Core Title Selection Process

Scope: The 2025 edition of DCT covers 126 specialties in

• Clinical Medicine
• Basic Science
• Nursing
• Allied Health
• other Associated Health-related disciplines

Audience: Doody's Core Titles in the Health Sciences 2025 is aimed primarily at medical, nursing, and allied health librarians around the world who are charged with making the book buying decisions for their libraries within budget guidelines.

Definition: A core title is a book or software title that represents essential knowledge needed by professionals or students in a given discipline and is highly recommended for the collection of a library that serves health sciences specialists.

Selectors: Over 200 professionals have participated in the selection of the titles appearing in the 2025 edition of Doody's Core Titles in the Health Sciences -- 89 Content Specialists and 131 collection development medical librarians who voluntarily served as Librarian Selectors, and a librarian consultant.

Process: A four-step process resulted in the selection of the titles appearing on the 2025 edition of Doody's Core Titles in the Health Sciences:

1. Content Specialists made initial selections of core titles for each specialty.
2. A panel of up to three Librarian Selectors (and no fewer than two) in each specialty reviewed the selections made by the Content Specialist and had the opportunity to add titles to the list.
3. The Librarian Selectors scored each title on the final list, rating each core title on a scale of 0 - 3 on five different key collection development criteria.
4. Librarian Selectors indicated which titles in each specialty are Essential Purchase Titles. Essential Purchase Titles are defined as those titles recommended for purchase by a small library.

Resources: To assist Content Specialists and Librarian Selectors in their responsibilities and to make the selection and scoring process as convenient and time-efficient as possible, the web-based tools built for the selection process included access to the following information sources:

• The titles that appeared on the previous issue of Doody's Core Titles in the specialty.
• Content Specialist's selections
• A searchable database of all in-print book in Doody’s Review Service™, the most comprehensive database of titles in the health sciences.
• Title Selection Limit for each Librarian in each specialty.
• Contact information for your fellow Librarian Selectors (if applicable).
• Doody's staff
• Step-by-step selection and scoring guide
• DCT Librarian Selector Orientation
• The full DCT taxonomy, including specialty definitions and related specialties
• Updated and interpretive Scoring Guidelines
• FAQs