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A historical review of optometry research and its publication: are optometry journals finally catching up?

2015; Wiley; Volume: 35; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/opo.12211

1475-1313

David B. Elliott, Neil Handley,

Medical History and Innovations

This year marks the 90th anniversary for Ophthalmic & Physiological Optics (OPO) and its predecessor the British Journal of Physiological Optics. As part of the anniversary celebrations, we thought it pertinent to briefly discuss parts of the history of optometry (and linked branches of optics) research and its publication. We also ask the question of whether the breadth, quality and quantity of optometry journals are finally starting to catch up with the high quality of optometry research. A timeline for many of the important points in the history of optometry research and its publication follows. There are many omissions as we only include the early discoveries (and even then omit such luminaries as Isaac Barrow, Christian Huygens, Edmund Hayley and Christoph Scheiner1) and do not discuss any modern inventions such as logMAR charts, automated perimeters, optical coherence tomography, multifocal contact lenses etc. This simply reflects our desire not to have an editorial the size of an issue! There are many fascinating books and papers regarding the history of the profession1-20 and its leading lights and these include (with apologies for omissions) the history of optometry in Africa,3 America,4 Australia,5 Canada,6 the Netherlands,7 New Zealand,8 South Africa9 and the UK,2, 10-12 the American Academy of Optometry,13 and the early important textbooks.14, 15 In addition, Clinical & Experimental Optometry's excellent series of editorials on leading optometry academics provides enthralling glimpses of the history of the profession in various countries including America, Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Canada.16-20 Before 1000 – Hand-held reading stones (lapides ad legendum) were probably in use as desk magnifiers in European monasteries.21 Earlier references are likely red herrings: Although Seneca the Younger, a tutor of Emperor Nero of Rome (1st century AD) wrote: “Letters, however small and indistinct, are seen enlarged and more clearly through a globe or glass filled with water”, no attempt was made to apply the knowledge. Some suggest that Nero (reigned 54-68 AD) was said to have used an emerald as a corrective lens whilst watching the gladiatorial games. However, Pliny the Elder's Natural History is often misunderstood as it claims only that Nero viewed the games through a ‘smaragdus’ (emerald) and makes no suggestion as to why and any suggestion that it was a corrective lens is not supported by the textual evidence. c.1266 – Roger Bacon, an English Dominican friar based in Paris, first outlined the theoretical application of lenses to correct human sight in his Opus Majus although there is no evidence that he produced a practical device.22 Final quarter of the 13th century – Primitive nose spectacles were in use by priests and friars in northern Italy, and although Rosen's detailed account suggests Florence,23 their probable source of origin was more likely Venice.24 1363 – Guy de Chauliac, the papal physician in Avignon, France, stated in his Grand Chirurgie that spectacles were a remedy of last resort only for when medicines or surgical treatment had failed. 1585 – Tommaso Garzoni, an Italian preaching friar, wrote in his La piazza universale di tutte le professioni del mondo that glass could be produced to various curvatures by specialist lens workers within the glassmaking trade, and that in Venice there were specific iron tools to grind lenses suitable for people of different ages. 1604 – Johannes Kepler explained in his Ad Vitellionem Paralipomena, quibus Astronomiae Pars Optica Traditur that images are formed on the retina, that the crystalline lens served as a refracting device and that concave lenses could correct myopia and convex lenses correct hyperopia.1, 25 He also described central and peripheral vision and many other aspects of refraction and accommodation. He also invented the Keplerian telescope in 1611.1, 25 1608 – The telescope was invented by Hans Lipperhey, a German-born Dutch spectacle maker from Middleburg whose device was soon imitated by Galileo, heralding an era when spectacle makers would earn a more prosperous living supplying the astronomy business. 