Talk:Jeroen C. J. M. van den Bergh

Royal/Shell Prize / aka Koninklijke/Shell Prijs econoom
I removed the following: "he was awarded the 2002 Royal/Shell Prize for research on ‘Sustainable Development, Environment and Resources’." (source was ) I googled both "Royal/Shell Prize" and "Koninklijke/Shell Prijs econoom" and found mostly references to him citing it, and a few stray others. Doesn't seem to be notable. I would be happy to see some source showing that prize is some kind of big deal worth mentioning.. like a list of winners somewhere or the like. Jytdog (talk) 01:40, 21 March 2015 (UTC)


 * The Royal/Shell prize (Koninklijke/Shellprijs) was one of the largest science prizes in the Netherlands. It has been awarded since the 1950s as a general science prize (notably for physics, chemistry, engineering), and since the late 1990s was refocused on environmental sciences. The prize award at that time was € 100.000,- and the prize winners were selected under auspices of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences (KNAW - https://www.knaw.nl/nl) – both of which illustrate that this was a serious prize. There used to be a website with the list of all the winners, but Shell stopped to award the prize several years ago, and the website was after some time cancelled. The link I put in the article (http://www.nieuwsbank.nl/inp/2002/10/16/P158.htm) was therefore to another source to identify that van den Bergh won the prize in 2002. Here are more links about the prize and other winners (all in Dutch):
 * http://www.bkb.nl/en/node/147
 * http://www.fom.nl/live/nieuws/archief_personalia/personalia2003/artikel.pag?objectnumber=47546
 * http://www.vno-ncw.nl/publicaties/Forum/Pages/Uitreiking_KoninklijkeShell_Prijs_Wetenschapper_maakt_biomassa_vloeibaar_14196.aspx#.VQ3Is45XnkY
 * Here is info available in English (http://www.feweb.vu.nl/nl/afdelingen-en-instituten/spatial-economics/awards-and-nominations/index.asp), where it says: “Royal Shell Prize for Jeroen van den Bergh: The Royal Shell Prize 2002 was awarded to the environmental economist professor Jeroen van den Bergh. He received the prize for his research in the field of sustainable development, the environment, and natural resources. He was unanimously chosen by the members of the jury and received the amount of 100,000 Euro.” Research83 (talk) 05:46, 22 March 2015 (UTC)


 * no one is disputing that you won the award - you have cited that about yourself a million times. yes i had found all those sources. none of them discuss the notability of the prize.  the site from the PR company BKB is especially not useful. as a a counter example, the Lasker Award is well known and there are many many sources as to its prestige. Jytdog (talk) 12:02, 22 March 2015 (UTC)


 * You are simply trying to avoid that something is in the article that supports vdB's reputation, like info on the handbook or on the two general prizes. Doesn't information in other languages than English (Dutch, Catalan) count? Many articles on scientists mention less important awards. So there is no consistency in how this article and other, similar ones are being treated. Research83 (talk) 16:57, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
 * please discuss content not contributors per WP:TPG. Your other remarks are not on point - the question is whether the award is notable. again, every year when the Lasker is awarded, newspapers report it.  it is significant.  what secondary sources regularly report on either of the awards you would like to mention?  Jytdog (talk) 17:04, 22 March 2015 (UTC)


 * I perfectly understand that it would be ideal if a reference could be made to a website explaining the prize and showing a list of its past winners. I’ll ask the KNAW and Shell if they can restore the old website about the prize, which is necessary in current times when information seems to be valid only if it is digitized and available through the Internet. However, I think that every reasonable person would agree that a prize with a money amount of € 100.000 is an important prize, in any context – whether national or international. This insight itself should suffice to include a mention of the prize in the article. A link to an eventual website with more detailed information, if it comes available, might then be added later. Research83 (talk) 18:56, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Here http://www.volkskrant.nl/archief/een-poldermodel-voor-de-aarde~a631075/ is a weblink to an article in the main left-wing newspaper of the Netherlands, De Volkskrant of October 2002 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Volkskrant), with an interview with vdB due to having been awarded the Royal/Shell prize. This answers your question for a secondary source/newspaper article. Research83 (talk) 19:49, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I am not going to respond to you further if you continue to refuse to indent your posts.  That is a useful source. i will add content about the shell prize back to the article. Jytdog (talk) 19:53, 22 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Sorry for not indenting - didn't know this was needed (or how to do it). I am trying to do it now.

