Baskaran Saradha, Agarwal Ashok, Leisegang Kristian, Pushparaj Peter Natesan, Panner Selvam Manesh Kumar, Henkel Ralf
American Center for Reproductive Medicine, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH, USA.
School of Natural Medicine, University of the Western Cape, Bellville, South Africa.
World J Mens Health. 2021 Apr;39(2):302-314. doi: 10.5534/wjmh.180114. Epub 2019 Feb 20.
Male infertility is emerging as a major, escalating global health problem that imposes the need to investigate research trends in male infertility. The purpose of this study is to analyze male infertility research trends in the past 20 years using the bibliometric database from Scopus.
In order to perform an in-depth bibliometric analysis, we propose a 'Funnel Model', which includes several layers representing different sub-areas of male infertility research. Adopting this Funnel Model, using Scopus, we retrieved relevant bibliometric data (articles per year, authors, affiliations, journals, and countries) for various areas of male infertility research and performed descriptive statistics.
The bibliometric analysis showed an exponential increase in male infertility research in the last 20 years. USA dominated in research output, with Agarwal, A. as the most prolific researcher. Testicular cancer, obesity and metabolic syndrome, and azoospermia were found to dominate male infertility research, whereas erectile dysfunction and unexplained male infertility had lesser attention. Interestingly, prognostic/diagnostic and mechanistic studies have significantly increased in parallel over the last 20 years. Furthermore, our bibliometric analysis revealed fewer publications in proteomics, transcriptomics and metabolomics when compared to genomics. Also, an increasing trend in publication was seen in assisted reproductive technology (ART) research.
An integrated and steep escalation in the field of omics and ART research appears to be a prerequisite for further development of future diagnostic and therapeutic strategies for male infertility.
男性不育正成为一个日益严重的全球性重大健康问题，这使得有必要对男性不育的研究趋势进行调查。本研究的目的是利用Scopus文献计量数据库分析过去20年男性不育的研究趋势。
为了进行深入的文献计量分析，我们提出了一个“漏斗模型”，该模型包括代表男性不育研究不同子领域的几个层次。采用这个漏斗模型，我们使用Scopus检索了男性不育研究各个领域的相关文献计量数据（每年的文章数量、作者、机构、期刊和国家），并进行了描述性统计。
文献计量分析显示，过去20年男性不育研究呈指数增长。美国在研究产出方面占主导地位，阿加瓦尔（A. Agarwal）是最多产的研究人员。睾丸癌、肥胖与代谢综合征以及无精子症在男性不育研究中占主导地位，而勃起功能障碍和不明原因的男性不育受到的关注较少。有趣的是，在过去20年中，预后/诊断和机制研究显著并行增加。此外，我们的文献计量分析显示，与基因组学相比，蛋白质组学、转录组学和代谢组学的出版物较少。而且，辅助生殖技术（ART）研究的出版物呈增加趋势。
组学和ART研究领域的综合且急剧升级似乎是未来男性不育诊断和治疗策略进一步发展的先决条件。
