The phenomenon of all-elements-sleeping-beauties in scientific literature

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Genius work," proposed by Avramescu, refers to scientific articles whose citations grow exponentially in an extended period, for example, over 50 years. Such articles were defined as "sleeping beauties" by van Raan, who quantitatively studied the phenomenon of delayed recognition. However, the criteria adopted by van Raan at times are not applicable and may confer recognition prematurely. To revise such deficiencies, this paper proposes two new criteria, which are applicable (but not limited) to exponential citation curves. We searched for genius work among articles of Nobel Prize laureates during the period of 1901-2012 on the Web of Science, finding 25 articles of genius work out of 21,438 papers including 10 (by van Raan's criteria) sleeping beauties and 15 nonsleeping-beauties. By our new criteria, two findings were obtained through empirical analysis: (a) the awakening periods for genius work depend on the increase rate b in the exponential function, and (b) lower b leads to a longer sleeping period.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sleeping beauties in genius work: When were they awakened?

Shi

2015

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“…Recently the topic of hibernators has attracted a lot of attention (Du & Wu, ; El Aichouchi & Gorry, ; Ke et al, ; Li, ; Li & Shi, ; Li & Ye, ; van Raan, , ), leading among others to the study of articles that at first receive some attention, then go through a period in which they are hardly noticed, followed by a period of being highly cited, activated by an awakener (Li & Ye, ). Figure shows the citation curve of (Romans, ), a typical hibernator studied by van Raan ().…”

Section: Two Special Types Of Articlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do citation chimeras exist? The case of under‐cited influential articles suffering delayed recognition

Rousseau

2019

In this study we investigate if articles suffering delayed recognition can at the same time be under-cited influential articles. Theoretically these two types of articles are independent, in the sense that suffering delayed recognition depends on the number and time distribution of received citations, while being an under-cited influential article depends only partially on the number of received (first generation) citations, and much more on second and third citation generations. Among 49 articles suffering delayed recognition we found 13 that are also under-cited influential. Based on a thorough investigation of these special cases we found that so-called authoritative citers play an important role in uniting the two different document types into a special citation chimera. Our investigation contributes to the classification of publications.

“…Li and Ye () introduced the “all‐elements‐sleeping‐beauties” (ASBs), where “spindles, sleeping beauties, and princes” co‐exist. The citation distribution of ASB articles follows the story in the fairy tale: initially, the articles generate considerable impact as if the SBs are not asleep at the beginning.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Smart girls” versus “sleeping beauties” in the sciences: The identification of instant and delayed recognition by using the citation angle

Bornmann

2017

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In recent years, a number of studies have introduced methods for identifying papers with delayed recognition (so called “sleeping beauties,” SBs) or have presented single publications as cases of SBs. Most recently, Ke, Ferrara, Radicchi, and Flammini (, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 112(24), 7426–7431) proposed the so called “beauty coefficient” (denoted as B) to quantify how much a given paper can be considered as a paper with delayed recognition. In this study, the new term smart girl (SG) is suggested to differentiate instant credit or “flashes in the pan” from SBs. Although SG and SB are qualitatively defined, the dynamic citation angle β is introduced in this study as a simple way for identifying SGs and SBs quantitatively — complementing the beauty coefficient B. The citation angles for all articles from 1980 (n = 166,870) in natural sciences are calculated for identifying SGs and SBs and their extent. We reveal that about 3% of the articles are typical SGs and about 0.1% typical SBs. The potential advantages of the citation angle approach are explained.