The first 25 years of Human Fertility

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Human Fertility. In this Editorial, the founding Editor-in-Chief Henry Leese (Hull-York Medical School) and the current Editor-in-Chief Allan Pacey (University of Sheffield) give a brief overview of the journal during this period.

The early days of the BFS have been well documented (Reiss, 1997) and from its first committee meetings in 1973, it largely served the interests of clinicians working in reproductive medicine. However, by the mid-1990s the society had grown considerably, and the diversity of its membership had increased to include nurses, counsellors, clinical embryologists, and non-clinical scientists working in fertility clinics and in UK Universities. It had also reached a membership of about 800, which some on the BFS Executive Committee at the time (Allan Templeton and Henry Leese) felt justified the setting up of a BFS journal. While the Executive Committee were sympathetic to this, they were also wary about going it alone and so, after informal discussions with Robert Edwards then Editor-in-Chief of Human Reproduction, at the 10th Annual Meeting of ESHRE in Brussels in 1994, a new Journal of the British Fertility Society (JBFS) was launched as a Supplement to Human Reproduction. It was edited for the BFS by Allan Templeton and Henry Leese, with excellent editorial support from Ellen Mooney, Henry’s Secretary at York University. However, overall editorial control resided with Bob Edwards. Moreover, JBFS had to be distributed, at considerable cost, to all subscribers of the parent journal (Human Reproduction). These arrangements proved unsatisfactory and after 4 issues of JBFS, the BFS decided to sever the link with Human Reproduction and set up its own, autonomous journal (Leese, 1998).

The name, Human Fertility was devised by Henry Leese, circulated informally, and agreed at the BFS annual meeting in Cardiff, in 1997. The contract to produce Human Fertility was awarded, competitively, to the Journals of Reproduction and Fertility (JRF) Ltd. The first issue of the new journal appeared in 1998 and had a splendid picture of a rainbow over the University of Sheffield on the cover, in recognition of the BFS annual meeting held there in the same year (Figure 1). The first Editorial Board comprised Adam Balen, Chris Barratt, Daniel Brison, John Collins, Ian Cooke, Jane Denton, Gillian Lockwood and Jim Monach with Henry Leese as Editor-in-Chief. Editorial Board meetings were convivial affairs, held in the King’s Manor, a fine, medieval building in the centre of York. Any loose ends were tidied up in ‘Little Bettys’ a quaint teashop with delectable delicacies to which the members adjourned after their meeting.

Figure 1. The front cover of Volume 1, Issue 1 of Human Fertility featuring the “Sheffield Rainbow”.

Following the first issue (Volume 1) of Human Fertility in 1998, there were two issues in Volume 2 (1999), four in Volume 4 (2000) and thereafter (Leese, 1998). By then, the Journal was being produced on behalf of three more UK Societies involved in assisted reproduction: (i) The Association of Clinical Embryologists (Leese, 2000); (ii) The British Infertility Counselling Association; and (iii) the Royal College of Nursing Fertility Nurses Group. These were subsequently joined in 2003 by (iv) the British Andrology Society (Leese, 2003a); and in 2012 by (v) the Association of Biomedical Andrologists; (vi) the Association of Irish Clinical Embryologists; and (vii) the Irish Fertility Society (Leese, 2012a), well-illustrating the defining feature of Human Fertility, which, since its inception has been to adopt a multidisciplinary approach to issues of fertility and infertility. Such an approach reflects practice in the treatment of the sub-fertile as well as the considerable overlap between sub-specialties in this area of healthcare.

Sadly, after 5 years of first-rate support, JRF Ltd ceased trading and the BFS had to seek a publisher elsewhere. Happily, after a tendering exercise, the BFS Executive decided to accept a proposal to publish the journal from Taylor and Francis (Leese, 2003b) which proved to be an excellent choice such that the journal has remained with them ever since. Two developments accompanied this change; first, the journal became available on-line (Remmington, 2004) and second, Dr Sandra Downing joined us as Editorial Assistant. Sandra arrived with a fine record as a reproductive scientist working on uterus and oviduct including 8 years in Henry’s laboratory and with 40 publications. She also brought extensive publishing experience (www.drdowningmusic.com) and her contribution to the journal has been outstanding. The journal now receives more than 300 manuscripts a year—almost one a day—all of which Sandra must process, involving correspondence with authors, the Editor in Chief, Editorial Board members and referees. This she does to the highest professional standards and never complains.

