. If a person does a piece of research all we need is a source that shows that it happened, not another source that declares it important. I include a list of publications to show the development over time of a researcher, what they were working on and what that led to. It is a list of events in a person's life as they progress in their field, facts supportable by self citation. And helped by the fact that titles of technical papers tend toward the very descriptive. If there is a bit more information available it can be done as prose with the same sources. But biography. particularly in science, needs to present what people did and how they came to do it, not just a list of awards and positions.

Drmies, I understand your frustration. Wikipedia is continually inundated by promotional editors, in the academic area as well as everywhere else. Professors want their latest research highlighted, or insist that their entire publication list be included, or want an article about their latest pet theory which no one in their field takes seriously. University PR people want shiny articles about their institution and professors. But in trying to fend this off we need to allow experienced editors use such factual material as is available, even if others try to misuse it. StarryGrandma (talk) 04:42, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

"If a person does a piece of research all we need is a source that shows that it happened"--what you are saying is that every single thing that a notable person does should be included in their article, no? I disagree. Drmies (talk) 12:43, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

@Drmies: Exactly. The role of the editor is to review and select what information to include, whether it is factual details or a list of publications. Rublamb (talk) 13:12, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

@Drmies, have you considered the constraints I mentioned below in selecting which papers to list? I don't think anyone here is arguing we include every piece of research or even that we choose the list items based on what we think ought to be most important. What experienced editors are doing is adding the most impactful publications according to external sources -- the citations or reviews themselves surely demonstrate why a particular piece is DUE in the page -- and (hopefully) trimming them down to just those works that reflect serious research contributions from the subject. JoelleJay (talk) 17:20, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

I did, but given the idiosyncrasies of the various fields (noted by others in response), how are these things workable at all? "What we think ought to be the most important"--I know what my reasoning is for dropping a paper in someone's list of publications: a citation, or a comment, in another paper/book/etc., in a footnote... Drmies (talk) 20:11, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Generally if the academic is actually notable, there will be some evidence of that in the form of discussion of their work by other academics. Most fields use citations as a metric to at least some degree, so identifying the papers that have the most citations is very workable. My recommendation was to filter that list further by generally ignoring reviews/surveys and to focus on papers where the subject is the first or senior author if their field uses ordinal authorship. I don't see this approach as any different from the way we (should) decide which of the subject's research topics to discuss in prose -- we can really only be sure something is BALASP if it's had attention elsewhere, and citations are the easiest metric to check. JoelleJay (talk) 20:46, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

For that reason I wouldn't recommend just copying a professor's own "selected publications" list from their home page (my own included). There is some likelihood that they chose some or all of these publications for reasons at cross-purposes to ours (to highlight publications that they think should stand out rather than the ones that already do; to focus on only their current interests rather than the old stuff they're notable for but no longer interested in; to present an appearance of being active in some now-hot topic; to show off high citation counts for papers that they had a minor role in; etc etc.) —David Eppstein (talk) 05:16, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Going purely by journal prestige, I'd include papers published in Nature, Science, and Physical Review Letters. XOR'easter (talk) 22:24, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

That was what I originally went with but it is good to have a physicist confirm my selection criteria. Maybe you can help identify any missing or better articles? Rublamb (talk) 23:00, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

In addition to what others said, when possible I would limit these works to those publications where the subject is a major author. In many fields authorship is ordinal (or ordinal at the start and end and alphabetical in the middle), and often senior/corresponding authors are listed last. When this is the case I would select the highest-cited research works that were by the subject as either first or senior author. I specify "research" because frequently someone's highest-cited papers are just reviews, which don't really demonstrate the impact of the author's scholarship (unless they basically defined their subfield). JoelleJay (talk) 21:08, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes. On Talk:Laurence D. Marks, Ldm1954 mentioned the selected publications on the article about me, David Eppstein#Selected publications. I didn't select them (because writing that article is not for me to do) and wouldn't have made exactly that selection, for one thing because the mesh generation paper listed is a survey rather than the research paper that I would have put in its place, "Provably good mesh generation". Different citation numbers mean different things for different kinds of papers. Another situation where this sort of thing comes up frequently is with statisticians, who often work as the statistical consultant to papers in other fields (getting big citation counts with a middle-position authorship) but whose more significant contributions to fundamental statistics are often less heavily cited. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:22, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

