Andrologie

About Andrologie

Andrologie: Journal Profile

Andrologie was a French-language, peer-reviewed medical journal devoted to andrology — the study of male reproductive and sexual health — published by Springer and serving for about twenty-five years as the official journal of the Société d'Andrologie de Langue Française (SALF), the French-speaking Society of Andrology. Its print ISSN is 1166-2654 and its electronic ISSN is 1760-5377. The journal ceased publication under the title Andrologie at the end of 2012 and continued from 2013, transformed in language, access model and title, as Basic and Clinical Andrology, an English-language open access journal published with BioMed Central. Any profile of Andrologie is therefore necessarily a profile of a completed journal run plus a living successor, and this article treats both halves with equal care, because citations to Andrologie still circulate and because authors deciding where to submit today need to find the successor, not the closed title.

Understanding Andrologie matters beyond antiquarian interest. Andrology itself is a comparatively young clinical and scientific field, assembled from urology, endocrinology, reproductive biology, genetics and sexual medicine. A dedicated French-language journal gave francophone clinicians and researchers a home for work on spermatogenesis, male infertility, erectile and ejaculatory disorders, male contraception, testicular disease and the endocrinology of male ageing at a time when such work otherwise scattered across general urology and gynaecology titles. The journal's archive, spanning its run to 2012, documents how French-speaking andrology defined its questions, and its transformation in 2013 documents something equally interesting: how a national-language society journal deliberately internationalised itself without abandoning its society or its subject.

Quick Facts

• Title: Andrologie (French title; the field name in French).
• ISSN: 1166-2654 (print) and 1760-5377 (electronic), as shown in the JournalsWorld record for this post and in journal listings of the title.
• Publisher during its run: Springer (France), per the successor journal's own launch editorial describing Andrologie as the former Springer title.
• Society affiliation: Official journal of the Société d'Andrologie de Langue Française (SALF) for the past 25 years at the time of its 2013 transformation.
• Status: Ceased under this title after 2012; continued from 2013 as Basic and Clinical Andrology (electronic ISSN 2051-4190), open access and in English, with BioMed Central.
• Field: Male reproductive and sexual health — fertility and infertility, sperm and testicular function, contraception, sexual and genital health, in human and animal models.
• Editorial leadership at transformation: Roger Mieusset (Toulouse, France) authored the 2013 launch editorial announcing the successor journal.
• Stored indicator on this JournalsWorld record: An H-index of 12 is shown in the record's summary data; readers should treat single aggregator indicators for a ceased title with caution and consult the successor's current journal pages for live metrics.

History: A Society Journal and Its 2013 Transformation

The clearest primary account of Andrologie's history is the launch editorial published in 2013 under the title 'Andrologie becomes Basic and Clinical Andrology', written by Roger Mieusset of the university hospital in Toulouse. That editorial states, in substance, that the new journal Basic and Clinical Andrology has its roots in the journal formerly entitled Andrologie, published by Springer, which had been the official journal of the SALF for the preceding twenty-five years, and that the new title is an evolution of the old one, adding an international dimension by publishing in English while remaining the official journal of the SALF. A twenty-five-year society affiliation counted back from 2013 places the journal's society era as beginning in the late 1980s, consistent with a mature, established title rather than a short-lived experiment. Journal listings independently show the French title as freely readable for its 1997 to 2012 range in at least one medical-journal directory, which matches a long Springer-era run ending in 2012.

The reasons for the transformation, as explained at the time, are instructive for anyone studying scholarly publishing. The editors argued that knowledge in andrology is needed not only by researchers in large institutions but also by clinicians and biologists working with patients in settings without subscription access, and that an open access, English-language journal would disseminate authors' work to the widest possible audience and improve indexing opportunities. The successor therefore kept the society, kept the subject and kept editorial continuity, while changing the three things that limited reach: the language of publication, the paywall and the title's intelligibility to international readers. French was not abandoned entirely — the successor's launch arrangements included French-language abstracts alongside English articles, acknowledging the journal's francophone community — but English became the language of the articles themselves.

This history creates a bibliographic chain that librarians and systematic reviewers must handle correctly. Work published in French in Andrologie up to 2012, under ISSN 1166-2654 and 1760-5377, and work published in English in Basic and Clinical Andrology from 2013, under electronic ISSN 2051-4190, belong to one continuing journal lineage but to two distinct bibliographic records. Citations must be made to the title and ISSN in force when the article appeared. A literature search on male infertility or sexual health that only searches the successor title will miss the French archive; a search that only uses the old title will miss everything since 2013. Competent evidence synthesis in andrology searches both.

