Which Database Should I Use?

Use EDUCATION FULLTEXT to find both scholarly and professional education journal articles, published chiefly in U.S., from the early 1980s to today. We have a Short Guide to Searching Education Fulltext to help you use it most constructively!

Use ERIC as a supplement to Education Fulltext for current articles in journals that Education Fulltext may not include. Although they overlap a lot in journal coverage, each has some things the other doesn't and because they work differently, you will find things in one you'll miss in the other.

Also use ERIC to search for ERIC documents, back to 1966. These are largely unpublished educational materials of wide variety. You'll find both Master's and Doctoral dissertations, speeches, unpublished reports of studies and research done at all levels of education, papers presented at conferences, raw data from governmental and quasi-governmental agencies and schools and school districts. From 1993 forwards, most of these are available as fulltext pdf files. We have some of the earlier documents on microfiche.

If you really want to do historical research, you can search the print database called Education Index back to 1929!

Use Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) if you have a citation to a particular important research article or book that was published at least a year ago. SSCI will allow you to identify some scholarly journal articles that cite that particular source as a reference in their own work. This is a difficult database to use. It is not at all intuitive. Be sure to use our research guide,
Cited Reference Searching on Science Citation Index & Social Sciences Citation Index in Six Thoughtful Steps before trying it out.