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.

Adjunct professors

Do adjunct professors qualify for meeting WP:NACADEMIC #5? LibStar (talk) 01:17, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

No. That is a title for allowing industry people to teach or for giving courtesy appointments to people in other departments. (It could also be adjunct associate professor or adjunct assistant professor, by the way.) It is not the sort of step beyond full professor such as distinguished professor that #5 is about. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:29, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

“Adjunct” is a synonym for “part time faculty.” As David says, it’s not an honor. It’s a job title. If an adjunct qualifies it’s because they’ve met one or more of the criteria - perhaps they became notable as full time faculty or in a national lab and became an adjunct on the side or in retirement- but being a part timer satisfies none of the criteria in and of itself. Qflib (talk) 22:39, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

General Notes Links

Just needed to link to "APT" (Average Professor Test -- the oldest WP:PROF criteria) and realized that the link had been removed at some point, so made headlines for each of the general criteria. Happy to discuss if there are objections, but I tried to be as neutral as possible. -- Michael Scott Asato Cuthbert (talk) 09:50, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

I think this does change the perceived meaning -- in particular a reasonable reading is that an academic who meets the guidelines for holding a named chair now needs a source independent of the institution to confirm this fact, which has not generally been required and might be hard to find; same goes for editor-in-chief of a major journal. Also I think it might generate demands to default to explicitly linking citation profiles, which is fine when there's a handy GS profile, but tricky for (?older) academics who have not created such a profile. Espresso Addict (talk) 17:22, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

Yes, this hits the nail. This has the potential to really make things difficult at AfC. Qflib (talk) 00:26, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

@Mscuthbert, the "General notes" section should be changed back to remove all the subheadings, especially the heading that emphasizes minor. That statement is just not correct. We also source major facts such as education, career development, and contributions to their field from institutional sources or the person's curriculum vitae. The policy at WP:PRIMARY covers this and doesn't need any change here. We have enough trouble with editors who come across articles about academics and believe that any source from anything that a person has been associated cannot be independent. We see this often at Articles for Deletion. Named chairs are awarded by the universities that are employing to person. Honorary Fellowships in societies involve being a member of the society. Adding to the problem is an increasing number of editors who seem to believe that non-independent sources are BAD and all sources used in an article must be independent even though they are fine for uncontroversial facts. StarryGrandma (talk) 20:48, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

I agree with StarryGrandma; although the notes do explicitly explain the details of what type of source can be used to support what, few editors get that far through the guideline, and I've seen many articles prodded/AfD'd/declined at AfC for lack of indept sources where the pass of PROF seems fairly obvious. Espresso Addict (talk) 22:07, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

Also agree with Starry Grandma. Qflib (talk) 00:24, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

This change would have meant that declining the Donna Strickland draft was the right thing to do. Let's not do that.

Also, I am unclear about why the text of the page had to be modified at all. Isn't this a case for an {{Anchor}}? XOR'easter (talk) 01:43, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

Determining notability of prestigious scholarly societies

#C3 clearly cites that membership of institutions such as a National Academy of Sciences or the Royal Society, establishes notability. I recently created an article based on an assumption that being a member of TWAS (The World Academy of Science) passes notability, but other editors have pointed out to me that it does not. Also as the criterion directly mentions membership of a National Science Academy as an example, I wonder whether this description establishes notability for all members of every national academy of science, in every country across the world. Xpander (talk) 08:22, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

No it does not until proven to. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:07, 16 April 2025 (UTC).

But the policy doesn't say anything about that, it just says "Academics meeting any one of the following conditions" are notable. It doesn't say how the condition is proven or measured. Xpander (talk) 06:28, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Determined by consensus. Xxanthippe (talk) 08:09, 18 April 2025 (UTC).

Is this the line? "The criteria, in practice, vary greatly by field and are determined by precedent and consensus." So what a criteria practically tells us, any article with one of the notability assertions, should never be speedy deleted (WP:SK) and should always go through WP:AfD? Or are there other means of reaching notability consensus? Best. Xpander (talk) 11:12, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

The question of whether a society and its fellowship program meets the bar for C3 is a little bit like asking whether a media outlet is reliable. But to expand specifically on TWAS and on Vahid Karimpour, I see a minor academic society, and with no clear criteria for their fellows program. (Indeed, I had to look a little bit to even find a mention of the fellows program on their website.) On the other hand, we are interested in C3 as a proxy for NPROF C1 notability, and I see absolutely no sign of the kind of impact that we're looking for. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 11:23, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

