Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/James M. Jasper


 * 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. Overall consensus is for article retention. NorthAmerica1000 09:47, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

James M. Jasper

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Not notable. Almost all sources are to his own writings, the one exception being the ASA announcing he's joining one of their magazines, so not a reliable source. No indication he's done anything to make him notable. I would note also that a lot of it seems to be copied and pasted from e.g. his CV,, and so is highly promotional and possibly a copyright infringement. JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 21:32, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 16:26, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Social science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 16:26, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 16:27, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 16:27, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
 * Keep, but.... GScholar shows several strong indications that he's notable - a paper with over 1000 citations and two books and two other papers each with over 500 citations to start with, fairly obviously meeting WP:PROF#C1. However, I would agree with the nominator that this does not justify the current article as it stands - until and unless some independent secondary sources are added, the current lead and a shorter bibliography of some of his most highly-cited works is probably as much as can be justified. PWilkinson (talk) 22:28, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep Meets WP:PROF#C1 and #C8, currently editing series for Oxford University Press, has frequently cited books from respected university presses. However, the long section on The Art of Moral Protest is the editor's own commentary, which is WP:OR. I would recommend moving that to an article on the book and/or tagging it as OR. Agree that the list of works should be trimmed. And that it needs editing to get rid of material copied from the CV. So substantial cleanup needed, but Jasper himself is notable. – Margin1522 (talk) 12:21, 8 December 2014 (UTC)
 * comment Are there any sources on the above assertions? The OUP claim is sourced to this link which is both first party and does not mention him. And WP:PROF explicitly cautions against relying on Google Scholar as a metric. Nothing has addressed the concerns about sources (concerns which aren't new, it's been tagged since July 2010), it still has none which aren't to his own writings or to first parties.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 16:49, 8 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I left a question at WT:Notability_(academics) about other citation indexes. About editing the ASA journal, the ASA itself is fine as a source on non-controversial questions such as who edits the journal. About the OUP claim, you can verify that by going to Amazon and checking the copyright page of a book in the series. That's what I did. It will say "Edited by Clifford Bob and James Jasper". I'm not saying that this is adequate for the article, only that it shows for purposes of this AfD discussion that he does in fact edit the OUP series. Therefore it is likely that a source saying so exists. – Margin1522 (talk) 20:15, 8 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep. The citation record gives him a clear pass of WP:PROF and as editor of the book series Oxford Studies in Culture and Politics there's also a plausible case for #C8. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:14, 8 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't see which of the many things listed in WP:PROF he satisfies. You write his 'citation record' and PROF#C1 says he should be the author 'highly cited' works. But he does not appear in this list (the link provided to ) of highly cited academics. Otherwise there's just the GScholar number which WP:PROF cautions 'is a rough guide only' and gives no indication what number would indicate a highly cited academic. And WP:PROF is for head/chief editors of major journals. Being editor of a book series isn't the same thing (it is mentioned as a contributing factor in #C1).-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 00:59, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, yes, but just because GS is a rough guide doesn't mean it should be ignored. I'm just getting started on AfD, so I haven't read all the way through Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(academics). But there are numbers that editors with experience in commenting on these matters know. The problem seems to be that it varies wildly by field and that GS tends to be less selective than the major citation indexes. But generally it seems that papers with hundreds of GS citations are notable. If you have access to an expensive citation index like Scopus, and the numbers there are much lower, then that would be cause for concern. But I think 1000 cites on GS is more than enough for notability. Especially since the citing papers are themselves highly cited. Chicago and Stanford are premier academic publishers. The book has to be very good to be published there. As an editor, he edited Contexts, from the ASA. I'd say he's probably the star of the department at a notable research school. To me, that qualifies. – Margin1522 (talk) 10:57, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete I don't know what criteria people are using to determine notability, but I sure don't see it. Yes, he has published books and articles -- he is, after all, an academic. There are no significant third-party sources here. He does not appear to have won any awards or held notabile positions in his field. I found one single paragraph book review in NYT, plus a review in: "Social Forces Vol. 77, No. 4, Jun., 1999 The Art of Moral Pro..." which I can't see (because JSTOR) but the journal is not held by many libraries (total 43 worldwide as per WorldCat), which is all I have to go on for its importance. I judge this person to be an academic, but not a notable academic. LaMona (talk) 00:23, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, NorthAmerica1000 00:33, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep per number of citations. A GScholar search via PoP software comes up with more than 7000 cites, which is quite something in this not very highly cited field. WorldCat also shows his books are held by thousands of public libraries and some of them have been translated into at least two languages (Japanese and Turkish). Btw, the journal User LaMona referred to is actually held by much more libraries than stated (she had apparently only checked this entry). I'm sure many more reviews could be found (this, for example). There certainly is a need for additional independent sources, but that's not an issue that should lead to deletion of the whole article, imo. --Axolotl Nr.733 (talk) 14:44, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep: In my view article could do with some editing but seems to be a clearly WP:Prof notable academic (judged by number of citations to his works).  (Msrasnw (talk) 17:57, 16 December 2014 (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.