Wikipedia:WikiProject Bibliographies/Science task force
Science is a long-term ongoing effort of humanity. Though it's of huge size, one can recognize a few publications of the largest value, certain achievements that have changed our world. The goal of this project is to identify these publications and make them accessible to the world. This project will gather the works of Einstein, Euclid, Freud and Darwin.
Other than this main goal, certain sub goals can be identified.
- Track the history of science in different areas.
- Allow a person with no proper background browse the achievements and development of an area (and find out the some of the ideas of evolution were suggested 100 years before Darwin.
- Allow a man with proper background (as a graduate student) enter a new research area by finding and reading the central publications.
Status
The current publications’ list are listed below. The lists are also organized at list of publications in science and belong to the category Lists of publications in science.
Not all areas are currently covered. Lists for many other areas (history, law, etc.) should be created.
Note that not all list are of equal level.
The loving care of a single expert can turn a list from a stub to a valuable resource.
The List of publications in computer science was the earliest list and as such it is of higher than the average level.
- List of publications in computer science
- List of publications in mathematics
- List of publications in statistics
- List of publications in biology
- List of publications in chemistry
- List of publications in geology
- List of publications in medicine
- List of publications in physics
- List of publications in economics
- List of publications in political science
- List of publications in psychology
- List of publications in sociology
Objectivity
Any list of publication will be subjective at some level. In order to avoid needless subjectivity the following guidelines should be used:
- Classification into sub areas – There is no use in arguments of the relative importance of geometry and number theory. Publications will be classified into sub areas and noted if they are important to the sub area and not necessarily to whole the area.
- The 90% rule – a publication should be considered notable if 90% of the experts to the area will consider it notable.
- Importance type – a publication made be a breakthrough though of minor influence. In order to avoid argument about the relative importance of theory and practice several importance type were defined. One importance type should be enough to consider a publication as notable, though many pearls are important due to many aspects.
Note that wikipedia already contain many list (scientists, books) that are just as much subjective.
Global and local importance
There are versions of the lists in some wikipedias – Note a French list, a Hebrew list and a German list.
These lists can be used in order to help advancing lists in other language but also create a problem. Some publications are important only in the local context. There is no German physics but there is German law, American history and French literature. Such publications should be classified a notable locally, in order to avoid such differences.
Phases
The lists are not the most suitable structure to display such lists. Some publications belong to few sub areas and some sub areas belong to few areas. In some sub areas there are publications the should be noted but don not fit the general list.
At the long-term, we should create an article about any publication, possible with an article with the publication’s text at wikisource. The publications should be classified and found using the category system. The current use of list is use is it is an efficient structure for gathering the publications, a structure suitable for an expert to geology who is new to wikipedia.
Want to help
Those who want to help to the project, please sign your name under the lists in which you are interested:
Entire project
Questions
In any question regarding the project, please contact APH.