User:Trialsanderrors/SCIENCE

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This is an essay in vitro. It is not yet a policy or guideline, although one day it might grow up to be one. As of now, it expresses the opinions and ideas of one Wikipedian and may or may not have wide support. Feel free to edit this essay-in-vitro as needed or use the discussion page to propose changes.

Shortcut: T&E:SCIENCE

This is a proposed notability guideline for scientific contributions, concepts, theories and definitions. It derives its relevance from the policies What Wikipedia is not (in particular Not an indiscriminate collection of information and Not a crystal ball), No original research and Neutral point of view (in particular Undue weight), as well as the guidelines Conflict of interest and Autobiography. Scientific concepts, theories and definitions are created and published routinely by many academics and interested laypeople. Although publication creates verifiability and most journals are reliable primary sources, publication by itself is not a sufficient (and sometimes not necessary) standard for encyclopedic notability. As Jimbo Wales noted:

If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it doesn't belong in Wikipedia (except perhaps in some ancillary article) regardless of whether it's true or not; and regardless of whether you can prove it or not.[1]

A key element to understanding this guideline is that Wikipedia is not a scientific publication, so it does not usurp the usual validation processes (peer review, academic recognition) of scientific institutions. The decision on inclusion or exclusion of scientific concepts should always reflect the opinions of outside authorities, not those of Wikipedia editors. As a corollary this also means inclusion or exclusion is not a judgement on the validity, importance or accuracy of a scientific contribution, but simply a reflection of the quality and quantity of responses the theory received inside and outside the scientific community. If a contribution is proposed as science and vociferously rejected by the scientific community, it is likely notable but the article should reflect opinions on the merit according to their weight. On the other hand, even if editors feel a new contribution advances the knowledge in the field it is not automatically notable. The role of Wikipedia is to reflect, and not to pre-echo the response of the interested public as reported by reliable sources.

And lastly, just like consensus can change in Wikipedia, opinions can change on the validity and notability of scientific contributions.

Contents 1 Scientific theories 2 Scientific terms 3 Scientists 4 Sources

[edit] Scientific theories

Theories are causal models that try to explain how the world works. Hypotheses are empirically testable conjectures distilled from theories and are as such usually not stand-alone notable outside the context of the theories they test. Nomenclature varies though, and it is possible that a hypothesis has been expanded to a full-blown theory but retained its original name.

For a scientific theory to be considered notable, it should fulfill at least one of the following criteria:

1. It has been included in general or specialized textbooks.
2. It has been widely cited in its research area relative to other publications in the same area. Self-citations and citations in non-peer-reviewed journals should be excluded. Inclusion in a peer-reviewed publication, especially in a respected journal with a reputation for rigorous inclusion standards and high impact, is an additional factor to be considered but not by itself a necessary or sufficient criterion.
3. The creators have received a major scientific award, such as the Nobel Prize or Fields Medal, for it. "Best paper" or "best conference presentation award" are rarely ever considered major.
4. The scientific merit of the theory is disputed in, or rejected by, the scientific community, but it has received significant attention in political circles and ongoing coverage in the popular media. In this case the article should make note of this status.
5. The theory or model historically met any of the above criteria but has since been superseded by an alternative theory, or it has been used as an example in a notable account on the history of science. In this case the article should make note of this status.
6. The theory has been the primary topic of a conference with notable participants.

[edit] Scientific terms

See also Wikipedia:Avoid neologisms

A scientific term is considered notable if all of the following can be established:

1. A commonly agreed-upon formal or informal definition
2. Its provenance, or published attempts to trace its provenance
3. A trajectory of cited usage starting from the original in the scientific literature

To determine notability it is important to keep in mind that different fields sometimes use the same term to describe different concepts. On the other hand, especially in the early stages of a field, terminology is often not standardized and different terms are used for the same concept.

Scientific terms that are not by themselves considered notable can still be included, with a short agreed-upon definition, in a glossary. The debate over whether glossaries are part of Wikipedia or should be treated as dictionaries and transwikied to Wiktionary, has not been settled.

[edit] Scientists

See also Wikipedia:Notability (academics)

Scientists are considered notable if they meet the "Prof test" as academics, or are considered the creators of scientific theories or scientific terms which pass their respective tests.

[edit] Sources

See also Wikipedia:Reliable sources, List of academic journal search engines

Scientific discovery is often disconnected from public discourse, so standard methods of sourcing and verifying are not always applicable. A scientific topic which yields low hit counts in the Google test might still be very notable in its particular field. On the other hand, a high hit count might reflect common usage of a term in everyday speech, but not necessarily in the proposed scientific definition. Web (and library) searches should therefore be evaluated based on the quality rather than the quantity of the finds. In addition, scientific terms are often used to mean different things in different fields (see for instance normal form), so standard search engine or news archive searches might be deceiving. The following is a list of sources with qualifications of their usefulness. Some of those sources are restricted and can only be accessed by subscribers, which usually include university and larger public libraries.

1. Google, Yahoo, or any multi-purpose search engine. A general search can provide background information on the originators of scientific ideas and also, via online lecture notes, whether they have become classroom material. Google counts usually shed very little information on the notability of scientific concepts.
2. Google Scholar. Purports to track scientific output but also includes web-only publications and working papers. Google Scholar is currently in beta.
3. Windows Live Academic. Currently in beta.
4. Google Books.
5. JSTOR. An online repository of research journals in the sciences and humanities. Individual jounrals have moving walls of up to five years, so the newest editions are generally not available.
6. ScienceDirect. An online repository of research journals and reference books maintained by Elsevier. Depth of coverage varies by field, but a topic that is the subject of an article in a reference book can usually be considered notable.
7. ISI Web of Knowledge citation index. A citation index provides information on how frequently a journal article or book has been cited in the academic literature, and therefore offeres a measure of notability of the original article. Again, since citation standards in scientific subfields differ, the quantity of citations might be less instructive than the quality.
8. ISI journal citation reports. The Institute for Scientific Information also calculates metrics for whole journals and ranks them within their fields. The most common metrics are impact factor, immediacy index and cited half-life. Other criteria on with to judge a journal are its age and its publisher.