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This Guide was created by Carolyn Swidrak (retired).
The largest education database in the world, contains over 1.3 million citations for journal articles, books, research papers, conference papers, technical papers, dissertations & other materials. Provides full text for over 300,000 of these items. Most journals are peer-reviewed. Sponsored by U.S. government (Dept. of Ed.)
This database covers scholarly research and information to meet the needs of education students, professionals, and policy makers. This massive file offers the world's largest and most complete collection of full-text education journals, and encompasses an international array of English-language periodicals, monographs, yearbooks, and more.
Searching
The ERIC search engine uses smart search technology. If you type what you are looking for without quotes or advanced Boolean logic, the most relevant results will appear as the first results. If you use quotes, Boolean logic, or Thesaurus descriptors you will get overlapping but not the exact same results. Use the limiters in the left sidebar to narrow or focus your results. If you know the ERIC number (begins with EJ for Journal articles, ED for other documents), you can search by number.
Thesaurus
Thesaurus terms, also known as descriptors, are similar to twitter hashtags in that they are vocabulary that has been tagged to each ERIC item to identify its topic. For example, ERIC uses the descriptor alcohol abuse. If you search using the keyword phrase problem drinking you wil get overlapping but not identical results. In many cases it is a good idea to search using the descriptors.
Peer Review
The majority of ERIC journal articles are peer-reviewed, but there are many other documents in the database in addition to peer-reviewed journal articles (conference proceedings, reports, etc.) You may limit your selection to peer-reviewed articles only.
Full Text
The library does not own all the journals that are indexed in the ERIC database. You may limit your selection to full-text to choose only documents that have complete full text (as opposed to just the citation and abstract.) Note that limiting to full-text will eliminate the chance to link to documents outside of the ERIC database that are accessible free of cost on the internet. There is also a chance that the library has the article in print, and this would be noted as 'local holdings'. This will not appear if you select full text only.
Best bet for general research. Covers many topics, millions of articles. Peer-reviewed (scholarly) and general interest periodicals. Much of this is full text.
This database indexes and abstracts articles from periodicals published in the U.S. and elsewhere plus the full-text of selected periodicals. Subjects covered include addiction studies, community health and medical care, corrections, criminal justice, economics, environmental studies, and urban studies.