Since 1993, Doody Enterprises, Inc., has been dedicated to providing timely, filtered medical information and expert commentary to busy health care professionals who need to stay abreast of the overwhelming volume of literature and research findings in their specialty areas.
At the core of the clinical information database are Doody’s Book Reviews™ which evaluate books and electronic products across a wide range of clinical specialty areas in Basic Science, Clinical Medicine, Nursing, Allied Health, and Other Disciplines.
For each specialty, there is an Editorial Review Group Chair (ERG Chair) who coordinates reviews of titles in his/her field. The Chairs work with over 5,000 academically-affiliated clinicians who prepare a formatted review and fill out a ratings questionnaire for each title. The reviewer’s name and affiliation appear with each review.
Doody’s Book Reviews™ database collects information on approximately 3,000 book and software titles each year from over 250 of the world’s leading publishers of professional level health care publications. Expert reviews of about 2,000 of the titles each year are prepared by a network of more than 5,000 academically-affiliated health care professionals.
Unique to the review process is the star rating assigned to each review. The stars correlate to the numerical ratings that are derived from an 18-point questionnaire completed by the reviewer in the course of assessing the title. The questionnaire highlights 16 different elements (such as the authority of the authors, and the quantity, currency, and pertinence of the references) of the title. The reviewer must rate each element essentially on a 5-point scale.
The rating system helps ensure that each review is as fair and as objective as possible. Thus, Doody’s Book Reviews™ incorporate a good blend of quantitative and qualitative analysis in its reviews. As a result, they have become well known around the world for reflecting a timely, expert, unbiased approach to rating medical publications.
Users of the service can establish a profile reflecting the specialties in which they want to receive up-to-date book and software information. Incorporated into the service is a personalized Weekly E-mail Bulletin that automatically alerts subscribers each week by e-mail to the new information in their personal areas of interest. Each Weekly E-mail Bulletin is linked to a personalized Web site where users can access in-depth information in hundreds of different specialty areas.
In addition to receiving the Weekly E-mail Bulletin in their profiled areas of interest, subscribers enjoy anytime-anywhere access to the complete database of 70,000 book and software titles.