Abstract
Delayed recognition in which innovative discoveries are re-evaluated after a long period has significant implications for scientific progress. The quantitative method to detect delayed recognition is described as the pair of Sleeping Beauty (SB) and its Prince (PR), where SB refers to citation bursts and its PR triggers SB’s awakeness calculated based on their citation history. This research provides the methods to extract valid and large SB–PR pairs from a comprehensive Scopus dataset and analyses how PR discovers SB. We prove that the proposed method can extract long-sleep and large-scale SB and its PR best covers the previous multi-disciplinary pairs, which enables to observe delayed recognition. Besides, we show that the high-impact SB–PR pairs extracted by the proposed method are more likely to be located in the same field. This indicates that a hidden SB that your research can awaken may exist closer than you think. On the other hand, although SB–PR pairs are fat-tailed in Beauty Coefficient and more likely to integrate separate fields compared to ordinary citations, it is not possible to predict which citation leads to awake SB using the rarity of citation. There is no easy way to limit the areas where SB–PR pairs occur or detect it early, suggesting that researchers and administrators need to focus on a variety of areas. This research provides comprehensive knowledge about the development of scientific findings that will be evaluated over time.
Highlights
Academic research has led to novel knowledge discoveries in various research areas and has contributed to human society’s prosperity
We compare the real citation network with the null model to statistically reveal the mechanism of delayed recognition
Comparison with the null model To statistically analyse the characteristics of the Beauty Coefficient in the empirical network, we investigated the specificity of Sleeping Beauty (SB) in science by developing the following null model (Fig. 11)
Summary
Academic research has led to novel knowledge discoveries in various research areas and has contributed to human society’s prosperity. Modern science focuses upon novelty which means that it is not uncommon for researchers to base their reseach on comparatively new papers. Due to the nature of scientific findings, innovative discoveries are often accepted after evaluation and confirmation by researchers in related fields. This phenomenon is known as ‘delayed recognition’ (Garfield 1980, 1989, 1990), which is perceived as an example of unexpected discovery. New findings and theories are significantly crucial for scientific progress; initially, big findings are often restricted or neglected, as the scientific community is sceptical about them (Campanario 2009; Fang 2015).
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