ASSISTED REPRODUCTION: LAW, ETHICS, RIGHTS BIBLIOMETRIC MAPPING

Assisted reproductive technologies (ART) pose governance issues that go beyond their efficacy to encompass issues of legality, ethics, and rights. This study employs bibliometric techniques to map the international academic landscape of ART-related research with explicit ethical-legal content. A dataset of publications was retrieved from Web of Science and Scopus (1996-2026), merged, and deduplicated using bibliometrix/Biblioshiny tools, followed by a filter for “topic fit” to ensure that only those publications substantively dealing with ART in relation to ethics, medical ethics, law, legal medicine, and related social science fields were retained for analysis. A total of 2,158 publications were retained for analysis. Performance indicators and science mapping techniques were employed to analyze temporal trends, key sources, geographic distribution, citation influence, and conceptual structure of this dataset. This study reveals that ART-related publications have demonstrated steady growth since the mid-2000s, accelerating in the late 2010s and early 2020s. Key publication sources include prominent reproductive medicine journals, as well as prominent bioethics and legal-focused journals. Country-wise distribution indicates that key countries dominate this dataset, with strong international collaboration links. Citation analysis reveals high influence synthesis and high-visibility journal publications. The factorial conceptual map (MCA) distinguishes between a clinical/technical IVF pole and a pole focused on governance, law, and ethics, with the terms related to surrogacy forming a substream. This evidence map provides clarity in the structure of the dispersed interdisciplinary field and can inform the research agenda and the setting of the agenda for ART governance and rights in the future.