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History of the Core Journal Project

Current Project

Original Project Description

The project:

To identify a list of core public health journals that should be in all libraries serving public health organizations in any or all of the specialty areas covered. The list should assist libraries and faculty in selecting journals for purchase and in evaluating their own collections.

This is a marvelous opportunity to make a contribution which can assist Public Health educators and practitioners as well as librarians working in the field. Participants will be individually acknowledged on the draft and final products which are presented to the Association of Schools of Public Health (ASPH), the Medical Library Association(MLA), and the American Public Health Association (APHA). A publication in a journal about this project, including a view of the data, is a good possibility.

This project has the support of the Public Health/Health Administration Section of MLA.

The product:

The end product will be a database organized under the subject areas utilized by the ASPH in the accreditation reviews: (See http://www.asph.org/document.cfm?page=301 [Ed. note: Updated link 3/17/04] for subject descriptions)

Core:
biostatistics
environmental health sciences
epidemiology
behavioral sciences/health education
health services administration
international public health
Additional:
occupational safety and health
maternal and child health
public health practice and program management
nutrition
biomedical lab practice
public health dentistry
public health nursing (Note: this is not in the ASPH list)
Also:
A "super" category of general public health, to include Journal of Public Health, Annual Review of Public Health, Public Health Reports, etc.

The database will contain the following elements:

  • title
  • association affiliation
  • language
  • publisher
  • frequency of publication
  • availability online
  • price (both institutional and individual)
  • subject(s) (per ASPH subjects)
  • keyword(s) ? if needed to describe topics beyond ASPH categories (max. 5)
  • notes fields: one to indicate ranking of journal (see below for more about that) and another to be able to include comments as to significance in a particular subject area, to particular audiences, etc.)
  • update field ? when was record last updated

Ranking of journals - Modeled on the Brandon-Hill list, the list will indicate whether a journal is in one of three categories:

  1. essential for a library whose organization has subject specialization in this area
  2. important but not essential (research level collecting)
  3. newsletters and other such publications which have largely transitory content, but which practictioners might favor. The initial intent would be to populate the list with the category one titles, but titles in the other two categories would be included, as submitted.

The process:

Matt Wilcox at Yale and Stephanie Normann are coordinating the project. We are inviting your participation in any of three ways, for any of the subject sections:

  • as "primary developer" of a section (or sections!)
  • as "partner" of the "primary developer" to react to the section and make suggestions for additions/deletions before the first review
  • as “reviewer” of the section

Possible collaborators could include Library School students who might find it a challenging project to search for titles in the area and assist in gathering details. If participants would like to explore a Library School connection, this project committee could assist.

Participants will be asked to submit their lists in electronic format to Matt Wilcox (eg. Excel spreadsheet, ProCite database). Matt Wilcox will provide participants with formatting guidelines and instructions for submission.

Instructions / Guidelines for the Project

Here are some instructions/guidelines for the public health core journal project. An Excel spreadsheet will be provided to use for data collection. If you do not have access to Excel, please let me know and we will work something out. You should also find attached the list of all the people involved in the project.

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What do we mean by "core journals?"

  1. Essential Core: Titles essential for a collection that supports a program with subject specialization in this area. This is the section we are most interested in.
  2. Research Level Core: important for comprehensive collections intended to support researchers or a graduate program
  3. Gray Lit Core: newsletters, annual reports, and other such publications which have largely transitory content, but which practitioners might favor

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Criteria Suggestions:

This is purposefully a little fuzzy each of you may wish to approach this differently. All versions of the output of this project, whether in print or on the web, will include a statement that this core journals listing is the product of reasoned opinion and not of divine revelation.

That said, what criteria should you use selecting the titles and ranking for your section? We are keeping this vague since you will have a better sense of what is core in the area you have volunteered to work on, but you may wish to consider things like whether or not the journal is peer-reviewed, the journal/editorial board's general reputation, faculty/staff input, ISI impact factor, survey of holdings at key libraries, etc.

One thing we are somewhat concerned about is the length of the list. The keyword is “core”-- we are not working on comprehensive lists but rather core lists of titles one needs, not necessarily what we would buy if we could buy everything. We see even the Research Level Core as a core list of key titles and not necessarily a list of every title related to the subject. Perhaps a rule of thumb would be to try to keep each level to 10-30 titles (but then again, don't feel obligated to add or cut titles to meet my artificial numbers)

As we are following the ASPH categories for public health, you should re-read the description of your area (http://www.asph.org/document.cfm?page=301). It may be useful as a reminder of the boundaries of you area. Also, some of what they put into a category is not intuitive.

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Required data elements:

In order to assist in you collection of these data elements, we will provide an MS Excel spreadsheet template with fields for the data we need from you. The data from all of the section developers will be combined into a database.

The data elements we need are:

  1. journal title
  2. ISSN for the print version of the journal,
  3. ISSN for the electronic version of the journal, if applicable
  4. publisher
  5. Publisher URL
  6. association affiliation
  7. Price (both institutional and individual)
  8. Keywords
  9. Notes: include comments as to significance in a particular subject area, to particular audiences, etc.)
  10. Rank: Either a 1, 2, or 3 based on whether it should be part of the Essential Core, the Research Level core, or the Gray Lit core
  11. jake ID number, if available (This number is available from the jake project at http://www.med.yale.edu. Not all journals in jake have jake Ids yet, but the inclusion of this number will allow us to do fun things later.)

It would also be helpful to us to have a brief cover note (one paragraph) explaining how you went about creating your list.

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Timeline Reminder:

--First drafts due 3/15/01 (this is, of course, somewhat flexible, but we would really like to see at least the Essential Core titles as these are what we are most interested in this project). You can, of course, converse with reviewers earlier or ask for the help/comments earlier. You should send your drafts to your partners/reviewers as well as to me (matthew.wilcox@yale.edu).
--Partners receive drafts 3/15/01 and comments are due back 3/31/01.
--Reviewers complete review by 4/15/01
--Draft product ready for MLA 5/1/01
--Next steps: further work on draft product to prepare it to be released at APHA 10/01

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How we envision the process might go:

The way this could go, or the way I might do it if I was a primary developer for one of the sections is this. First I would read these instructions/guidelines thoroughly marveling at the wondrous prose exhibited by the author. Then I would probably send out an email to the partners and reviewers for my section. I would let them know that while I am listed as the primary that doesn't meant that they have to wait to get involved. I would ask the partners to begin thinking about what titles should be included and at what rank for our section, and I would ask them to forward them to me (perhaps with some explanation as to why).

On 3/15 I would send out my draft to all of my partners and reviewers for comments/additions/deletions/etc. After 4/1 I would compile the comments from everyone and come up with a near final draft that I would send to them around 4/9. Then I would send out the final draft to Matt Wilcox by 4/15.

This is not to say that you should do it this way, simply that this is how I might do it. Part of the fun about large group projects is the different types of creativity expressed in the different ways people get the job done.

One final note/change: We have been struggling with the name of the “general public health” section - it is really more than that and we need to make that explicit. It's the general public health journals PLUS all of the journals that would be key to any place that had any kind of public health action at all. A specialist in any of the topic areas would want to have these journals - such as NEJM, JAMA, etc. To help get this across we are renaming the topic to “Key journals for all PH topics.”

Questions? Please do not hesitate to contact either myself or Stephanie Normann if you have any questions.

Enjoy and thanks-this is going to be a great tool when it is done.
--Matt Wilcox

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Matt Wilcox, Epidemiology & Public Health Librarian
Yale Epidemiology & Public Health Library