Journal Reading Preferences among Ophthalmologists: A Study in India

Abstract

Background: Scientific journals provide evidences and facilitate to build the core knowledge in a professional field. Ophthalmologists/eye doctors working in academic eye hospitals read journals to do evidence-based practice, research, and teach. The purpose of this study is to determine journal reading preferences among those ophthalmologists. Methodology: The study design is cross-sectional and convenience sampling method is adopted. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data. SPSS 18 PASW Statistical package was used for statistical analysis. Frequencies, percentages, Mann Whitney U test, Kruskal-Wallis test, Factor Analysis, and Wilcoxon signed rank test were used in the study. Findings: Around 633 ophthalmologists working in 47 academic eye hospitals from 16 states of India were included in the study. The study results revealed that the majority of the ophthalmologists prefer to read journals based on subject relevance. The statistical test results showed up that there exists a significant difference between ophthalmologists’ journal reading preferences and experience. The two major factors of journal reading preferences of ophthalmologists were cognitive preferences and affective preferences. The cognitive preference was significantly higher than the affective preferences. Conclusion: The ophthalmic librarians should give importance to subjects of the journal and build the resource collection. The Journal publishers should understand the ophthalmologists’ need and revive their scope of their journals or promote quality articles on subjects. The information service providers like online databases should ensure to index journals in a wide range of subjects and provide good information retrieval options like subject filters to the ophthalmologists.