Identifying the princes base on Altmetrics: An awakening mechanism of sleeping beauties from the perspective of social media

Abstract

In science, sleeping beauties (SBs) denotes a special phenomenon of the diffusion of scientific knowledge based on citation trajectories, the awakening of which is also measured through changes in the citations index. However, the rapid advancement of social media has altered the mode of scientific communication and knowledge diffusion. This study aims to re-identify SBs and its Prince from the perspective of comprehensive indicators, which involves the analysis of Altmetrics indexes and Citation index, and investigate the awakening mechanism of A-SB to supplement the research on the awakening mechanism of SBs. By combining Ab index, we redefined the Prince, which makes A-SB receive high attention after a long Sleeping period and reflects the most prominent academic or social behavior that awakens and sustains the Awakening of A-SB. Then we conducted empirical research on the retrieved PLOS Biology collection and examined Prince after identifying the A-SB. The analysis and summary of the characteristics of the identified A-SB and Prince revealed the SBs’ awakening mechanism under the comprehensive trajectory based on Altmetrics from the three dimensions of the influence between the indicators, the overall evolution trajectory of A-SB, and literature bibliometric attributes. In the trajectory of Delayed Recognition stage of A-SB, we define the Dogsleep of SBs, which mirrors that the instability of the Sleeping of SBs will generate a specific negative impact on Prince of A-SB and Awakening intensity. Besides, the literature bibliometric attributes cannot reflect the tendency of users to read academic papers, which again proves that the traditional citation index cannot be neglected in the awakening mechanism of A-SB. Overall, this study demonstrates the addition of the Altmetrics indexes as a useful complement, illustrating the inheritance and connection between the SBs based on the comprehensive trajectory and the SBs based on the citation diffusion trajectory.