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Dolmans, M. M., von Wolff, M., Poirot, C., Diaz-Garcia, C., Cacciottola, L., Boissel, N., Liebenthron, J., Pellicer, A., Donnez, J., & Andersen, C. Y. (2021). Transplantation of cryopreserved ovarian tissue in a series of 285 women: A review of five leading European centers. Fertility and Sterility, 115(5), 1102–1115. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fertnstert.2021.03.008
Ellis, S. A., Wojnar, D. M., & Pettinato, M. (2015). Conception, pregnancy, and birth experiences of male and gender variant gestational parents: It’s how we could have a family. Journal of Midwifery & Women’s Health, 60(1), 62–69. https://doi.org/10.1111/jmwh.12213
Greenwald, P., Dubois, B., Lekovich, J., Pang, J. H., & Safer, J. (2022). Successful in vitro fertilization in a cisgender female carrier using oocytes retrieved from a transgender man maintained on testosterone. AACE Clinical Case Reports, 8(1), 19–21. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aace.2021.06.007
Israeli, T., Preisler, L., Kalma, Y., Samara, N., Levi, S., Groutz, A., Azem, F., & Amir, H. (2022). Similar fertilization rates and preimplantation embryo development among testosterone-treated transgender men and cisgender women. Reproductive Biomedicine Online, 45(3), 448–456. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rbmo.2022.04.016
Kerman, H. M., Pham, A., Crouch, J. M., Albertson, K., Salehi, P., Inwards-Breland, D. J., & Ahrens, K. R. (2021). Gender diverse youth on fertility and future family: A qualitative analysis. The Journal of Adolescent Health, 68(6), 1112–1120. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2021.01.002
Kolbuck, V. D., Sajwani, A., Kyweluk, M. A., Finlayson, C., Gordon, E. J., & Chen, D. (2020). Formative development of a fertility decision aid for transgender adolescents and young adults: A multidisciplinary Delphi consensus study. Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics, 37(11), 2805–2816. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10815-020-01947-8
Kumar, S., Mukherjee, S., O'Dwyer, C., Wassersug, R., Bertin, E., Mehra, N., Dahl, M., Genoway, K., & Kavanagh, A. G. (2022). Health outcomes associated with having an oophorectomy versus retaining one’s ovaries for transmasculine and gender diverse individuals treated with testosterone therapy: A systematic review. Sexual Medicine Reviews, 10(4), 636–647. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sxmr.2022.03.003
Lai, T. C., Davies, C., Robinson, K., Feldman, D., Elder, C. V., Cooper, C., Pang, K. C., & McDougall, R. (2021). Effective fertility counselling for transgender adolescents: A qualitative study of clinician attitudes and practices. BMJ Open, 11(5), e043237. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-043237
Leavy, M., Trottmann, M., Liedl, B., Reese, S., Stief, C., Freitag, B., Baugh, J., Spagnoli, G., & Kolle, S. (2017). Effects of elevated beta-estradiol levels on the functional morphology of the testis – New Insights. Scientific Reports, 7(1), 39931. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep39931
Lierman, S., Tolpe, A., De Croo, I., De Gheselle, S., Defreyne, J., Baetens, M., Dheedene, A., Colman, R., Menten, B., T'Sjoen, G., De Sutter, P., & Tilleman, K. (2021). Low feasibility of in vitro matured oocytes originating from cumulus complexes found during ovarian tissue preparation at the moment of gender confirmation surgery and during testosterone treatment for fertility preservation in transgender men. Fertility and Sterility, 116(4), 1068–1076. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fertnstert.2021.03.009
Meijerink, A. M., Ramos, L., Janssen, A. J. W. M., Maas-van Schaaijk, N. M., Meissner, A., Repping, S., Mochtar, M. H., Braat, D. D. M., & Fleischer, K. (2016). Behavioral, cognitive, and motor performance and physical development of five-year-old children who were born after intracytoplasmic sperm injection with the use of testicular sperm. Fertility and Sterility, 106(7), 1673–1682.e5. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fertnstert.2016.09.011
Moseson, H., Fix, L., Hastings, J., Stoeffler, A., Lunn, M. R., Flentje, A., Lubensky, M. E., Capriotti, M. R., Ragosta, S., Forsberg, H., & Obedin-Maliver, J. (2021). Pregnancy intentions and outcomes among transgender, nonbinary, and gender-expansive people assigned female or intersex at birth in the United States: Results from a national, quantitative survey. International Journal of Transgender Health, 22(1–2), 30–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/26895269.2020.1841058
Muthusamy, K., Smushkin, G., Lampropulos, J. F., Elamin, M. B., Abu Elnour, N. O., Elamin, K. B., Agrwal, N., Gallegos-Orozco, J. F., Lane, M. A., Erwin, P. J., Montori, V. M., & Murad, M. H. (2010). Prevention of virilization in pregnancies at risk of congenital adrenal hyperplasia with dexamethasone: A systematic review and metaanalysis. Clinical Endocrinology, 31(3), https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2265.2010.03826.x
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In the first issue of this anniversary volume, we published an historical overview of the first 24 years of Human Fertility (Pacey & Leese, Citation2022). In this issue (issue 2), with the help of Mark Hamilton (former Chair of the British Fertility Society (BFS), and current Chair of the BFS Board of Trustees) we turn our attention to the many Policy Statements, Guidelines, and Policy and Practice papers that have been published over the last 24 years by the various societies associated with the journal. This provides a rich insight into the history of reproductive medicine in the UK and allows us to pay tribute to the authors involved.
