Library Guide for Education Graduate Students

The Purdue Library Catalog can be helpful in browsing books in the Purdue collection. The catalog also allows you to search for whole journal issues by performing a "Journal Search" and searching the journal title.

However, Article Databases are tools that enable library users to perform more sophisticated searches for scholarly literature. These databases are usually designed according to subject and can either simply index an article (or book chapter) or provide the article in full-text.

Tool Features

• Subject-specific limiters to refine search results (e.g. education level, publication audience)
• Peer-reviewed article limiter option
• Controlled vocabulary determined by field experts to classify articles
• Records providing bibliographic information for sources both within and without Purdue
• Folder creation capabilities for account holders

Tip

Users can use the thesauri of subject-specific databases to perform more targeted searches. For more information on using this feature of EBSCO databases--including Education Source, ERIC, and PsycINFO--see EBSCO's help entry on Browsing EBSCO Databases Using the Thesaurus.

While the quality or impact of journals can be tricky to determine, below are tools that provide some relevant metrics.

• Scimago Journal & Country Rank - Tool that draws on data gathered in SCOPUS, Elsevier's abstract and citation database; explore journal ranks and limit search by Subject.
• Journal Citation Reports: Science Edition - Comprehensive resource for evaluating and comparing journals using citation data drawn from over 11,000 scholarly and technical journals from more than 3,300 publishers in over 80 countries. JCR Science Edition contains data from over 7,300 journals in science and technology. (login requires Purdue Career Account)
• Journal Citation Reports: Social Science Edition - Comprehensive resource for evaluating and comparing journals using citation data drawn from over 11,000 scholarly and technical journals from more than 3,300 publishers in over 80 countries. JCR Social Sciences Edition contains data from over 2,200 journals in the social sciences. (login requires Purdue Career Account)

The University of Wisconsin-Madison's Library Guide on Bibliometrics and Citation Analysis points to helpful, critical discussions on measuring the research impact of journals, articles, and authors.

This list includes some of the most frequently-used databases in Education research. 

Looking for the full text of articles in these databases?  If an article does not have a direct HTML full-text or PDF link, look for the FIND IT @ Purdue Libraries icon or search for the article from the Purdue Libraries catalog to see if full-text access is provided through another source.

Interlibrary Loan enables current Purdue West Lafayette students, faculty, and staff to obtain research materials not owned by Purdue Libraries. This includes books, as well as other materials like articles, book chapters, DVDs, microfilm, sheet music, etc.

Article Express is an enhanced Interlibrary Loan service that provides almost immediate (within 2 hours) email delivery of articles from eligible journal content that you can request straight from Library Search. Eligible journal content currently includes all non-subscribed Elsevier journal titles and a few non-subscribed journal titles from other publishers (e.g. Mary Ann Liebert and Nature). Each PDF requested through Article Express will be paid for by the Libraries at an average cost of $25 per article. This service is available for currently affiliated users at the West Lafayette campus.

Questions about this service may be directed to ill@purdue.edu.