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. There is a rough consensus here that the article currently (just) fails to meet the relevant notability guideline, although the discussion did show that many editors thought it was close. Davewild ( talk) 08:55, 20 June 2015 (UTC) reply

Klaus Solberg Søilen

Klaus Solberg Søilen (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log · Stats)

(Find sources:  Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Doesn't appear to meet WP:PROF or WP:BASIC. All but one of the sources cited are written by the subject and a search for other sources produced nothing. Google scholar suggests that the subject has not been widely cited. The only potential notability would be due to PROF #8 as he is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Intelligence Studies in Business but again, based on a search the journal doesn't appear to be particularly important. (The editor has declared a COI). SmartSE ( talk) 20:23, 24 May 2015 (UTC) reply

Comment: The topic meets at least 5 criteria of WP:ACADEMIC (probably more), and I do not know you think otherwise. Søilen is a respected expert in his filed with dozens of papers written that were published in notable magazines. As you said, he is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Intelligence Studies in Business, which is an additional proof of notability. -- BiH ( talk) 06:57, 25 May 2015 (UTC) reply

Which parts of ACADEMIC? A "respected expert" according to who? Unless JISIB is shown to be a "major well-established academic journal" then him being the editor is moot. SmartSE ( talk) 13:53, 25 May 2015 (UTC) reply

Parts 4, 5, 7, 8, and 9.. JISIB seems notable to be according to this and this as it is included in journal databases and has continuity since 2011. Moreover, its publisher is Halmstad University, Sweden. -- BiH ( talk) 15:17, 25 May 2015 (UTC) reply

Add: Even Google Scholar says on its web: "A caution about Google Scholar: Google Scholar works well for fields where all (or nearly all) respected venues have an online presence. Most papers written by a computer scientist will show up, but for less technologically up-to-date fields, it is dicey. For non-scientific subjects, it is especially dicey." so notability can't be assessed only with Google Scholar. As I said, JISIB is an open source journal. The journal is already cited by SCOPUS even though it is not more than 3 years old (found an evidence here). The argument that it is not well known should not be used as no new journals are well known. Their development and usage should be taken into the account as well. -- BiH ( talk) 04:38, 27 May 2015 (UTC) reply

#4 Sources? #5 only a normal prof, #7 sources? #8 again we need sources that are currently lacking, #9 did you read that criterion? SmartSE ( talk) 20:10, 31 May 2015 (UTC) reply

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Sweden-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k ( talk) 02:16, 26 May 2015 (UTC) reply

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Social science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k ( talk) 02:16, 26 May 2015 (UTC) reply

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k ( talk) 02:16, 26 May 2015 (UTC) reply

• weak keep Just qualifies under WP:PROF, but promotional and full of exaggeration, especially in the publications section. I generally think that any full professor at a research university can be assumed to be notable; in decisions at afd every one of them has been found notable in the last five or six years, except 1/ in fields where the opinion or perhaps prejudices of WP editors is that the field is insufficiently rigorous --some of these have been fields traditionally dominated by women, and this opinion or prejudice has contributed in some part to our gender bias; 2/where there is a prejudice against the individual because of their espousal of ideas that are unpopular at WP, generally in fields other than their primary notability--in the past they have often been those very few scientists who have some involvement with parapsychology or alternative medicine; more recently a few have been in climate science (I have fought every one of such deletions and shall continue to); 3/in a few special cases where there were other contributing factors. The question is whether this falls in the third category. Obviously we have deleted hundreds of articles on professors, usually for copyvio, and sometimes for blatant promotionalism--but these are matters other than notability. I first considered whether the promotionalism here is sufficient for deletion on that basis alone, but it isn't. In the last year I and others have been arguing that in all fields the combination of borderline notability and substantial promotionalism should be grounds for deletion--and many articles have been deleted on that rationale. Taking this into account, it's a weak keep.