I agree, but other fields don't follow these conventions (or didn't historically), so it would be important to avoid applying this kind of rule without exception. – Joe (talk) 11:15, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

I'll confess that I often have a gut reaction akin to it simply being resumé-building, but I also recognize that it's really not as simple as that. As other editors already pointed out above, one consideration is the career stage of the page subject. I'll expand on that by pointing out a rather easy test for whether or not a publication list should be trimmed. Look at the current version of the page as a whole. (I should quickly add that this does not apply for a very newly created page, that may be significantly expanded in the near future.) If the person the page is about is someone with a particularly substantial life story, so that the page has a lot of paragraph text about them, a publications list may make up a fairly small part of the page as a whole. When that is the case, the list has a good chance of being justified. On the other hand, for an early-career academic, for whom there can only be a start-level page, it tends to look very WP:NOTRESUME when the publication list fills up about half of the entire page. When that happens, there's probably a good reason to remove at least some of the list.

Another issue that I've come across, that hasn't been mentioned yet, is that I sometimes see pages about persons in the fields where I'm particularly familiar with the literature, where there is good reason to list some selected publications. But what I actually see in the list are a bunch of the less important publications by that person, related by the fact that they are all coauthored by a (not notable) junior author. I get a strong feeling that there must have been some WP:COI editing of the page in the past. The solution, of course, is not to remove the list, but to rewrite it. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:39, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

• My thought is that the selected publication list should only contain blue-linked publications. This is generally similar to other lists in articles. Everything else should be in the prose. --Enos733 (talk) 00:35, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

  That's a super-extreme position that would prevent listing almost all research articles, even those winning major prizes, and many entire books. I don't think it's a good idea. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:01, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

  That is a great selection criterion, espeically for new academics who might pad their CV with non-notable online journals, but it cannot be the only deciding factor. Many defunct publications and state or federal series are not included in Wikipedia but were, nevertheless, important in their day. I just finished an article on the leading surgeon for pulmonary tuberculosis in the early 20th century—all of those TB journals and national organizations have been inactive for a long time and are not in Wikipedia. However, it was a major branch of medicine and a public health crisis; Time magazine wrote about this African American surgeon's innovations in 1940. I would not exclude his articles in Bulletin of the National Tuberculosis Assocation or the Pennsylvania Medical Journal just because those publication are not in Wikipedia and don't seem to be digitized yet. Rublamb (talk) 01:03, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

  Am I misreading Enos's comment? It seems to require that the individual research article have a blue link, not merely that it be published in a bluelinked journal. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:12, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

  I believe "blue-linked publications" refers to journals, not to individual articles or books. Rublamb (talk) 01:17, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

  That would make even less sense, since basically 100% of notable contemporary scientists will have many many papers in blue-linked journals, and a huge proportion will have only published in notable journals. That would be effectively the same as having no selection criteria at all. JoelleJay (talk) 02:09, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

  It depends on the situation. Of course, there is a difference between a journal meeting Wikipdia's notability (verified by having an article) and a journal being considered notable in a given academic field. And not all articles in notable publications represent significant advances in a given field or major research by a given scholar. Nevertheless, I still think this can be a useful way to start a review/reduction of an existing publication list, depending on the situation. I have edited articles for newer academics where none of the journals in their publication list were blue-linked. On closer examination, the cited publications lacked peer review or were predatory, meaning the lack of a blue-link was a pretty good indicator of worthiness for inclusion. Regardless, I don't believe this should be a "rule", just a useful tool. Rublamb (talk) 02:47, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

