Wikipedia talk:Notability (academics)

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Criterion #3 (notability by award), does this include meta-scientific activities?

This request for discussion is a result of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fariborz Maseeh. As background, Maseeh has had a stellar business career as an engineer, entrepreneur in engineering businesses, and has become a significant philanthropist and donor to academic organisations, endowing a chair, and funding projects that will create the next generation of engineers. He has education to PhD level, but does not appear to have taught since his PhD, nor to have carried out academic research work since then. He was recognised by election to the NAE, the citation being "For leadership and advances in efficient design, development, and manufacturing of microelectromechanical systems, and empowering engineering talent through public service", and one of the organisations he's greatly helped, Portland Sate University, has praised him as a "venture philanthropist".

My question is this: when someone with a background in science and engineering wins an award from a science/engineering organisation, does the award actually have to be for academic work in the field of science and engineering, if we're to count it towards NPROF#3? Or is it sufficient that the award is in recognition of outstanding positive benefits to academia? And if we make a distinction between these two situations, how do we draw the line? In Maseeh's case, do we think his award was primarily for "leadership" and "empowering engineering talent through public service", which are not academic activities, or "efficient design, development... of microelectromechanical systems" which might well be?

That's the end of my question. To be clear, I'll add my own view: I believe that NPROF should be restricted to academics' activities as an academic, their research and publication. If they are elected to a learned society because of their outstanding research, they are judged by NPROF. If they are honoured for their wider contribution in a field that they reached via a scientific education and by running tech companies, they should be judged by GNG. This is in line with our policy that a person can be notable via NPROF for sitting in a distinguished chair, but not necessarily for endowing the chair. In Maseeh's case I'd be happy to see his article retained with him as a generally notable person, but I think he's moved far enough from pure academia that he no longer needs the (rather generous) prop of NPROF. I am biased towards a science context, but of course this applies equally to any business that grows from an academic root, be it geography, law or economics too.

Pinging Ldm1954 who suggested I raise this here. Elemimele (talk) 10:46, 24 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Elemimele, thanks for posting this.

My view is different, and I think we should ignore this specific case and discuss the general principle. I know that there is at least one other case of an industry-based NAE who has minimal publications, and there are also FRS. (I cannot remember names, let's leave aside controversial ones.)

While I am biased towards academics, we should not ignore industry/technology. Often their results do not get published, and/or they only publish what fails or years later. However, their contributions are sometimes as or more significant for technology or science. Therefore if reputable peer societies such as NAE/NAS/RS etc decide that industry people with low-citations merit inclusion, we should to. Ldm1954 (talk) 11:02, 24 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In my opinion, WP:PROF, and any of its criteria, should be used to determine notability when the notability results from scholarly distinction. In cases like this, the awards, even if given by scholarly societies, are made in recognition of contributions that are not really about scholarship. As such, instead of looking to Criterion 3, one should judge notability by WP:ANYBIO and WP:GNG. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:14, 24 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The NAE and other engineering societies tend to have more of a mix of businesspeople than less-applied scholarly societies, for obvious reasons. There is a big gray area here between businesspeople whose recognized contributions are in business leadership and people who have a strong record of research publication but who do so while working in industry rather than academia. I would not want to shut off what is currently one of the main ways of recognizing strong researchers in industry (or for that matter independent researchers) by imposing arbitrary credential-based rules that we can only apply this to professors, but on the other hand I can see the argument that people elected to scholarly societies without scholarly accomplishments shouldn't be considered notable as scholars.

By overall preference would be to keep this criterion as is, without new qualifications. The reasons are that (1) the people who it lets through but are "undeserving" by scholarly accomplishments are probably mostly notable anyway, so it does little harm while new qualifications could do more harm by imposing arbitrary credentialism on our standards, and (2) notability is not really about being deserving, anyway, but about recognition, and this is a high level of recognition regardless. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:51, 24 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I can also see Ldm1954's point about recognising industrial scientists. I have great sympathy with people like those chemists who went into industry and were instrumental in developing pharmaceuticals that have changed the world, but who slip under the radar because they weren't publishing (except in the form of patents), they didn't occupy a chair, and modern media mostly doesn't care very much about how ibuprofen/mobile-phone-screens/circle-drawing-algorithms came to exist. This may be one of those situations where GNG needs to be used with some flexibility. How do we feel about patents as a notability criterion? I'd say being on a patent for an idea no one ever used is pretty irrelevant, but if you're named on the patent for aspirin or the transistor, that makes you quite encyclopedia-worthy? Elemimele (talk) 08:44, 25 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Elemimele, a page that is relevant to your comment above is Magid Abou-Gharbia. Just based upon his h-factor he would be marginal as almost all his papers are large team efforts. What (IMHO) makes him notable is that major scientific societies recognized his contributions to pharmaceuticals. Ldm1954 (talk) 10:21, 25 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

On one level, WP:ANYBIO suggests that a stand alone page could be created for anyone who "received a well-known and significant award or honor." This is similar to NPROF#2 and NPROF#3. So, a case could theoretically be made that the award is well-known. That said, as David Eppstein says above, notability is not really about being deserving, anyway, but about recognition. For me, though, the more we lean into NPROF#2 and NPROF#3 and NPROF#4, the more I want to see independent, reliable-sourced coverage of the honor or recognition. --Enos733 (talk) 17:08, 25 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Significant impact

1. The person's research has had a significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources.

What exactly is meant by "as demonstrated by independent reliable sources"? TurboSuperA+_[talk] 12:34, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Read the Specific criteria notes and see if that answers your question sufficiently. FactOrOpinion (talk) 13:04, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Not really, because the notes are still vague: The most typical way of satisfying Criterion 1 is to show that the academic has been an author of highly cited academic work – either several extremely highly cited scholarly publications or a substantial number of scholarly publications with significant citation rates.

