Research on "feeding behavior": quantitative information vs. qualitative perceptions about where it is published.
To gain some understanding of where research on "feeding behavior" is published, a Medline search was conducted for the years 1980-1990 inclusive using the above key phrase to capture published articles coded in this way. Furthermore, an eight-item questionnaire was mailed to all 451 persons listed in the 1990 membership directory of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB) soliciting views on the top five journals publishing the greatest number, as well as the most "prestigious," articles in this field, along with demographic information about the respondents. After deleting journals that published agriculturally based research relating to insects or parasites, the Medline search generated 1,813 articles in the top 25 journals, the top 5 of which were Physiology and Behavior (462 articles), Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior (211 articles), Brain Research (118 articles), American Journal of Physiology (106 articles) and Brain Research Bulletin (87 articles). This fact accorded well with weighted scores generated from perceptions of SSIB respondents (24.4% return rate), whose top 25 rankings correlated highly (r14 = +0.829, p < .001) with the Medline data. Although the top 5 number 1 choices of "prestige" journals by SSIB members did not match up well with the Medline list, weighted "prestige" scores correlated reasonably well with the Medline data (r15 = +0.766, p < .001), but a bit less so with SSIB perceptions of where greatest numbers of articles appeared (r12 = +0.588, p < .05). Discussion is presented about the validity of these data, their implications, and their potential utility in helping researchers decide where to publish work in this field.
Coscina
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Section of Biopsychology, Clarke Institute of Psychiatry, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
D000818:Animals; D005247:Feeding Behavior / Q000502:physiology / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D011643:Publishing