Sleeping beauties in ophthalmology

To identify delayed recognition publications, or 'Sleeping Beauties' (SBs), that are scarcely cited in the years or decades following their publication, but then go on to become highly cited, we screened citation histories of 184,606 articles in 52 ophthalmology journals using the Science Citation Index-Expanded (Thomson Reuters). Nine articles were identified as SBs, which accounted for 0.005% of basic materials. The SBs were published in Archives of Ophthalmology (n = 3), American Journal of Ophthalmology (n = 3), Acta Ophthalmologica (n = 1), Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science (n = 1), and Japanese Journal of Clinical Ophthalmology (n = 1). For citation histories according to the conjuring SB from the fairy tale, the sleep duration ranged from 7 to 59 years with mean of 19.7 years, the depth of sleep as evaluated by the average citations per year during the sleeping period ranged from 0.09 to 0.82 with mean of 0.45 citations, and the awake intensity as determined by the average citations per year during the first 5 years period following awakening ranged from 3.60 to 17.80 with mean of 8.51 citations. The number of total citations up to 2010 ranged from 109 to 375 with mean of 176.3 citations. Topics of the SBs covered description of new clinical diseases including acute retinal necrosis syndrome, cancer-associated retinopathy, and polypoidal choroidal vasculopathy, correlate of central corneal thickness with intraocular pressure readings, inadvertent eyeball perforation in retrobulbar anesthesia, pharmacologic weakening of extraocular muscles, amniotic membrane graft for ocular surface reconstruction, and refractive surgery. These data provide a perspective of rare but interesting delayed citation articles in ophthalmology.