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Revision draft for WP:PROF


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. For the purposes of this guideline an academic is some-one enaged in scholarly research or higher education and academic notability refers to being known for such engagement. Most academics are or have been faculty members (professors) at colleges or universities or at academic research intstitutes. However, an academic, in the sense of above definition, may also work outside academia and their primary job does not have to be academic in nature if they are known for their academic achievements. School teachers at the secondary education level, sometimes also called professors, are not presumed to be academics and may only be considered academics for the purposes of this guideline if they are engaged in substantial scholarly research and are known for such research.

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

Contents

[edit] Criteria

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, if they meet the conditions of WP:Notability or other notability criteria, and the merits of an article on the academic/professor will depend largely on the extent to which it is verifiable. See the Notes and Examples section below before applying this guideline.

  1. The person's research has made significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources.
  2. The person has won a major academic award or honor, or several[1] lesser but significant academic awards or honors.
  3. The person is or has been an elected member of a highly selective and prestigious scholarly society or association (e.g. the National Academy of Sciences) or a Fellow of a major scholarly society for which that is a highly selective honor (e.g. the IEEE).
  4. The person's academic work has made a significant educational impact in the area of higher education, affecting a substantial number of academic institutions.
  5. The person holds a named/personal chair appointment or "Distinguished Professor" appointment at a major institution of higher education and research.
  6. The person has held a major highest-level elected or appointed academic post.
  7. The person has made substantial impact outside academia in their academic capacity.
  8. The person is an editor-in-chief of a major journal in his subject area.
  9. The person is in a field of literature (e.g writer or poet) or the fine arts (e.g. musician, composer, artist), and meets the standards for notability in that art, such as WP:CREATIVE or WP:MUSIC.

For people who have made substantial impact outside academia in their academic capacity, the appropriate criteria for that sort of notability apply as an alternative--an academic can be notable in another way instead of academic notability--or a person notable as both an academic and in some other way.

An alternative standard, "the academic is more notable than the average college instructor/professor" is often cited. This criterion has the advantage of being concise though it is not universally accepted and determining the notability of an average professor is difficult in itself and usually relies on one of the six more detailed criteria above.

It is possible for an academic to be notable according to this standard, and yet not be an appropriate topic for coverage in Wikipedia because of a lack of reliable, independent sources on the subject. Every topic on Wikipedia must be one for which sources exist; see Wikipedia:Verifiability.

[edit] Notes and Examples

Examples and practical tips for applications of this guideline follow.