Btw, one error in the article that I forgot to mention: vdB is elected member of the Academy of Europe (Academia Europaea) as of October 2010, not 2015 (ref. to his cv at ICREA can be made). Research83 (talk) 20:12, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

"Sant Jordi Environmental Prize"/"Premi Sant Jordi de Medi Ambient"
"Sant Jordi Environmental Prize" yields only references to van den Bergh. (content was sourced to here) ditto "Premi Sant Jordi de Medi Ambient". all self-promo, it appears. as above, i would be happy to see some evidence that this prize is notable. Jytdog (talk) 01:46, 21 March 2015 (UTC)


 * The "Sant Jordi Environmental Prize"/"Premi Sant Jordi de Medi Ambient" is a serious science prize given yearly to a researcher in environmental science by the Institut d’Estudis Catalan (IEC) – the “Academy of Sciences” of the region Catalonia (with capital Barcelona) in Spain. Here is a link to the IEC that provide information (on page 2) indicating that van den Bergh won this prize in 2011 (unfortunately, most of the information is in Catalan, but with internet translators everything is now accessible):
 * http://www.iec.cat/institucio/documents/Premis_2011.pdf Research83 (talk) 05:47, 22 March 2015 (UTC)


 * i never disputed that you won the prize. the question is whether it notable/worth mentioning, as above. Jytdog (talk) 12:03, 22 March 2015 (UTC)


 * See what I said above under the Royal/Shell Prize. Anyway, what do you consider as sufficiently notable? Only international prizes? vdB won two main environmental science prizes in two different countries. Few people can say this. Not notable enough? Research83 (talk) 17:02, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I am looking for any source discussing the prize itself, that shows it is worth mentioning in an encyclopedia for the general public. Jytdog (talk) 17:16, 22 March 2015 (UTC)


 * It is a bit too much asked for a Catalan science prize to be advertised at Wikipedia like the Lasker prize you mentioned. But at this webpage http://www.iec.cat/activitats/noticiasencera.asp?id_noticies=247 it says at the end something that you are asking for: “Des que es van instituir el 1914, els Premis Sant Jordi de l’IEC distingeixen les institucions i les persones que han contribuït, amb llurs activitats o treballs, a la consolidació i al prestigi de la recerca científica i de la cultura catalana, amb una incidència especial en la promoció dels joves investigadors de tots els àmbits de les ciències i les humanitats.” Translation: “Since they were instituted in 1914, Sant Jordi Awards of the IEC distinguish institutions and individuals who have contributed with their work or activities, to consolidate the prestige of scientific research and Catalan culture with special emphasis on the promotion of young researchers from all fields of science and the humanities.” And at the beginning of the same document it says: “Entre els premis generals destaquen el Premi de Medi Ambient per a Jeroen van den Bergh”, translated: “Among the general prizes the Environmental Prize for Jeroen van den Bergh is notable”. Research83 (talk) 18:06, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

you make my point that the jordi prize is not a big enough deal for a Wikipedia article. it is nothing like a lasker. and the press release you cite does what press releases do. i am looking for something like this Jytdog (talk) 18:22, 22 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Few prizes are equivalent with Nobel prizes. If this is the standard against which to measure, than indeed very very few prizes can be mentioned. You moreover need to do some cleaning up in Wikipedia and get rid of many prizes mentioned that are too far from the Nobel prize level. Please try to be consistent with what has been accepted in many other articles, and don't apply other or more stringent standards to this article. I would be interested to hear the opinion of others on this. Research83 (talk) 19:08, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
 * the article i linked to was not about a nobel- that is a strawman argument. i agree that other voices would be useful here. Jytdog (talk) 19:32, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

If you are looking for a newspaper article on this prize: Here www.iec.cat/butlleti/pdf/153_butlleti_recull_premis_sant_jordi.pdf is an article in a main Spanish (4th most circulated) and the most important Catalan newspaper La Vanguardia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Vanguardia) about the prize, with vdB also mentioned at the end. Research83 (talk) 20:04, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

selected papers
to give this some meaning, i cited his top 5 most-cited papers from google scholar (which has the benefit of being freely available). I doubled checked at the Web of Science (more scholarly but proprietary) and it roughly matched. Here is the list from Web of Science