1621 – Willebrord Snell (or Snellius) of Leiden in the Dutch Republic, worked out his law of refraction, which was later published by Descartes in his La Dioptrique of 1637. Although technically a rediscovery of 10th century Arabic thought, there was no awareness of this in the west prior to the modern era. Indeed, the law of refraction was also discovered earlier in 1601 and found in unpublished papers of the English scientist Thomas Harriot, long after his death in 1621.1, 26 1623 – El uso de anteojos by Benito Daza de Valdes described a system of units used to measure the curvature of lenses in Spain. Daza went on to describe the actual testing of the patient's sight and the subsequent provision of lenses suitable for that specific person.4, 27 1629 – The Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers of London was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles I.10 Although preceded by similar guilds in Germany, today it is the oldest surviving eyesight organisation in the world. 1672 – In a contribution to the Philosophical Transactions Isaac Newton refers to ‘opticians’ in the sense of experts in, or students of, optics. 1675 – Development of the simple microscope by Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. 1685 – Johannes Zahn appeared to introduce the concept of a trial lens, incorporated within a hand-held instrument, in Volume III of his Oculus artificialis teledioptricus sive telescopium. 1690 – Irish natural philosopher, William Molyneaux, published his Dioptica Nova in 1690, in which Chapter III discusses rules for choosing glasses and correction of myopia.4 1704 – First edition published of Isaac Newton's Opticks, recounting experiments conducted in the 1660s including the famous prism experiment. This book arguably represents the foundation of a separate scientific discipline of physical optics. c.1720s Edward Scarlett of London appears to have been the first to market spectacles with a mark denoting the focal power marked on the frame.2, 28 1756 – London Optician Peter Dollond was described as an ‘optician’ in the indenture for his apprentice John Berge (he was also referred to in letters to and from Benjamin Franklin, who didn't believe they were making his split bifocals correctly!)29 He was probably the first optician to make a fortune from the business and rise the social ladder. 1784 – Benjamin Franklin referred in a letter to ‘double spectacles’ and subsequently became known as a pioneer user of split bifocal lenses.29 1794 – John Dalton delivered a paper in Manchester containing the first description of living with a colour vision deficiency.30 c.1800 – Sets of classified trial lenses appear to have been in use by individual practitioners, such as Paul Hirn of Munich.2 1801 – The English polymath Thomas Young provides the first description of astigmatism in The Mechanism of the Eye. Less well-known investigations included ocular accommodation, peripheral imagery, depth-of-focus, chromatic aberration, change in spherical aberration with accommodation and the influence of gradient index distribution on lens power.31, 32 Subsequently Sir George Airy is the first to develop cylindrical lenses to correct the condition. 1830 – George Cox's ‘trial box’ allowed the user to flip quickly between lenses on the end of a handle, the origin of the lens trier.2 1838 – Sir Charles Wheatstone invented a stereoscope. 1847 – The English polymath Charles Babbage devised what might well lay claim to have been the first ophthalmoscope, but there is no evidence that he manufactured a working instrument.33 The Czech physiologist Jan Evangelista Purkinje certainly lay the theoretical groundwork for ophthalmoscopy, but similarly didn't produce an instrument.33 1849 – Sets of (loose) trial lenses were first advertised for commercial sale in Germany. Demand had been prompted following the publication of an article by Georg Fronmüller in 1843.34 1851 – Hermann von Helmholtz (Potsdam, Germany) invented the first functioning ophthalmoscope and used it to examine the interior of the living eye.33 He published his multi-volume Handbuch der Physiologischen Optik between 1856 and 1866. 1860 – Franciscus Cornelis Donders of Utrecht (“The father of modern refraction”) is credited with introducing prismatic and cylindrical lenses to the trial set for the assessment of astigmatism. His Anomalies of Accommodation and Refraction of the Eye would be published in 1864 and provided the first distinction between presbyopia and hypermetropia.1 1862 – Hermann Snellen of Utrecht devised his optotypes for measuring visual acuity, subsequently resulting in the first test chart.1 1865 – J. W. Verschoor's doctoral thesis, in Dutch, Optometers en Optometrie seemingly coins the word ‘optometry’. 1872 – Ferdinand Monoyer proposed the term ‘dioptre’ as the unit of lens power.2 1880 – H. Parent, building on the work of French ophthalmologist Ferdinand Cuignet and M. Mengin (his overlooked student: so overlooked, his first name has not been traceable!), introduced the quantitative refraction test and coined the word ‘retinoscopie’. 1886 – Edmond Landolt's book, Refraction and Accommodation of the Eye and Their Anomalies produced in Paris, France and translated into English by the American Dr Culver refers to the principles of ‘optometry’ throughout. 