ABSTRACT
Introduction: Impact Factor is a proxy for the significance of a journal in its field. This study aims to examine the perceptions of Impact Factor and journal reading preferences among gastrointestinal researchers. Methods: A world wide online survey was conducted among 764 gastrointestinal researchers in 2004. Basic characteristics, job nature and number of publications were reported. Moreover, opinions towards the applications of Impact Factor, reading preferences of gastrointestinal and general medical journals were assessed. Results: Majority of the respondents believed that Impact Factor could reflect the journal quality (68.1%) and should be a major factor in selecting journals for publications (78.6%). Only about 40% of them agreed that use of Impact Factor should be extended to appraisals of institutes, departments, and faculty members. North American and European researchers tended to read the journals in their own regions. Gastrointestinal and general medical journals with relative higher Impact Factor were the most popular and highly ranked. Conclusions: In general, assessment of journal quality was a more acceptable application of Impact Factor than other uses to gastrointestinal researchers. Reading preferences of both general medical and specialty journals may be related to the geographic locations of the readers and the Impact Factor values.