Human Fertility gets bigger!

As we publish the first issue of Human Fertility for 2021, I am beginning my 6th year as the Editor in Chief. It has been great to see the growth of the journal during that time and I am pleased in this editorial to report a few more milestones.

First, I hope the readers of Human Fertility will be pleased to hear that from this volume (volume 24) onward, we will be increasing our publication frequency from four to five issues per year. That amounts to an additional 100 pages of articles! The publication of issues is now scheduled for February, April, July, October and December.

Second, as hinted in the editorial I wrote for the last issue of volume 23 (Pacey, 2020b) I am delighted to announce some changes to the composition of the journal’s Editorial Board with effect from 1 January 2021. This includes the appointment of three new sub-editors. So, I would like to welcome Dr Neelam Potdar (Leicester Fertility Centre, UK) and Dr Sergio Oehninger (Reproductive Biology Unit, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa) to their appointment as Clinical Sub-Editors and Dr Eleanor Stevenson (Duke University School of Nursing, USA) as the new Health and Social Sciences Sub-editor to replace Jane Denton who stood down from the role at the end of last year (Pacey, 2020b). Each of them has already served as Editorial Board Members for a number of years and I am delighted that they have agreed to take on these new roles.

In addition, as a consequence of these changes and in recognition of the need to expand the Editorial Board still further, I am also pleased to report the appointment of three new Editorial Board Members: (i) Dr Gianmartin Cito (University of Florence, Italy); (ii) Professor Georgina Jones (Leeds Beckett University, UK); and (iii) Dr Susan Grey Silva (Duke University School of Nursing, USA). I’d like to welcome them all to the Human Fertility Editorial Board and I look forward to working with them.

Exactly one year ago, I wrote about how the coronavirus pandemic may have changed our participation in conferences for the time being, if not forever (Pacey, 2020a). Therefore, I draw your attention to the abstracts from the Fertility 2021 conference this year held entirely on-line in early January. Whilst I missed the opportunity to interact and chat with colleagues face to face, it was a great conference nevertheless as the abstracts will testify.

In this issue we also publish the latest update to the UK guidelines for the medical and laboratory procurement and use of sperm, oocyte and embryo donors (Clarke et al., 2021). These are an update to the Association of Biomedical Andrologists, Association of Clinical Embryologists, British Andrology Society, British Fertility Society, & Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (2008) guidelines.

Alongside these, we publish three complementary papers about third-party (donor) conception. The first is a study by Indekeu and Lampic (2021) conducted in Belgium and Sweden which examined how parents were challenged by cultural norms and values when interacting with friends, healthcare professionals and teachers about how they had formed their family. The second, by Bolt et al. (2021), explores the motivations of anonymous Dutch sperm donors to release their identity. The third, by Hershberger et al. (2021), outlines the decisions made by a small group of parents to tell their children about their conceptual origins by oocyte donation.

I hope you enjoy this issue of Human Fertility and that it brings some light to the start of 2021.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).