Eye work that gets a lot of credit (5)
I believe the answer is:
optic
'eye' is the definition.
('optic' can be a synonym of 'eye')
'work that gets a lot of credit' is the wordplay.
'work' becomes 'op' (abbreviation for opus).
'that gets' says to put letters next to each other.
'a lot of' means to remove the last letter (most of the word but not all of it).
'credit' becomes 'tick' (I've seen this before).
'tick' with its last letter removed is 'tic'.
'op'+'tic'='OPTIC'
(Other definitions for optic that I've seen before include "Relating to vision" , "Publican's measuring device" , "Topic (anag.)" , "Visual" , "connected to the eye" .)