The basic criterion for WP:PROF is to be recognized as an authority in one's field--the other parts of the guideline are just shortcuts. The normal way to show recognition as an expert is by a person's professional publications: He works in a field where bother books and journals are significant, so I will analyze both. Despite the impressive appearance of the bibliography, , he is the author of no academic research level books by a major publisher whatsoever. The only internationally known publisher here is Springer, and his book with them is not an academic book: Exhibit marketing and trade show intelligence : successful boothmanship and booth design Springer, 2013. (in 273 worldcat libraries) The publisher "Studentlitteratur" is a Swedish publisher of academic theses--it is still the custom in Sweden and several other countries that academic theses must be actually published, and the candidate pay for that himself--their publications are best regarded as self-published. Wirtschaftswissenshaftlichen Fakultät Universität Leipzig, Germany is another publisher of theses, this time in German. Ventus is a textbook publishers. Copenhagen Business School press is a very minor university publisher. The purported other books are not even books, but just chapters in books. In the hierarchy of academic publishing they not only dod not count as books, but rank considerably below journal articles, as they are rarely actually peer-reviewed. As for the journal articles, none of them is published in a first rate journal. Journal impact factors are a very rough way to evaluate journals, but they can yield some information; the best of the journals, Journal of Business Research is only 107th of the 239 business journals listed in Web of Science. Journal articles can be characterized in Google Scholar--again this is only approximate, and it under-rates non US/UK publications, and also under-rates fields where publication is in books. Nonetheless, the highest cited articles there has been cited 8 times only, which would normally be considered insignificant in any subject.

The key possibility here is one of the auxiliary criteria: being editor in chief of a major journal Journal of Intelligence Studies in Business is listed in Scopus, but no other selective index. It was started only in 2011. It might just count as borderline notable here, but in no sense is it a major journal. It does not seem to be the major journal in its niche; rather, that is Competitive intelligence review which has been published since 1990 by a major publisher (Wiley). consideration as the major journal in its niche. To be editor of the major journal is a small speciality is probably notability. None of the other qualifications in WP:PROF are even approximately met. DGG ( talk ) 07:22, 28 May 2015 (UTC) reply

• Comment: Studentlitteratur is not primarily a publisher of theses (not sure they publish any theses at all, but it's possible) but of textbooks, and I see no reason to see these as "self-published". (There is no reason to regard Swedish doctoral theses as self-published either in any way that would make sense to most English-speaking wikipedians, but that issue is probably best saved for another discussion.) -- Hegvald ( talk) 18:18, 29 May 2015 (UTC) reply
• Comment @ DGG: Thank you for taking a look. I'm a bit confused by your reasoning though as you seem to be saying that there is little evidence that they are important, but because they are a professor, the article should be kept. Wikipedia:Notability_(academics)#General_notes is very relevant in this discussion since there are zero independent sources discussing the subject and therefore we shouldn't have an article per BLP. Essentially, the only reason they could be notable is that they started a journal 4 years ago, which any academic could do, and for which we have no sources to demonstrate that it is an important journal. As it stands the article is basically a resume and since there are no sources, if it was made BLP-compliant, there would be nothing left! SmartSE ( talk) 20:10, 31 May 2015 (UTC) reply

any academic can start an OA journal ; relatively few would be able to maintain it for 4 years, because unless people respect the ed in chief and thing the venue worthwhile, they won;t sent in articles to publish. He's at the low end of notability by the basic WP:PROf criterion being an authority in his subject, but he's arguabley within it. When we have general practices, we should decide specific borderline situation in to maintain them, if only to avoid confusion/. DGG ( talk ) 22:14, 31 May 2015 (UTC) reply

That seems to be your own interpretation rather than anything based in policies or sources. I don't think that we should keep BLPs where there are zero sources to write a biography and I thought that this was a reasonably established community norm. I'm still waiting to see even a single secondary source differentiating him from all the other academics in the world. SmartSE ( talk) 19:13, 10 June 2015 (UTC) reply

• Strong keep as above. J 1982 ( talk) 22:00, 1 June 2015 (UTC) reply

• Comment !voting "keep" on AFDs simply because the subject is Swedish or related to Sweden is not how it works, and I'd tend to discard the arguments of the paid editor that created the article to begin with without any disclosure whatsoever. Please make an argument based on policy. § FreeRangeFrog ^croak 22:30, 7 June 2015 (UTC) reply
• Comment @ J 1982: has a history of continuous frivolous "strong keep" votes as in [1] [2] [3] [4] [5], May–June 2015, and many more before that. — Brianhe ( talk) 00:39, 9 June 2015 (UTC) reply

