Abstract
Three kinds of criteria have been advanced for distinguishing sleeping beauties in science, i.e., average-based criteria, quartile-based criteria and parameter-free criteria, on which basis four rules are proposed that should be adhered to in distinguishing sleeping beauties: (1) the early citations should be penalized; (2) the whole citation history should be taken into account; (3) the awakening time of a sleeping beauty should not vary over time; and (4) arbitrary thresholds on sleeping period or awakening intensity should be avoided.
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(2), 329–339.
Garfield, E. (1980). Premature discovery or delayed recognition-why? Current Contents, 4, 488–493.
Garfield, E. (1989a). More delayed recognition. Part 1. Examples from the genetics of color blindness, the entropy of short-term memory, phosphoinositides, and polymer Rheology. Current Contents, 38, 3–8.
Garfield, E. (1989b). Delayed recognition in scientific discovery: Citation frequency analysis aids the search for case histories. Current Contents, 23, 3–9.
Garfield, E. (1990). More delayed recognition. Part 2. From inhibin to scanning electron microscopy. Current Contents, 9, 3–9.
Glänzel, W., & Garfield, E. (2004). The myth of delayed recognition. Scientist, 18(11), 8–9.
Glänzel, W., Schlemmer, B., & Thijs, B. (2003). Better late than never? On the chance to become highly cited only beyond the standard bibliometric time horizon. Scientometrics, 58(3), 571–586.
Ke, Q., Ferrara, E., Radicchi, F., & Flammini, A. (2015). Defining and identifying sleeping beauties in science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 112(24), 7426–7431.
Li, J. (2014). Citation curves of “All-elements-sleeping-beauties”: “Flash in the Pan” first and then “Delayed Recognition”. Scientometrics, 100(2), 595–601.
Li, J., & Shi, D. (2016). Sleeping beauties in genius work: When were they awakened? Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 67(2), 432–440.
Li, J., Shi, D., Zhao, S. X., & Ye, F. Y. (2014). A study of the “heartbeat spectra” for “sleeping beauties”. Journal of Informetrics, 8(3), 493–502.
Li, J., & Ye, F. Y. (2012). The phenomenon of all-elements-sleeping-beauties in scientific literature. Scientometrics, 92(3), 795–799.
Li, J., & Ye, Y. (2014). A probe into the citation patterns of high-quality and high-impact publications. Malaysian Journal of Library and Information Science, 19(2), 31–47.
Sun, J., Min, C., & Li, J. (2016). A vector for measuring obsolescence of scientific articles. Scientometrics,. doi:10.1007/s11192-016-1884-7.
van Raan, A. F. J. (2004). Sleeping beauties in science. Scientometrics, 59(3), 467–472.
Acknowledgments
We acknowledge the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 71173187 and 71203193) for financial support.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding authors
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Li, J., Ye, F.Y. Distinguishing sleeping beauties in science. Scientometrics 108, 821–828 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-1977-3
Received:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-1977-3