C1 and mathematics

A current AfD, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Roshdi Khalil, raises broader questions about the applicability of citation counting and WP:PROF#C1 to mathematicians. I'll repeat something I said there: "Major mathematics societies have issued statements telling mathematicians not to rely solely on citation counts in evaluation: IMU (IMU summary), AMS." Criterion C1 itself only asks for "significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources", but perhaps at least for mathematics we need something other than citation-counting to make this demonstration. I'm not really sure what that would be, though. Mathematicians often have very specific ideas about publication in certain journals being a sign of significance but those are rarely articulated clearly enough for us to use (and again, for the same reasons we should avoid replacing their ideas of significance by citation-based criteria). —David Eppstein (talk) 19:16, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

I agree that this implies we cannot rely on citation counts any more as a positive signal for mathematicians any more in AfD, which means a lot more work for each AfD discussion. However the statements you use are from 15+ years ago, I wonder if the situation has since changed (probably for the worse?). I would like to hear from people in the field what they would consider such indicators of C1 "significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources." In the end it may mean that we have to wait for media coverage / awards in the field (it seems there are quite a few: https://www.ams.org/prizes-awards/palist.cgi ) etc to appear in the profile of a researcher. Unfortunately, the latest Steel Price in 2025 was given for a 1976 paper, so that may mean quite some delay ... but I dont think we will run out of award-winning mathematicians soon. --hroest 16:05, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

This 2024 Science article is evidence that if things have changed it is only for the worse.

I don't have a good feeling for replacement indicators myself though, as, although I sometimes publish pure mathematics papers in mathematics journals, I am largely evaluated professionally by computer scientists (and participate in evaluations of others) using computer science standards, which are very different. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:39, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

I had a look at this discussion from last year about something similar but not really a conclusion at the end -- and honestly after thinking about this some more I wonder if we are probably overthinking this. It seems like we are trying to solve an almost impossible problem here that the field has recognized and doesnt have a solution either. I see either the option to basically have an opt-out for citation counts for pure mathematics (eg "In pure mathematics, satisfaction of C1 cannot be demonstrated by citation counts only") which will probably lead to more deletions and we rely more on other verifiable factors like awards. Ie we will need at least another indication of C1 or any other criteria for a keep. Alternatively we keep things as they are and have to deal with a bunch of articles of somewhat less notable mathematicians per WP:NOTPAPER if there is a reasonable quality article to be written. From personal experience, I find that in AfD discussion we almost never had a false positive where a true luminary in the field (or just a high quality article in general) was almost deleted and many articles of barely notable people that are kept, so I would be okay with the first approach to make the criteria a bit tighter for pure mathematics. --hroest 15:51, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

Clarification regarding ERC grants

I am curious as to what the community thinks about ERC grants with regard to establishing notability. I think it's fair to say that the ERC is currently the highest prestige grant offered in Europe, and I think could therefore be considered a "highly selective fellowship" (1e), even if it doesn't use the word "fellowship". Although a small fraction of ERC Starting grantees might not have permanent positions, I think it is not right to call it a "postdoc grant", as the grantee is in a leadership position employing multiple postdocs and PhD students.

The size of the award (1.5-2.75 M€) is roughly ~40 times larger than the Guggenheim Fellowship explicitly mentioned in 2a.

My personal opinion is that all ERC grantees pass the "average professor test", and should therefore be considered notable under 1e/2a. What do you think?

(Part of why I'm asking is that when browsing academics previously removed through AfD, I've noticed several ERC grantees that I would have voted to keep. It makes me wonder whether editors outside of Europe might not be aware of how prestigious the award is viewed within Europe.) a bunch of penguins (talk) 17:41, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

I tend to disagree. ERC grants are, well, a grants program, like the ones NSF/NIH/CIHR/etc run. Scientists and engineers working in research apply for grants and they get them sometimes - if they don't, they don't keep working long. I'd expect successful senior faculty to be winning the large amount/high tier ones, but also I would not expect that everyone winning those is automatically notable. They may be doing great work, and often someone who is successful in grant funding is also generating plenty of well-cited work, which would satisfy 1. Also, I'd think that the €/$ amount doesn't matter as much as does whatever academic prestige might generated by the award. The Nobel Prize would still be prestigious if its amount were divided by 10. But I'm interested to hear what others think. Qflib (talk) 19:02, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

