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. -- Cirt (talk) 12:01, 19 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oscar Alzate, Ph.D.[edit]

Oscar Alzate, Ph.D. (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • AfD statistics)

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Run-of-the-mill associate professor at the University of North Carolina. Highest cited paper, 45. h-index is 11. The subject for which Dr Alzate gets the most cites, Bacillus thuringiensis endotoxin, has many other papers written about it. A Google Scholar search shows 471, 470, 443, 355, 334, 266, 249, 237, 214, 197, 164, 141, 126, 113, 109, 86, 80, 79, 78, 77, 77, 74, 74, 73, 69.... citations in just the first few pages of results. Deprodded. Abductive (reasoning) 03:58, 12 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 19:05, 12 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 19:06, 12 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete if associate professors are notable enough to be featured on wikipedia, then the universities themselves would have offered them tenure already. Nergaal (talk) 02:27, 13 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment What is considered a "notable" h-index by wikipedia standards (to factors of order unity)? Leaning towards delete since it doesn't pass any other criteria but looking for a bit more information. Also, I find highest cited is 66. Sailsbystars (talk) 16:05, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• The article on h-index says, "A value of about 18 could mean a full professorship, 15–20 could mean a fellowship in the American Physical Society, and 45 or higher could mean membership in the United States National Academy of Sciences." I got Alzate's highest cited number from the article. Abductive (reasoning) 16:53, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • These values are very specific to disciplines and to subdisciplines within those disciplines. My department has at least one assistant professor (still probably two years from going up for tenure) with an h-index of 20, many full professors in the mid 40s, and only one national academy member. For this reason your earlier comparison to citation counts within the same subdiscipline is very helpful, I think a better approach than just looking at absolute numbers and trying to find the right threshold. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:00, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thanks. Yes, it is very difficult to know what's a good h-index number. But an h around 11 is worth reporting as it was considered low in all the AfDs I've seen. Abductive (reasoning) 19:29, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • How did you guys calculate the h-index? Nergaal (talk) 21:13, 17 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • Using Google Scholar or WebofScience, one sorts the list of publications in order from most to least cited. (With Google Scholar, care must be taken, since from time to time a higher cited paper may be hiding on the next page.) Then one counts down the list. When the number of citations is less than the count, stop. The number just before the citations dropped below the count is the h-index. For example, if a researcher has one paper with 66 citations, then one with 10, then one with 7 and one with 2, s/he has an h-index of 3. Abductive (reasoning) 00:16, 18 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. Citability is fairly low for biology, nothing else in the record to indicate passing WP:PROF. Nsk92 (talk) 18:58, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. The evidence for passing WP:PROF#C1 is not strong, but the other criteria seem even farther out of reach. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:02, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per above discussion (somehow I missed that line in previous skims of the h-index article). Even if it survived, and article rename would be in order, since Firstname Lastname, PhD is a pretty pufftastic title. Sailsbystars (talk) 19:06, 14 October 2010 (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.