Dormitory of Physical and Engineering Sciences: Sleeping Beauties May Be Sleeping Innovations Part 1: Basic Properties, Cognitive Environment, Characteristics of the Princes

TL;DR

This paper investigates the properties and cognitive environments of Sleeping Beauties in science, especially in physics, to understand their delayed recognition and potential as innovations, using bibliometric and co-citation mapping techniques.

Contribution

It introduces a new approach for analyzing the cognitive environment of Sleeping Beauties through co-citation mapping, highlighting their application orientation and potential as innovations.

Findings

Over half of Sleeping Beauties are application-oriented.

Developed a new co-citation mapping approach to analyze cognitive environment.

Identified research themes associated with awakening of Sleeping Beauties.

Abstract

A Sleeping Beauty in Science is a publication that goes unnoticed (sleeps) for a long time and then, almost suddenly, attracts a lot of attention (is awakened by a prince). In this paper we investigate important properties of Sleeping Beauties, particularly to find out to what extent Sleeping Beauties are application-oriented and thus are potential Sleeping Innovations. In this study we focus primarily on physics (including materials science and astrophysics) and present first results for chemistry and for engineering & computer science. We find that more than half of the SBs are application-oriented. Therefore, it is important to investigate the reasons for and processes related to delayed recognition. First we analyze basic properties of the SBs such as the time-dependent distribution, author characteristics (names of authors, country, institution), as well as the journals and fields of the SBs are analyzed. Next we develop a new approach in which the cognitive environment of the SBs is analyzed, based on the mapping of Sleeping Beauties using their citation links and conceptual relations, particularly co-citation mapping. In this way we investigate the research themes in which the SBs are used and possible causes of why the premature work in the SBs becomes topical, i.e., the trigger of the awakening of the SBs. This approach is tested with a blue skies SB and an application-oriented SB. We think that the mapping procedures discussed in this paper are not only important for bibliometric analyses. They also provide researchers with useful, interactive tools to discover both relevant older work as well as new developments, for instance in themes related to Sleeping Beauties that are also Sleeping Innovations.