Education: ERIC

ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) is the world's most widely used index to educational-related literature. Content includes:

• journal articles (mostly peer-reviewed)
• research reports
• curriculum and teaching guides
• conference papers
• dissertations and theses

Full-text: includes many full-text documents or links to full text via UC-eLinks.

Coverage: 1966 - current

Grey literature: indexes grey literature content published by 1,057 selected centers, agencies, programs, associations, non-profit organizations, and initiatives.  To see a current list of these non-journal sources on the ERIC website.

PDFs online: In August of 2012 ERIC discovered that personally identifiable information appeared in some ERIC documents and were easily discoverable online. ERIC removed access to all full-text documents due to the security concerns. As of July 2014, approximately 94% of the PDFs that ERIC has permission to display are now available. This includes all peer-reviewed materials, documents published after 2004, and PDFs that were scanned electronically for sensitive information.

ERIC documents that are not available online are available on microfilm. The UC Berkeley ERIC microfilm collection is stored at the Northern Regional Library Facility (NRLF) and are discoverable via UC Library Search. Search by ERIC number. 

Example: Advanced Search -> Call Number contains -> ED476871

Items can then be requested from NRLF via the REQUEST feature.

UC Berkeley defaults to the advanced search interface in ERIC via Proquest which allows you to search on multiple terms and to select from a a  number of searchable fields.

Use the thesaurus to find subject terms to narrow or broaden your search. ERIC uses a controlled vocabulary (or ERIC descriptors) that may help you find more relevant, precise results.

For example, entering the following phrases in the thesaurus search term box leads the user to a more commonly used or precise ERIC descriptor:

• inner city schools ==> urban education
• parent involvement ==> parent participation

ERIC also adds many additional indexes that allows users to get more precise results. Some of the indexes that users can search on include:

• Education level (Adult education, Early childhood education, Elementary education, Grade 1, Grade 2, etc.)
• Target audience (Administrators, Teachers, Students, etc.

When you enter a search you will retrieve a results page. Some features to look out for on the results page:

• Modify: click this to make changes to your current search strategy. Or make changes to your search in the search box.
• Search within: Use this to run a search within the current results. Add additional keywords and ProQuest will look for the keywords within the current search results.
• Email or print any marked records in your search results.
• Cite: generates a bibliographic citation in a number of different styles available from the pull-down menu. Copy and paste the citations into a document and make necessary edits.
• Export: use with bibliographic software like Zotero or Refworks.
• Narrow results by: apply additional limits (also known as filters or facets) to refine your results such as peer reviewed, source type (scholarly journal, report, book, etc.), language, and date.
• Sort results by: Sort by relevance, date (newest first).