Based on the derivative concept in differential calculus, this paper proposes to use the citation derivative to identify the sleeping beauty literature, so as to enrich the method system for identifying the sleeping beauty literature. The 7553 journal articles published in the field of WOS "information science & library science" from 1998 to 2003 were selected as the research objects. The derivative function of Origin was used to calculate the citation derivatives and identify the sleeping beauty literature. Through comparison experiments, it is found that compared with the rate of citation, the citation derivative has a better recognition effect on the sleeping beauty literature with high influence, deep sleep and strong arousal intensity.