1888 – Adolf Eugen Fick (Zurich, Switzerland; a good friend of Helmholtz) and Eugene Kalt (Paris, France) independently developed optically corrective scleral contact lenses. 1888 – The Handbook for Opticians by William Bohne of New Orleans in the USA is sometimes cast as the ‘first textbook written by an optometrist for optometrists’ though it explicitly addressed ‘workmen’ of the ‘trade’.15 1890s – Mechanised automatic refracting units were introduced in the UK, originally for self-testing at pharmacies and railway stations.2 1891 – The Optician first published by Frederick Boger in New York, USA.4 Publication ceased in 1894 with Boger's publication of The Optical Journal in 1895. The Optical Journal joined with The Optical Review (thought to be derived from the optical section of The Jeweler's Circular and first published in 1907) in 1910 to form The Optical Journal and Review of Optometry. These were professional journals, providing news items, job advertisements and clinical review articles rather than peer-reviewed papers.4 Since 1977, the journal has been named Review of Optometry. A similar US optometry professional or ‘trade’ periodical, Practical Optician, was first published in 1910 but is now defunct. It was published under the name Practical Optometrist and Optician, Optometric Weekly, and Optometric Monthly.4 1891 – Five months later, The Optician, an independent trade journal, was first published in London, UK as ‘the organ of the optical, mathematical, philosophical, electrical, nautical and photographic instrument industries’ under founding editor Charles Hyatt-Woolf. 1892 – In the USA Charles F. Prentice attempted to charge $3 to perform an eye examination – an ophthalmologist complained that this should be regarded as the practice of medicine, leading to a famous court case. Prentice styled himself an ‘opticist’ and copyrighted the term. 1896 – The Dioptric & Ophthalmometric Review was first published by the British Optical Association (forerunner of British Journal of Physiological Optics).11 1913 – The Optometrist of NSW first published in Australia. 1919 – The Commonwealth Optometrist first published in Australia (this and the above title were subsumed into the Australasian Journal of Optometry, which was renamed the Australian Journal of Optometry in 1959. It became Clinical and Experimental Optometry in 1986. 1920 – American Journal of Physiological Optics first published in the USA. 1924 – The first issue of the Northwest Journal of Optometry was published in Minneapolis, USA, with editor Carel C Koch.13 After 19 issues, the name was changed to the American Journal of Optometry and by 1928 it was the official journal of the American Academy of Optometry. After a merger, this became the American Journal of Optometry and Archives of the American Academy of Optometry in 1941.13 From 1974 (until 1988) it was renamed the American Journal of Optometry & Physiological Optics. 1925 – British Journal of Physiological Optics first published in the UK (until 1980, forerunner of OPO).11 1928 – Formation of the International Optical League, later the International Optometric and Optical League, now the World Council of Optometry, at a meeting in Cologne, Germany with Mr J. H. Sutcliffe of the UK as the first President.35 The impetus was generated by the ‘Odin’ court case in Paris in 1924 when an optician was found guilty under French law of using a medical instrument by practising retinoscopy. 1934 – The South African Optometrist first published in South Africa.9 1939 – The Canadian Journal of Optometry first published in Canada.6 1947 – Kevin Tuohy invented the corneal contact lens, subsequently patented. 1961 – Otto Wichterle produced the first wearable soft lens at the Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry in Prague. 1961 – The Ophthalmic Optician first published in the UK (until 1984, forerunner of Optometry Today). This is similar to Optician and Review of Optometry, a trade journal providing news items, advertisements and clinical review articles. 1981 – Ophthalmic and Physiological Optics journal first published by the UK College of Optometrists (preceded by the British Journal of Physiological Optics). 1986 – Clinical & Experimental Optometry journal first published (preceded by the Australian Journal of Optometry). It is now the official journal of Optometry Australia, the New Zealand Association of Optometrists, the Hong Kong Society of Professional Optometrists and the Singapore Optometric Association. 1989 – Optometry & Vision Science first published by the American Academy of Optometry (preceded by the American Journal of Optometry & Physiological Optics). 2000 – Optometry in Practice first published in the UK as a continuous education and training journal, building upon the work of its predecessor Clinical Optometry Update. 