Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pema Ram


 * 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. J04n(talk page) 11:08, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Pema Ram

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The page does not show the notability of the person. The person wrote some books, which does not show the notability Jussychoulex (talk) 18:30, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of India-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:50, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:50, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:50, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:51, 20 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete. Cites on GS are 6, 2, 2. Not enough for WP:Prof. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:26, 20 February 2013 (UTC).
 * What would you consider to be the GS cut-off for a professor of Indian history to meet PROF:C1? Which Indian history professors pass that? c-- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 16:38, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I would expect an h-index of higher than 2. Xxanthippe (talk) 21:44, 20 February 2013 (UTC).
 * I'm just asking what your basis for comparison is. H-indexes are only useful compared the the norms of fields.  I have no idea what the standard h-index for a tenured scholar in Indian history.  Are you absolutely sure it's above 2? Looking at medieval musicology, I see that most of the top names have 1 or no entry. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 21:55, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
 * It's going to be low if you define a field sufficiently restrictively. Our habit is to define in terms of the broader disciplines where an academic would fit (i.e. roughly speaking, in a small but respectable liberal arts school or university, where would you put this person?) In this case, the field for comparison is history, where an h-index of 2 is surely too low. Ray  Talk 01:59, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Again, I just ask for some stats that the average C1 historian has an h-index sufficiently above 2. I see a lot of arguments that various humanists don't have h-indexes high enough to keep, but I haven't yet seen an argument showing what h-index a notable historian should have.  I've looked up the top of the field music historians on h-index charts and few of them are above 2 because they don't publish in on-line journals.  I've never heard of a tenure or hiring case (and I've been on many hiring committees at what I think is a pretty good school) where h-index or GS cites have been mentioned.  I'm not sure that Pema Ram is a keep by any means, but I think that h-index and GS cites are a terrible way to tell for a historian.  If it's going to be used as an argument for deletion a citation should be easy to come by. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 03:04, 22 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete — I searched for citations of his works in both English language and Hindi publications; things like शेखावाटी किसान आन्दोलन का इतिहास actually come up with some results, but much less than what you'd expect of a full career. I cannot imagine what results do not appear, either due to reasons that Mscuthbert gives (the field is narrow, so any count will be low), because many if not most Hindi-language citations may go unnoticed (GS is not the correct tool, so any count will be off), or because the citations simply don't exist (no amount of searching will yield what's not there). AfD isn't the correct place to speculate as to why coverage and citations are unavailable. So as long as there's no indication this subject passes under any WP:PROFESSOR criteria, and no indication that he meets WP:GNG through actual in-depth coverage that would give us biographical content, I can't think of a good reason to keep. This article can be restored when actual coverage or citations are apparent, whatever the source language. There's no deadline, and this subject is apparently retired. Nothing but time to gather further citations... JFHJr (㊟) 19:51, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Weak Keep Delete -- his many books are held in many important research libraries in the West (search worldcat.org) and presumably many more in India. Not the greatest argument for a Keep, especially since I couldn't find any reviews in JSTOR and of course these are the libraries with the biggest acquistions budgets, but he doesn't work in a field that is indexed on the Net, so better evidence would be hard to find even if he were at the top of the field.  And there is sufficient coverage in the libraries to believe that the librarians were not being duped into purchasing from a vanity press. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 03:11, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Delete Worldcat counts for his books are in 5-40 range, for about 7 of them listed, which is really quite low. By comparison, a relatively obscure math text that I just pulled from the library, "Les fonctions polyharmoniques", an out of print text which was printed as a small pamphlet 80 years ago in France and never reprinted, has about 64 holdings . This book was last checked out in 1980 here at NYU, so when I say that this book is relatively obscure, I mean that at a major university this book was last checked out before my lifetime.
 * I was similarly unable to find reviews of the subject's work; this is not really sufficient for WP:AUTHOR, in my view. Similarly, I conclude a broad fail of WP:PROF - C1 is not met, and I see no other basis for claiming it. To give some relative numbers for WP:PROF C1, I went to my current school's history department, and checked the Gscholar h-index of the first associate prof to appear (a position usually far below the bar of notability), and found an h-index of 4 , while a full professor in the department (the next person on the list, alphabetically) without special title or recognition got a 7 or 9 , while a University professor came in at 11 . I offer these numbers as a very rough range, bearing in mind that the h-index is approximately quadratic in the number of citations. History is a low-cited field given the specific specializations and the lack of citation chasing (the latter of which I consider a virtue, which is neither here nor there), but we should expect some recognition of significant and notable scholars by their peers.  Ray  Talk 16:33, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks Ray! I appreciate that you've taken the time to search. You've convinced me. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 20:57, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Also thanks for this research. Depending on field, historians can have a higher h-index. Here is one with 10. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:34, 22 February 2013 (UTC).


 * Delete. No evidence of passing WP:PROF, and one highly-critical review is not enough for WP:AUTHOR. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:17, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Delete I tried to find some support for notability when I edited this article a while ago. I couldn't find it then and I cannot find it now. I'm not even sure that he is actually a professor. - Sitush (talk) 18:03, 24 February 2013 (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.