Wikipedia:WikiProject Science pearls

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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 to browse the achievements and development of an area (and find out that some of the ideas of evolution were suggested 100 years before Darwin.
Allow a person with proper background (as a graduate student) to enter a new research area by finding and reading the central publications.

1 Status
2 Objectivity
3 Global and local importance
4 Phases
- 4.1 Categories of important publications
5 Want to help

[edit] 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 important publications in computer science was the earliest list and as such it is of higher than the average level.

[edit] Humanities

List of publications in philosophy

[edit] Mathematics

[edit] Natural sciences

[edit] Social sciences

List of important publications in economics
List of important publications in political science
List of important publications in psychology
List of important publications in sociology

[edit] 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.

[edit] Global and local importance

There are versions of the lists in some wikipedias – Note a French list, a Hebrew list, Dutch 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.

[edit] 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 do 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.

[edit] Categories of important publications

As an initial phase towards an article for every important publication and a category based structure, categories of important publications are created. An important publication on which there is an article should be added to the category. The lists should be maintained in parallel since they structure make contribution from experts in a given field that lack wikipedian knowledge easier.

Besides categories for entire topics (e.g.,important publications in mathematics), categories for sub topics should be created too (e.g., important publications in geometry).

The current categories used are:

Category:Important publication
Category:Important publication in mathematics
- Category: Important publication in mathematics early manuscripts
- Category:Important publication in geometry
- Category:Important publication in elementry algebra
- Category:Important publication in logic
- Category:Important publication in number theory
- Category:Important publication in Information theory
- Category:Important publication in algebric geometry
- Category:Important publication in analysis
- Category:Important publication in arithmetic
- Category:Important publication in category theory
- Category:Important publication in fractals
- Category:Important publication in game theory
- Category:Important publication in mathematical text books
- Category:Important publication in numerical analysis
- Category:Important publication in set theory
- Category:Important publication in mathematical popular writing
Category:Important publication in computer science
- Category:Important publication in Information theory
- Category:Important publication in algorithms
- Category:Important publication in artificial intelligence
- Category:Important publication in cryptography
- Category:Important publication in software engineering
Category:Important publication in philosophy
Category:Important publication in statistics
- Category:Important publication in probability
Category:Important publication in biology
Category:Important publication in chemistry
Category:Important publication in geology
Category:Important publication in medicine
Category:Important publication in physics
Category:Important publication in economics
Category:Important publication in psychology
Category:Important publication in sociology

[edit] Want to help

Those who want to help to the project, please sign your name under the lists in which you are interested:

[edit] Entire project

APH 05:56, 11 September 2005 (UTC).
Bduke 00:51, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
DGG 01:09, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Humanities

[edit] List of important publications in philosophy

[edit] Mathematics

--R.Koot 10:19, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
--HappyCamper 00:37, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Molecular structure of Nucleic Acids --JWSchmidt 16:42, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
DGG 01:10, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of important publications in chemistry

Walkerma 15:40, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
HappyCamper 00:38, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
Bduke 23:32, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of important publications in geology

Pete Tillman 06:56, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of important publications in medicine

JFW | T@lk 19:07, 11 September 2005 (UTC) (I have embellished many medical articles with their historical and breakthrough references; it remains to be established which ones are truly groundbreaking articles that should make it to our list)