Publication productivity in IVF in Europe, 1990-2006

The present investigation was conducted to determine how individual European states rank with respect to quantitative productivity in research and publication on IVF. A search in MEDLINE was performed in August 2007 and the number of entries under the MeSH 'Reproductive Techniques, Assisted' was registered for each individual year 1990-2006 for 19 European countries. Countries with a total number of >60 publications between 1990 and 2006 were further evaluated. Publication productivity was assessed by three measures: absolute numbers of scientific articles published in MEDLINE, mean number of publications published per year normalized to population size, and mean number of publications published per year normalized to gross domestic product (GDP). The Benelux and Scandinavian countries lead the field, with a median of 26 publications per year per 10(7) population in Belgium, followed by Finland, The Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden with 12, 11, 10, and nine publications respectively. This compares with a median of three and two entries from Italy and Germany respectively. After normalizing the publication number to GDP, Belgium leads the field with a median of 10 publications per year per 10(11) euro GDP, followed by Greece, Sweden, UK and Finland with six, six, five and five publications respectively. The back markers are Switzerland and Germany (one publication each). In conclusion, drastic differences between individual European countries exist in terms of publication activity.