Scope: The Subject Matter of Andrologie

Andrologie's subject was andrology in its full breadth, and the successor's stated scope — which explicitly presents itself as continuing the same field — is the best guide to what the French journal covered. At the basic-science end, the journal dealt with the development and maintenance of male reproductive tissues and functions at molecular, cellular, tissue and whole-organism levels: spermatogenesis and sperm function, testicular physiology and pathology, the endocrinology of the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis, and genetic and environmental influences on male fertility. Animal-model and human studies both fell within the field, reflecting andrology's position between laboratory reproductive biology and clinical medicine.

At the clinical end, coverage included male infertility investigation and treatment, including the interface with assisted reproduction; male contraception; erectile dysfunction and other sexual disorders; genital health; prostate and testicular conditions in their reproductive aspects; and the effects of ageing, disease and medical or environmental exposures on male reproductive health. The topic list attached to this JournalsWorld record points in the same direction — sperm and testicular function, reproductive health and technologies, sexual function and dysfunction, reproductive biology and fertility, hormonal and reproductive studies, and urological disorders and treatments all appear there — and that breadth is accurate to the journal. Andrologie was not a general urology journal and not a general reproductive-medicine journal: its organising centre was always the male patient and the male reproductive system, approached from whichever neighbouring discipline a given study required.

That positioning explains the journal's readership. Its natural readers were andrologists and urologists first, but also reproductive endocrinologists, embryologists and laboratory specialists in semen analysis and assisted conception, gynaecologists treating couples for infertility, geneticists working on male-factor causes, and general clinicians managing sexual-health presentations. A French-language title serving that readership performed a specific service: it allowed francophone practitioners, concentrated in France and the wider French-speaking world, to read, debate and publish specialist work in their professional language. The 2013 decision to move to English was therefore a genuine trade-off — wider international reach bought at the price of that language service — and the editors' retention of French abstracts in the successor shows they understood the cost and tried to soften it.

Distinguishing Andrologie From Similar Titles

Few journal names generate more confusion than this one, and a profile that failed to untangle the neighbours would fail its readers. Andrologie, the French Springer title described here, is not Andrologia. Andrologia is a separate, older international journal, first published in 1969, with its own ISSNs (0303-4569 and 1439-0272) and a different publisher and scope statement; bibliographic databases list the two titles independently and their archives must not be merged. Andrologie is also not Andrology, the English-language journal with electronic ISSN 2047-2927 that was formed from the Journal of Andrology lineage and serves the American and European andrology societies; the similarity of Andrology and Andrologie has misdirected many a citation. Finally, Andrologie is not its own successor: Basic and Clinical Andrology continues the journal but is a new bibliographic title from 2013, and articles after that date should be cited to it.

The practical rule is simple and absolute: identify by ISSN, never by name resemblance alone. For the French journal, the pair 1166-2654 and 1760-5377 is decisive. If a record carries those ISSNs, it is this journal, whatever language the surrounding website is written in. If it carries 2051-4190, it is the successor. If it carries 0303-4569, it is Andrologia. Authors preparing reference lists, librarians correcting catalogue records and reviewers checking prior publication should all apply that ISSN test before anything else, because title words in this corner of medicine are nearly identical by design — they all name the same field.

The Archive: Reading and Citing Andrologie Today

Because Andrologie is a ceased title, most present-day encounters with it are encounters with its archive: a reference in a review, a French clinical study found through a database, or a citation chain leading back from the successor journal. The archive remains scholarly live. French andrology research from the journal's decades — on semen parameters, testicular function, hormonal treatment, sexual dysfunction and assisted reproduction — continues to be evidence that systematic reviews in male reproductive health must consider, and excluding French-language studies on language grounds alone is a recognised source of bias in evidence synthesis. Reviewers should search the title in both its forms and should expect competent abstracts even where the full text requires French reading or translation support.

Access to the archive runs through the publisher's platform and through library holdings and medical-journal directories; directory listings recorded the title as freely accessible for at least its 1997 to 2012 range at the time of listing, but access arrangements for back content can change, and readers should follow the links from the successor journal's site and from major biomedical databases rather than assuming any single route persists. What does not change is citability: a properly referenced Andrologie article, with authors, year, volume, pages and the journal title as published, remains verifiable through the ISSN record regardless of platform changes. That permanence is one reason the 2013 transformation was handled as a formal, editorially announced continuation rather than a quiet closure — the scholarly record needed the chain to be explicit.

