Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Abdon Atangana


 * 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   delete. -- Ed (Edgar181) 12:02, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Abdon Atangana

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Non-notable academic. Atangana claims a fairly high impact factor by having his papers frequently cited, but an examination of the citations shows that they are largely him or his co-authors citing his own papers. There is no indication that many other authors have cited his work. Atangana publishes exclusively in journals published by Hindawi Publishing Corporation, an open-acces, pay-to-publish organization that has been put under watch by the Beall list for predatory publishing practices. The conferences listed cannot be found except as mentioned in Atangana's papers. WikiDan61 ChatMe!ReadMe!! 14:33, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Atangana is a young researcher that has published 67 papers in his field of expertise in less than 3 years. His research paper appears in top journal like "Vibration and Control", "Computational Physic", "Journal of hydrological processes", "Communication in nonlinear science and numerical simulation" "Neural computing and applications" and others this journals are not open access and in addition, I will like to point out the fact that, almost all the journals in Elsevier, Wiley, Springer and other have open access option does that means they are not good? The conferences list exist and are well-known — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mboctara (talk • contribs) 16:19, 24 March 2015 (UTC)
 * — Mboctara (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.


 * Comment No, the claim is not that all open access journals are of poor quality. But Hindawi's journals have been called to task by Jeffrey Beall, with specific note that several of their journals have been delisted from Thomson Reuters' Impact Factor listing, some more than once. (See ). Also, Atananga's practice of citing his own papers artificially boosts his own citation count within Google Scholar (a poor, but often used measure of an academic's impact). The fact is, there just does not appear to be the necessary indication that Atananga is a person who has had a deep impact on his field of study. Quantity is not the same as quality. WikiDan61 ChatMe!ReadMe!! 16:45, 24 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep He has had some of his work published in peer reviewed publications that are respected. He is a leading academic mathematician in Camerron.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:03, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment "...some work published" isn't really the criterion defined by WP:ACADEMIC. And we have little to evidence that he is a leading mathematician in Cameroon. WikiDan61 ChatMe!ReadMe!! 04:06, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Africa-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 15:26, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of South Africa-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 15:26, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 15:26, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 15:26, 25 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Delete. WoS confirms the actual lack of impact of this subject's work. The citation count list is 31, 18, 13, 8, 8, 6 etc, but most of these are him citing himself. For example, of the 31 cites for the highest paper, 22 are his own. For the second paper, 13 of the 18 cites are his own, etc. This is hardly representative of a "leading mathematician". Agricola44 (talk) 20:46, 25 March 2015 (UTC).
 * Delete. Even with self-citations, his h-index is 10, which isn't enough for WP:PROF. Nor does he have the kind of senior position that would satisfy WP:PROF. He gets zero mentions on the Cameroonian web. In the last few years there have been papers applying mathematical techniques to e.g. African diseases. This may make him notable eventually, but so far not yet. -- 120.17.0.71 (talk) 21:47, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete. Hindawi, Naturalspublishing, and Omicsonline are all dubious-quality publishers. Skipping them and counting only the journals from reputable publishers (in this case Springer and Elsevier) in a Google scholar search, we have citation counts 30, 16, 10, 6, 2, 2, 1. (Surprisingly close to the WOS numbers.) Eliminating the self-citations makes the citation record look even worse: 10, 5, 8, 1, etc. I don't want to conclude from this that he is *not* notable: mathematics is a low-citation field and it's possible for important work to be poorly cited. But certainly this means that the publication and citation record by itself provides no evidence of passing WP:PROF. And what else is there? Editorship (not editor-in-chief) of some journals, and a postdoctoral fellowship, neither of which is sufficient for notability. Being a Cameroonian mathematician, maybe, since that is an unusual combination, but we would at least need sources (such as magazine profiles of the subject) saying so, and we don't have even that. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:56, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
 * Delete: not even close of any of the WP:PROF criteria. I do not see how being Cameroonian makes up for any kind of notability; even if he was the only mathematician in Cameroon but got nothing published on him in GNG style, PROF ought to apply in full force. Tigraan (talk) 09:58, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, &mdash; Coffee //  stole my cup  //  and beans  // 01:58, 1 April 2015 (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.