Celebrating outstanding research articles published in Clinical and Experimental Optometry

The winner of the J Lloyd Hewett Outstanding Paper Award (referred to henceforth as the ‘Hewett Award’) for 2021 is a paper by Benjamin Host, Angus Turner and Josephine Muir, from the Centre for Ophthalmology and Visual Science at the University of Western Australia, entitled ‘Real-time teleophthalmology video consultation: an analysis of patient satisfaction in rural Western Australia’.¹ This 2018 paper was prescient by way of demonstrating the viability and extent of patient acceptance of teleophthalmology (and perhaps by inference, teleoptometry), two years before the COVID-19 pandemic transformed a novel, alternative option of clinical consultation into an absolute requirement for many patients.

But let’s take a step back. Many readers may be unfamiliar with the Hewett Award and unaware of why it is given. This award actually goes back over 40 years, and following a stuttering initial phase, has developed into an important ‘jewel in the crown’ of this journal. Here is the story of the establishment of the Hewett Award and how it has evolved.

The Hewett award: 1980–2008

The Hewett Award was established by Clinical and Experimental Optometry in May 1980 as a tribute to Sydney optometrist J Lloyd Hewett OAM (1923–1996),² who was editor of the journal from 1962 to 1979, and a leading practitioner and clinical teacher, especially in the field of contact lenses.

The award was originally intended to foster and encourage the work of early career researchers or clinicians not yet well established as authors, and took the form of a certificate and a cash prize of $100 AUD. The journal editor selected the award winner. The inaugural Hewett Award was made in 1980 to Anne Gibson, an optometrist in practice in Melbourne, Australia, and the award was made on only three more occasions over the next 29 years. Interestingly, all four of these ‘early’ awards went to Australian optometrists who wrote single-author papers.

Reinvigorating the Hewett award

At an Editorial Board meeting of Clinical and Experimental Optometry in 2008, I made a plea to reinvigorate the Hewett Award. I had noticed at the time that the award had not been made for over a decade, and it was not clear to me why it had become dormant. I put it to the Board that the Hewett Award ‘… ought to be an annual award made by the journal in a clear and transparent way’ and that doing this would ‘… serve to more purposefully celebrate Lloyd’s great editorial achievements, and would also serve to celebrate … optometric scientific journalism and create further interest in the journal’ [Editorial Board Minutes, Item 5, Attachment 2, page 13, 15 July 2008].

The Editorial Board of the journal immediately agreed with my proposal to re-activate the award. It was decided that the award should be made annually by the Editorial Board as of the following year (2009), and would take the form of a framed certificate – signed by the Editor and Chairman of the Editorial Board – to be presented to each of the authors of the award-winning paper.

The Hewett award: 2009–present

Since 2009, the J Lloyd Hewett Award has been made every year. The award is given to the authors of what is judged collectively by the Editor and Associate Editors to be the most meritorious paper published in the journal in the three years prior to the year of the award. As of 2011, it was decided that the award should only apply to research papers. As well, the award would no longer be restricted to ‘early career researchers or clinicians not yet well established as authors’, because of the way academic publishing has evolved since the award was established: present-generation papers are typically multi-authored, comprising a range of contributors from junior post-doctoral fellows to senior leaders of a laboratory. Very few single-author papers are now published by early career researchers or clinicians.

The process begins by identifying and listing the five most highly cited research papers published in Clinical and Experimental Optometry in the three years preceding the year of the award. This list, together with the five papers, are circulated to the Editor, Deputy Editor and Associate Editors, who are asked to independently assign a ‘global score’ out of 10 for each paper, based on the following criteria, which were stipulated when the award was established in 1980: importance of the question addressed and significance of the conclusions of the paper, but not to the exclusion of papers that show insight or cleverness in dealing with ‘off-beat’ subjects; intellectual and technical difficulty and the elegance of the investigation or analysis; quality of the writing; and intellectual quality of the arguments.

An Awards Committee convened by Optometry Australia decides the winning paper, taking into account the collated scoring and any other factors though to be relevant. The Awards Committee is comprised of the journal Editor and Deputy Editor, a representative of Optometry Australia and a clinical optometrist appointed by Optometry Australia. If a member of the Awards Committee is a co-author of one of the five papers being considered, that person stands aside and takes no part in the deliberations.

