Abstract
Purpose: Our success as a field and as individuals in reproductive science and medicine relies on our ability to produce high quality work that has broad visibility and impact. A common metric for assessing such success is the quantity of publications that are published in journals with high impact factors. It is unclear, however, how frequently work related to reproductive science and medicine actually appears in what are considered the highest impact journals. Methods: To address this gap in knowledge, we first determined how the field of reproductive biology in general compared to other research areas in terms of composite journal impact factor. Second, using a targeted search approach in the PubMed database, we examined the relationship between a journal's impact factor and the number of reproductive research articles published per journal issue. Results: We found that compared to other major scientific disciplines, our field lacks journals with impact factors above 4. In addition, primary original research articles on reproduction - irrespective of male or female search terms - do not appear often in high impact journals. Instead, there is an increased percentage of secondary reproductive literature in high impact journals compared to topic-specific journals of lower impact. Conclusions: There are likely several explanations for why reproductive science and medicine has low visibility, including the field's small relative size, its lack of a specific disease and associated strong advocacy, and its surrounding social, ethical, and political unease. Nevertheless, there are concrete actions we can take to minimize the role of impact factor in our evaluation while simultaneously increasing influence through global awareness of the importance and need for reproductive research.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 511-520 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics |
| Volume | 31 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| DOIs |
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| State | Published - May 2014 |
Funding
Although journal impact factor may eventually become obsolete in ranking our productivity as individuals and as a field, there are several collective actions we can take to improve the image and position of reproductive research. To protect the shrinking pipeline of academic researchers in obstetrics and gynecology, letters could be written to tenure committees framing the field’s status in relation to other disciplines to ensure that our future generation of scientists is evaluated on a level playing field. As basic scientists and clinicians, we must also develop and implement strategies to better communicate with the press, policy makers, political leaders, and the general public about the value and need for reproductive research. This is necessary so that we are poised to act on the implications of our research. There are several programs already in place to facilitate such training that would increase the impact of reproductive science independently of publishing our work in high impact journals (Fig. 5). For example, the “Reach the Decision Makers Fellowship (REACH)” supported by the Kresge Foundation and run by the University of California San Francisco’s Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment is a year-long program in which scientists, health care providers, and community leaders learn how to convey the importance of reproductive environmental health to support science-based policy change at the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US-EPA). In only 3 years, REACH has trained 75 individuals nationwide and has had an impact on topics ranging from US-EPA risk assessment processes to superfund site clean up. Acknowledgments We thank Dr. Sarah Rodriguez, Dr. Lisa Campo-Englestein, and Rosemary Hines for insightful discussions. We also acknowledge Dr. Kate Timmerman, Dr. Tracey Woodruff, Marj Plumb, Jason Harless, Dr. Mario Ascoli, and Megan Castle for providing updated statistics for their respective programs. This work was supported by Award Number U54HD076188 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official view of the National Institutes of Health.
Keywords
- Female
- Gamete
- Gonad
- Impact factor
- Male
- Mammalian
- Ovary
- Reproduction
- Testis
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Reproductive Medicine
- Genetics
- Obstetrics and Gynecology
- Developmental Biology
- Genetics(clinical)