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. SarahStierch (talk) 19:30, 22 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Arno Tausch[edit]

AfDs for this article:
Arno Tausch (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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Badly written and edited, looks suspiciously like a CV, completely unsourced and finally fails WP:GNG big time. Gaba (talk) 23:19, 13 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Austria-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:25, 14 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Social science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:25, 14 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Religion-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:25, 14 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:26, 14 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:26, 14 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
-- Green Cardamom (talk) 04:36, 15 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Almost all of the books listed above by Green Cardamom are published by Nova Publishers: [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. This is a questionable publisher with apparently no editorial filter which means pretty much everything is accepted for publication. A quick Google search brings up many issues with this company so a high count of books by this author published there should be taken with caution. Regards. Gaba (talk)
  • This could be true but it's not relevant: the reliability is different from the notability - we have many fringe authors who are unreliable, but notable. Likewise there are many self published authors who are notable. Wikipedia allows for authors to be notable so long as they have multiple book reviews in reliable sources. -- Green Cardamom (talk) 16:10, 15 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Green Cardamom is absolutely right. For all we care the books could be hand-written in 5 copies each, what counts is whether the books got noted, which is substantiated by reviews in reliable sources. --Randykitty (talk) 18:47, 15 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I am not sure if a review in Reference & Research Book News is really the kind of review we had in mind when we formulated WP:Author #3. My understanding is that Reference & Research Book News produces reviews of all books sent to them and the reviews are mere descriptive summary reviews. Some of the other reviews are in noted journals - but the couple I have looked at are also to my mind lacking. The review in the JEL is only a summary review 1 paragraph long and Cammack's review in Political Studies is also only one paragraph long (a long paragraph though) but reviews 3 books including Prager and Tausch's Towards a Socio-Liberal Theory of World Development.. This last book has in Google Scholar 45 cites but most of these are by Tausch. (Msrasnw (talk) 23:52, 15 November 2013 (UTC))[reply]
  • Book News is a mainstream channel for information about new academic books. Their content is licensed by libraries, the big commercial databases like Gale etc.. it is not a vanity review operation, they have been around since the 1970s and are mainstream and well known in the industry. It is a reliable source, they review only a fraction of new books published each year. See NBOOK which says some reviews "should contain sufficient critical commentary to allow the article to grow past a simple plot summary." (assume NBOOK roughly applies to AUTHOR in regards to book reviews). Reviews don't all need be the opinion type, just some. Notability is less about the quality of the review as the mere fact it was reviewed in a reliable source. --Green Cardamom (talk) 04:37, 16 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • NBooks was, of course, written with popular books (like novels and such) in mind (and reviews in the NYT and such), not academic books. In social sciences and the humanities, books are often the major vehicle of academic production, not articles such as in the sciences. Therefore almost all books get reviewed somewhere (because before we had the Internet, that was the major way of bringing new work to the attention of other academics). I therefore think that for academics, NBooks needs to be applied a bit more strictly and the quality/length of a review certainly enters into the equation. I haven't made up my mind on this case yet, but if it is kept, it needs complete re-writing, checking of the sources to weed out overblown claims, and people should keep it on their watchlists given the pattern of SPA POV editing of the article (see also the previous AFD discussions). --Randykitty (talk) 07:10, 16 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Understood what you're saying. These types of reviews are not limited to academic books, there is Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly for example who do much the same and are considered reliable sources. It is more than a pre-Internet vestige. The reviews provide a neutral, non-publisher affiliated summary of the book (and sometimes opinion) which are then used in many ways, by libraries, commercial book sellers (Amazon.com often reproduces these reviews). The content is licensed, sort of wholesaler to retail level - the reviews thus have a lot of exposure. Not every book gets reviewed, most books published are not reviewed at all, according to Virginia Tech University Library: "many books are published each year, only a small fraction of them are reviewed". Book News is the major reviewer of academic books, they have about 300,000 reviews since the 1970s, that is a lot but is also probably a "small fraction" of the academic book output during that period. My anecdotal experience of finding book reviews during AfD confirms not every book has reviews, in fact most don't (that show up at AfD anyway). -- Green Cardamom (talk) 19:09, 16 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not saying that all books are being reviewed. Clearly, in the sciences reviews are very selective. Novels don't all get reviewed either and Kirkus or Publishers Weekly obviously can review only a small proportion of books that are published. But in social sciences and the humanities, book reviews are much more common. For religion, for example, there exist whole journals that exclusively review books in that (restricted) field. Also, I expect that the books/authors that arrive at AfD are a selected sample of at least borderline notability and more likely to be among the few that are not being reviewed. --Randykitty (talk) 09:14, 17 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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.
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