What is considered "highly cited"? What is "a substantial number" or "significant citation rates"? I always went by 1000+ citations, but I just want to double chack that that isn't too strict or too lenient. TurboSuperA+_[talk] 13:08, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What number constitutes highly cited likely varies by discipline. FactOrOpinion (talk) 13:39, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the response! TurboSuperA+_[talk] 05:53, 1 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Question on Wikipedia:Notability (academics)#C3

That says:

The person has been an elected member of a highly selective and prestigious scholarly society or association (e.g., a National Academy of Sciences or the Royal Society) or a fellow of a major scholarly society which reserves fellow status as a highly selective honor (e.g., Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers or Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Physics).

And then then notes below says:

3. The person has been an elected member of a highly selective and prestigious scholarly society or association (e.g., a National Academy of Sciences or the Royal Society) or a Fellow of a major scholarly society for which that is a highly selective honor (e.g., the IEEE).

For the purposes of Criterion 3, elected memberships in minor and non-notable societies are insufficient (most newly formed societies fall into that category).

For documenting that a person has been elected member or fellow (but not for a judgement of whether or not that membership/fellowship is prestigious), publications of the electing institution are considered a reliable source.

Based on this, if someone is listed as a member of the National Academy of Sciences and found under this URL...

https://www.nasonline.org/membership/member-directory

Does that mean the presumption should their article goes to AfC or AfD they are automatically notable? The reason I ask is because this page (List of members of the National Academy of Sciences, likely out of date) says 2000~ members, but their search says 7000+. It seems like a red link editing waiting to be written bonanza if membership there plus Wikipedia:Notability (academics)#C3 is an instant notability pass (assuming the article is written).

Am I interpreting this criteria right? — Very Polite Person (talk/contribs) 00:26, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes.

There are more like 3683 members of Category:Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences but still, there are plenty of members for whom we do not have articles.

I'm not sure what you mean about the bonanza: if it means you were running out of inspiration for your Wikipedia editing and have now found some, then good. If it means mass creation of thousands of substubs saying only that they are a member and sourced only to those directory entries (or worse, longer AI-written slop), then please don't. (We are still cleaning up the problems created by one past editor who did that and mass creation is generally frowned on and likely to get stopped.) If it means that you think there is a problem with the notability criterion, then no, there isn't. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:02, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, no, I wouldn't make a bunch of crappy tiny things. I noticed that come up in an AfD and I'd never looked that closely at the criteria, then the number discrepency was just eye-popping. I've got plenty to do; it's just neat having a reservoir of science-related red links to scratch at when I'm bored or sick of working on other things. How many did that guy make? — Very Polite Person (talk/contribs) 01:38, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Here are the new article listings for Topcipher and SwisterTwister (maybe around 1500 and 2500), but there were other usernames, I don't remember them all, and they're not all in the SPI. My general impression is that they were generally on people notable by our standards (not only #C3), but were low-quality sub-stubs. Some have been expanded since (often by COI editors) but many have not and are still low-quality. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:53, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Setting aside users who have violated various policies, the basic answer to the question of whether membership in the NAS should be taken as a presumption of notability is yes. Pretty much anyone who attains membership there can be considered notable for our purposes. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:34, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Academics New Page Sorting

I think an improvement in how User:SDZeroBot/NPP sorting handles academic biographies would be useful to aid reviewing. Some get sorted under STEM, but many are only in the massive Biography list and hard to isolate. Many STEM academics also never make it to the STEM list, and there is no non-STEM academics sorting. I made a request to SD0001 on the talk page, but the response was not enthusiastic. Maybe someone here has a better approach to this, and/or a better sorting page or strategy. Ldm1954 (talk) 09:57, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Draft:Alexandre Zerbini notability

I have written Draft:Alexandre Zerbini in return for compensation. It has been declined because of him not being notable. Zerbini has a citation count of 8800 with him being the first or the last author on many of the highly cited papers. He has 3900 citations according to Scopus. I understand that notability based on criterion 1 differs from field to field. Zerbini is a marine scientist. For this field, do 8800 citations make him notable? HRShami (talk) HRShami (talk) 10:30, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would put him on the border, as he is one-of-many for his highest cited papers, and their citation numbers are not great. One issue is that you describe his research, but do not focus on what would make him notable. A significant weakness is a lack of peer recognition through awards etc. Why did you skip IWC Science Committee? (Use a better source.) Anything else? Ldm1954 (talk) 11:53, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Ldm1954, Thank you very much for your detailed feedback. If he is borderline notable, I will leave this aside and come back to it at a later date when he is clearly notable. HRShami (talk) 06:17, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]