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Review
. 2022 Jul 12:13:889845.
doi: 10.3389/fendo.2022.889845. eCollection 2022.

Global Research Trends on Infertility and Psychology From the Past Two Decades: A Bibliometric and Visualized Study

Hongkun Zhu  1 , Lingli Shi  2 , Rong Wang  3 , Lijuan Cui  4 , Jiahui Wang  2 , Mengyu Tang  2 , Haiqing Qian  2 , Minggang Wei  5 , Lihong Wang  2 , Huifang Zhou  6 , Wenting Xu  1   2
Affiliations
Review

Global Research Trends on Infertility and Psychology From the Past Two Decades: A Bibliometric and Visualized Study

Hongkun Zhu et al. Front Endocrinol (Lausanne). .

Abstract

Objectives: The aim of this study was to evaluate the global scientific output of research on infertility and psychology; explore the current status and trends in this field through the cooperation of authors, countries, and institutions; shed light on the direction of clinical infertility research in the future, and provide inspiration for targeted diagnosis and treatment of infertility.

Methods: Research publications on infertility and psychology from the past two decades were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC). Bibliometric analyses were performed using VOSviewer software and the bibliometrix R package. Network maps were generated to evaluate the collaborations between different authors, countries, institutions, and keywords.

Results: A total of 151 articles related to the study of infertility and psychology were identified. We observed a gradual increase in the number of publications from 2001 to 2021, and the trend has been relatively stable in the past eight years. Human Reproduction (England), as the leading journal publishing the most papers (29 articles), was cited in the most journals (1208 times). Boivin J was the most prolific author (16 articles), with the largest number of citations (890 times) and the highest h-index (14) during the past decades. Boivin J was also the leader with the highest publication frequency and more active cooperation with other top authors. The United Kingdom (34 papers) and Cardiff University (25 articles) contributed the most publications and were the leading contributors in this field. Active cooperation between countries and between institutions was observed, and analyses of articles and references were also shown. The main hot topics included matters related to women (39 times), in-vitro salt (31 times), infertility (30 times), couples (25 times), and impact (24 times).

Conclusion: Our study results provide a comprehensive overview of the development of scientific literature, allowing relevant authors and research teams to recognize the current research status in this field. At the same time, infertility and psychology may soon become hotspots and should be closely monitored.

Keywords: VOSviewer; bibliometric analysis; hot spots; infertility and psychology; research trends; web of science.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flow diagram of the included papers created with BioRender.com.
Figure 2
Figure 2
(A) Statistical chart of literature types (B) Global trend of annual publications related to infertility and psychology research from 2001 to 2021.
Figure 3
Figure 3
(A) Growth trends in the publication quantity of the top 7 journals in infertility and psychology research from 2001 to 2021 (B–D) Total number of publications, sum of total citations, and H-index of top 15 journals in this field. (E) Citation map of journals on infertility and psychology research generated by the VOS viewer. Each node represents a journal, and node size indicates the number of publications. The connection between the nodes represents a citation relationship, and the thickness of the lines indicates citation strength.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Analysis of authors. (A) Number of publications from different authors(Top15). (B, C) Total citations and local citations in the research filed from different authors(Top15). (D) H-index of publications from different authors(Top15). (E) Network map of co-authorship between authors with more than one publications.
Figure 5
Figure 5
(A) The top 20 productive institution on the research of infertility and psychology. (B) The institutions collaboration network of research on infertility and psychology; the font size of each institution’s name represents the number of articles in the institutions. The thickness of the curved connecting line represents the collaborative intensity between institutions.
Figure 6
Figure 6
(A) World map displaying the global distribution of infertility and psychology research. Different corresponding authors’countries were denoted with different colors based on the number of articles published. (B, C) Total citations and annual citations of related articles from top 20 countries. (D) Distribution and international cooperation of countries that are involved in infertility and psychology research. The thickness of the line reflects the frequency of the cooperation. The thicker the line, the stronger the cooperation. (E) Network map of co-authorship between countries with more than one publications generated by the VOS viewer.Each node represents a country, and node size indicates the number of publications. The connection between the nodes represents a citation relationship, and the thickness of the lines indicates citation strength (weights on the TLS).
Figure 7
Figure 7
(A, B) Top 20 local and global citation analysis of documents on infertility and psychology research. (C) Networkmap of co-citation analysis of references with more than five citations.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Co-occurrence analysis of keywords. (A) Mapping of keywords of studies. (B) VOSviewer overlay visualization of co-occurring author keywords by time(blue:earlier, yellow: later). (C) Distribution of keywords according to the mean frequency of appearance. The deeper the color of a node, the more frequently keywords appear.
Figure 9
Figure 9
(A, B) Keywords cloud map and tree map related to infertility and psychology research. (C) Growth trends of the top 10 keywords in infertility and psychology research from 2001 to 2021. (D) Thematic Map of keywords of studies.First quadrant (upper right corner): motor themes; second quadrant (upper left corner): highly developed and isolated themes; third quadrant (lower left corner): emerging or declining themes; fourth quadrant (lower right corner): basic and transversal themes.
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