Oxford LibGuides: Education: research guide: Databases

Key databases for finding articles on your topic (education)

Scopus
Scopus contains the best coverage of relevant educational research journals as well as many other interesting research papers from all disciplines.
Scopus is a bibliographic database for science, medicine and some social sciences. It covers over 25,000 journals and over 300,000 books from over 7,000 publishers worldwide, providing access to over 90 million records going back as far as the 18th century.
Education Collection (incl. ERIC)
ERIC (Educational Research Information Center) was the original collection focused on research in the field of education. It includes US government papers as well as extensive international material. We provide access to ERIC as part of ProQuest's Education Collection and as part of ProQuest's Social Science Premium Collection.
Alternative name: Education Database and ERIC

Education Collection comprises 2 databases: Education Database and ERIC
British Education Index
BEI (British Education Index) provides strong coverage of relevant educational research journals and includes international research (not just British!) There will be some overlap with Scopus or ERIC but it is worth searching separately.
The British Education Index provides information on research, policy and practice in education and training in the UK.
Particular strengths include aspects of educational policy and administration, evaluation and assessment, technology and special educational needs.
Australian Education Index
An additional place to search as well as the Education Collection and the British Education Index if you wish to ensure broader international coverage and, often interesting, research from Australia
The Australian Education Index is a comprehensive collection of educational research documents relating to educational trends, policy, and practices. The database is produced by the Cunningham Library at the Australian Council for Educational Research and is Australia's largest source of education information. Coverage includes trends and practices in teaching, learning and educational management.
Education Abstracts
another source of material on education, an additional place to search if you have time.
Educational Abstracts (EBSCO) indexes hundreds of periodicals, books and yearbooks covering a broad range of subjects pertaining to education including adult education, comparative education, government funding, higher education, school administration, teacher evaluation and more.

Key databases for finding articles on your topic (applied linguistics)

Linguistics Collection (including LLBA)
Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA) was the original collection focused on research in applied linguistics. We provide access to LLBA as part of ProQuest's Linguistics Collection and as part of ProQuest's Social Science Premium Collection.
Alternative names: Linguistics Database ; Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts ; LLBA

This collections comprises 2 databases: Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA) and Linguistics Database
Scopus
Scopus contains the some limited coverage of applied linguistics research as well as many other interesting research papers from all disciplines.
Scopus is a bibliographic database for science, medicine and some social sciences. It covers over 25,000 journals and over 300,000 books from over 7,000 publishers worldwide, providing access to over 90 million records going back as far as the 18th century.
PsycINFO
Psychology journals - useful for language development research and educational psychology etc.
PsycINFO provides citations with abstracts to the scholarly literature in the psychological, social, behavioural, and health sciences. The database includes material of relevance to psychologists, students, and professionals in related fields such as psychiatry, management, business, and education, social science, neuroscience, law, medicine, and social work. PsycINFO contains more than 2 million records spanning 1806 to the present. Journal coverage includes material selected from approximately 2,000 periodicals. Chapter and book coverage includes worldwide English-language material published from 1987 to the present; however, there is a substantial number of records covering books published earlier. Dissertations constitute approximately 12% of the database. APA is currently adding approximately 8,100,000 references annually through weekly updates.
MLA International Bibliography (EBSCO)
The database of the Modern Languages Association - more useful for literature in other languages
Produced by the Modern Language Association (MLA), the MLA International Bibliography is the definitive index for the study of language, literature, linguistics, rhetoric and composition, folklore, and film, covering scholarly publications from the early 20th century to the present. International in scope, it includes citations to journal articles, books, articles in books, series, translations, scholarly editions, websites, and dissertations. It has more than 3 million records and is constantly updated by scholars in the field. The database also includes the MLA Directory of Periodicals and the MLA Thesaurus, a proprietary, searchable collection of thousands of subject terms, and personal names used in indexing the bibliography.

Key databases for finding articles on your topic (medical education))

In addition to the education databases recommended above you will also wish to search medical databases. See our recommendations (and lots of other useful advice) here: https://libguides.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/medsci/literaturesearching

Consider seeking advice from your outreach librarian as well as the Education Library team.

