Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/James Z. Wang

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. east.718 at 09:57, 11/4/2007

[edit] James Z. Wang

James Z. Wang (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

The article does not meet any of the WP:PROF criteria. Iterator12n ^Talk 14:29, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

• Keep This article introduces James Z. Wang and his contribution to CBIR, Automatic Linguistic Annotation Indexing, and other image related high-level applications. His research is novel and several projects in his group have been reported by discovery, CBS news, and other media. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Simplely (talk • contribs) 18:16, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

— Simplely (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. --Crusio 20:31, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

• Keep The article asserts notability in several ways, each of which might justify an article. For example, he has authored 2 monographs and about 100 journal articles; this is a nontrivial accomplishment. Shalom (Hello • Peace) 14:49, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
• Keep The notibility has been stated in some ways. e.g. 1) Wang is the author or coauthor of two monographs and nearly 100 journal articles, book chapters, and refereed conference papers. 2) His works have been widely cited. For example, SIMPLIcity: Semantics-Sensitive Integrated Matching for Picture Libraries has been received more than 500 citations. 3) The SIMPLIcity system has been sought after and obtained by researchers from more than 60 institutions. 4) His work has been widely reported by significant media including ... 5) He acts as a reviewer for 40+ scientific journals and many conferences. 6) Detailed contributions of his monograph to his field. Wendy xxy 17:35, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

— Wendy xxy (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. --Crusio 20:31, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletions. —David Eppstein 17:59, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
• Comment, no opinion on notability per our guidelines on biographic articles at this time, but it bears pointing out that the Keep !voters above, excepting Shalom (talk · contribs), would appear to have a conflict of interest here and appear to be part of a group of editors creating a walled garden on academics at PSU.--Isotope23 ^talk 20:03, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
• Comment Publishing is what academics do and in itself not enough to establish notability. WP:Notability should be documented by independent secondary sources, which this article does not. --Crusio 20:33, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

yes, and whether they are notable depends on how much they do and how many people refer to it. The references from other peoples' work are the independent sources. The people in the field determine notability--we just record it. DGG (talk) 04:04, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

• Delete no reliable sources are given to establish notability. SashaCall ^(Sign!)/_(Talk!) 21:24, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
• Strong delete - CoIs from above editors lead me to believe that this article was created in bad faith. If that wasn't enough, it doesn't assert notability per WP:RS. Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry 21:36, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
• Keep I think he is marginal, but his co-authorship of ALIPR is convincing for me; see this coverage, for instance. Articles should not be removed because they were created by interested parties, they should be deleted because they are non-notable, and I think this guy is notable enough. Brianyoumans 22:24, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

*Delete as per Sasha Callahan and Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry. --Crusio 22:52, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