2008 – The Journal of Optometry (the Spanish General Council of Optometrists) and the Scandinavian Journal of Optometry & Visual Science first published. 2015 – The South African Optometrist journal renamed African Vision & Eye Health and became a a joint optometry / ophthalmology journal. What role have research and research journals played in the history of optometry? This is discussed in the history of the American Academy of Optometry13 where in the early 1900s, there were about 60 schools teaching optometry in the US, with some courses lasting two weeks! There was a huge range of opticians, from conscientious professionals to “commercialists” or “spec peddlars”. There was a clear need to first standardise education, then raise the standards of both the education and the science to support it.13 This is still ongoing and the need to support the profession with an evidence base for its current and future roles seems paramount. There is a need to highlight the illegitimacy of quackery such as the Bates Method of controlling myopia,36 the many wonderdrug or superfood elixirs and potions proposed on the internet and nonsense such as iridology.37 There is a need to dissect practices of optometry on the fringes such as behavioural optometry and highlight aspects that appear to have an evidence base and those that do not.38 There is a need to carefully delineate how the evidence suggests some treatments can be used and (particularly given the manipulation of the evidence by the pharmaceutical and food industries39, 40) where there is no evidence for their use.41 There is a need to propose what is wrong with current systems (e.g., glaucoma referral in the UK), propose new ones (referral refinement) and assess their usefulness.42 There is a need to determine the aetiology of ocular diseases and abnormality, propose treatments and then assess those treatments. In this respect, the search for the causes of myopia and its possible treatment is a major research thrust at present.43 Clearly, we could go on and on and there are many reasons for the need for research, particularly given the current evidence-based requirements for healthcare provision throughout the world.44 It is also important to highlight the role played by the professional / trade or continuing education and training / continuing professional development journals such as Optician, Optometry Today, Optometry in Practice, Review of Optometry etc. Although the research journals provide the evidence base, the professional journals help to disseminate the information to optometrists in practice.44 Optometry is a young discipline and has its roots in optics rather than medicine.45 Education in the early 1900s was provided by private tutors and was very practical and aimed at passing professional exams. It was academised by Physics in the 1920s in the US and UK (for example, the department in Bradford was a part-time course in the 1920s within the Department of Physics of the Bradford Technical College promoted by a group of local opticians). Optometry became independent of physics within recognised higher education institutions from the 1930s to the 1940s in the US45 and the 1960s in the UK. Despite the late start, the quality of optometry research is high. Results from government research assessment exercises in the UK have indicated that optometry departments are regularly producing research of international excellence, particularly in recent years. The use of peer review to judge the quality of published work in these research exercises is hugely time consuming and expensive and a simpler way is to use citation metrics, such as the h-index.46, 47 An index of h indicates that an individual has h publications, which have been cited at least h times. This is a single-number metric to describe the impact of an academic, combining quality with quantity. H-indices of leading international optometry researchers again indicate that the level of research is very high and internationally excellent and on occasions world leading.46 For example, take the top ten optometry researchers from Australia and the US by h-index as listed by Efron and Brennan37 in 2011 (Westheimer, Hess, Holden, Adams, Mitchell from Australia; Freeman, Levi, Schor, Smith and Zadnik from the USA) and consider their top 10 papers. These include many highly influential papers (and doesn't even include the top two most cited papers, with over 1,000 citations each, from Ian Bailey). Some were published in huge impact multidisciplinary journals such as Nature, Science and the Journal of Physiology and the great majority were published in the world's leading ophthalmology and vision science journals such as Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science and Vision Research. These publications greatly helped to raise the profile and reputation of the profession among the wider clinical / scientific community. Efron, Brennan and Nichols's citation analysis of the contact lens