In 2014 Henry decided to step down from the role of Editor-in-Chief and so the BFS embarked on a recruitment drive to find a replacement. Henry published his last Editorial as Editor in Chief in March 2015 (Leese, 2015) and handed over the reins to Allan Pacey who had already served on the Editorial Board for several years and was by this time the Science Sub-Editor. After Henry’s last Editorial Board Meeting (held in London) the Editorial Board held a lovely meal in his honour in St. John’s Wood close to the former site of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists at which he was presented with a bound volume of key papers and editorials from the journal, along with personal messages and tributes from past and present members of the Editorial Board (Pacey, 2015a).

Allan has continued over the last 7 years as Editor in Chief. During that time the journal was wholly on-line with no printed issues being produced. It has been free to BFS members as well as members of ACE (now ARCS—see Kasraie et al., 2020) and some of the other associated societies. In March 2016 the journal underwent a change in typesetting-style bringing a fresh and modern look to the articles, but also allowing the space to be used more efficiently since by now the journal was receiving more manuscript submissions than it had space to publish (Pacey, 2015b). This pressure on journal space continued to increase and so the decision was taken from volume 24 to increase the number of issues from four to five as well as increasing the page count (Pacey, 2021a). In this Editorial we are also pleased to announce that the page length of volume 25 will increase yet further, with a total of 200 pages per issue. Alongside this steady increase in size has been a sustained rise in the journal impact factor which was first awarded in 2012 (Leese, 2012b) and by 2020 had increased to 2.767 (Pacey, 2021b). According to Clarivate, Human Fertility is now ranked at 43rd out of 83 other journals in Obstetrics and Gynaecology and 19th out of 30 other journals in Reproductive Biology. From such humble beginnings we would argue that this is quite impressive.

Over the course of 24 years, the journal has published about 800 original research articles and 80 review articles, as well as over 30 commentary articles, more than 30 Policy and Practice Guidelines, 11 meeting/workshop reports and over 60 book reviews. At the time of writing this Editorial, the most highly cited papers include an original article by Gual-Frau et al. (2015) on the use of oral antioxidant treatment improving the integrity of human sperm DNA in grade I varicocele patients, and a review article by Karwacka et al. (2019) on the exposure of endocrine disrupting chemicals and their effect on the reproductive potential of women. Conversely, the most read articles include Guidelines on Good Practice in Clinical Embryology Laboratories (Hughes & Association of Clinical Embryologists, 2012) and a more recent paper proposing an alternative hypothesis to the hypothesised decline in sperm counts across the world (Boulicault et al., 2021). These four papers alone reflect the diversity of topics covered in the journal and its multidisciplinary scope.

Other important contributions to the journal include the many Policy and Practice Guidelines published on behalf of the BFS and/or the other societies associated with the journal. Highlights include the medical and laboratory screening guidelines for sperm, egg and embryo donors first published in 2008 (Association of Biomedical Andrologists, Association of Clinical Embryologists, British Andrology Society, British Fertility Society & Royal College of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists, 2008) and updated in 2019 (Clarke et al., 2021). Others include those on elective single embryo transfer (Cutting et al., 2008; Harbottle et al., 2015), fertility preservation for medical reasons in girls and women (Yasmin et al., 2018), screening for Chlamydia trachomatis in the reproductive setting (Akande et al., 2010), and guidelines for good practice in the Andrology laboratory (Tomlinson et al., 2012). In fact, a scan of the content of the first 24 volumes gives a unique overview of UK reproductive medicine history.

In addition to current and historic policy and practice documents the first 24 volumes of Human Fertility also record many other important historic events. For example, in 2004 Human Fertility published “A conversation with Dr Anne McLaren DBE, DPhil, FRS, FRCOG” which is a remarkable insight into her life and her views about reproductive medicine, regulation and embryo research (McLaren, 2004); in 2013 the journal published a heartfelt and warm obituary for Bob Edwards (Leese, 2013); and in 2017 a remarkable article remembering Jean Mariane Purdy, arguably the world’s first Clinical Embryologist (Gosden, 2018). We would urge anyone with a spare hour or two to browse the archive and review the richness of the many articles published over the last 24 years.

So, in conclusion, what does the future have in store for the next 25 years of the journal? Whilst it is clear that the journal is a jewel in the BFS crown, if it is to flourish further it will need to adapt and respond to the changing landscape of academic publishing. For the two of us, it has been a privilege and immensely rewarding to have been Editors-in-Chief of Human Fertility over the first 25 years. We owe a great debt to numerous Editorial Board members, to our referees, authors, publishers and the officers and members of the constituent societies. We have encountered remarkably few problems; a tribute to the unity of purpose, loyalty, and generosity of everyone involved.