Useful advice on doing clinical education research, including literature reviewing, is available from the NIHR with webinar recordings and slides complemented by more on mastering the basics from the Incubator for Clinial Education Research. The PAPERs podcast is a weekly medical education podcast with some episodes offering advice on methodology etc.

Broader databases for finding literature on your topic

Scopus
Scopus contains strong coverage of relevant educational research journals as well as many other interesting research papers from all disciplines.
Scopus is a bibliographic database for science, medicine and some social sciences. It covers over 25,000 journals and over 300,000 books from over 7,000 publishers worldwide, providing access to over 90 million records going back as far as the 18th century.
Web of Science Core Collection
A rival to, and similar in coverage to Scopus in terms of coverage of relevant educational research journals, Web of Science also includes many other interesting research papers from all disciplines.
Alternative names: WOS ; Web of Knowledge ; WoK. Web of Science provides seamless access to the Science Citation Expanded®, Social Sciences Citation Index®, and Arts & Humanities Citation Index™.
PsycINFO
for all aspects of psychology, including educational and developmental psychology
PsycINFO provides citations with abstracts to the scholarly literature in the psychological, social, behavioural, and health sciences. The database includes material of relevance to psychologists, students, and professionals in related fields such as psychiatry, management, business, and education, social science, neuroscience, law, medicine, and social work. PsycINFO contains more than 2 million records spanning 1806 to the present. Journal coverage includes material selected from approximately 2,000 periodicals. Chapter and book coverage includes worldwide English-language material published from 1987 to the present; however, there is a substantial number of records covering books published earlier. Dissertations constitute approximately 12% of the database. APA is currently adding approximately 8,100,000 references annually through weekly updates.
ProQuest Social Science Premium Collection‎
Includes Education Collection (including ERIC) and the Linguistics Collection (including LLBA) so choose this instead if you want results from a wider range of Social Science journals.
Also includes International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS) and Applied Social Sciences Index & Abstracts (ASSIA) so there is no need to search these separately.
This collection provides access to databases covering international literature in social sciences, including politics, public policy, sociology, social work, anthropology, criminology, linguistics, library science, and education. Featured databases include IBSS, Sociological Abstracts and Worldwide Political Science Abstracts. Together, they provide abstracts, indexing and full-text coverage of journal articles, books, book chapters, dissertations, working papers, and more.
Included databases:
Criminology Collection
Education Collection
International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS)
Library & Information Science Collection
Linguistics Collection
Politics Collection
Social Science Database
Google Scholar
Similar to SOLO's Articles search, useful to check you've found everything in your other searches, and very handy if you have no instiutional affiliation.
Google Scholar searches academic publishers, professional societies and pre-print archives.
SOLO
not just for finding books in our libraries, SOLO is also a huge database of journal articles similar in size & coverage to Google Scholar. Tip: tick the option to include results without full-text access to get a Scholar type set of results
Alternative name: Search Oxford Libraries Online
SOLO is the official search tool for the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford. It allows searching of around 13 million library items, 3 million Electronic Legal Deposit e-books and journal articles, the theses and articles stored in ORA, and research articles from journals subscribed to by the University. A specialist map search is also available.
Dimensions
Alternative names: Dimensions (Digital Science)

Dimensions is a bibliographic database which can be used to analyse citation and publication metrics to help you measure influence and impact at article, author and category level. It contains over 100 million publication records, predominantly in science and medicine.
This links to the freely available version, for publication search, citation and Altmetric data, and other research analytics. The University does not currently subscribe to Dimensions Plus (for full access including grants, patents, clinical trials and policy documents).

Databases which offer citation tracking

Web of Science Core Collection
Alternative names: WOS ; Web of Knowledge ; WoK. Web of Science provides seamless access to the Science Citation Expanded®, Social Sciences Citation Index®, and Arts & Humanities Citation Index™.
Scopus
Scopus is a bibliographic database for science, medicine and some social sciences. It covers over 25,000 journals and over 300,000 books from over 7,000 publishers worldwide, providing access to over 90 million records going back as far as the 18th century.
PsycINFO
PsycINFO provides citations with abstracts to the scholarly literature in the psychological, social, behavioural, and health sciences. The database includes material of relevance to psychologists, students, and professionals in related fields such as psychiatry, management, business, and education, social science, neuroscience, law, medicine, and social work. PsycINFO contains more than 2 million records spanning 1806 to the present. Journal coverage includes material selected from approximately 2,000 periodicals. Chapter and book coverage includes worldwide English-language material published from 1987 to the present; however, there is a substantial number of records covering books published earlier. Dissertations constitute approximately 12% of the database. APA is currently adding approximately 8,100,000 references annually through weekly updates.
Google Scholar
Google Scholar searches academic publishers, professional societies and pre-print archives.

