The relevance of endometrial polyps: a bibliometric study

The aim of this study was to explore and describe the status and trends of scientific literature on endometrial polyps. We have conducted a systematic search for publications related to endometrial polyps from 1982 to 2012 using Scopus. The original search was refined with the additional keywords: "infertility", "bleeding", and "cancer". We have collected and analyzed quantitative data on number of publications, journals, language, and origin of each article. Descriptive statistics and charts were used to analyze data and provide information on publication trends. Out of a database of 12,125,345 articles published in the past 30 years, our systematic search retrieved 1,144 relevant publications. The amount of articles/year related to endometrial polyps has been significantly growing throughout the study period (1982-1996, 14 +/- 11.988; 1997-2012, 58.38 +/- 11.506; p<0.0001). A similar positive trend is observed for relative number of yearly publications (% retrieved/indexed; 1982-1996, 0.0044 %+/-.0035; 1997-2012, 0.0127 %+/- 0.0025; p<0.0001). The proportion of articles related to "infertility" and "bleeding" has been growing more than that of papers related to "cancer". English is the dominant language (79 %), and the USA is the most prolific country (19 %), followed by Italy (8 %) and the UK (7,8 %). During the last 5 years, Gynecological Surgery has been the journal with the highest proportion of publications on endometrial polyps (2.11 % of all its articles). In conclusion, the publications related to endometrial polyps have increased steadily during the last 30 years, particularly those related to bleeding and infertility. Not all the journals publishing regularly on "endometrial polyps" are indexed in Medline/Pubmed. Scholars interested in this field should consider comprehensive bibliographic search strategies.