Sleeping Beauties in Autism Literature: A Review of the Research Literature in the Twentieth Century

Increasing scientific productivity in autism research requires citation evaluations that may produce multiple benefits. One of the most recent citation evaluations is the delayed recognition of scientific productions, known as "Sleeping Beauties", which in this study referred to research articles that were neglected (rarely cited) in the first ten years of publication (ten-year sleep/sleep depth) but suddenly cited in later years (at least ten years later/ten years an opportunity to wake up). Based on the standard and comprehensive selection criteria, out of a total of 8864 papers found in WoS and Medline databases between 1946 and 2000, 197 SB papers were identified. In Scopus, 8550 papers were published between 1946 and 2000, and 232 papers were identified as SB. Gillberg (1983) received the highest SB score in all citation databases, and Vilensky et al. (1981) received the highest SB score among the most cited papers. The innovative nature of the SB papers and the special attention paid to autism in recent years were discussed and concluded as possible reasons for the findings.