Education Research for Graduate Students: Searching ERIC

ERIC records will have an ERIC Number or Accession Number. These numbers indicate wether the record is from an academic journal (EJ) or another type of publication (ED) such as papers, dissertations, guides, books, etc.

ERIC Number/Accession Number

• In eric.ed.gov, the search results include an ERIC Number.

• In ERIC(at EBSCOHost) this number is called an Accession Number. 

ED 

• Numbers starting with ED are ERIC Documents, which are unpublished documents. 
  • example: (ED572827)

EJ 

• Numbers starting with EJ are ERIC Journals, which are articles in education journals. 
  • example: (EJ1125222)

Keywords

• Keywords are the search terms that you use to search for records on your topic.
• Keyword searching is what many of us start with. When you type in your search terms and hit Search, you are doing a keyword search. You can use limiters with a keyword search and it will still be a keyword search. 
• A keyword search searches for the term(s) in the Title, Abstract, Descriptors, and Identifiers fields.
• If the keyword(s) appears in those fields, it will be included in the search results. This is true even if the keyword is only mentioned once and has nothing to do with the actual topic of the record. For this reason, keyword searching can return results that are off-topic. 

Descriptors

• Descriptor searches are designed to return results that are on-topic. Descriptors are a standardized list, or controlled vocabulary, of terms used to organize ERIC records by subject. 
• A Descriptor search searches the Descriptors field (DE=)
• Descriptors are assigned to each ERIC record. A Descriptor describes the subject content of a record. Descriptors provide a more precise description of a records' subjects than keywords do. 

ERIC's Thesaurus

• The ERIC Thesaurus contains the Descriptors used in ERIC.  
• You can search the Thesaurus search to find the best, most accurate, descriptor(s) for your topic, keyword, or subject terms.