Spatial sustainability, trade and indicators: an evaluation of the 'ecological footprint' By: van den Bergh, JCJM; Verbruggen, H ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS Volume: 29   Issue: 1   Pages: 61-72   Published: APR 1999 Times Cited: 207 Ecological-economic analysis of wetlands: scientific integration for management and policy By: Turner, RK; van den Bergh, JCJM; Soderqvist, T; et al. ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS Volume: 35   Issue: 1   Special Issue: SI   Pages: 7-23   Published: OCT 2000 Times Cited: 178 Economic growth and emissions: reconsidering the empirical basis of environmental Kuznets curves By: de Bruyn, SM; van den Bergh, JCJM; Opschoor, JB ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS Volume: 25   Issue: 2   Pages: 161-175   Published: MAY 1998 Times Cited: 152 Economic valuation of biodiversity: sense or nonsense? By: Nunes, PALD; van den Bergh, JCJM ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS Volume: 39   Issue: 2   Pages: 203-222   Published: NOV 2001 Times Cited: 133 Alternative models of individual behaviour and implications for environmental policy By: van den Bergh, JCJM; Ferrer-i-Carbonell, A; Munda, G ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS Volume: 32   Issue: 1   Pages: 43-61   Published: JAN 2000 Times Cited: 75 Structural decomposition analysis of physical flows in the economy By: Hoekstra, R; van den Bergh, JCJM ENVIRONMENTAL & RESOURCE ECONOMICS Volume: 23   Issue: 3   Pages: 357-378   Published: NOV 2002 Times Cited: 63 Evolutionary policies for sustainable development: adaptive flexibility and risk minimising By: Rammel, C; van den Bergh, JCJM ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS Volume: 47   Issue: 2-3   Pages: 121-133   Published: DEC 2003 Times Cited: 62 Evaluation of risks of metal flows and accumulation in economy and environment By: Guinee, JB; van den Bergh, JCJM; Boelens, J; et al. ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS Volume: 30   Issue: 1   Pages: 47-65   Published: JUL 1999 Times Cited: 60 Material flows and economic models: an analytical comparison of SFA, LCA and partial equilibrium models By: Bouman, M; Heijungs, R; van der Voet, E; et al. ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS Volume: 32   Issue: 2   Pages: 195-216   Published: FEB 2000 Times Cited: 54 Insurance against climate change and flooding in the Netherlands: Present, future, and comparison with other countries By: Botzen, W. J. W.; van den Bergh, J. C. J. M. RISK ANALYSIS Volume: 28   Issue: 2   Pages: 413-426   Published: APR 2008 Times Cited: 52 If somebody has a better idea, i am all ears. Jytdog (talk) 02:11, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
 * 1.
 * 2.
 * 3.
 * 4.
 * 5.
 * 6.
 * 7.
 * 8.
 * 9.
 * 10.

Mentioning the top 5 most-cited papers from google scholar is questionable for various reasons: -	It gives too much attention to citations, and neglects important journals or diversity of topics, or topics that are most characteristic for this author. -	It does not take into account whether the author was the first/main author or not. It would make more sense to select from the list the articles that van den Bergh authored alone or where he was mentioned as first author. -	These are relatively old publications, which partly contributes to them being much cited. One might also look at articles that are relatively much cited given the time since publication (i.e. ranking according to citations per year). This procedure is now invented by the editor, and I it is not consistent with lists of selected articles found in other articles about scientists. Usually articles are mentioned that reflect best the work or ideas of the respective people, like the list which I had originally included. I would like to suggest the editor therefore to revert to that original list. Research83 (talk) 05:49, 22 March 2015 (UTC)


 * what are the sources for the selection of the original papers as being your best work? we need some basis on which to decide which of the ~150 papers to include.  otherwise it violates WP:INDISCRIMINATE. as i wrote above i am open to some other criteria but it needs to be based on something we can cite as a source.  it cannot just be van den Bergh's preference. Jytdog (talk) 12:05, 22 March 2015 (UTC)


 * My suggestion was to not focus on a narrow citation criterion but to use a kind of multi-criteria approach, taking into account the criteria I mentioned above: citation, average citation per year since publication, vdB as first or main author, an important journal, and the topic being important in vdB's research. Please don't ridicule my point - it is clear I didn't suggest to mention all (more than 160 journal publications) by vdB. The list I had included originally in the article fits better the mentioned set of criteria. I am not saying this is necessarily the best/optimal choice (this would be a difficult decision problem), but it is considerably better. Many others choices would be better two. To be more specific: of the articles you mention above, numbers 1, 4 and 5 are ok, but the others less so. Probably, the article on the GDP paradox should appear here too, as it is one of the most cited ones in the last years. Given vdB's shift in research focus since several years to climate policy, something on this topic would also make sense to appear in the list of selected articles. You can see that this logic is consistent with my original list. Research83 (talk) 17:16, 22 March 2015 (UTC)


 * last time i will respond. i am not being sarcastic or ridiculing.  we need some external sourcing to guide the selection.  i suggested # of citations, supported by google scholar which is backed by Web of Science.  if you want different criteria, say what they are, and what external sources we would look to determine what papers meet them. it cannot just be the ones you select, based on your authority.  That is original research which is forbidden by policy.  your personal opinions do not matter here, nor do mine.  that is the essence of the WP:OR policy.  Jytdog (talk) 17:21, 22 March 2015 (UTC)


