Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ousseina Alidou

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. Sam Walton (talk) 17:42, 19 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ousseina Alidou[edit]

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No indication of notability. The awards are not significant national awards. Her twin sister's achievements do not confer notability by proxy. The references provided are not independent sources. -- HighKing⁺⁺ 14:53, 10 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have asked User:HighKing on the talk page to indicate other people who have done work in the field of the study of Muslim women in Africa, whether on WIkipedia or not. The criteria for notability in Wikipedia:Notability_(academics)#Criteria is:

"1. The person's research has made significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources." If you can identify other people whose contributions dwarf her attempts, you may well have a point, but until you have done that, then the current list of award indicates a sufficient level of acclaim.

Thus I feel the article clearly has sufficient indication of notability Leutha (talk) 18:07, 10 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"The person's research has made significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources" (my emphasis). I've pointed out that the articles sources are not independent or are primary. If better sources can be provided, please add them to the article. -- HighKing⁺⁺ 19:12, 10 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Africa-related deletion discussions. Espresso Addict (talk) 02:29, 16 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. Espresso Addict (talk) 02:29, 16 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. Espresso Addict (talk) 02:29, 16 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Weak delete. Some good cites on GS but with an h-index of 8 probably WP:Too soon. Off to a good start but not there yet. Try later. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:44, 16 November 2016 (UTC).[reply]
Keep based from the fact she's held in over 2,300 libraries and that's enough, since another note is it was a university publisher. Overall, there's enough for an article. SwisterTwister talk 07:15, 16 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The way I cut this: Is there regular name-drops in academic works to show notability? This helps us tell places where her argument is being singled out ("Alidou argues...") and focused on as opposed to merely cited (Alidou 2014). While it isn't my field (which seems more stingy with name-drops), I put a bright line on 10 independent name-drop references in Google scholar to tell me that her ideas have received "significant impact in their scholarly discipline." Passed that number fairly quickly. So, Keep. AbstractIllusions (talk) 15:42, 16 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Way out of my area, but indications seem positive that Alidou is highly regarded in her field. She is Director of the Center for African Studies at Rutgers University;[1] and she serves on the Board of Directors of the African Studies Association. [2] Her single-author book Engaging Modernity... is well cited & has received multiple reviews/discussion (eg "Linguist Ousseina Alidou's tour de force..."[3], and several via JSTOR eg [4],[5]) and there are also reviews of other books (eg "The book's contribution to the existing knowledge of peace-making in Africa cannot be overemphasized" JSTOR [6] for Postconflict Reconstruction in Africa, which she co-edited but doesn't seem to be mentioned in the article). The article is in need of expansion to reflect her career/publications. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:35, 17 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - I agree, meets WP:PROF. Smmurphy^(Talk) 02:20, 17 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Of the 9 criteria listed in WP:PROF, none is concerned with publications or the number of libraries holding the publications. Criteria 3 concerns being an elected member of a "highly selective and prestigious scholarly society or association". Neither the African Studies Association or the Center for African Studies at Rutgers meets this criteria. The best argument put forward (IMHO) is for Criteria 1 - that Ousseina has made "a significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources". Espresso Addict states that her book is well cited and AbstractIllusions states that she is "name-dropped" in Google Scholar. It is difficult to measure whether someone has made a significant impact in their area of expertise. Another editor has stated "Some good cites on GS but with an h-index of 8 probably WP:TOOSOON" and that begs the question of what h-index would put her over the line? The index works properly only for comparing scientists working in the same field and given that Ousseina is working in a relatively small field, perhaps an h-index of 8 is good enough? Perhaps Xxanthippe could give an indication of what would be an acceptable h-index? -- HighKing⁺⁺ 17:54, 17 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

As a note about my !vote, I was thinking she fits under WP:PROF criteria 7, "The person has made substantial impact outside academia in their academic capacity." for her work with the Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa and the related anthology A Thousand Flowers. I'm interested in the use of h-index in !votes, but I think it is a hard measure to use. In particular, I think it understates notability in many cases including this one where an academic's area of study involves close association with political or social movements which do not lead to citations but do lead to impact. Smmurphy^(Talk) 18:45, 17 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the clarification. But how would we independently verify that she has made substantial impact outside academia? Are there some references we could use? -- HighKing⁺⁺ 19:24, 17 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Before today I hadn't heard of the CAFA, but I can attempt a reply. From my looking (for instance: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q="Committee+for+Academic+Freedom+in+Africa" <- can someone tell me how to get wp to link urls like this corectly?), I am not finding much independent discussion of the impact of the CAFA, but there is certainly some. I can guess this lack is partially because inside countries where academic freedom is not discussed, the activities of CAFA would not be easy to report on or publish about and outside of those countries, interest is not very great among people not involved in CAFA. But that is supposition. The history of CAFA in the Journal of Higher Education in African in 2008 (Alidou, Ousseina, George Caffentzis, and Silvia Federici. "‘We no go sit down’: CAFA and the Struggle Against Structurally Adjusted Education in Africa." Journal of Higher Education in Africa 6, no. 1&2 (2008): 61-76. [7]) is not strictly an independent document, but I think lends quite a bit of support to its influence and to Alidou's influence. I apologize if that I do not have a stronger source.Smmurphy^(Talk) 19:52, 17 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There's been infinite discussion of the imperfect application of Criteria #1 on the talk page of PROF. There seems at this point no great way to compare Criteria #1 across disciplines. An H-index of 20 in some fields is low, in others it would be exceptional. As the page reads: "Measures of citability such as the h-index, g-index, etc., are of limited usefulness in evaluating whether Criterion 1 is satisfied. They should be approached with caution because their validity is not, at present, completely accepted, and they may depend substantially on the citation database used. They are also discipline-dependent; some disciplines have higher average citation rates than others." We could contact field experts anonymously? But short of that, we gotta try the best we can with imperfect metrics. (My solution is imperfect at best, but I like it better than h, quite frankly. But that may be disciplinary blinders). AbstractIllusions (talk) 01:13, 18 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Straw man (or woman). There has never been any suggestion that citation data should be used to compare achievements across different fields. It is used to compare achievements within similar fields. Xxanthippe (talk) 01:31, 18 November 2016 (UTC).[reply]

Xxanthippe, is this your academic field? If so, that would be good to note, it would help me to know how the field works. If not, then you are comparing achievements across different fields by saying that an h of 8 is too soon. That's your impression based on your field, but that might not be relevant for her field. So....um.... AbstractIllusions (talk) 02:37, 18 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There is much on the matter of how citation rates vary across fields in the archives of WP:Prof talk and similar. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:52, 18 November 2016 (UTC).[reply]

OK, no answer to my question (or HighKing's original question). That's cool. I'll maintain that you are comparing across disciplines and that's not a legit thing to do without knowing standards in the particular discipline. As HighKing noted "perhaps an h-index of 8 is good enough." I certainly wouldn't want to delete a scholar using a poor metric and applying it incorrectly. But, that's just me. AbstractIllusions (talk) 14:10, 18 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Looking through the names listed at African studies, it seems like a low-citation field, so I don't think a low h-index relative to other areas is sufficient evidence of WP:PROF failure. It's hard to avoid apples-and-oranges comparisons, particularly with regard to her various directorships, but I'm inclined to err on the side of keeping the article. Sławomir Biały (talk) 15:59, 18 November 2016 (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.