  I think this is a fine rule of thumb, but our inclusion criteria for journals is so random at the moment that I oppose its use as a hard indicator. Suriname0 (talk) 04:32, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

  I would agree with avoiding the inclusion of anything in a predatory journal. That is not going to help much as a filter for most notable scholars, though. I find User:Headbomb/unreliable to be helpful in catching links to predatory journals, so if the listed articles have dois or other links they should show up as unreliable using this script. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:37, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

  I was referring to the actual publication, not a blue-linked journal. I know that some academics may not have a separate publication list in my formulation, especially if they only publish journal articles, but it does provide a bright line (and a standard that is followed in many other areas including WP:NLIST, and generally followed in filmographies). I do also think that editors can (and should) talk about the academic's work in the body of the article (this is why we consider citations as a reason to keep - because other academics are talking about the subject and the subject's theories. - Enos733 (talk) 05:48, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

  All of the filmographies I sampled to verify your claim (e.g. Gary Cooper filmography, Lillian Gish filmography, several others) included blacklinked or redlinked entries. The same is true for all the discographies I sampled, and all the bibliographies of fiction authors I sampled. If this is a rule it is one very much not followed. For open-ended lists of people, yes, this is a typical rule, but that is not what we have here.

  In cases of academics in book fields, the (authored) books and their reviews are the main claim to notability of the subjects; omitting them (in cases where they do not have standalone articles already) could leave the article without a claim of notability, in an A7 deletion worthy state. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:52, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

  Moreover, WP:MERGE suggests that it could be better in many circumstances to e.g. cover notable books from a notable author in the article on the author. So in many circumstances, the books not only may not be blue-linked, but should not be blue-linked (even though they are notable). Russ Woodroofe (talk) 07:51, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

  @Enos733: Looks like I misinterpreted your suggestion. Only citing blue-linked books in a selected publication list is not a reasonable standard, for many reasons. Firstly, you assume that a book is more important than cutting-edge research in a journal and that a book has a wider reach. Secondly, scholarly monographs are less likely to have a Wikipedia article than best-selling "trashy" novel; being blue-linked does not mean the novel is more important academically. Thirdly, being blue-linked is not a Wikipedia standard for lists. WP:NLIST specifically says that all items in a list do not need to be notable (i.e. have an article in Wikipedia). The function of a publication list in a biographical article is to showcase the person's career and their important/influential work; the list's importance is relative to the subject of the article and their field of expertise, not being blue-linked. Rublamb (talk) 18:54, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

  I agree a black and white (blue and white) standard may not always lead to optimum results, but it does provide a certain degree of clarity for editors. At the end of the day, material on this project must first be verifiable, and second, should be written about. "Selected," to a large degree, implies subjectivity and an editor's judgement that the publication is important. So, we must make choices - first by deciding to limit the publication record to a handful of publications, and second which publications are "most" important and reflective of the subject's career. If we don't list all publications, we are making editorial choices, and if we want to give editors discretion, we are going to have lots of variety across subjects (as the publications I think are important may not either be an exemplar of the scholar's work or important to other editor [ and to avoid conflict, it is easier to add than subtract]).

  However, our community does have guidance across all subjects - a focus on the material that are discussed by other authors. Yes, it could be a blue-linked work (there are some journal articles that should meet our guidance for a stand-alone article), But even if we don't use blue links as a metric, the selected publication list should be based on how impactful those publications are on their respective field (or society at-large), and impact should be evaluated through the lens of whether those publications (and the theories contained within those publications) are discussed by others - and ideally, those impacts are discussed in the prose.

