It is essential for the scientific community to be up to date with new fields of knowledge in order to develop research. In this, universities are both pioneers and the greatest beneficiaries from the use of electronic network technologies, with 91.3% of the scientific production in the country (Meis et al, 13 2003 Abstract ObjectiveTo investigate the influence of the Internet on the academic-scientific activities of the Brazilian public health community. Methods This was a descriptive study, centered on the opinions of 237 teachers connected with Brazilian postgraduate programs in public health, at master's and doctoral levels, in 2001. Data were collected by means of a self-administered questionnaire via the Internet and traditional mail. The statistical analysis was done by means of proportions, means and standard deviations. ResultsThe vast majority of the population (225; 94.9%) said that they used the Internet. Electronic mail (92%) and the web (55.6%) were the resources in greatest daily use. The Internet had significant influence (73.8%) on communications between the teachers, especially for developing collaborative research. The teachers who did not use the Internet (5.1%) gave the reasons that they lacked motivation and time and that it was easy to obtain the material they needed from their colleagues. ConclusionsThe results showed that the Internet has had an influence on the teachers' work and has been affecting the cycle of scientific communication, particularly due to the high speed with which information can be retrieved. There was a tendency to single out communication between the teachers as the feature that has changed most since the coming of the Internet to the Brazilian academic-scientific world. able manner regarding the speed and efficiency of accessing and obtaining information.