  1. The most typical way of satisfying Criterion 1 is to show that the academic has been an author of highly cited academic work[2]: either of several extremly highly cited scholarly publications or of a substantial number of scholarly publications with significant citation rates. Reviews of the person's work, published in selective academic publications[3], can be consider together with ordinary citations here. Differences in typical citation and publication rates and in publication conventions between different academic disciplines should be taken into account.[4]
    • 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.
    • 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 count citations 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
    • Citation indexes: the best way in many subjects is to use one of the two major citation indexes, Web of Knowledge 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.) Web of Knowledge provides a free index of highly cited researchers, which may be of some value. In mathematics, MathSciNet is a valuable resource, but access to it is also not free and usually requires a university computer account.
    • Measures of citability such as H-index, G-index, etc, may be used as a rough guide in evaluating whether Criterion 1 is satisfied, but they should be approached with considerable caution since their validity is not, at present, widely accepted, and since they depend substantially on the sources indices used.
  2. Criterion 1 can also be satisfied if the person has pioneered or developed a significant new concept, technique or idea, made a significant discovery or solved a major problem in their academic discipline. In this case it is necessary to explicitly demonstrate, by a substantial number of references to academic publications of researchers other than the person in question, that this contribution is indeed widely considered to be significant and is widely attributed to the person in question.
  3. There are other considerations that may be used as contributing factors (usually not sufficient individually) towards satisfying Criterion 1, e.g.: service on editorial boards of scholarly publications; publications in especially prestigious and selective academic journals; publication of collected works; publication of anniversary or memorial journal volumes dedicated to a particular person; naming of academic awards or lecture series after a particular person; and others.
  4. For the purposes of satisfying Criterion 1, the academic discipline of the person in question needs to be sufficiently broadly construed. Major disciplines, such as physics, mathematics, history, political science, or their significant subdisciplines (e.g. particle physics, algebraic geometry, medieval history, are valid examples. Overly narrow and highly specialized categories should be avoided. Arguing that someone is a top expert in an extremely narrow area of study is, in and of itself, is not sufficient to satisfy Criterion 1.
  5. Published collected works, special birthday anniversary volumes of academic journals or special conferences dedicated to honor academic achievements of a particular person may be counted as contributing factors towards satisfying Criterion 1.
  6. Simply having authored a large number of academic works is not considered sufficient to satisfy Criterion 1.
  7. 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.
  8. For the purposes of Criterion 2, major academic awards include highly prestigious national or international academic awards, e.g the Nobel Prize, the Fields Medal and various annual awards, honors and prizes of significant academic societies. Highly prestigious and selective academic awards by governmental (e.g. National Medal of Science), educational, nonprofit and media entities can also be used for this purpose.
  9. For the purposes of Criterion 2, lesser significant academic awards and honors may include, for example: highly selective fellowships (other than postdoctoral fellowships); invited lectures at meetings of national or international scholarly societies, where giving such an invited lecture is considered more prestigious than giving an invited lecture at typical national and international conferences in that discipline; named lectures or named lecture series; awards by notable academic and scholarly societies; and others. Ordinary colloquia and seminar talks and invited lectures at scholarly conferences are insufficient for this purpose. Valid examples of prestigious fellowships that qualify as lesser significant academic honors include Sloan Foundation Research Fellowships, Guggenheim Foundation Fellowships, Humboldt Foundation Fellowships (other than postdoctoral fellowships), and others.
  10. Post-doctoral fellowships, research grants, visiting appointments, internal university awards and honors, best paper prizes at particular conferences, are typically not considered sufficient to satisfy Criterion 2.
  11. For the purposes of Criterion 3, elected memberships in minor and non-notable societies are insufficient (most newly formed societies fall into that category).
  12. Criterion 4 may be satisfied, for example, if the person has authored several books that are widely used as textbooks (or as a basis for a course) at multiple institutions of higher education.
  13. Criterion 6 may be satisfied, for example, if the person has held the post of a President or Chancellor of a significant accredited college or university, director of a highly regarded academic independent research institute or center (which is not a part of a university), president of a notable national or international scholarly society, etc. Lesser administrative posts (Provost, Dean, Department Chair) are generally not sufficient to satisfy Criterion 6, although exceptions are possible on a case-by-case basis.
  14. Criterion 7 may be satisfied, for example, if the person is frequently quoted in conventional media as an academic expert in a particular area. A small number of quotations, especially in local newsmedia, is not unexpected for academics and so falls short of this mark.
  15. Criterion 7 may also be satisfied if the person has authored widely popular general audience books on academic subjects provided the author is widely regarded inside academia as a well-established academic expert and provided the books deal with that expert's field of study. Books on pseudo-science and marginal or fringe scientific theories are generally not covered by this criterion; their authors may still be notable under other criteria of this guideline or under the general WP:BIO or WP:N guidelines.
  16. Patents, commercial and financial applications are generally not indicative of satisfying Criterion 7.

[edit] Caveats

Some caveats to this guideline follow.

  1. 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.
  2. An academic who is not notable by these guidelines could still be notable for non-academic reasons.
  3. It is possible for an academic to be notable according to this standard, and yet not be an appropriate topic for an article in Wikipedia because of a lack of reliable, independent sources on the subject. Every topic on Wikipedia must be one for which sources exist; see Wikipedia:Verifiability.

[edit] Footnotes and References

  1. ^ The level of notability and prestige accorded by specific lesser but significant awards and honors must be taken into account in determining how many such awards are needed to satisfy Criterion 2.
  2. ^ To count towards satisfying Criterion 1, citations need to occur in peer-reviewed scholarly publications or books.
  3. ^ In some disciplines there are review publications that review virtually all refereed publications in that discipline. For example, in mathematics, Mathematical Reviews, also known as MathSciNet, and Zentralblatt MATH fall into that category. The mere fact that a an article or a book is reviewed in such a publication does not serve towards satisfying Criterion 1. However, the content of the review and any evaluative comments made there may be used for that purpose.
  4. ^ 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 slower than in sciences. Also, in sciences most of new original research is published in journals and conference proceedings whereas in humanities book publications tend to play a larger role.