• Delete The combination of being just under WP:PROF, failing GNG and the obvious involvement of a paid editor should mean we nuke this and wait for someone unrelated to the subject creates the article once he actually meets at least the academic guidelines. § FreeRangeFrog ^croak 22:27, 7 June 2015 (UTC) reply

• Delete Fails WP:PROF, WP:GPG, and WP:BASIC. Even hiring an editor connected to the person (I don't know whether the editor was paid as claimed above) didn't coax out some notable work. It only seems he gave his opinion about a series of topics. -- Abaget ( talk) 01:58, 14 June 2015 (UTC) reply
• Delete. JISIB too new for notability to accrue to its EiC. Doesn't make the top 25% of economists in Sweden. No other evidence of notability, and the paid editing thing is another strike against this. — David Eppstein ( talk) 06:40, 14 June 2015 (UTC) reply

Comment: JISIB is indexed by SCOPUS, one of two best magazine indexes, so the fact that is "too new" does not apply here. About the list of Swedish economists, it is obvious that you need to register first for this site (and obviosly most or some do not) to be included. It clearly says at the top: "They are based on data about authors who have registered with the RePEc Author Service".. DGG really explained the situation batter than anyone else, I do not understand these reactions and comments. -- BiH ( talk) 16:40, 14 June 2015 (UTC) reply

Ok, let's look more closely at that top-25% listing, by comparing it with another measure of impact, Google scholar citations. Søilen's top citation counts in Google scholar are 20,17,8,6,4,3,... In comparison, the lowest-ranked of the RePEc-listed Swedish economists (at number 168, just barely making the top 25%) is Roger Svensson, whose citation counts (skipping a couple of papers that are obviously by a different Roger Svensson) are 214,168,74,48,... So regardless of whether Søilen is listed or not, it's obvious that he's not close to the bar for WP:PROF#C1. — David Eppstein ( talk) 19:27, 14 June 2015 (UTC) reply

In my opinion, comparing Søilen with other scientist will not prove much especially since they are obviously in different fields. WP:NACADEMICS should be considered above all. Considering #8, as I stated above "JISIB seems notable to be according to this and this as it is included in journal databases and has continuity since 2011. Moreover, its publisher is Halmstad University, Sweden". The subject also meets several other criteria mentioned in WP:NACADEMICS. -- BiH ( talk) 07:20, 15 June 2015 (UTC) reply

• Keep - passes WP:NACADEMICS #8. Kraxler ( talk) 15:58, 17 June 2015 (UTC) reply

Struck vote, per the objections raised concerning the importance of the journal. Kraxler ( talk) 13:50, 19 June 2015 (UTC) reply

• Delete As per FreeRangeFrog, doesn't quite pass WP:PROF or WP:GNG. Joseph2302 ( talk) 21:11, 18 June 2015 (UTC) reply
• Delete failing GNG, per FRF. Winner 42 Talk to me! 21:14, 18 June 2015 (UTC) reply
• Neutral I was closing overdue AfDs when I came to this one and at first intended to close it, but find that I need to be able to comment in more detail than a close would permit. The subject, in my opinion, technically meets PROF#8, as being EIC of a notable journal. DOAJ is not a selective indexing service showing notability and this is a fake rating site (see Jeffrey Beall) that usually is more a sign of not being notable (no respectable journal will list this rating, only predatory journals do). However, the journal is indexed in Scopus, which means that it meets WP:NJournals. However, PROF#8 talks about "a major well-established academic journal" and I doubt that listing in Scopus (which seems to be getting less selective by the day) is enough evidence of this journal being a "major well-established" one. So I'm torn between "weak keep" and "weak delete": technical pass of PROF#8, but I think it does not meet the spirit of PROF#8. I see no evidence of the subject meeting any of the other criteria of PROF, BIO, or GNG. -- Randykitty ( talk) 13:25, 19 June 2015 (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.