Explore other disciplines

Databases A-Z
Other databases may be useful for your research. Use the 'All subjects' menu to see listings of relevant databases beyond education.

For example: Interested in ethnography? explore Anthropology; Interested in child development? explore Psychology; Teaching geography? explore Geography etc.

Keeping up to date

Tips on the various types of alerts you can set up to stay up to date with your research interests

Research methods

Sage Research Methods Online
Alternative name: SRMO

Sage Research Methods Online (SRMO) is essentially a collection of ebook content put together in a unique way to help you understand research methods. The site includes access to the entire "Little Green Book" and "Little Blue Book" series as well as dictionaries, encyclopaedias, handbooks and other commissioned material. The site includes a unique methods map and a discussion forum. Access is not available to the ‘add-on’ content - videos, cases and datasets.
PsycINFO
PsycINFO provides citations with abstracts to the scholarly literature in the psychological, social, behavioural, and health sciences. The database includes material of relevance to psychologists, students, and professionals in related fields such as psychiatry, management, business, and education, social science, neuroscience, law, medicine, and social work. PsycINFO contains more than 2 million records spanning 1806 to the present. Journal coverage includes material selected from approximately 2,000 periodicals. Chapter and book coverage includes worldwide English-language material published from 1987 to the present; however, there is a substantial number of records covering books published earlier. Dissertations constitute approximately 12% of the database. APA is currently adding approximately 8,100,000 references annually through weekly updates.

Common Search Tricks

check your spelling, and consider British American variations
consider searching for your search terms just in abstracts
use double quotation marks to indicate an "exact phrase"
try truncating words, e.g. child* will find child, children, childhood etc.
a wildcard can be useful, e.g. behavio?r ; wom?n
provide alternative search terms with OR between them ; join concepts into a more focused search using AND ; exclude unwanted results using NOT

For example:

cyberbull* OR "cyber bull*" OR "cyber vicitimi?ation"

AND

boy* OR m?n or male*

NOT primary OR elementary OR junior OR infant

Ovid search tips

Some databases e.g. PsycINFO are provided by Ovid. Ovid is a very sophisticated search interface, which can make it rather daunting to use.

Use the Advanced Search or the Multi-Field Search if you want to use combination words like AND, OR, or truncation (*). The Basic Search is just for natural-langage queries, like "What is the effect of low thyroid function on heart failure" and will ignore the syntax of your search.

It helps to split your search into smaller searches in the Multi-Field Search and then combine them afterwards - this is also useful for highlighting where the problem search terms might be.

Note that if you search for more than one word Ovid defaults to exact phrase searching between any operators, e.g. OR, ADJ# so you do not need to use "double quotation marks".

PsycINFO
PsycINFO provides citations with abstracts to the scholarly literature in the psychological, social, behavioural, and health sciences. The database includes material of relevance to psychologists, students, and professionals in related fields such as psychiatry, management, business, and education, social science, neuroscience, law, medicine, and social work. PsycINFO contains more than 2 million records spanning 1806 to the present. Journal coverage includes material selected from approximately 2,000 periodicals. Chapter and book coverage includes worldwide English-language material published from 1987 to the present; however, there is a substantial number of records covering books published earlier. Dissertations constitute approximately 12% of the database. APA is currently adding approximately 8,100,000 references annually through weekly updates.

ProQuest search tips

If a ProQuest database is unable to complete your search, try reducing the amount of truncated terms within quotation marks as this has an impact on search performance.

Exporting results

Setting up a personal account in ProQuest 'MyResearch' can make it easier for you to export the results into your reference manager. However, if you see this error message "Export results is disabled due to content restrictions. Your selection includes one or more articles that can't be included in your request." then try exporting your results page by page (you can show more 'Items per page').