Research Guides: *Education: Finding Research Materials

Finding Education Research Literature

The databases listed below are a selection of education, educational psychology, and multidisciplinary databases. The majority of literature graduate students will use for their research will be empirical, peer-reviewed, primary source research reports. Once you have outlined your problem of practice and identified main concepts and keywords you will be ready to explore article databases. If you are struggling to find relevant articles consider exploring the Reference Sources tab in the left drop down menu to gather background information on your research topic and to develop a precise database search.

Article databases

The article databases listed below allow you to search for articles through multiple journals simultaneously. Click on the name of the database below to start searching. If you're off-campus, you'll be asked to log-in using your USC ID and password. For a list of all USC Libraries subscription databases, go to A-Z Database List.

ERIC (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
Key database for education research and education literature. Database includes journal articles, conference proceedings, government documents and dissertations on topics about and related to education. Maintained by the Dept of Education.
ProQuest Education Database This link opens in a new window
ProQuest Education Journals gives users access to over 900 top educational publications, including more than 600 of the titles in full text.
The coverage spans the literature on primary, secondary and higher education as well as special education, home schooling and adult education. Many titles are indexed in the ERIC database.
PsycINFO This link opens in a new window
Abstracting and indexing database with more than 3 million records devoted to peer-reviewed literature of journal articles, chapters, books, dissertations and reports in psychology, the behavioral sciences, and mental health.
Education Source This link opens in a new window
Includes full-text for education journals, and encompasses an international array of English-language periodicals, monographs, yearbooks and more. Coverage in Education Source spans all levels of education—from early childhood to higher education—as well as all educational specialties, such as multilingual education, health education and testing.
Content Includes:Full text for more than 1,900 journals; Indexing and abstracts for more than 3,500 journals; Full text for more than 550 books and monographs; Full text for numerous education-related conference papers; and citations for more than 5.5 million articles, including book reviews.
Educational Administration Abstracts This link opens in a new window
Provides indexing and abstracting for articles in more than 100 journals related to the administration of primary, secondary and post-secondary educational facilities and programs.
Subjects covered include: personnel, curriculum, school-community relations, supervision, minority group relations, and professional education. Educational levels include: early childhood education, K-12, community colleges, and higher education.
Coverage: 2003 to present
PAIS Index This link opens in a new window
Good resource for policy issues related to education. International in scope, with coverage of journal resources as well as "gray literature" like government information.
Scopus This link opens in a new window
Large abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature in science, technology, medicine, social sciences, and arts and humanities. Includes bibliometrics tools to track, analyze and visualize research.
Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Multidisciplinary database that provides citations covering high-impact journals in the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities, as well as international conference proceedings.
America: History & Life with Full Text This link opens in a new window
Excellent coverage of history of American education.

Library Search Process

There are three stages of the database search workflow:

Discovery: Do (and redo!) your searching, using varying terms and combining using the Boolean operators "and, or, not" to get good results. Your first search is not your best search, but rather an opportunity to refine your search strategy and your understanding of your topic.
Delivery: If you want to retrieve and item select the link to the full-text if available, or click on the button to see if we own the item. If you want to keep this item, either download the article to your computer, email it to yourself, or print it.
Organize it: Keep the "meta-information" about all the resources you found for your records and to make your bibliographies. You will find yourself returning to resources so having a system in place will save you time and aggravation later. USC Libraries has a subscription to the citation manager, RefWorks, that will help you organize the information you're collecting. For more information visit the Citation Managers guide.