Assisted reproductive technologies (ART) are considered as one of the primary management options to address severe male factor infertility. The purpose of this study was to identify the research trends in the field of male infertility and ART over the past 20 years (2000-2019) by analysing scientometric data (the number of publications per year, authors, author affiliations, journals, countries, type of documents, subject area and number of citations) retrieved using the Scopus database. We used VOS viewer software to generate a network map on international collaborations as well as a heat map of the top scientists in this field. Our results revealed a total of 2,148 publications during this period with Cleveland Clinic Foundation contributing the most (n = 69). The current scientometric analysis showed that the research trend on ART has been stable over the past two decades. Further in-depth analysis revealed that density gradient centrifugation (46%) and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (59.2%) are the most reported techniques for sperm separation and ART, respectively. Additionally, azoospermia was the most studied clinical scenario (60.6%), with majority of articles reporting pregnancy rate (47.25%) as the primary reproductive outcome for ART. This study provides insight into the current focus of research in the area of male infertility and ART as well as the areas that require further research in future.
Andrologia. 2020 Nov 24 [Epub ahead of print]
Ashok Agarwal, Manesh Kumar Panner Selvam, Saradha Baskaran, Renata Finelli, Kristian Leisegang, Cătălina Barbăroșie, Peter Natesan Pushparaj, Kathy Amy Robert, Rafael Ambar, Concetta Iovine, Damayanthi Durairajanayagam, Ralf Henkel
American Center for Reproductive Medicine, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH, USA., School of Natural Medicine, Faculty of Community and Health Sciences, University of the Western Cape, Bellville, South Africa., Department of Genetics, Faculty of Biology, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania., Center of Excellence in Genomic Medicine, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia., Department of Urology, Sexual and Reproductive Medicine, Faculdade de Medicina do ABC, Santo André, Brazil., Department of Environmental, Biological and Pharmaceutical Sciences and Technologies, University of Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli", Caserta, Italy., Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Sungai Buloh, Malaysia.