The selection of high-impact health informatics literature: a comparison of results between the content expert and the expert searcher

Background: The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) National Resource Center for Health Information Technology (NRC) created the Health IT Bibliography that contains peer-reviewed articles in eleven different health informatics categories. To create the bibliography, informatics experts identified what they considered the seminal articles in each category. Methods: Using the same eleven categories, an expert searcher (librarian) compiled a list of the "best" health informatics articles using information seeking and retrieval tools. The two sets of articles were then compared using high citation counts as a measure of value. Results: The expert searcher set (8,230) contained more than 3 times the citations to chosen articles compared to the content expert set (2,382). Of 60 articles, 27% of those articles (n=16) were included in both sets. The frequently cited journals were similar for both sets, and one-third of the same authors were cited in both sets. Discussion: While citation counts and the timeliness of the articles differed in the two sets, the same authors and same journals were frequently present in both sets. Conclusion: A best practice for locating high-quality articles may be collaboration between expert searchers and content experts.