Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Donald J. Summers


 * 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 no consensus. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont)  11:30, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

Donald J. Summers

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While accomplished, not enough in-depth coverage to meet WP:GNG, and doesn't meet WP:NSCHOLAR.  Onel 5969  TT me 18:48, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions.  Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 19:01, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions.  Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 19:01, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * comment according to his Scopus profile, he has published over 800 papers with more than 55k citations and has an h-index of 107. In most fields this would be quite impressive, but in high energy physics there are literally thousands of authors per paper and it is unclear how to assess the contribution of an individual researcher such as Summers. --hroest 19:37, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi, if that is the case, then he would definitely pass wp:nscholar. How do you explain the Scholar search wherein he doesn't even have a profile, and only 1 paper which he co-authored with over 100 citations?  Please ping me. Onel 5969  TT me 20:09, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi I used the linked profile from his article to get his ORCID and from there his Scopus ID. I dont know how good Google Scholar is with these large consortia, but it seems he does not have a profile in GS? At least some papers that are his see the first one here do not link to any GS profile at all. Not having a GS profile is not grounds for non-notability, many researchers dont have one since you actively need to create one unlike Scopus or Microsoft Academic. Also I dont know how well GS deals with large author lists, maybe it works less well for these papers?  Btw, his Microsoft Academic profile shows 99k+ citations for him. I checked some of these papers and it is clearly him, so not an error from Microsoft Academic. --hroest 00:23, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
 * , thanks for that. Am pinging, who's the editor I always turn to due to his expertise in scholar articles.  Onel 5969  TT me 01:37, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment Apparently, he's also commonly referred to as Don Summers. There's a university article about him with background info over here. And an NSF grant. The h-index does seem rather hard here, though i'm seeing a number of large physics papers referring to him as the mentor for others, which is interesting. Silver  seren C 20:07, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Weak delete. All I can find is that he participated as a member of significant but very large physics collaborations and that he gave some money to his university. Even the experiment that the donation article says was most closely associated with, Fermilab E791, does not have its own article, he is not one of its two lead authors, and his name is listed alphabetically in the middle of a pack of 66 authors. I don't think that's enough to base an article, and I don't think an h-index based only on such collaborations is enough for WP:PROF notability — we need publications in which he can be clearly stated to have played a key role, either because he was lead author or because there were few authors. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:17, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment. I won't even attempt Scopus-analyzing particle physicists on such large collaborations, at least not until Elsevier responds to my request for access to their API (for "scholarship purposes")... I asked the physics wikiproject if they had any suggestions for gauging notability, but they didn't seem to have too much of an idea either outside of agreeing citations and h-indices in this field are ludicrous. JoelleJay (talk) 06:54, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Weak keep. The issues pointed out above with the large author counts in this field mean that his authorship statistics are likely a poor indication of nobility, but it's not as though the article is badly written or unverifiable. Notability guidelines exist because a lack of notability usually implies a lack of verifiability, which doesn't really seem to be a concern here (and neither does self-promotion, since he's dead). jp×g 04:16, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, jp×g 04:16, 23 April 2021 (UTC)  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus. Relisting comment: Would appreciate a bit more insight from the community regarding WP:PROF. Thank you!
 * Delete: per nom, fails WP:NSCHOLAR, not enough W:SIGCOV found-able, fails WP:GNG CommanderWaterford (talk) 08:20, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Missvain (talk) 18:46, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment. Would it be informative to others here if I compiled Scopus citation metrics on Summers and, let's say, the top 50 of his most frequent collaborators (very high topic specialty match, but will skew towards higher-profile researchers) and 150 of his most recent coauthors (will be less specific to his subfield and skew towards newer researchers)? Or if anyone has other requests I can probably do those too. JoelleJay (talk) 05:06, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
 * That would probably be somewhat informative, but it's unlikely to give an obvious, conclusive answer to the question posed by this discussion. It is very difficult to judge articles on experimental physicists who take part in such large collaborations where it is unclear who played a major role in any particular experiment. Phil Bridger (talk) 09:15, 5 May 2021 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it.</b> 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.