A new study about selecting the best databases for research in education just came out and was co-authored by NIU Libraries faculty member, Alissa Droog along with co-authors Sarah Fitzgerald (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) and Kari D. Weaver (University of Waterloo, Canada). The article, Selecting a specialized education database for literature reviews and evidence synthesis projects, questions the long held belief that the most popular database used in educational research, ERIC, is enough for comprehensive searching in the field and suggests that a combination of databases is best. Based on this research, Droog recommends that NIU students, staff, and faculty use a combined database called ERIC and Education Source (EBSCO), to find research in the field of education.
Abstract
While the Institute of Education Science’s ERIC is often recommended for comprehensive literature searching in the field of education, there are several other specialized education databases to discover education literature. This study investigates journal coverage overlaps between four specialized education databases: Education Source (EBSCO), Education Database (ProQuest), ERIC (Institute of Education Sciences), and Educator’s Reference Complete (Gale). Out of a total of 4,695 unique journals analyzed, there are 2,831 journals uniquely covered by only one database, as well as many journals covered by only two or three databases. Findings show that evidence synthesis projects and literature reviews benefit from the careful selection of multiple specialized education databases and that ERIC is insufficient as the primary education database for comprehensive searching in the field.
