Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/David Simchi-Levi


 * 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. This is clearly not going to develop a consensus for anything other than keep, although I note that folks here have flagged some quality issues with the article. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 09:07, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

David Simchi-Levi

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Doesn't appear to be notable. No significant coverage in secondary sources. The draft has been declined for that reason, the author did an end-run and created the article directly. There are also tone issues bordering on G11 speedy deletion, particularly in the "entrepreneurship" section that makes up half the body of the article (excepting the list of publications). Huon (talk) 01:17, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. Huon (talk) 01:17, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Massachusetts-related deletion discussions. Eastmain (talk • contribs) 02:33, 15 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Speedy keep Easy pass of WP:PROF C1 due to GS h-index of 65 and C8 as current editor-in-chief of Management Science. IntoThinAir (talk) 02:34, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Engineering-related deletion discussions. IntoThinAir (talk) 02:34, 15 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Keep. Passes WP:NACADEMIC as full professor at a leading research-based university, editor of one leading academic journal and past editor of another, 22533 citations, h-index of 65, i10-index of 156, and (based on the citations, h-index and i10 index) significant impact on his fields. People evaluating drafts and AfD submissions need to consider WP:NACADEMIC and other subject-specific notability guidelines. As WP:NACADEMICS says, "Many scientists, researchers, philosophers and other scholars (collectively referred to as "academics" for convenience) are notably influential in the world of ideas without their biographies being the subject of secondary sources." Eastmain (talk • contribs) 02:46, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep as passing WP:Prof, however promotional bloat should be pruned. Xxanthippe (talk) 03:04, 15 June 2019 (UTC).
 * KeepAgree with the above proofs. Thanks,L3X1 ◊distænt write◊  04:07, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep Passes WP:NPROF C1 and C8 with Google citation over 22.5k and editor-in-Chief of a well-established academic journal.  CASSIOPEIA(talk) 04:18, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep. Easily passes multiple WP:PROF criteria. --Tataral (talk) 05:26, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep but blow it up and start again. The person is indubitably notable, with an h-index of 65 (as mentioned above)., I didn't decline the draft for lack of notability but for lack of independent sourcing, a problem that has not been fixed by subsequent editing – almost all sources in the page are either connected, self-written or unreliable by our standards. I looked for, but didn't find, better sources. I couldn't see any independent coverage of his business activities in the press, though there are the inevitable press-releases. Every aspect of this – including the unacceptably promotional tone, the ref-bombing with low-grade sources and the sidestepping of AfC – has the typical appearance of undisclosed paid editing, but has denied anything but a distant connection. What I suggest: revert to , rescue any useable independent sources, and leave it for an experienced unconflicted editor to expand. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 10:20, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment - Eastmain, since when do non-distinguished, non-named chair "full professors at leading research universities" have automatic notability? Where does WP:PROF say that?
 * Regarding the citations, all arguments I see here are WP:BIGNUMBER. How does Simchi-Levi compare with other run-of-the-mill professors in his field? Have any "independent reliable sources" demonstrated that his work had "a significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed"? What impact? I hope Google Scholar giving some numbers without context isn't meant to satisfy that criterion. Similarly, criterion 8 doesn't just require someone to be editor-in-chief of any journal whatsoever. Are these major, well-established academic journals? Well-established probably, with a history going back decades, but which source confirms that any of them is major? The highest-ranked (by impact factor), Management Science (journal), has an impact factor between 3 and 4, which apparently is not enough for the top 10% of journals.
 * If Simchi-Levi were solely a businessman with the same kinds of sources, this article would be deleted on the spot. Huon (talk) 12:18, 15 June 2019 (UTC)


 * See Figure 7 in for the table of median h-index for full professors in various disciplines. Among engineering fields, chemical engineering as the highest median h-index, namely 18. Among all the disciplines listed there, physics has the highest median h-index, at 32. For the Nobel prize winners in physics (table 3 in the same paper), the median h-index seems to be around 40. Simchi-Levi's h-index of 65 is extremely high (I would even say astronomically high) for any discipline. Nsk92 (talk) 13:46, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
 * That publication is outdated. The data in the tables you cite is from 2010 and 2005, respectively. The same work gives tables 4 and 5 where the professors with the highest h-index in various disciplines as of 2013 are given. The best engineer overall, Ted Belytschko, had a h-index of 58 in 2013. By now Belytschko's h-index has increased to 146 (and there's no guarantee that he's still the most highly cited engineer). Back in 2013 the civil engineer with the highest h-index had 29, now the same person has a h-index of 126. 65 might have been extremely high six, nine or 14 years ago; nowadays it's probably still above-average, but not exceptionally so. Huon (talk) 23:40, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
 * For the two examples you gave, Ted Belytschko was born in 1943 and Zdeněk Pavel Bažant was born in 1937, both are more than 10 years elder than David Simchi-Levi. As for the journal, the impact factor depends on the areas. Please see the journal ranking in the area of operation research and operation management: https://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php?category=1803, David Simchi-Levi is the Editor-in-Chief or the former Editor-in-Chief of the No.2 and No.5 journals. And as a student majoring in this area, what I know is that we see these two journals two of the most important journals in this area, researchers who have publications accepted by these two journals are glad to select them as their most essential publications. As for the COI, you can see that I have no experience of editing a Wikipedia before and I made lots of mistakes. Why would he pay a person with no experience for creating his Wikipedia, and if I want to hide the relationship, why did I ask him to send an e-mail to you? I agree that I may not be neutral enough but I tried to. And maybe you need to rewrite it. I sincerely apologize for my inappropriate words and my lacking of experience.Shiyuanw (talk) 15:56, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
 * The examples I gave were the people with the highest h-index in their respective fields back in 2013. What you can see there is that in the past six years h-indices have been inflated so much that someone like Simchi-Levi nowadays has a higher h-index than the highest engineering h-index worldwide six years ago - no, he's nowhere near the engineer who has the highest h-index today. Apparently the h-index that corresponds to "best in (civil) engineering" has increased by a factor of at least three to four in the past six years (publish or perish at work, I guess). If we assume that the average h-index has increased by the same rate, Simchi-Levi's current h-index of 65 would make him roughly the equivalent of someone who had a h-index of 15 to 20 back in 2013, or even less than that in 2010 - higher than the 2010 median of 10, but hardly world-class.
 * Regarding the journals, what you present is not a useful ranking, unless you wish to claim that some affiliated publication of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, with a grand total of 12 published articles over three years, is the second-most major journal in the world, more significant than NEJM, The Lancet, Nature and Cell. Huon (talk) 21:31, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
 * http://diamscience.org/collections/show/154, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b803/829d28bdce8ff69407c41ec704d38fc7be48.pdf Please also see these two, I just searched the keywords "operation journal rank" in google and I randomly opened these two. Shiyuanw (talk) 22:02, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
 * https://www2.isye.gatech.edu/~jsokol/jfig/OM-OR%20Journals-rept.pdf and this one. Shiyuanw (talk) 22:02, 16 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Reluctant keep despite having originally flagged the article for CSD A7. I'm not wild about the WP:NPROF criteria, which seem to me to allow distinctly WP:RUNOFTHEMILL academics to claim inherent notability for a level of notability that in other categories would come nowhere near, based entirely on stats and not on independent coverage in reliable secondary sources. However, consensus is clear and this AFD isn't the place to challenge long-established guidelines. Hugsyrup (talk) 12:08, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep per above. Viztor (talk) 17:18, 17 June 2019 (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.