  Just my 2 cents. - Enos733 (talk) 00:21, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

  But there is a huge difference between a publication receiving sufficient coverage to be DUE and receiving sufficient coverage to be notable. The vast majority of even well-cited papers are not going to receive sustained GNG SIGCOV: citations will be at best a few sentences, and even in-depth reviews/editorial summaries will only occur in the short period around the paper's publication (and anyway are considered routine for some disciplines, like math). I agree that the selected works should reflect external appraisals of impact, but limiting them to blue-linked works would basically eliminate these lists for everyone in STEM, and even for book-based scholars would be totally inconsistent with our treatment of, e.g., novelists, for whom every book is listed. JoelleJay (talk) 16:35, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

  For most research journal papers, even when the contents of the paper is covered in-depth in a chapter of a textbook (say), it would be better to have a Wikipedia article about the topic of the paper than a Wikipedia article about the paper itself. There may be papers that are separately notable from their topic but they are so rare that, looking through our existing Wikipedia articles on journal papers, I didn't see any truly convincing examples. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:43, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

  My usual go-to example of a notable paper is "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid". DMacks (talk) 18:50, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

  It's an important paper and one I wouldn't even consider the deletion of. But by "truly convincing" I meant that there is clear WP:GNG coverage of the paper itself, considered separately from its topic and its history of discovery. Which sources in that article do you think provide that? —David Eppstein (talk) 19:55, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

  Arguably the Andrew Wakefield Lancet paper would meet GNG, but as you said would still be better covered in an article on the larger scandal (as it is currently). I think coverage that actually critically discusses a paper's conclusions/rationale/narrative, rather than just the results of experiments, would probably hew to GNG better.

  The Market for Lemons might be an example of a paper that became synonymous with the concept it introduced and is best covered in its own article. JoelleJay (talk) 20:16, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

  The paper gets highlighted for its omission of Rosalind Franklin as an example of sexism. And it's also mentioned as an example of a major breakthrough (including that it led to a Nobel Prize) that is not one of the most highly-cited papers.[1] Both of these are coverage of the paper itself not of the scientific content. DMacks (talk) 20:22, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Notability of Mark Kotter

There is an ongoing debate at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mark Kotter on whether Mark Kotter passes WP:NPROF#C1 where additional comments would be welcome. He has an h-factor of 48, with 2 papers that have > 1K cites, but he has no major awards. There has been some confusion in the voting between NPROF & GNG criteria, plus there is a COI. Ldm1954 (talk) 22:59, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Raffi Indjejikian

Hello folks -- Not sure if this is the correct venue, but I have started the above deletion discussion on Raffi Indjejikian, the Robert L. Dixon Collegiate Professor of Accounting at the Ross School of Business of University of Michigan, at the request of an IP claiming to the subject of this article, and would welcome experienced eyes in the debate. It's far from my area, but I see no obvious objectionable content in the article, and I'd say the citations are adequate to support an article. However it was started by a single-purpose editor who hasn't edited since, so there might be something odd that I am missing. Thanks, Espresso Addict (talk) 15:28, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm watchlisting the AfD. @Espresso Addict: This is a strange place for me to say this, but I think posting it at the AfD or at your talk would be more likely to be seen by the IP who contacted you. I've noticed that the IP address is not consistent with someone at the page subject's institution. Could be traveling, I guess, but I'm a little uncomfortable about it. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:47, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, Tryptofish -- That's worrying. An IP has already entered the AfD discussion, so here is probably a safer place to discuss concerns. Espresso Addict (talk) 21:56, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps someone (me I suppose) should contact Professor Indjejikian by e-mail to confirm? Espresso Addict (talk) 22:21, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Good idea. Yes, you (not me, wink). --Tryptofish (talk) 22:23, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

E-mailed. (Though it occurs to me if I hear nothing it's most likely my e-mail has got spam-tagged, so perhaps it will be necessary for someone with an academic e-mail account to follow up.) Espresso Addict (talk) 22:55, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Professor Indjejikian has responded to me by e-mail confirming that they request deletion. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:21, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

Criterion 2a

This criterion says, in part, "Some less significant academic honors and awards that confer a high level of academic prestige can also be used to satisfy Criterion 2. Examples may include certain awards, honors and prizes of notable academic societies ...". I've started a conversation on the WP:NORG Talk page re: the challenge of establishing that an academic society is notable, even when people in the field would say that it's a key society in their field, as there's seldom significant coverage in independent RS's about the society itself. This has implications for whether any of their awards can count towards criterion 2, so I invite participation there. FactOrOpinion (talk) 18:23, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

question about independent sources

I know that the issue of independent sources has been discussed here more than once (e.g., here and here), but I'm still seeking a bit of clarification about the necessity of independent sources and what counts as independent.