To collect these data, we first examined the titles, authors, and abstracts of all the papers published in the twenty-four years since Human Fertility was launched in 1998. We examined the way each of the papers was classified in the Table of Contents for each issue and, where possible, we also consulted the minutes of the BFS Executive Committee, the Editorial Board of the journal, and any other related correspondence. This led to the identification of 49 unique articles which we considered to have been published on behalf of one or more of the societies associated with the journal. These articles are summarised in Table 1.
Given that the BFS owns the copyright of the journal, it is not surprising that most of the papers had been published with the BFS as the major contributor. However, over the 24 years it is noticeable that article style and presentation has changed considerably. For example, in the early years (1998–2003) most of the papers were published directly by, or on behalf of, the BFS only. Some were published in the names of the primary authors (e.g. Balen and Hayden, Citation1998) whereas for others the author was the BFS itself (e.g. British Fertility Society, Citation1999). For some papers, it was clear from the title that the paper had the approval of the BFS (e.g. ‘BFS recommendations for good practice on the storage of ovarian and prepubertal testicular tissue’ by Nugent et al. (Citation2000)) and in others the title was less helpful (e.g. ‘Department of Health donor information consultation: providing information about gamete or embryo donors’ by Hunt and Fleming (Citation2002)). In examples such as this it was only after reading the article that it became clear that the publication was in fact official BFS policy. We must therefore issue a caveat that the list of papers shown in Table 1 is only as accurate as it was possible to be by reviewing titles, authors, and abstracts. We cannot exclude the possibility that we may have missed some relevant policy papers, though we feel this is unlikely.
After 2003, the authorship of society papers published in the journal shifted and they started to become visibly more collaborative. This began with the publication of ‘A strategy for fertility services for survivors of childhood cancer’ which was published by a Multidisciplinary Working Group convened by the British Fertility Society (Citation2003), although the working party was convened and chaired under the auspices of the BFS. This was followed by a consensus statement on multiple births (Hamilton, Citation2007) which involved 8 professional organisations and 11 patient organisations, although again these were not listed as formal authors in the journal. By 2008 the paper on elective single embryo transfer signalled a new style of collaboration as both the BFS and the Association of Clinical Embryologists (ACE) were listed as authors, alongside the individuals who pulled the paper together (Cutting et al., Citation2008). These arrangements, where applicable, have continued ever since, with further collaborative papers including the 2008 guidelines on the screening of sperm, egg and embryo donors being published on behalf of five organisations (Association of Biomedical Andrologists et al., 2008) and the 2019 paper on oocyte cryopreservation (Cutting et al., Citation2008) which was produced on behalf of ACE and the BFS.
Interestingly, although collaborative papers between the various societies associated with the journal have become more common, we have been unable to identify any examples over the past 24 years involving the Irish Association of Clinical Embryologists (ICE) or the Irish Fertility Society (IFS). There have also been none published by, or in collaboration with, the Association of Reproductive and Clinical Scientists (ARCS), although this is perhaps to be expected given it was only established in 2020 (Kasraie et al., Citation2020). It is noteworthy that the journal has also published guidelines on behalf of other organisations (e.g. German guidelines for psychosocial counselling in the area of gamete donation by Thorn and Wischmann (Citation2009)), even though there was no formal relationship between the BFS and the professional body which produced them (Infertility Counselling Network Germany).
The data shown in Table 1 also include information on the number of views, citations and the Altmetrics; a measure of the attention a paper receives on social media, on-line news media and other non-traditional bibliometrics, (correct as of 15th May 2022). We have included this to see if it was possible to identify any markers of success to determine a paper’s popularity or impact. Based wholly on ‘views’, the laboratory guidelines published in 2012 by ACE (Hughes, Citation2012) and the ABA (Tomlinson et al., Citation2012) have collectively been the most popular with 12,926 and 5,517 unique views respectively. Similarly, the Policy and Practice paper by Harbottle et al. (Citation2015), which describes UK best practice guidelines on elective single embryo transfer, has 7,266 views. In terms of citations, arguably the best marker of academic impact, it is the paper by Cutting et al. (Citation2008) on guidelines for elective single embryo transfer which, at 133 to date, has had the highest number. Because citations can only increase over time, there may be papers which have been published more recently which will ultimately achieve a greater impact. We have not made any attempt to adjust citation numbers for time since publication, and so this will be for future editors to determine. Finally, in terms of Altmetrics, these show that the paper by Yasmin et al. (Citation2018) on guidelines for female fertility preservation has, to date, yielded the highest altmetrics score at 47. However, we should be careful about over-interpreting this finding since Altmetrics only became established around 2010 and so papers published before this time are unlikely to receive an accurate score, if at all.
Of course, in this editorial, we do not claim that the 49 papers listed in Table 1 represent the totality of the societies’ work in setting policy, guidelines and policy and practice papers over the last 24 years. We are aware that some formal papers produced by various Executive Committees may have been published elsewhere. For example, in the early days of the journal, the BFS itself chose to publish some of its responses to Department of Health and/or Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority consultations (e.g. British Fertility Society, Citation1999; Policy and Practice Sub-Committee, & Executive Committee of British Fertility Society, Citation2001), whereas in recent years these have been published on-line on the society website. Given the pressure of space in Human Fertility this is now wholly appropriate, but an absence of journal placed publication could erroneously give scholars and historians the view that responses of societies and professional bodies to public consultations are now less valuable. This is not the case. Moreover, the change in fashion/approach by the journal to providing subheadings to categorise published contributions has made it harder for us to be confident that we have identified all relevant papers accurately. It is only recently that Human Fertility has consistently used the ‘policy and practice’ label while many papers which would be classified in this way now, were actually published as original articles, commentaries or even under a miscellaneous label.
