Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Roxana Geambasu


 * 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. Seems like the (somewhat thin) GNG claims and the PROF claims have convinced participants that the subject meets inclusion criteria Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 08:25, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

Roxana Geambasu

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Geambasu is mentioned in a handful of news articles but only as passing mentions (most were about projects she had worked on, e.g. the Google incident, XRay, Vanish); there isn't any significant coverage from secondary reliable sources to pass WP:GNG.She clearly doesn't satisfy criteria 2-9 of WP:NACADEMIC and her research doesn't meet criterion 1 (yet) by the standard citation metrics: Web of Science (6 papers with 12 citations), Scopus (14 papers with 159 citations). Seven of those papers have more than 50 citations on Google Scholar, but those include self-published / non-peer-reviewed sources (cf WP:NACADEMIC#Citation metrics). — MarkH21 (talk) 23:36, 19 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. — MarkH21 (talk) 23:37, 19 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. — MarkH21 (talk) 23:37, 19 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. — MarkH21 (talk) 23:37, 19 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Romania-related deletion discussions. — MarkH21 (talk) 23:39, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Comment. I have not yet formulated an opinion on her notability but the nominator's use of WOS/Scopus and disparagement of GS, by far the better database for computer science, is problematic. See the last bullet point of WP:PROF and the references cited there. The major professional associations in computer science have cautioned against using the commercial databases for computer science because, by focusing on journal publication (which in computer science is largely secondary to conference publication) they introduce significant distortions and omissions. And I don't see any non-peer-reviewed publications listed among her ten most cited publications on GS; note that, in computer science, most conferences are both peer-reviewed and highly selective. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:29, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
 * The use of WOS and Scopus relates to how WP:PROF says the only reasonably accurate way of finding citations to journal articles in most subjects is to use one of the two major citation indexes, Web of Knowledge and Scopus. I agree that it has limitations, both within and outside computer science, and should be used with caution. I also didn't mean that her publications were not peer-reviewed, but that some of the citations of her publications were from non-peer-reviewed sources. — MarkH21 (talk) 00:40, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Are you even reading what I wrote? Journal articles are not how computer science is primarily published. So a quote about how to find citations to journal articles in most subjects is very far from relevant. And WP:PROF explicitly warns, based on warnings in reliably published sources from major academic societies, that in computer science indexes based on journal publication are bad. Not just "use with caution" but "do not use" level bad. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:41, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes I read what you wrote, recognized that one should not focus solely on journal publications, paraphrased what is literally written in WP:PROF: "these databases should be used with caution for disciplines such as computer science in which conference or other non-journal publication is essential", and finally pointed out your misunderstanding of what I wrote. In any case, every single paper that appears in Scopus and WOS for this author is from conference proceedings, and I think that the Google Scholar citations are probably not enough to count as "extremely highly cited" or a "substantial number of scholarly publications with significant citation rates" (WP:PROF). — MarkH21 (talk) 05:19, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
 * For the area of computer science research she is in, one should not focus on journal publications at all. They are almost completely irrelevant. (Other areas of CS such as mine do still value journals, if less than conferences.) For instance Geambasu herself only has two journal papers according to DBLP, one of those two is actually an editorial in a trade magazine, and she probably only has the other one because of what people in this area call the "tenure tax": you have to waste your time making journal papers that nobody will read because it looks bad at tenure time to have zero. And when journal papers are so irrelevant to the field, an index that includes conference papers only as an afterthought will introduce significant distortions in its citation patterns. Those indexes are not usable. The fact that GS occasionally includes some preprints is much less problematic. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:24, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Sure, that's why I agreed that WOS and Scopus has limitations (even with the WOS Conference Proceedings database of 180,000 conference proceedings which I included in my search) and should be used with caution and why I included the GS citations. Perhaps I should have made it more clear that I wasn't disqualifying GS from the discussion, but making a note that some of the numbers are made up of preprints and self-published notes. But even off of the GS citations, I still think it falls just short of PROF#C1 given the number of citations typical of her field. — MarkH21 (talk) 05:37, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Weak keep. Despite all that, I think the case for notability through WP:PROF is a little weak. She has one heavily-cited paper on Vanish (her work as a graduate student in a project led by someone else), another paper with 100+ citations, and the rest down in double digits, nothing special in a high-citation field. The reason I ended up siding with keep is that she also has a lot of media coverage for her work, both among the articles now cited as sources from high-profile publications (NYT, NPR, Slate, PopSci etc) and among others that could have also been cited but would have been redundant. They cover at least three aspects of her work (Vanish, XRay, and the Gmail findings) and include media from both the US and Romania. I think it's enough for WP:PROF and WP:GNG. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:16, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
 * For WP:GNG, I'll disagree because most the articles do not give significant coverage of Geambasu (as opposed to the various projects). They're mostly passing mentions of her or brief quotes from her. Linking the articles here for reference: NYT, NPR, Slate (fr translation), PopSci (this one is probably sigcov), Network World, Columbia (not independent of subject), Tech Review. I couldn't find the Romanian coverage mentioned above. — MarkH21 (talk) 05:47, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
 * For people known for their scholarly work, we expect in-depth coverage of their scholarly work, not of their taste in food or their travels to exotic resorts. Just like, for athletes we expect coverage of their athletic accomplishments and for politicians we expect coverage of their political achievements. It is shallow and nonsensical to demand that academics meet the standards of celebrities, to have the coverage about them be about their personal life instead of the thing they are actually known for doing. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:55, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
 * There are in-depth articles that do focus on famous academics, but many great intellectuals don't have such articles written about them. That's what WP:PROF is for. — MarkH21 (talk) 05:57, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Just because a very small number of academics are treated as celebrities doesn't mean that the only academics we can cover are the ones that are also celebrities. As for Romanian coverage, I suppose you didn't notice the one already in the article? But here's another. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:55, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Again like I said, that's what WP:PROF is for. Most academics pass via WP:PROF and not WP:GNG. For an article about a person, the subject in "significant coverage... of the subject" from GNG is the person. And yes, I didn’t notice the Romanian reference because it wasn't in the article until your !vote. — MarkH21 (talk) 06:06, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
 *  Rather weak keep?  GS is the appropriate data base to use for WP:Prof, but her citation record is slender by the standards of most computer scientists. Xxanthippe (talk) 09:42, 20 April 2019 (UTC).
 * Weak keep per David Eppstein's comment. --Tataral (talk) 15:52, 21 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Eh, keep I think the case for her passing WP:PROF/WP:GNG is acceptable. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 21:37, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, -- Scott Burley (talk) 23:58, 26 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep the arguments both for WP:PROF and WP:GNG seem to have been made acceptably. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 21:45, 2 May 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.