Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Xinru Liu


 * 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. NW ( Talk ) 03:05, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Xinru Liu

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fails WP:BIO and WP:PROF. hardly any coverage in gnews. some coverage in gscholar but nothing that seems to meet WP:PROF. LibStar (talk) 03:43, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Weak Keep - the award for Outstanding Research Works done between 1977-1991 from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences is potentially a "notable award or honor" per WP:ANYBIO, and I would expect sources supporting its notability to be largely foreign language and not necessarily easily found through English language Gnews and Gscholar sources. Per WP:FAILN, "If it is likely that significant coverage in independent sources can be found for a topic, deletion due to lack of notability is inappropriate unless active effort has been made to find these sources." - DustFormsWords (talk) 03:48, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment Name in Chinese is 刘欣如. Almost useless for a google search because there's some minor 80s pop star by the same name, but if you search e.g. "Liu Xinru" "Ancient India" in Chinese there's only about 600 GHits and she doesn't seem to have published any major works in Chinese. Normally I'd be the first guy jumping up and down reprimanding LibStar to be bothered to search in foreign languages ... but in this case, she's got a Ph.D. from a U.S. university almost a quarter of a century ago and has been teaching in the U.S. system for the most recent 15 years of her career.  And even the "Award for outstanding research works" she received from the Chinese Academic of Social Sciences (#181 in this list) was for a work published in English by Oxford University. If she's had any major impact in her field, you should be able to find it in the English-language literature. I'll defer to someone who actually knows the field to assess that. For what it's worth, I do see a couple of independent reviews of her 1998 book Silk and religion in GScholar. cab (talk) 05:55, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

 Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, NW ( Talk ) 04:59, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions.  cab (talk) 05:55, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep. Has won award from notable organization, and having at least two books published by Oxford University Press indicates significant stature in/contributions to her field. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 17:46, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete. Writing books is not enough. What counts is having them noted by others. On basis of top cites found in GS 32, 16, 5... this has not occurred yet to a sufficient extent. Unless further evidence emerges this seems to be another case of an article on an assistant professor created too soon. Xxanthippe (talk).
 * Keep Whether writing books is notable depends on the books.   We can judge the books by citations--but in the humanities it takes many years or decades for citations to books to accumulate. GS will be more useful 20 or 30 years from. We can judge by publisher: Her latest in by OUP: Liu, Xinru. The Silk Road in World History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009 in a major series, The Oxford New World History, My tentative judgment from that alone is that someone who manages to get a contract to write sucha book for such a publisher is likely to be notable--presses like OUP are good at judging such things, probably better than any of us. OUP India published her earlier book: Lui, Hsin-ju. Silk and Religion: An Exploration of Material Life and the Thought of People, AD 600-1200. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996.  She did one for McGraw also, Liu, Xinru, and Lynda Shaffer. Connections Across Eurasia: Transportation, Communication, and Cultural Exchange on the Silk Roads. Explorations in world history. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2007. Not a research publisher in humanities,   so it's likely to have been a textbook. But Liu, Hsin-ju. The Silk Road: Overland Trade and Cultural Interactions in Eurasia. Essays on global and comparative history. Washington, DC: American Historical Association, 1998. published by the most important US historical association itself--it's a short supplementary book, but when the major associations publish these is because they intend them as part of a series for standard teaching use. The reviews cited by cab confirm it, and meet WP:AUTHOR. Whatever additional is in Chinese can only add to it.  I'm not sure why she's still as Assistant Professor, and I have been very reluctant to say keep for people at this rank--I do not think most of them notable; she's one of the exceptions, as   the publications are enough to show her a leading author in her field--   DGG ( talk ) 05:52, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete Citation counts are low, and she's still an assistant professor after nearly 25 years as an academic. I think it's clear that she is a serious academic (from the publications discussed above by DGG and Hullaballoo Wolfowitz), but it just doesn't seem that her peers consider her stature very high. I hesitate to purely use gradations of academic status to judge somebody's contributions to the field, but in the absence of major citation records, that's all we really have to go on here - most tenured professors have contributed chapters, articles, or sections to books and compilations by major university presses - that's an indicator of a serious academic with real contributions, to be sure, but not so much a cut above the rest as to pass WP:PROF. Ray  Talk 16:51, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment Her academic rank and TCNJ's site is puzzling. According to  she moved up the ranks at the Institute of World History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, where she is "1993 - present [full] Professor", and was in 1994 the Director.  Also on that page, "Spring Semester of 2000-Present   Part-time faculty, Department of History, the College of New Jersey" so her assistant professor rank there may be because she is a part-timer.  But she is listed as full time here, which also lists a part time 2007 Ph.D as a full professor. John Z (talk) 10:17, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, something very weird is going on here. Can we get an expert in the field to comment? Ray  Talk 22:34, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.


 * Keep per DGG. I think her Chinese academic rank should be taken more seriously, it looks like she's an assistant prof in NJ because she's part time.  The defects, or necessity to weight differently, of gscholar in the humanities are well-known. Gets about 300 gbooks hits, more than I expected, many in Chinese, and this suggests to me that she probably is notable in her field.John Z (talk) 17:02, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment I agree with your comments about GScholar, but not about her status in China. Her Chinese name is rather common. It's not quite "Mary Jones", but close. Most of the Chinese GHits are for an unrelated 80s pop star by the same name. The little coverage that does exist of her in Chinese relates to her English-language works. I'm quite aware of the issues of systemic bias when it comes to evaluating foreign humanities scholars, but in this case I think it's fair to say her notability stands or falls on what we see in English. cab (talk) 00:50, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The gbooks hits seem to be for this Xinru Liu - the first few I see relate to Buddhism, e.g. ISBN 9578517661 ("some hits in Chinese" is more accurate than my "many" above)John Z (talk) 03:35, 26 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Weak keep per DGG. Odd that she's only an assistant professor after 25 years, but she seems to have established notability through her books. cab (talk) 00:54, 26 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Strong Keep.
 * 1) Books with established publishers OUP - McGraw Hill
 * 2) Full Professor at World History Institute, The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (Beijing) and other posts there.
 * 3) referenced all over 'our encyclopedia'.[] (given the nature of the references and how they are used this seems important and not really so self-referential)
 * 4) Keynote type lecture: The Georgia State University World History Lecture for 2008 Presented by The Department of History & The Program in World History and Cultures The Asian Studies Center -  ](Msrasnw (talk) 22:11, 26 November 2009 (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.