research field47 paints a similar picture. It is a subdivision dominated by optometry researchers, providing seven of the top 10 researchers in the world by citation analysis.47 Optometry journals are also relatively young within the research area. Of 32 ‘ophthalmology’ journals listed as being cited between 1850-1949, 19 started publication before 1900, with the oldest one in 1838 (Annales d'Oculistique) while the British Journal of Physiological Optics was the youngest.48 The principal indicator of the quality of a journal, despite its many known limitations,49 is the journal impact factor. Impact factors are only provided to journals that are listed by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) and there are currently 58 journals listed in ISI's “ophthalmology” section. For many years, only two optometry journals were in the ISI list and had an impact factor: OPO and Optometry & Vision Science (compared to 40-55 typically listed in the ophthalmology section of ISI). Because Optometry is a young discipline and relatively small and because inter-disciplinary citation has been poor (ophthalmology papers rarely cited optometry papers on the same topic and vice-versa),50 the impact factors of these two journals have rarely been high. Indeed, Optometry & Vision Science dipped to an impact factor of 0.12 in 1994, before its resurgence (OPO was at 0.45 in the same year). Given the pressures on academics to publish in high impact factor journals (for promotion purposes, to win grants, to perform well in research assessment exercises etc.) as well as to seek the widest audience for their work, much of the ‘best’ work of optometry researchers has tended to be published in other ophthalmology and vision science journals. For example, in research related to ametropia, Optometry & Vision Science and OPO rank 5th and 11th respectively in terms of the number of papers published, but rank 17th and 24th in terms of the number of citations.51 The most citations (likely reflecting the higher quality of the work) have been provided by papers published in Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science and Ophthalmology. Similarly, of the top 100 papers from optometry researchers as described above, only one was published in an optometry journal. Even in the contact lens research field in which optometry leads,47 the majority of the most cited papers of the leading optometry researchers (Holden, Efron, Sweeney) were typically published in Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science or other ophthalmology/medical journals. Optometry research journals are slowly catching up with the breadth and high quality of optometry research. They are becoming more multidisciplinary (for example, OPO's latest feature issue on glaucoma was a joint ophthalmology / optometry collaboration, while the South African Optometrist journal has been revamped as a joint optometry / ophthalmology venture and renamed African Vision & Eye Health) and attract authors from disciplines including ophthalmology, orthoptics, physics and psychology. They are truly international (in terms of editors, authors and reviewers)52 and there are now five optometry journals on the ISI list and with an impact factor, with the recent additions of Clinical & Experimental Optometry, Optometry and Contact Lens & Anterior Eye (see Figure 1). Plus journal impact factors are rising, with Optometry & Vision Science breaking through the 2.00 impact factor ceiling in 2011 and OPO reaching its highest ever impact factor of 2.66 in 2013. It is hoped that this increase in impact, breadth and internationality will continue to attract increasingly ‘better’ papers from researchers of all disciplines, including optometry. Despite the American Optometric Association's decision to discontinue their journal Optometry, the future of optometry journals looks bright. New journals are appearing, such as the Spanish Journal of Optometry (2008) and the Scandinavian Journal of Optometry & Visual Science (2008), while the Canadian Journal of Optometry remains vibrant and the South African Optometrist has been revitalised and renamed African Vision & Eye Health in 2015. OPO will continue its links to optometry's physiological optics roots with another special issue linked with the European (and now International) Visual & Physiological Optics meeting; continue to support the core research areas that include primary care optometry, in-practice research, binocular vision, visual impairment and vision in everyday activities (the website provides links to feature issues and virtual issues on these topics) while increasingly reflecting optometry's role in the co-management of ocular pathology with ophthalmology (such as the tremendous recent feature issue on glaucoma). The last 90 years have seen a great change in optometry and its evidence base, but the years ahead look more exciting still.