I agree with Qflib, grants do not measure they same thing as notability on WP or other academic awards. Academic awards measure actual achievements of individual research or a body of research. Grants evaluate an idea and potential for research. The same way we dont consider young investigator awards notable (because they reward potential for research), we should not use grant funding for notability. --hroest 19:36, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

I also agree. Getting a multi-million Euro or dollar or pound research grant is a big accomplishment, but it is not the kind of accomplishment that matches our criteria nor that directly measures impact. As an academic administrator I knew was fond of saying, grants are input, not output. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:52, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

I agree as well. There are some grants in the US such as a MURI (grant) which is $7.5M/5yr, and Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship [1] of $3M/5yr but also not themselves a proof. Almost always people with the Bush Fellowship would qualify for other reasons. There are some bigger block grants such as a STC or an EFRC where I would compare the PI to a Dean, again not by itself enough. Ldm1954 (talk) 20:12, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

The decision criteria in the ERC is split between excellence of the idea and excellence of the PI. The second half is a direct measure of impact, with reviewers asked to evaluate "To what extent have the achievements of the PI typically gone beyond the state of the art?". If the applicant doesn't score "outstanding", they won't get the grant. The question could be rephrased "is this an average professor or not?" a bunch of penguins (talk) 23:12, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks to everyone who replied so far! I'll note that the "average European professor" has obtained a dozen or a few dozen grants by the time they are 40, but the average department is lucky if they have a single professor with an ERC. Also, the median NSF grant is a bit over $500,000 over 3 years,[2] whereas the *smallest* ERC grant is 1.5M€ over 5 years, so that's not really an apples to apples comparison.

Getting a single NIH grant is not going to get you a professorship at the US University of your choice, whereas getting an ERC (even a starting grant) is nearly always a ticket to immediate tenure. Wealthy universities like TUM actively headhunt ERC winners, and multiple national funders award their own grants to researchers who make it to the second round selection but then *failed* to get an ERC. It is simply not the case that typical NIH and NSF grants are equivalent to ERC in terms of academic prestige.

While I'm not sure about Qflib, the rest of the people who replied are not working in the European academic context. It would be great to hear some feedback from people with experience in the European academic system.

It also would be helpful to get more clarity about what "highly selective fellowships" means in WP:PROF 1e. Can someone name a European example of a highly selective fellowship? And what is the European equivalent of the Guggenheim Fellowship (2a), if not an ERC? — Preceding unsigned comment added by A bunch of penguins (talk • contribs) 22:08, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

This might be location/computer specific, but try googling "most prestigious American scientific grant" and "most prestigious European scientific grant" and compare the differences. On my computer, the American query returns an eclectic mix of pages, including "where to search for funding" from AAAS. When I do the query with "European", 17 of the first 20 results returned are about the ERC. If you click through and look at the pages, they say things like "Prestigious ERC funding for 20 Max Planck researchers", or "The ERC Advanced Grant is one of – if not the - most prestigious and highly competitive research grants in Europe", or "The European Research Council (ERC) grants are considered to be the most prestigious funding opportunities for frontier research across all fields, emphasizing scientific excellence".

Another data point: NSF planned to award 12,900 grants in 2024. As of 2021, there had only been 12,500 ERC awards in total, since the grant was first awarded in 2007. a bunch of penguins (talk) 22:51, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

I don't think any of the arguments here about why it should not count towards notability are arguments that it is not prestigious. Those are two different things. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:06, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

With the caveat that I'm an American, this strikes me as something borderline for our purposes of notability (as, a bit stronger than an NSF grant, but maybe not strong enough to establish the presumption of notability on its own). I would expect that for European scholars with this grant, there would be additional evidence of notability, so that we would not need to make the grant an explicit criterion by itself. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:13, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks @David Eppstein, but please clarify in why the ERC should not be regarded as a "highly selective fellowships" as indicated in the WP:PROF 1e guideline. (And the question remains, if the ERC isn't a highly selective fellowship, then which European fellowship could possibly be considered highly selective?) a bunch of penguins (talk) 23:17, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

Because fellowship can mean many different things, and the "highly selective fellowships" of the guideline are a different meaning of the word. A fellowship can be:

• A postdoctoral position
• A teaching position at certain universities (especially Cambridge and Oxford)
• Funding for a postdoctoral position
• Funding for a professorial position (in Australia, an ARC Future Fellowship)
• Funding for travel or for a visiting position (e.g. a Humboldt Fellowship)
• Funding for some other purpose (I think this one?)
• An honorary level of membership in a society for which this is a highly selective honor
• A level of membership in a society open to all and indicating the member's support for the society
• Probably other meanings that aren't coming to mind right now.

