Mapping research in assisted reproduction worldwide

Research question: What are the current research trends in human assisted reproduction around the world? Design: An analysis of 26,000+ scientific publications (articles, letters and reviews) produced worldwide between 2005 and 2016. The corpus of publications indexed in PubMed was obtained by combining the Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) terms: 'Reproductive techniques, 'Reproductive medicine, 'Reproductive health, 'Fertility, 'Infertility' and 'Germ cells. An analysis was then carried out using text mining algorithms to obtain the main topics of interest. Results: A total of 44 main topics were identified, which were then further grouped into 11 categories: 'Laboratory techniques, 'Male factor, 'Quality of ART, ethics and law, 'Female factor, 'Public health and infectious diseases, 'Basic research and genetics, 'Pregnancy complications and risks, 'General - infertility &ART, 'Psychosocial aspects, 'Cancer' and 'Research methodology'. The USA was the leading country in terms of number of publications, followed by the UK, China and France. Research content in high-income countries is fairly homogeneous across categories and it is dominated by 'Laboratory techniques' in Western-Southern Europe, and by 'Quality of ART, ethics and law' in North America, Australia and New Zealand. 'Laboratory techniques' is also the most abundant category on a yearly basis. Conclusions: This study identifies the current hot topics on human assisted reproduction worldwide and their temporal trends for 2005-2016. This provides an innovative picture of the current research that could help explore the areas where further research is needed.