A paper with delayed recognition (or a "sleeping beauty") is a publication that received very little attention (receiving few

citation A citation is a reference to a source. More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression embedded in the body of an intellectual work that denotes an entry in the bibliographic references section of the work for the purpose of ...

s) shortly after publication, but later receives a dramatic increase in citations. For example, an 1884 article by

Charles Sanders Peirce Charles Sanders Peirce ( ; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American philosopher, logician, mathematician and scientist who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism". Educated as a chemist and employed as a scientist for ...

was rarely cited until about the year 2000, but has since garnered many citations. The phenomenon has been studied in

bibliometrics Bibliometrics is the use of statistical methods to analyse books, articles and other publications, especially in regard with scientific contents. Bibliometric methods are frequently used in the field of library and information science. Bibliom ...

and

scientometrics Scientometrics is the field of study which concerns itself with measuring and analysing scholarly literature. Scientometrics is a sub-field of informetrics. Major research issues include the measurement of the impact of research papers and academ ...

. A 2015 study published in the Proceedings of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nat ...

concluded, after looking at over 22 million scientific papers of the prior 100 years, that "sleeping beauties are common", and seen even in the works of the most famous scientists. In particular, that a paper on an aspect of

quantum mechanics Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, q ...

that was published in 1935 by

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theor ...

Boris Podolsky Boris Yakovlevich Podolsky (russian: link=no, Бори́с Я́ковлевич Подо́льский; June 29, 1896 – November 28, 1966) was a Russian-American physicist of Jewish descent, noted for his work with Albert Einstein and Nathan ...

and

Nathan Rosen Nathan Rosen (Hebrew: נתן רוזן; March 22, 1909 – December 18, 1995) was an American-Israeli physicist noted for his study on the structure of the hydrogen atom and his work with Albert Einstein and Boris Podolsky on entangled wave functi ...

, did not receive widespread attention until 1994. In the top 15 such papers in science, identified in the study, the delay for recognition was often 50 to 100 years.

Sleeping Beauties Studies

Since van Raan's 2004 paper, the Sleeping Beauties metaphor developed into more focused research area with investigations and comparative analyses of Sleeping Beauties in specific areas. The paper highlighted (1) depth of sleep, (2) length of the sleep and (3) awake intensity. A 'Sleeping Beauty' paper, asleep for an extended duration is awakened by a 'Prince'. The depth of sleep may be deep (very long) or light. In 2020, Moodley, Hernández Serrano, Dijck and Dumontier investigated the presence and features of sleeping beauties in case law from the Court of Justice of the European Union. Preliminary findings indicate that the B-coefficient could be a potential candidate for an additional measure of case relevance in the legal sphere. A recent investigation of Sleeping Beauties in Innovation Studies found only 8 Sleeping Beauties out of 52,373 relevant papers obtained via the Web of Science. This study found that "highly influential authors and self-awakening mechanisms were critical triggers for bringing SBs into scientific notoriety". Sleeping Beauties are found to be rather rare in

Psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...

. A recent study by Yuh-Shan Ho and James Hartley found only three sleeping beauties in 303,255 relevant psychology papers. Jian Du and Yishan Wu find that. Du and Wu suggest that Sleeping Beauties "may need one or more Princes and even "retinues” to be “awakened.” Recent findings by van Raan and Winnink, indicate that technological innovations are reducing the length of sleep period, especially as associated with patenting activities. More so when waking is performed by a ‘technological prince'. A similar result was found in analyzing publications in medical researchvan Raan, Anthony FJ, and Jos J. Winnink. "The occurrence of ‘Sleeping Beauty’publications in medical research: Their scientific impact and technological relevance." PLOS ONE 14, no. 10 (2019): e0223373.

References

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