Harry Potter author fails to make the grade for public vote on the 50 highlights of last half-century

She created the Harry Potter series and has written two bestselling novels for adults but JK Rowling has been snubbed in a competition that pits Scotland's top writers in a public vote to find readers' "favourite Scottish books of the last 50 years".

The author, who lives in Edinburgh, is the highest-profile author to be excluded from the list of 50 books which readers can vote for on the Scottish Book Trust website.

According to literary critic Stuart Kelly, who assembled the list with Scottish Book Trust, Rowling doesn't figure on the list because she just isn't good enough.

"If she was to have been included it probably would have been for the third Harry Potter book, but this list is about adult books," Kelly explained, arguing that "there are 50 better books than The Casual Vacancy on that list".

The list was an attempt to find the "best books for people to choose their favourites from," he continued. "There are a lot of works which expand the novel, books which fundamentally change what a novel does, like Andrew Crumey's Pfitz, Frank Kuppner's A Very Quiet Street, or Hotel World by Ali Smith. It is not just about content, it's also about form. Many of these books are doing quite radical things."

Women writers feature strongly, even though they "haven't been in the past part of the critical discourse", Kelly said, citing Candia McWilliam's A Case of Knives, and The Bad Sister by Emma Tennant, "but they are very much part of the Scottish tradition. They have developed this fascination with dopplegangers."

He said: "Every Scottish author I know writes within a world tradition but it is the case that they are more likely to have read Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886), The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824) by James Hogg, and Witch Wood by John Buchanan (1927), the influence is implicit. There is a distinct way in which they self-situate within a Scottish context."

Many other famous Scottish books were omitted because they were published more than 50 years ago, although some of the earlier books on the list include Muriel Spark's Loitering with Intent (1981), Docherty by William McIlvanney (1975), and James Kennaway's 1963 novel The Mind Benders.

Others in the selection are James Kelman's Kieron Smith, Boy, Day by AL Kennedy and Alan Warner's 1977 novel Morvern Callar.

The list is rich with Scottish crime writers, from Ian Rankin, to Denise Mina, Louise Welsh, Val McDermid and Christopher Brookmyre. The late Iain Banks is the only writer to have two books included, one, Excession, from his science fiction work written as Iain M Banks, and the other The Bridge, published as Iain Banks.

Voting, which is open to everyone, ends on 18 November, and the top 10 titles will be announced during Book Week Scotland (25 November to 1 December).