Ophthalmic & Physiological Optics ISSN 0275-5408
EDITORIAL
A historical review of optometry research and its
publication: are optometry journals finally catching up?
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 qual-
ity of optometry research.
A timeline for many of the important points in the his-
tory 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 Chris-
toph Scheiner1) and do not discuss any modern inven-
tions such as logMAR charts, automated perimeters,
optical coherence tomography, multifocal contact lenses
etc. This simply reflects our desire not to have an edito-
rial 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 pro-
vides enthralling glimpses of the history of the profession
in various countries including America, Australia, Hong
Kong, Malaysia and Canada.16–20
Time line history of optometry and optometry
research journals
Before 1000 – Hand-held reading stones (lapides ad legen-
dum) 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 ‘smarag-
© 2015 The Authors Ophthalmic & Physiological Optics © 2015 The College of Optometrists
Ophthalmic & Physiological Optics 35 (2015) 245–251
dus’ (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 specta-
cles 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 test-
245

Editorial
ing 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 tele-
scopium.
1690 – Irish natural philosopher, William Molyneaux,
published his Dioptica Nova in 1690, in which Chapter III
discusses rules for choosing glasses and correction of myo-
pia.4
1704 – First edition published of Isaac Newton’s Opticks,
recounting experiments conducted in the 1660s including
the famous prism experiment. This book arguably repre-
sents 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 con-
taining 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 accom-
modation, peripheral imagery, depth-of-focus, chromatic
aberration, change in spherical aberration with accommo-
dation 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
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D B Elliott and N Handley
1838 – Sir Charles Wheatstone invented a stereoscope.
1847 – The English polymath Charles Babbage devised
what might well lay claim to have been the first ophthalmo-
scope, but there is no evidence that he manufactured a
working instrument.33 The Czech physiologist Jan Evangel-
ista Purkinje certainly lay the theoretical groundwork for
ophthalmoscopy, but similarly didn’t produce an instru-
ment.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 Fronm€ uller
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 Accommoda-
tion 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 opto-
types for measuring visual acuity, subsequently resulting in
the first test chart.1
1865 – J. W. Verschoor’s doctoral thesis, in Dutch, Op-
tometers en Optometrie seemingly coins the word ‘optome-
try’.
1872 – Ferdinand Monoyer proposed the term ‘dioptre’
as the unit of lens power.2
1880 – H. Parent, building on the work of French oph-
thalmologist Ferdinand Cuignet and M. Mengin (his over-
looked 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 Accom-
modation 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’ through-
out.
1888 – Adolf Eugen Fick (Zurich, Switzerland; a good
friend of Helmholtz) and Eugene Kalt (Paris, France) inde-
pendently 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 text-
book 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 pharma-
cies and railway stations.2
Ophthalmic & Physiological Optics 35 (2015) 245–251

D B Elliott and N Handley
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 Optome-
try. A similar US optometry professional or ‘trade’ periodi-
cal, Practical Optician, was first published in 1910 but is
now defunct. It was published under the name Practical
Optometrist and Optician, Optometric Weekly, and Opto-
metric 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 ophthalmol-
ogist complained that this should be regarded as the prac-
tice 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 Austra-
lia.
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 pub-
lished in the USA.
1924 – The first issue of the Northwest Journal of Optom-
etry 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 offi-
cial 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 Ameri-
can Journal of Optometry & Physiological Optics.
1925 – British Journal of Physiological Optics first pub-
lished 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’
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Editorial
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 pub-
lished 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 Pra-
gue.
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 jour-
nal 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 Optome-
try). It is now the official journal of Optometry Australia,
the New Zealand Association of Optometrists, the Hong
Kong Society of Professional Optometrists and the Singa-
pore Optometric Association.
1989 – Optometry & Vision Science first published by the
American Academy of Optometry (preceded by the Ameri-
can 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 optome-
try / ophthalmology journal.
The role of research and research journals
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 par-
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Editorial
amount. 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 evi-
dence suggests some treatments can be used and (particu-
larly 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 aetiol-
ogy 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 train-
ing / 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 dissemi-
nate the information to optometrists in practice.44
What is the level of quality of optometry research?
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 recogni-
sed 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 exer-
cises 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
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D B Elliott and N Handley
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 (Westhei-
mer, Hess, Holden, Adams, Mitchell from Australia; Free-
man, 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 multidisci-
plinary 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 domi-
nated by optometry researchers, providing seven of the top
10 researchers in the world by citation analysis.47
What about the ‘quality’ of optometry journals?
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’Oculis-
tique) 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 Optome-
try & 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-dis-
ciplinary 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 aca-
demics to publish in high impact factor journals (for pro-
motion purposes, to win grants, to perform well in research
assessment exercises etc.) as well as to seek the widest audi-
ence for their work, much of the ‘best’ work of optometry
Ophthalmic & Physiological Optics 35 (2015) 245–251

D B Elliott and N Handley
3 Health) and attract authors from disciplines including oph-
OPO
OVS
2.5 CLAE
Median ophthalmology
CXO
Journal impact factor
2 Opt
1.5
1
0.5
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Year
Figure 1. The ISI impact factors for optometry journals (2007-2013)
compared against the median values for the ‘ophthalmology’ subsec-
tion. OPO, Ophthalmic & Physiological Optics; OVS, Optometry & Vision
Science; CLAE, Contact Lens & Anterior Eye; CXO, Clinical & Experimen-
tal Optometry; Opt, Optometry.
researchers has tended to be published in other ophthal-
mology 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 Ophthalmol-
ogy & 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 typi-
cally published in Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Sci-
ence or other ophthalmology/medical journals.
Are the journals catching up?
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 Optome-
trist journal has been revamped as a joint optometry / oph-
thalmology venture and renamed African Vision & Eye
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Editorial
thalmology, orthoptics, physics and psychology. They are
truly international (in terms of editors, authors and review-
ers)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 fac-
tors 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 interna-
tionality will continue to attract increasingly ‘better’ papers
from researchers of all disciplines, including optometry.
Looking to the future
Despite the American Optometric Association’s decision to
discontinue their journal Optometry, the future of optome-
2013
try journals looks bright. New journals are appearing, such
as the Spanish Journal of Optometry (2008) and the Scandi-
navian 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 Interna-
tional) 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 excit-
ing still.
David B. Elliott, Editor-in-Chief, Ophthalmic &
Physiological Optics and Professor of Clinical Vision
Science, University of Bradford, UK
E-mail address: d.elliott1@bradford.ac.uk
Neil Handley, Curator, British Optical Association
Museum, The College of Optometrists, London, UK
E-mail address: neil.handley@college-optometrists.org
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Editorial
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