The Successor: Where the Journal Lives Now

Basic and Clinical Andrology, the continuation, is an open access, peer-reviewed journal published with BioMed Central and affiliated with the SALF, covering all aspects of male reproductive and sexual health in humans and animal models. It publishes the standard range of article types for a clinical-basic science journal, from original research and clinical studies to reviews, and its launch editorial emphasised bringing clinical advances and research developments in andrology from around the world to an international readership. Authors who arrive at this profile intending to submit work in andrology should therefore redirect their submission to the successor's current site, read its live aims and scope and author instructions there, and check its current article processing charge and indexing status on that site, since those details belong to the successor's present operation and change over time.

Two continuities deserve emphasis for authors weighing the successor. The first is community: a journal that remains a society's official title carries that society's conferences, guidelines culture and reviewer community with it, which gives submissions a knowledgeable first audience. The second is editorial philosophy: the stated reason for the 2013 relaunch was access — the conviction that andrology knowledge should reach clinicians and biologists beyond large subscribing institutions. An open access successor edited under that philosophy is a materially different proposition from the subscription French journal it replaced, even though the lineage is direct. Neither continuity should be taken on trust from this profile alone; both are verifiable in minutes on the successor's own pages, and verifying current facts on the journal's own site is the correct habit for every journal in this directory.

Metrics and Standing: An Honest Assessment

Ceased titles do not acquire new metrics, and this profile will not dress up old or aggregator-supplied numbers as current fact. The JournalsWorld record for Andrologie displays an H-index of 12 in its summary data, which is recorded here as the record's stored indicator and nothing more; different databases compute different values for the same archive, and none of them describes the successor's present performance. Andrologie has no current Journal Impact Factor as a ceased title, and any website presenting a fresh impact factor for Andrologie itself, rather than for a successor or a similarly named journal, should be treated as an error or a confusion with Andrologia or Andrology until proven otherwise by ISSN.

The journal's real standing rests on verifiable ground: a roughly quarter-century run as the official journal of the French-speaking andrology society, publication by a major scientific publisher, an archive that remains part of the evidence base in male reproductive and sexual health, and a successor that a major open access publisher launched explicitly as its continuation. In a directory, that is a complete and respectable record. Researchers evaluating a citation from Andrologie should judge the individual article — its methods, its era, its place in the French and international literature — exactly as they would a citation from any established specialist journal of its period.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Andrologie still accepting submissions?

No. Publication under the title Andrologie ended after 2012. Its continuation, Basic and Clinical Andrology, is the living journal and the correct destination for new submissions in this lineage.

What is the difference between Andrologie and Basic and Clinical Andrology?

They are successive titles of one journal lineage. Andrologie was French-language and subscription-based under Springer and affiliated with the SALF; the successor is English-language, open access, published with BioMed Central from 2013, and remains the SALF's official journal.

Is Andrologie the same as Andrologia or Andrology?

No. Andrologia (ISSN 0303-4569) and Andrology (electronic ISSN 2047-2927) are separate journals. Andrologie's ISSNs are 1166-2654 and 1760-5377; always check the ISSN.

In what language did Andrologie publish?

French. The move to English-language publication was one of the defining changes of the 2013 relaunch, with French abstracts retained in the successor as a bridge for its francophone community.

How do I cite an Andrologie article?

Cite it exactly as published — authors, French title, journal title Andrologie, year, volume and pages — and never update the journal name to the successor title, which would make the reference unverifiable.

A Note on the French-Language Literature in Andrology

One lasting consequence of Andrologie's run is bibliographic. A generation of French clinical observation — on semen quality trends, on the management of male infertility in French centres, on sexual medicine as practised in francophone settings — exists primarily in this journal's pages, in French. International guideline groups and systematic reviewers who search only English-language databases will systematically under-represent that evidence, however rigorous their methods otherwise are. The correct practice is unglamorous but effective: include the French title and its ISSNs in the search strategy, screen French abstracts with the same care as English ones, and translate the small number of studies that pass screening. Andrologie's archive rewards that effort because it was, for its community and its era, the journal of record — the place where the French-speaking specialty argued out its standards. Preserving access to that record, and citing it accurately under its original title, is part of how a field remembers what it knows.

Conclusion

Andrologie, ISSN 1166-2654 and 1760-5377, was the French-speaking world's specialist journal of male reproductive and sexual health, the SALF's official journal for about twenty-five years, and a Springer title whose archive still forms part of the andrology evidence base. Its 2013 continuation as Basic and Clinical Andrology is a model of deliberate journal evolution: same society, same subject, new language, new access model, wider world. This profile preserves the record of the original title accurately, points every practical question — submission, current metrics, current charges — to the successor where those questions now belong, and gives readers the ISSN-based distinctions they need to keep this journal separate from its near-identically named neighbours.