 * The De Bruijn et al. and Turner et al. articles are not important in vdB’s research and he is not the first author of these. It would be reasonable to replace them by the nearest articles in vdB’s Google Scholar publication list of which he is single author:
 * - The GDP paradox, JCJM Van den Bergh, Journal of Economic Psychology 30 (2), 117-135
 * - Evolutionary thinking in environmental economics, JCJM Van den Bergh, Journal of Evolutionary Economics 17 (5), 521-549
 * These are moreover two themes (environment-vs-growth debate and evolutionary environmental economics) that are important in vdB’s work next to climate change/policy. Wrt to the latter theme, you might add the Climate Change or Nature Climate Change article that was part of the list I proposed. Research83 (talk) 17:47, 22 March 2015 (UTC)


 * You are not proposing anything I can WP:VERIFY with an external source. Jytdog (talk)

You don't respond to my argument. Please do so. And I strongly get the feeling (based on this item and that on the two prizes discussed on this page) that you apply standards which are clearly different from what has been accepted in many other Wikipedia articles. Most selected publications in Wikipedia contributions that I have seen are not motivated by "most cited articles in Google Scholar". So why follow a different, ad hoc approach here? Research83 (talk) 19:20, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
 * you are not responding to the need for some external sources to bring to bear. let's wait and see what others have to say on this too. Jytdog (talk) 19:33, 22 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Article “The GDP Paradox” published in Journal of Economic Psychology 30(2), was awarded a "Citation of Excellence" by the Emerald Management Reviews. Less than 1% of all articles in the database receive this acclaim. The list is available at . This together with the fact that this is one of the most cited articles of vdB on average per year is a good reason to include it in the list of selected journal articles. That it is much cited on average per year can be quickly seen by comparing year of publication and position in Google Scholar list: This paper is from 2009 and on the 10th position, while the first nine in the list are from the period 1997-2003.

Research83 (talk) 09:11, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

COI tag
I went over the article and removed puffery and cited everything. still relies a lot on WP:SPS but per WP:BLPSELFPUB that is marginally ok, i guess. typical academic.. not much independent discussion of him per se. I removed the COI tag. it can stay off as long as the subject avoids editing it directly. I have it watchlisted. Jytdog (talk) 02:34, 21 March 2015 (UTC)


 * More changes have been made by Jytdog, notably deleting the sentences (with reference/link) on the Handbook of Environmental and Resource Economics, which was an important contribution by van den Bergh to his discipline. And deleting the weblinks to various aspects of van den Bergh’s work at the end (this was added upon the suggestion of earlier reviewers/editors). It would be reasonable to revert these links. Research83 (talk) 05:50, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
 * with regard to the Handbook... it is already listed in the Book section. There is no reason to discuss things twice.    the text i removed from the "academic career and activities" section was:
 * He edited the Handbook of Environmental and Resource Economics (1999, Edward Elgar Publ., 1328 pages). This has been evaluated as a constructive synthesis of mainstream and heterodox approaches.


 * On the external links, I provided the justification for removing each of them as I went, but in general please read WP:ELNO Jytdog (talk) 12:11, 22 March 2015 (UTC)


 * So nothing interesting about vdB's work can be mentioned. Is this based on the idea that Wikikpedia should minimize the amount of interesting information about the works of scientists. I accept your point that repetition should be avoided if possible (in this case, it would be logical then to give priority to the sentence over the mere mention of the publication in the selected books section), but isn't it also good to not be dogmatic in this respect. Please realize that since the 1970s very few handbooks have been published in the area of environmental and resource economics. This one is moreover unique wrt scope and heterodox character, as reflected by the book review by the ex-president of the Europ. Assoc. of Env and Resource Economists. But I guess nothing about vdB's work is considered interesting (yes, I have become cynical). Research83 (talk) 16:50, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
 * of course it can. it needs to be reliably sourced is all. i'll add mention of the review in the list of books. (the remark that ", some authors have a propensity to cite themselves more than is strictly necessary" was interesting.  Jytdog (talk) 17:01, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Please refrain from making suggestive remarks that don't serve any purpose here and only can cause irritation. I am also doing my best, which is not easy as I am not convinced yet (but willing to give it a chance) that you are perfectly neutral regarding this article. And thanks for responding twice to my comments with a change in the article. Research83 (talk) 19:30, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Detail: "encyclopaedic character' has wrong right quote mark in the article.Research83 (talk) 09:19, 23 March 2015 (UTC)