• At the top of the guideline, it says that "Subjects of biographical articles on Wikipedia are required to be notable, ... as evidenced by being the subject of significant coverage in independent, reliable, secondary sources," indicating that independent sources are always required. But under the General notes, it says "Once the passage of one or more notability criteria has been verified through independent sources, or through the reliable sources listed explicitly for this purpose in the specific criteria notes..." (emphasis added), which suggests that independent sources aren't necessary for establishing notability if there are RSs that demonstrate that the academic meets one or more of the specific criteria. Am I understanding the General notes correctly, or do we always need to have a few independent secondary RSs with significant coverage, per the note at the top of the page?
• In some cases, I'm clear that some relevant info is not independent (e.g., if a university states that a professor has a named chair). But in other cases, I'm uncertain about determining what constitutes an independent source, in part because professors may be members of the societies who give them awards, may have co-authored publications with people who decide to honor them with a festschrift, are clearly associated with a society that they've been elected president of, and so forth. For example, are either of the following considered independent sources for the NPROF: a highly regarded professional society's website stating that they've given a prestigious award or named someone a fellow (if that's highly selective)? When relevant, should I always add something like "NPROF's work on Research Topic is widely cited," with a link, e.g., to their Google Scholar citations page, since the citations are generally independent? Thanks. FactOrOpinion (talk) 19:13, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

  I fear there's a significant conflict between the material in "This page in a nutshell", which I've not read recently, and the rest of the guideline, which is what editors generally follow. Espresso Addict (talk) 00:16, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

  Yes, the nutshell appears inaccurate to me, and is not the definitive part of the guideline. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:32, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

  I feel like I understand that definitive part, and it was really the discrepancy between the "in a nutshell" description and some of the rest that had me confused. Thanks, FactOrOpinion (talk) 04:56, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

In the US (and probably elsewhere) an official university page that states that they are XYZ is fine. The reason is that these are curated sites, and there are consequences if they are fake. Similarly a major society page. What is not independent, but I would think is in the "also add" category, is their personal or group web page since nobody else curates those.

"Named chair" is far, far more complex. The criteria were written for when any Dept might have 1-2 named chairs. Many top universities in the US & UK (maybe elsewhere) have found that donors like to give $$££€ to create a chair. Hence now often 1/3-1/2 of full Professors have chairs at least in the sciences. IMHO how to handle this is not as yet settled. Ldm1954 (talk) 00:28, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Hence the recent update to change "a named chair appointment" to "a named chair appointment that indicates a comparable level of achievement" [to a distinguished professorship]. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:34, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

In the context of NPROF, "independent" coverage -- typically, the cumulative coverage of the subject's research across many publications by independent academics -- isn't what is being used to write the article (though I would argue we should try to highlight the subject's research contributions based on their descriptions in IRS). Universities, award-granting societies, orgs they're members of, etc. are not independent but are acceptable for verifying that the subject does meet NPROF criteria.