Of these, the "honorary level of membership in a society for which this is a highly selective honor" meaning is the meaning used by WP:PROF#C3. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:42, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for this answer @David Eppstein. If the meaning of fellowship in 1e is the same as the meaning in WP:PROF#C3, then I would recommend it should be removed from 1e, because it's otherwise redundant and confusing.

But I still don't see why the Guggenheim Fellowship and the ERC are being treated so differently. They are both a highly competitive, prestigious award, which is not based on independent nominations, but on an application written by the potential grantee. They both explicitly evaluate the individual's level of achievement in comparison to their peers. Guggenheim "is awarded to individuals who have demonstrated exceptional ability in their chosen field and exhibit great promise for their future endeavors." ERC proposals are evaluated by selected international peer reviewers who evaluate proposals on the basis of excellence as the sole criterion. It will be applied to the evaluation of both the research project and the Principal Investigator in conjunction.

I suspect that the major difference between the two is that the Guggenheim is older and more familiar to American editors, whereas ERC is newer and unfamiliar to them. In hindsight, it was probably a mistake to start this conversation on a Friday evening in Europe. I am curious as to whether some European academics might chime in tomorrow or next week. a bunch of penguins (talk) 00:20, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

NPROF does not contain the phrase "highly selective fellowship". Fellowship is an ambiguous term.

• For Criterion 2 it means being awarded the kind of fellowship such as the Guggenheim Fellow awarded based on: These awards are bestowed upon individuals who have demonstrated distinguished accomplishment in the past and potential for future achievement. That is awards that coincide with our criteria for notability, having already made an impact on their field.
• For Criterion 3 it means being elected to a purely honorary membership level in a professional society, not a similarly named senior dues-paying level.

ERC is a general funding program for researchers at several levels of experience. The question should be, is receiving an ERC Advanced Grant, which go researchers who should be exceptional leaders in terms of originality and significance of their research contributions, equivalent? StarryGrandma (talk) 23:15, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

Hello @StarryGrandma. 1e starts "For the purposes of partially satisfying Criterion 1, significant academic awards and honors may include, for example: major academic awards (they would also automatically satisfy Criterion 2), highly selective fellowships (other than postdoctoral fellowships);"

If someone rates an ERC Advanced Grant winner as AfD, they've made a mistake. I would argue strongly in the same direction for Consolidator Grants, because it is simply not possible to get that award unless the experts on the ERC panel have come to the consensus that the applicant has made significant impact in their scholarly discipline (condition 1). Significant impact is a requirement to get the award, period.

I can see a case to be made that some Starting Grant awardees may not yet be notable, but you can apply for that up to 7 years after your PhD (with extensions for maternity/paternity leave), and the grantees skew towards the late side. Again, one half of the criteria for obtaining the award, even for Starting Grants, is effectively whether or not you have made significant impact in your scholarly discipline (specifically "To what extent have the achievements of the PI typically gone beyond the state of the art?", to which the required answer for getting funding is "Outstanding"). However, if we're thinking of the "average professor test", generally speaking almost everyone who gets an ERC Starting grant is probably already beyond the "average professor" league already. a bunch of penguins (talk) 23:29, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

While I certainly agree that winning major grants which are highly selective (from any source) can be used for the purposes of partially satisfying Criterion 1, I still disagree that winning such grants should be construed as completely satisfying Crit 1. But yes, I suspect that if someone rates an ERC Advanced Grant winner as AfD, it probably was a mistake - simply because in addition to winning that grant, they've likely also done other things that - together with the grant - had a huge impact, and their career's work cumulatively adds up to satisfying Crit 1. On that point - have we actually had this happen? Or is this whole discussion hypothetical? Qflib (talk) 19:51, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

I still don't really understand how to see the previous logs of AfD articles. Sometimes I seem to find them, sometimes not.

In this case, regarding an advanced grant winner, it was a hypothetical - I don't know whether the deleted articles I saw were Advanced, Consolidator, or Starting winners. Is there a way to search through articles that were deleted? If you can help me out with that, I could take a look.

