EDC 115: Exploring Education: Articles and Databases

• Academic Search Premier

  An important resource for many academic subjects including the social sciences, humanities, education and more. It includes full text and abstracts for thousands of academic journals.
• Education Database

  Abstracts and indexing of over 900 education journals, many in full-text.
• Education Research Complete

  Provides full-text access to more than 750 journals, 100 books, and conference papers on all aspects and levels of education since 1983 with monthly updates. Particularly useful for Education and Social Sciences. This database includes the database Education Abstracts.
• Educator's Reference Complete

  Provides full-text access to more than 450 journals and reports on best practices and educational research since 1980 with daily updates. Particularly useful for Education and Social Sciences.
• ERIC - EBSCO

  Provides full-text access to articles published from ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) since 1966 with monthly updates. Particularly useful for Education and Social Sciences. ERIC EBSCO contains full-text ERIC documents (past 5 years) and Digests.
• ERIC - ProQuest

  Provides full-text access to articles published from ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) since 1966 with monthly updates. Particularly useful for Education and Social Sciences.

  Opposing View Points

  Provides an excellent first-step in researching any current social issue. Includes pro-con articles, opinion pieces, newspaper pieces, scholarly articles and information from many other types of sources, all full text.
• Professional Development Collection

  Provides current full-text access to over 240 journals for professional educators. Particularly useful for Education and Social Sciences.

• Sage Journals Online

  Teacher Reference Center

  Provides full-text access to over 270 popular teacher and administrator journals and magazines to assist professional educators. Particularly useful for Education and Social Sciences.

"Peer-reviewed" describes the process an article has to go through before it can be published in a specific journal. 

When a piece of research is submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, a panel of researchers with a similar focus judge the research by various criteria. 

The article must be reporting original research that adds to the body of knowledge for the subject. The research must be reproducible, ethical and unbiased. Methods must be properly controlled and the conclusion must be reflective of the results. 

Some journals are a lot harder to get published in than others and this adds to their prestige. 

Search Sage Journals Online and Sage Knowledge Databases for Educational Research Resources

Sage Knowledge database Education Reference titles

Research Methods in Education

Find journals, magazines, and newspapers by title by using our periodicals directory. The library has a wide range of journals, magazines, and newspapers in print or online through databases.

Few journal titles from Sage Journals Online database

• Action Research
• Journal of Mixed Methods Research
• Qualitative Inquiry
• Qualitative Research

Inter-Library Loan is a great way to get pretty much anything you want from any library in the world.

You just need to fill in an easy online form and the librarians will do the work for you.

Enter '0' in the payment field.

The item will generally get to you within a few days - books will need to be collected from the library and articles will normally be e-mailed to you as a PDF.

A scholarly article is basically a formal presentation of original research.

Scholarly articles have many features which distinguish them from popular or secondary sources. In evaluating whether an article is scholarly, you should look for:

• The publication source is usually a periodical (journal). 

• The article is highly structured, usually with an abstract, introduction, methods, results and conclusion. 

• Specific, technical or scientific language is used.

• Original research is being presented for the first time. 

• The authors have their affiliations noted (university, organization...).

• There are citations within the text and a set of references at the end

What is "primary literature"?

• Primary literature refers to ideas that are revealed in a public forum for the first time. Much of the primary literature appears in journal articles. Conference papers, reports, abstracts, and preprints are additional sources of primary literature. 

• Staying current with the primary literature in a specialty enables researchers to fully understand the scope of developments in their field and to avoid duplication of work.

Is primary research available on the web?

Many government agencies are sources of highly reputable scholarly research reports and journal articles. Conference papers, reports, abstracts, and preprints are additional sources of primary literature.