Abstract
We developed a systematic methodology for identifying the under-cited (or not-so-highly cited) Sleeping Beauty (SB) publications and tried to figure out their key characteristics. Based on the identification framework of “beauty coefficient” (B) introduced by Ke et al. (Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 112:7426–7431, 2015), taking into account the whole citation history of the publications concerned, we substituted yearly citations in “beauty coefficient” with yearly cumulative percentage of citations, and eliminated the denominator in “beauty coefficient” since the curve of a given document’s cumulative citations is always monotonically increasing if only the document is cited. The value of the modified beauty coefficient is denoted as Bcp. We also redefined the awakening year, sleeping length and sleeping depth within the Bcp framework with the intention of avoiding arbitrary thresholds as much as possible. We tested the new index using the data of SB articles identified from Science and Nature. The results showed that Bcp is more sensitive in identifying the “lower level SBs”, which refers to the case when the total citations and the maximum annual citations of SBs are not so high in comparison with other typical SBs. Bcp works better than B in at least two aspects: (1) it “punishes” the situations when the SBs experienced early citations instead of continuous sleeping; (2) it allows for comparing the extent of delayed citation impact of publications in different fields with different citation patterns. We also figured out some key characteristics of such SB publications and pondered some policy implications about the associations of SB publications with transformative research, research front and research evaluation.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Costas, R., Van Leeuwen, T. N., & Van Raan, A. F. J. (2010). Is scientific literature subject to a ‘sell-by-date’? A general methodology to analyze the ‘durability’ of scientific documents. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 61, 329–339.
Du, J., & Wu, Y. (2015). Defining and identifying the Sleeping Beauty and her Princes in Science (in Chinese). Library and Information Service, 59, 6–11.
Du, J., & Wu, Y. (2016). A bibliometric framework for identifying “Princes” who wake up the “Sleeping Beauty” in challenge-type scientific discoveries. Journal of Data and Information Science, 9, 50–68.
Fang, H. (2018). Analysing the variation tendencies of the numbers of yearly citations for sleeping beauties in science by using derivative analysis. Scientometrics, 115, 1051–1070.
Garfield, E. (1989). Delayed recognition in scientific discovery: Citation frequency analysis aids the search for case histories. Current Contents, 23, 3–9.
Ke, Q., Ferrara, E., Radicchi, F., et al. (2015). Defining and identifying Sleeping Beauties in science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 112, 7426–7431.
Li, J., & Ye, F. Y. (2016). Distinguishing Sleeping Beauties in science. Scientometrics, 108, 821–828.
Liu, Y., & Rousseau, R. (2014). Citation analysis and the development of science: A case study using articles by some Nobel Prize winners. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 65, 281–289.
Onodera, N. (2016). Properties of an index of citation durability of an article. Journal of Informetrics, 10, 981–1004.
Trapido, D. (2015). How novelty in knowledge earns recognition: The role of consistent identities. Research Policy, 44, 1488–1500.
Van Raan, A. F. J. (2004). Sleeping Beauties in science. Scientometrics, 59, 467–472.
Van Raan, A. F. J. (2015). Dormitory of physical and engineering sciences: Sleeping Beauties may be sleeping innovations. PLoS ONE, 10, e0139786.
Van Raan, A. F. J. (2017). Sleeping beauties cited in patents: Is there also a dormitory of inventions? Scientometrics, 110, 1123–1156.
Wang, J. (2013). Citation time window choice for research impact evaluation. Scientometrics, 94, 851–872.
Wang, J., Thijs, B., & Glanzel, W. (2015). Interdisciplinarity and impact: Distinct effects of variety, balance, and disparity. PLoS ONE, 10, 18.
Ye, F. Y., & Bornmann, L. (2018). “Smart girls” versus “sleeping beauties” in the sciences: The identification of instant and delayed recognition by using the citation angle. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 69, 359–367.
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 71603280, 71373252). The present study is an extended version of an article presented at the 16th International Conference on Scientometrics and Informetrics, Wuhan (China), 16–20 October 2017. We thank Prof. Ronald Rousseau for his detailed review of our language and enlightening suggestions for the calculation of the Bcp index.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Du, J., Wu, Y. A parameter-free index for identifying under-cited sleeping beauties in science. Scientometrics 116, 959–971 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2780-0
Received:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2780-0