Self-publishing and Wikipedia
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Self-published sources and Wikipedia reliability criteria
Anyone can create a website or pay to have a book published, then claim to be an expert in a certain field. For that reason, self-published books, newsletters, personal websites, open wikis, blogs, forum postings, and similar sources are largely not acceptable. "Blogs" in this context refers to personal and group blogs. Some newspapers host interactive columns that they call blogs, and these may be acceptable as sources so long as the writers are professionals and the blog is subject to the newspaper's full editorial control. Where a news organization publishes the opinions of a professional but claims no responsibility for the opinions, the writer of the cited piece should be attributed (e.g., "Jane Smith has suggested ..."). Posts left by readers may never be used as sources.
Self-published material may, in some circumstances, be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications. However, caution should be exercised when using such sources: if the information in question is really worth reporting, someone else is likely to have done so.
Self-published sources should never be used as third-party sources about living persons, even if the author is a well-known professional researcher or writer.
Articles and posts on Wikipedia may not be used as sources.
Self-publication and Wikipedia notability guidelines
- See also unpublished
In this regard, it should be especially noted that self-publication and/or publication by a vanity press is indicative, but not determinative of non-notability. Exceptions do exist such as Robert Gunther's Early Science in Oxford or Edgar Allan Poe's Tamerlane. Note however that both of these books would be considered notable by virtue (for instance) of criterion 1.
Taking the preceding threshold section into account, it should be noted that many vanity press books are both assigned ISBN numbers and may be listed in a national library such as the Library of Congress, as well as are amenable to being found through a Google Book Search.
By the same token, it should always weigh against an article's inclusion if the author or other interested party is the creator of the Wikipedia article.
