Urogynecology Research Is Underrepresented in Top Obstetrics and Gynecology Journals

Importance Patients with urogynecologic conditions commonly present to general gynecology practices. Consequently, it is imperative that journals for obstetrics and gynecology (OBGYN) represent topics pertinent to comprehensive women’s health, including urogynecology topics. Objective The aim of the study was to analyze the prevalence of urogynecology research compared to other topics in top OBGYN journals. Study Design This was a retrospective review of all papers published in top OBGYN-focused journals from 2000 to 2023. The publicly available PubMed package in R was used to extract papers. Stata, a statistical software package, was used to develop an algorithm searching for key words concerning urogynecology, obstetrics, benign gynecology, gynecologic oncology, and reproductive endocrinology and infertility. The algorithm was tested and cross-validated via manual review of papers published in 1999 to determine whether identified key words were accurate in determining paper content. The algorithm was modified with additional key words and revalidated based on this initial analysis. Results Validation of the algorithm using all 1999 publications from several top OBGYN journals found a 93.48% accuracy for correct identification and classification of papers. Analysis was performed for 81,174 articles between 2000 and 2023. An average of 6.64% of publications focused on urogynecology topics. In contrast, 41.42% of publications concerned obstetrics, 33.9% on other benign gynecology, 41.9% on gynecologic oncology, and 24.7% on reproductive endocrinology and infertility. Conclusions This study reveals consistent underrepresentation of urogynecology topics in leading OBGYN journals. Given that generalist gynecologists may not subscribe to subspecialty journals, this study underscores the need for the inclusion of urogynecologic research in OBGYN journals.