Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Arun Agrawal


 * 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. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 01:08, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Arun Agrawal

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This subject fails WP:GNG for lack of in-depth coverage in reliable sources that could actually produce an encyclopedic biography. The subject also fails alternative criteria such as WP:ACADEMIC (quality/quantity of publications, h-count indications, and reviews; and WP:ANYBIO for awards and notable contributions. JFHJr (㊟) 05:08, 8 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete Although a cursory search turns up a few hits for this researcher, most are faculty pages and none are appropriate independent sources which could provide verifying detail to the subject of this article. Snow (talk) 05:52, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Weak delete -- it's true the sources available don't enable writing a good biography. What might hold us back from deleting is that his work has a large number of citations (see GS link).  The article was originally created by his students and has had to be chopped down, and if kept it would likely stay that way -- not a credit to Wikipedia, so it's no great loss if deleted (with re-creation possible at a later point if appropriate).  Nomoskedasticity (talk) 18:17, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Social science-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 00:25, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 00:26, 9 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete If this person was a professor, I would have to say keep. But according to his profile, he's an associate professor and many Universities have AP's who are 1 level below professors. Unless he has published many important or noteworthy books, I lean towards delete reluctantly. It looks like he isn't that notable at present, so delete it is. --Artene50 (talk) 05:07, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep Several of his publications have hundreds of citations (one even over 1000), which is way beyond what we usually take to satisfy WP:PROFcriterion #1. That he's an associate professor is immaterial. The article seems to have started as yet another disastrous class assignment, but has been pared and toned down to acceptable levels.--Guillaume2303 (talk) 07:38, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep per WP:PROF. —David Eppstein (talk) 08:16, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Strong keep with an h-index around 40 a very clear pass of WP:Prof, 20 would be enough. I do not understand the nominator's rationale here. Xxanthippe (talk) 04:13, 10 July 2012 (UTC).
 * I think the concern is that there is only one independent source confirming any of the content on the page -- the other cited sources are just a CV and some faculty pages. We're told he's contributed to three book but not if he is a primary author or if the books are anthologies of shorter works., and none of that information is contextualized in the article (in fact, it has no analysis or synthesis of his work whatsoever, aside from a one-sentence reference to the afore-mentioned article in Nature.  We don't see him any evidence of him being cited by fellow researchers or influencing his field beyond that of the average researcher.   Here's the wording from the policy you cited: "1. The person's research has made significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources." and "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".  Also h-indexes are really more of a shorthand, not a guarantee of notability as they A) are controversial and B) can be inconsistent, turning up significantly varied indexes depending on who calculates them and how they approach the material.  Anyway, it's not replacement for valid sourcing.  Now, arguably the one Nature article that we do have sourced sells him alone, but I'd say that's iffy.  But if we can get a confirmation on (and, minimally, the title and subject matter for) his publication in Science, for example, and a little bit of synthesis as to his work and why it is relevant, then we'd be in business.  As it is, I wasn't surprised to learn of the origins of the page because at present all it says, in essence, is that he's a researcher.  But that's not good enough to address WP:GNG or WP:Prof - for our purposes here we require context to demonstrate why his work is worth note.  Now I'm not saying that the sources don't exist (it seems likely they do if his faculty page proves to be a fair representation of his productivity) and that he might not pass those bars once we find them, I'm just saying that proof is not yet in evidence, despite several people doing some digging for it (or at least, I have, to little effect).  Snow (talk) 08:44, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
 * What do you mean "We don't see him any evidence of him being cited by fellow researchers or influencing his field beyond that of the average researcher"? If hundreds of citations to several different papers and an h-index of 40 are not evidence of this, then what is? And why is the title of his Science publications important (and besides, why is it a problem to find that)? --Guillaume2303 (talk) 10:38, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Hundreds of hits, yes, but google returns only faculty and CV pages that I can see, and JSTOR and google scholar seem to have mostly only his articles. I haven't found him cited once by a non-primary source. Again, I'm fairly sure such citations must exist, but I still have not seen one in evidence, despite opening dozens of pages. If someone can find just a few, I will reverse my position.  And as to the Science article, I was just using it as an example, but I think if a work is going to be referenced in the article we ought to know what it concerns and how it is relevant to his area of research, don't you? I actually did find it here, but it still needs contextualizing.  Right now the page is devoid of biographical content and of any explanation of what his field of expertise is (outside political science in general) and how he's contributed to it.  Easily fixable with the right sources, of course. Snow (talk) 11:17, 10 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Obvious Keep per WP:ACADEMIC. Those who are saying "Delete" should review that essay, which specifically EXEMPTS notable scholars from having to have lots of coverage from independent sources - based on the journalistic fact that papers rarely write about such people. The enormous citation rate of this person demonstrates his impact on the field. The biographical details can then be filled in from non-independent sources such as his faculty page. Per the guideline, "for the routine uncontroversial details of a career, official institutional and professional sources are accepted as sourcing for those details." --MelanieN (talk) 22:05, 15 July 2012 (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.