• Keep 500 citations to a particular book r article is extremely high in any subject, shows professional recognition as a significant author, and thus demonstrates notability. The absurdly over-written article does need very drastic editing. as for the people at Penn State, I wish they'd get in touch with me or someone, and we will explain the facts of life about WP:BFAQ and how to have reasonable articles in WP, instead of stuff like these which not unreasonably attracts deletion. DGG (talk) 04:02, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
• Keep per coverage of ALIPR in multiple sources. The trim by DGG helps the article a lot. Gimmetrow 04:28, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
• Comment Thank you for your trimming, DGG. Editing the article frequently partly because of my unfamiliarity with wiki editing as a novice, and partly because I am keeping remedying problems in WP:RS and WP:PROF. As for some people who think it is not enough in WP:RS, I would like to cite the following statement in WP:RS: "In general, the most reliable publications are peer-reviewed journals and books published in university presses; university-level textbooks; magazines, journals, and books published by respected publishing houses." I have listed representative peer-reviewed journals and two books published by RESPECTED publishing houses to support WP:RS. I think it has met the criteria. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wendy xxy (talk • contribs) 04:48, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Comment Wendy xxy, as I read these things, WP:RS indeed defines a reliable source and the books and articles you mention are indeed reliable sources. However, these need not necessarily be produced by the subject, but must be about the subject. In that way, we get reliable, independent, secondary sources establishing reliability. All academics publish in peer-reviewed journals and with respectable publishers, that in itself does not make one notable. Notability follows if those publications (even if it is just one) have a real and objectively verifiable impact. This impact should then be [[Wikipedia:Verifiability|verifiable] and, as stated in WP:PROF, an academic (or any other subject for that matter) may satisfy the criteria for notability and still not satisfy the criteria for inclusion into Wikipedia because of a lack of verifiable and independent sources. The 500 citations mentioned above would do to establish verifiable independent sources, but what puzzles me is that I don't see those citations in the Web of Science. There the most I get is somewhere around 140, which is very respectable, but not necessarily notable in my eyes. Perhaps DGG has an explanation for that? If they're real, I'll change my delete vote to keep. --Crusio 09:27, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Reply Crusio, Google Scholar says the citation number for that paper is more than 500. It is not strange that ISI citation might be much lower than Google Scholar. There are two reasons. First, the number of the academic journals ISI embodies is much less than Google Scholar, also much less than other important acamedic index such as EI Index, although those journals ISI embodies are regarded as highly respected. Second, ISI citation is not very up-to-date. ISI collection is maintained manually, and aims at keeping what it embodies only the best academic works. So, It is totally understandable that the paper only receives 140, rather than 500, citations in ISI. Just because of the above reasons, 140 citations for one paper in ISI is enough to verify notability. Wendy xxy 10:12, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Comment Wendy, I see your point. However, I ran my own name and looked at the results for my own publications (I know those best, of course, and will not deny a very small amount of vanity, too :-). It's probably field dependent, but my own papers get less than half the number of hits in Google Scholar than they do in WoS. In addition, some commentaries that in reality got cited perhaps just once, get scores of 30 or 40 in Google Scholar. Even for those papers that did get cited more frequently and in Google get lower citation frequencies than in WoS, when I look at the actual list of citations given by Google, many are counted two or more times. This combination of under- and over-reporting does not instill much confidence in the accuracy of Google Scholar. I guess this is because Google does things automatically whereas WoS does much by hand. In my experience, WoS is not so outdated as you suggest, a few months at most. In any case, as you see below I accepted the 140 WoS count as enough evidence for notability (from a verifiable independent secondary source :-). --Crusio 10:36, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

• Keep I just note that the 140 citations I mentioned above are to an article published only in 2001, that's not just "very respectable", but actually very high. I change my vote to keep. The article still needs cleanup (the list of publications seems a bit overdone) and also needs to be sourced (the awards, for instance). --Crusio 09:49, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

WoS (ISI) remains the standard, as it is limited to peer-reviewed articles, GS gets most of them too, but it also gets a lot else, and if we are dealing with the notability of an academic it's references from such article that count. But, as Crusio says, 140 for a field like information science is extremely high. It would be very respectable in almost any subject, even ones with a higher frequency of citing each other like biomedicine. DGG (talk) 19:24, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

• I think it's starting to snow - keep 68.143.88.2 15:25, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
• Keep but clean up, eliminate the external links peppered all over, and only talk about the notable aspects of this professor. This article should be shorter. Antelan ^talk 23:47, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
• Delete; WP:PROF guidelines are not met; having 100 publications is not on its own evidence of notability. SparsityProblem 04:00, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

  What are your thoughts on the NSF Career Award? Antelan ^talk 04:26, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

  An NSF CAREER Award is prestigious, but by definition it's for faculty who are early in their careers. To meet Wikipedia notability guidelines, an academic has to be more established than that. SparsityProblem 05:48, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

  Good response. Let me think this over; I may change where I stand. Antelan ^talk 12:21, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

  In fact, some one deleted the account that can prove notability best, that is something about paper citation. I do not know why. No matter how big divarication on quality of a specific well-known type of citation, 500 hits in terms of google scholar or 140 hits in terms of WoS(ISI) citation is enough for notability.Wendy xxy 17:31, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

  WP:PROF #6 has "The person has received a notable award or honor"; it doesn't say this must be late in an academic career. Gimmetrow 18:07, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

We have no real standards for evaluating research grants.(personally, I tend to look at the amount of money involved.) In any event, I do not consider them awards in the sense of prizes. But there is an easier way--the amount of the grant and its importance results in more papers published. What scientists do that make them notable is to publish things important enough to be cited by other scientists. DGG (talk) 22:55, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

• Weak keep. I don't think the CAREER is a sufficiently notable award as to pass WP:PROF but I'm more impressed with his citation counts. —David Eppstein 15:38, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.