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Revision as of 03:06, 7 April 2007

This page documents an English Misplaced Pages ]. Editors should generally follow it, though exceptions may apply. Substantive edits to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on this guideline's talk page.

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It has been suggested that this page be merged with Notability (people). (Discuss)

This guideline, sometimes referred to as the professor test, is meant to reflect consensus about the notability of academics as measured by their academic achievements.

Criteria

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If an academic/professor meets any one of the following conditions, as substantiated through reliable sources, they are definitely notable. If an academic/professor meets none of these conditions, they may still be notable, and the merits of an article on the academic/professor will depend largely on attributability.

1. The person is regarded as a significant expert in his or her area by independent sources.
2. The person is regarded as an important figure by independent academics in the same field.
3. The person has published a significant and well-known academic work. An academic work may be significant or well known if, for example, it is the basis for a textbook or course, if it is itself the subject of multiple, independent works, if it is widely cited by other authors in the academic literature.
4. The person's collective body of work is significant and well-known.
5. The person is known for originating an important new concept, theory or idea which is the subject of multiple, independent, non-trivial reviews or studies in works meeting our standards for reliable sources.
6. The person has received a notable award or honor, or has been often nominated for them.

Examples

Some examples of applications of this guideline follow.

1. An academic who has published a book or books of general interest, a widely used textbook, or non-academic articles in periodicals with significant readership is likely to be notable as an author (see WP:BIO), regardless of their academic achievements. Similarly, an academic involved in significant current events is likely to be notable as a person under the general WP:BIO guidelines.
2. An academic repeatedly quoted in newspapers or newsmagazines may be considered to meet criterion 1. A small number of quotations, especially in local newsmedia, is not unexpected for academics and so falls short of this mark.
3. An academic meeting criterion 2 will probably meet other criteria as well. Nonetheless, in theory, an academic meeting only criterion 2 would certainly be notable.
4. It is hard for those not in an academic's own field to judge criteria 3 and 4: researchers in some areas publish many more papers than in other areas: in some cases, books are the standard form of publication. Nonetheless, numbers of publications can be judged quantitatively to a degree. The importance of a paper can often be deduced from the number of citations of it.
5. A caution about Google Scholar: Google Scholar works well for fields that are (1) paper-oriented and (2) where all (or nearly all) respected venues have an online presence. Most papers written by a computer scientist will show up, but for less technologically up-to-date fields, it's dicey. For non-scientific subjects, it's especially dicey. Even the journal Science puts articles online only back to 1996. Thus, the absence of references in Google Scholar should rarely be used as proof of non-notability.
6. A caution about PubMed: Medline, now part of PubMed, is a well-established broadly-based search engine, covering much of biology and all of medicine, published since 1967 and sometimes even earlier. But beware, the PubMed "Related articles" are not articles that necessarily cite the original; they are articles on the same general topic, some of which may cite the original (and some of which clearly are not, for they will have been published before the articles in question).The only way to do it within PubMed is the extremely tedious method of looking at every one of the related articles published after the article in question, choose its "cited article" display, and check if it is there. (Some PubMed records do not list cited articles, for a variety of reasons.) - Help for "Related articles" feature
7. Citation indexes: the only sure way in most subjects is to use one of the two true citation indexes, Web of Science and Scopus. They are, unfortunately, very expensive: Scopus will be found mostly in university and large college libraries, and Web of Knowledge in major universities. Scopus covers the sciences and the social sciences, but is very incomplete before 1996; Web of Science may cover the sciences back to 1900, the social sciences back to 1956, and the humanities back to 1975, but only the largest universities can afford the entire set. (Fortunately, additional citation indexes with public access are being developed.)
8. If an academic is the originator of an idea or concept that is significant and important within its area, they meet criterion 5, however, the originator of an idea that is similar to previously existing ideas may not meet criterion 5.

Caveats

Some caveats to this guideline follow.

1. Note that if an academic is notable only for their connection to a single concept, paper, idea, event or student it may be more appropriate to include information about them on the related page, and to leave the entry under the academic as a redirect page.
2. Note that as this is a guideline and not a rule, exceptions may well exist. Some academics may not meet any of these criteria, but may still be notable for their academic work. It is important to note that it is very difficult to make clear requirements in terms of numbers of publications or their quality: the criteria, in practice, vary greatly by field. Also, this proposal sets the bar fairly low, which is natural: to a degree, academics live in the public arena, trying to influence others with their ideas. It is natural that successful ones should be considered notable.

See professor for more information about academic ranks and their meanings. Note that academic ranks are different in different countries.

Notes

1. There is no objective criterion for establishing that a publication is "widely" cited. Misplaced Pages editors should consider not only the absolute number of citations (as provided by a citation index) but also the number relative to other publications in the same field which are generally acknowledged to be important.