  We investigate Sleeping Beauties (SBs) in medical research with a special
focus on SBs cited in patents. We find that the increasing trend of the
relative number of SBs comes to an end around 1998. However, still a constant
fraction of publications becomes an SB. Many SBs become highly cited
publications, they even belong to the top-10 to 20% most cited publications in
their field. We measured the scaling of the number of SBs with sleeping period
length, during-sleep citation-intensity, and with awake citation-intensity. We
determined the Grand Sleeping Beauty Equation which shows that the probability
of awakening after a deep sleep is becoming rapidly smaller for longer sleeping
periods and that the probability for higher awakening intensities decreases
extremely rapidly. Scaling exponents show a time-dependent behavior which
suggests a decreasing occurrence of SBs with longer sleeping periods. We
demonstrate that the fraction of SBs cited by patents before awakening is
exponentially increasing. This finding shows that the technological time lag is
becoming shorter than the sleeping time. Inventor-author self-citations may
result in shorter technological time lags, but this effect is small. Finally,
we discuss characteristics of an SBs that became one of the highest cited
medical papers ever.