It still seems odd to me, @Qflib:, that you wouldn't consider the decision of a panel with broad scientific expertise supported by independent subject expert reviewers tasked with determining whether a person's achievements are "outstanding" as a demonstration of notability (due to significant impact in their scholarly discipline). Turning it around, does it seem plausible to you that a person who has not made a significant impact in their scholarly discipline could somehow get an ERC? (Keep in mind that the committee is specifically tasked to separately examine both the proposal and the applicant - you can't win with a great idea if you haven't already had a major impact on your field.) a bunch of penguins (talk) 15:50, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

Having sat on review panels, as I believe have others who have responded here, I would not want to have their decisions be a deciding factor -- contributing is OK. Often all it takes is one strong advocate, or one strong opponent; remember that panels are not anonymous, and frequently academics are wary of alienating others. (Admitted we are not always much better when it comes to AfD.) Ldm1954 (talk) 16:03, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

That seems backwards to me - consider a newspaper editor who wouldn't want their coverage decisions to be a deciding factor on Wikipedia's notability...

In any case, your position is clear and understandable. But to be consistent, would you also suggest to remove the reference to the Guggenheim Fellowship from 2a? It is, after all, a grant which people apply for directly, not a prize from third party nominators, like the Nobel. If not, why not? a bunch of penguins (talk) 16:41, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

I just looked at 4 of the people who received a Guggenheim Fellowship in science in 2025. While they are all notable, I would not put them in a class similar to recipients of the Wolf Prize or the MacArthur Prize, in the sciences. I cannot comment about a Guggenheim in the arts or other areas outside of science. For certain there appear to be issues with 2a that probably should get other input. Ldm1954 (talk) 17:10, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

N.B., I was too vague. I would not consider a Guggenheim Fellowship in science as an automatic pass of NPROF#C2a, it would only support notability. Ldm1954 (talk) 21:49, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

My basic position is a conservative one, in the sense of - if this matter hasn't presented a problem in the past, is it really a problem? And if so, why "fix" it? Qflib (talk) 18:15, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

@Qflib The problem (from my perspective) is the deletion of articles about European academics that are notable according to WP:Prof 1. And if this discussion is representative, the decisions may be to some extent driven by North American wikipedians who aren't necessarily familiar with the fact that the award very strongly suggests (if not already demonstrates) notability. a bunch of penguins (talk) 20:04, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

While ERC grants are difficult to get, the stated aims are to give it for interesting projects (and a PI who has a reasonable chance of carrying it out). I don't think that this is at all what is imagined by WP:NPROF C2. Academics that are notable according to NPROF C1 should have some sign of it in the citation record or elsewhere. The Guggenheim is a bit different, in that it is apparently offered mainly based on prior achievement, separated from any project. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 21:14, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for replying @Russ Woodroofe, and it's great to see feedback from someone in Europe (even if you disagree with me). It seems the ERC decision criteria may have changed in the last year or two (which is probably a good thing). The past years assigned equal weight to the scientific excellence of the applicant (reviewers were asked to assign a rating in response to the question "To what extent have the achievements of the PI typically gone beyond the state of the art?").

I'd ideally still like to see feedback from one or two more Europeans before this is closed. I still think that it's pretty much unthinkable that someone who has not "had a significant impact in their scholarly discipline" would be awarded an Advanced or Consolidator grant. a bunch of penguins (talk) 21:50, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

What articles have been deleted that should not have been deleted, though? This still seems very hypothetical to me without any examples given. Qflib (talk) 18:20, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Having seen ERC winners that had been deleted was the motivation for me to start this discussion. However, as I said, I didn't check if they had consolidators or starting grants, and I didn't keep any record of them, because it was when I was just starting. I will keep an eye out for it in the future.

Is there a way to search the text of the AfD logs? I couldn't figure out how to do that. (Although it would only help if someone pointed out that the person had an ERC during the discussion.)

Two days ago, I noticed a notable academic I know personally had been deleted for being nominated "too soon". I was really scratching my head over how the group could have come to such a conclusion, until I realized the deletion was from 2015 :-)

But with that in mind, it's perhaps possible that some of the ERC winners I saw had been awarded their ERC after they were deleted. a bunch of penguins (talk) 05:37, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Articles for deletion#Search current and archived AfD discussions by topic is probably what you want. Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 06:25, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Like other editors who have commented here, I'd be interested in seeing specific examples of AfDs, with links. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:50, 14 May 2025 (UTC)