The American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) is the definitive professional society for reproductive medicine in the United States and one of the most influential worldwide. It was founded in 1944 in Chicago as the American Society for the Study of Sterility, became the American Fertility Society in 1965, and took its current name in 1994. Today it has roughly 8,000 members across more than 100 countries, and its headquarters moved to Washington, DC in 2019, with an administrative office remaining in Birmingham, Alabama.

Unlike large commercial houses, ASRM's publishing programme is deliberately small: four journals, all produced and hosted with Elsevier on ScienceDirect. That means the editorial standards are society-set and specialty-specific, while production, open-access administration and submission tooling follow Elsevier's infrastructure. This guide covers how the four titles differ, what open access costs, how peer review runs, and how to submit.

The four titles divide cleanly by article type and research stage. Picking correctly at the outset is the single biggest time-saver, because transfers between the F&S family are possible but still add weeks.

Fertility and Sterility was established in 1950 and is published monthly by Elsevier on ASRM's behalf. It carries original clinical and laboratory research across reproductive endocrinology, infertility and assisted reproduction, physiology, immunology, genetics and menopause, alongside ASRM Practice Committee and Ethics Committee documents that function as de facto standards of care in US fertility practice. Its Journal Impact Factor has been reported in roughly the 7-8 range in recent JCR releases; check the current Journal Citation Reports for the exact figure, since JIF moves annually.

F&S Reports, F&S Science and F&S Reviews all launched in 2020 to widen the society's publishing footprint. All three are fully open access and indexed in PubMed Central, Scopus, DOAJ and the Emerging Sources Citation Index. Together the four titles are usually referred to as the F&S family of journals.

Three of the four ASRM journals are Gold open access; Fertility and Sterility is a subscription journal with a hybrid open-access option. Fees below are the list prices published by Elsevier and exclude tax. ASRM members receive a 50% discount on the open-access publication fee, and prices are revised periodically - always confirm on the journal's own fees page before you submit.

Other routes to consider:

• Publish free in Fertility and Sterility. Choosing the standard subscription route carries no article publishing charge.
• Green open access. Elsevier permits self-archiving of the accepted manuscript, subject to a per-journal embargo. This is the zero-cost compliance route if your funder allows an embargo.
• Licences. CC BY is the default for open-access articles; CC BY-NC-ND is generally available as an alternative for authors who want to restrict commercial reuse.
• Waivers and discounts. Authors in eligible low- and middle-income countries are covered by Elsevier's Research4Life waiver and discount tiers. Eligibility is assessed during submission.
• Institutional agreements. Some Elsevier read-and-publish agreements cover authors' APCs, but society-owned titles are frequently carved out of those deals. Ask your library, or check the ESAC registry, before assuming coverage.

All four journals use single-anonymized peer review: reviewers see the author names, authors do not see the reviewers. Submissions are screened by the editorial office and an editor before external review, and a substantial share of manuscripts are rejected without review - this is the main reason Fertility and Sterility feels fast even though it is selective.

Expect a first decision within a few weeks to about two months for most submissions. ASRM does not publish a single portfolio-wide turnaround statistic, so treat any specific number you see quoted with caution and check the journal's own metrics page.

1. Pick the right title using the table above. If you are unsure between Fertility and Sterility and F&S Reports, submit to the flagship first - declined manuscripts can often be transferred within the family with reviews attached.
2. Read the journal's Guide for Authors on ScienceDirect. Article-type rules, structured-abstract formats and word limits differ between the four titles.
3. Format your references in AMA numbered style, the house style across the F&S family. SciSpace has ready-made ASRM formats you can write in directly.
4. Prepare the required files: cover letter, title page, structured abstract, main text, tables, figures and disclosure statements. The cover letter must confirm the work is not published or under consideration elsewhere and describe each author's contribution.
5. Submit through Editorial Manager, which all four journals use. Register clinical trials prospectively and quote the registration number.
6. Choose your access route at acceptance. For Fertility and Sterility this is where you decide between the subscription route and the hybrid OA fee.

ASRM is a COPE member and the F&S journals follow COPE guidance on authorship, corrections and retractions, alongside ICMJE recommendations on conflicts of interest and clinical-trial registration. Because reproductive medicine involves human participants, gametes and embryos, expect close scrutiny of IRB or ethics-committee approval, informed consent, and consent for publication of any identifiable patient material. ASRM's own Ethics Committee opinions, published in Fertility and Sterility, are the field's reference points on questions such as embryo disposition, gamete donation and third-party reproduction.