As for your last question, I would not include anything about their citations (especially evaluations like "widely cited") unless it's been explicitly noted in IRS. JoelleJay (talk) 02:29, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Concerning the last point, I would definitely not quote being in the Stanford top 2% of scientists. Maybe we need a brief RfC or just debate on this here since I have seen it many times of late -- to add a comment to the main page that the Stanford list is not a proof of notability. Ldm1954 (talk) 02:37, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it seems to me that this sort of claim is used more often to push paper-mill authors than for academics who have more significant accomplishments to describe. (A quick search seems to show I am listed there. I don't think it means much.) I wouldn't even use this for trying to evaluate whether someone passes WP:PROF#C1 let alone including it as content in an article. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:45, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

The notes say "The most typical way of satisfying Criterion 1 is to show that the academic has been an author of highly cited academic work," referring people to the citation metrics section. So that's only for checking that someone meets Criterion 1, but not for demonstrating it in the article's text? (With the few NPROF articles I've looked at/added to, it hasn't been an issue, as they have more significant accomplishments, just trying to get clear in my own head that I understand what kind of evidence to present.) FactOrOpinion (talk) 18:38, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

That has been the way I handle it. I will often put a link to a Google Scholar profile in the external links as a nod to #C1, but I usually don't discuss the level of citations in the article text. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:01, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

FactOrOpinion I don't think it is appropriate for an editor to assess how highly the academic has been cited, even if they happen to be an expert in that field because it is original research, although you can quote others stating this in festschrifts or obituaries. You might occasionally find comments about citations for individual papers in reviews. I agree with linking the Google Scholar profile (if there's a curated one). You can also list a few of their highest-cited research papers (per Google Scholar if you don't have access to anything else) in a Selected publications section. DGG used to advise stating the GS citation count explicitly, but I don't think that's often done. I sometimes put it in a hidden-text comment in case anyone questions why those particular papers were selected. Espresso Addict (talk) 22:41, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

We kind of have to assess it for AfDs, but I agree it is inappropriate to add our own judgements to the text of articles. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:21, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Sure; I meant in the actual article. Espresso Addict (talk) 23:44, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Would you put it in external links if it's already in an authority control section at the bottom? FactOrOpinion (talk) 07:32, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

I would tend to, yes; there's often a lot of miscellaneous links in that box, most of which are of only marginal value. Espresso Addict (talk) 08:57, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Are uploaded letters RS for NPROF

In a page I reviewed as part of NPP there were a couple of mentions of visiting appointments which were not sourced. In response to me request for sources the editor received letters from an academic at each of the two sites and has uploaded these as pdfs. I would like opinions on this, I cannot decide if this is OK or not. (Please ignore the COI flag this raises, that is a seperate issue.) Ldm1954 (talk) 13:40, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

I don't think that a private communication satisfies WP:V. But for a minor thing like a visiting appointment, I think we can source to CV, per WP:BLPSPS. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 13:56, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

As a minor clarification, they are both signed letters on an official letterhead from academics in Europe that state that the person visited and collaborated. Ldm1954 (talk) 14:09, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

With that degree of digging, it sounds like something too WP:PRIMARY or at least not WP:DUE if the best documentation is unpublished letters (even with letterhead). KoA (talk) 16:00, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

I agree with KoA that this kind of documentation is not generally acceptable. I'd prefer the CV of the academic, if it were hosted at their university, though I know that can get questioned. Are the appointments significant for notability? I generally strip that kind of material out unless it looks important for some reason. Espresso Addict (talk) 22:32, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Yeah I don't think a visiting appointment would be DUE anyway. JoelleJay (talk) 00:46, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Generally speaking, I think this could be fine. I think if the PDFs are hosted publicly on an appropriate domain, we can treat them like other self-published sources (generally okay for verifying uncontroversial claims). This seems trickier if the files are uploaded anonymously on some random domain, such as at Commons or here on English Wikipedia. Unless the editor uploading the file is attesting to their own identity (or their ability to act as an intermediary for the self-publishing institution) directly, I don't really think we can use these as sources. Might be easier to ask this question at Wikipedia talk:Verifiability. Suriname0 (talk) 21:42, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

I'd say that unless the editor has made these available through a reputable publisher, or are themselves an WP:EXPERTSPS in this context, they're not RS because there's no real way to assess their authenticity. On the broader point I agree that if you have to go to this kind of length to verify something, there's no way that it's WP:DUE. – Joe (talk) 16:09, 28 November 2024 (UTC)