Award-winning papers

All 17 Hewett Award-winning papers to date are presented in Table 1. The designated countries of the first authors are as follows: Australia (12), Hong Kong (2), United States (2), and New Zealand (1). The number of authors of the winning papers ranges from one (1980, 1981, 1994 and 1997) to 13 (2019). The topics of the winning papers can be broadly categorised as follows: anterior eye disorders and therapeutics (7); visual function (4); optics of the eye (2); biomechanics of accommodation (1); glaucoma (1); ophthalmic markers of diabetic neuropathy (1); and teleophthalmology (1).

Table 1. Recipients of the J Lloyd Hewett outstanding paper award (1980–2021)

Year	Authors	Title	Country^a	Reference
1980	Anne Gibson	The incidence, heredity and aetiology of open angle glaucoma	AU	3
1981	L Michael Zand	The effect of non-therapeutic ophthalmic preparations on the cornea and tear film	AU	4
1994	Konrad Pesudovs	Terrien’s marginal degeneration: case reports and literature review	AU	5
1997	Charlotte A Hazel	The efficacy of sports vision practice and its role in clinical optometry	AU	6
2009	Klaus Ehrmann, Arthur Ho & Jean-Marie Parel	Biomechanical analysis of the accommodative apparatus in primates	AU	7
2010	Jayoung Nam, Larry N Thibos & Robert Iskander	Describing ocular aberrations with wavefront vergence maps	US	8
2011	Catherine Suttle, Jack Alexander, Miriam Liu, Stephanie Ng, Jacqueline Poon & Thu Tran	Sensory ocular dominance based on resolution acuity, contrast sensitivity and alignment sensitivity	AU	9
2012	William CK Kwan, Shea Ping Yip & Maurice KH Yap	Monochromatic aberrations of the human eye and myopia	HK	10
2013	Katie Edwards, Nicola Pritchard, Dimitrios Vagenas, Anthony Russell, Rayaz A Malik & Nathan Efron	Utility of corneal confocal microscopy for assessing mild diabetic neuropathy: baseline findings of the LANDMark study	AU	11
2014	Jennifer C Fan Gaskin, William R Good, Charlotte A Jordan, Dipika V Patel & Charles NJ McGhee	The Auckland keratoconus study: Identifying predictors of acute corneal hydrops in keratoconus	NZ	12
2015	Camus KM Choy, Pauline Cho & Maureen V Boost	Cytotoxicity and effects on metabolism of contact lens care solutions on human corneal epithelium cells	HK	13
2016	Sivaraman A Balasubramanian, David C Pye & Mark DP Willcox	Effects of eye rubbing on the levels of protease, protease activity and cytokines in tears: relevance in keratoconus	AU	14
2017	Sumithira Narayanasamy, Stephen J Vincent, Geoff P Sampson & Joanne M Wood	Visual demands in modern Australian primary school classrooms	AU	15
2018	Yahya Alzahrani, Luisa H Colorado, Nicola Pritchard & Nathan Efron	Longitudinal changes in Langerhans cell density of the cornea and conjunctiva in contact lens-induced dry eye	AU	16
2019	Jacque L Duncan, Thomas P Richards, Aries Arditi, Lyndon da Cruz, Gislin Dagnelie, Jessy D Dorn, Allen C Ho, Lisa C Olmos de Koo, Pierre-Olivier Barale, Paulo E Stanga, Gabriele Thumann, Yizhong Wang & Robert J Greenberg	Improvements in vision-related quality of life in blind patients implanted with the Argus II Epiretinal Prosthesis	US	17
2020	Julie M Albietz & Katrina L Schmid	Intense pulsed light treatment and meibomian gland expression for moderate to advanced meibomian gland dysfunction	AU	18
2021	Benjamin KJ Host, Angus W Turner & Josephine Muir	Real-time teleophthalmology video consultation: an analysis of patient satisfaction in rural Western Australia	AU	1

^aCountry of corresponding author: AU, Australia; US, United States; HK, Hong Kong; NZ, New Zealand.

Hewett award virtual issue

A virtual issue of Clinical and Experimental Optometry has been assembled to serve as an ongoing archive of Hewett Award-winning papers. This virtual issue therefore represents an important collection of some of the most important works published in the journal since the award was established in 1980. The virtual issue is updated each year to include the most recent award-winning paper, and can be accessed via the journal website.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.