LibGuides: Education: Find Articles

Subject Focused Databases

These are the best subject databases (meaning they collect articles by subject area) to start looking for articles on education related topics. You can do advanced and basic searches in these databases. You can also see our full list of Electronic Resources.

ERIC Update

The Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) is funded and operated by the Department of Education. As one of the world’s largest databases for educational research, ERIC provides access to a large collection of journal and non-journal literature in the field of education-related research. Editors of certain journals indexed in ERIC have received emails stating that the U.S. Department of Education will no longer include their journal in the ERIC database.

It is expected that the ERIC database will be reducing the collection by approx. 45% starting in April 24, 2025

ERIC
Index to >1.2 million journal articles and other education-related materials. ERIC is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education.
Teacher Reference Center
Site covering a variety of topics of interest to teachers, such as: Continuing Education, Pedagogical Research, Curriculum Development.

PubMed
For a health science & education related topics.

PsycINFO
Comprehensive index (approx. 3 million citations) to the psychology literature and the psychological aspects of related disciplines.
Sociological Abstracts
Comprehensive index of articles from journals worldwide in sociology and related disciplines (e.g. social anthropology, demography, community development, social psychology).

* Direct export to RefWorks
* Click 'Get It at StFX' icon to check for full text
* Citation tracking
Indigenous Studies Portal (USask)
The Indigenous Studies Portal (iPortal) is a database of full-text electronic resources such as books, articles, theses and documents as well as digitized materials such as photographs, archival resources, maps, etc. focusing primarily on First Nations and Aboriginals of Canada with a secondary focus on North American materials and beyond.

Lit Search Tool
Use this tool to walk through the steps to construct a search.

Multidisciplinary Databases

There will be articles here related to education but also other topics. Use keyword searches here. You can also see our full list of Electronic Resources.

ScienceDirect
Full-text access to articles from 1,700 Elsevier journals covering the subject areas of science, social sciences, arts, and humanities.
Web of Science
Huge multidisciplinary index of articles in over 8,500 journals, from 1989 to the present. (Includes: Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Arts & Humanities Citation Index)

Indigenous Studies Portal

Reviews

Where to Search for Articles - Video Tutorial

The below video series were created for EDU 517 in 2024.

Where to Search:

The video below (16min) describes some key databases to search for Education related topics, the difference between subject databases, multidisciplinary databases & search engines. It includes a short Google Scholar demonstration at the end.

How to Create a Search - Video Tutorials

Search Concepts:

The video below (12min) describes strategies to determine your minimum search concepts and the difference between sensitivity and precision in searching.

Search Concepts:

The video below (4min) describes how to create a basic search strategy using boolean operators.

Execute a Basic Article Search in Eric - Video Tutorial

Search Concepts:

The video below (15min) describes how to execute a basic search in the database ERIC. It includes how to add concepts, use filters, and some database syntax such as quotes, truncation and proximity operators.

AI Integrated & Mapping Search Tools

There are a lot of new discovery tools and search engines coming up that are enhanced with AI and LLMs. For the tools that are grounded in academic literature sources like Semantic Scholar or PubMed you can think about them as Academic AI Search Engines. Many of these tools are called Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), where they will be grounded in a data set and use an LLM to summarize the literature. To learn more about RAG systems, see this blog by Determind.ai

Below are some of these new Academic AI Search Engines you want to explore (if your class allows you to), with a warning that you will still need to critically evaluate the results (aka, does this paper seem legit?), and any guidance or summaries they are providing. Reading the actual paper is still very important, and applying your own critical thinking skills is even with these new research tools.

There are also very real and serious ethical and environmental concerns around the development, use, and sustainability of these tools. See this guide by Rebecca Sweetman for more information.

See this guide by UofT Libraries for some help evaluating these tools.

See this guide by McGill Libraries for help evaluating AI enhanced resources.

L-OVE (Living OVerview of Evidence)
L·OVE is a free-access medical evidence repository that combines AI and crowd-sourced screening to organize reviews from the Epistemonikos Database into PICO questions. It is called ‘Living’ because the content is constantly updated. If you are searching for a clinical question, this could be a good spot to look.

How to use:
Search by how you'd describe your population (eg. condition) & use the left menu to filter the results
Elicit
Search for the question you ask and provide summaries of papers retrieved. Uses Semantic Scholar as the dataset to search on (aka the results will come from this set of 200 million English papers). Freemium option available.

How to use:
-make an account
-type in a question
-use links on the right to add columns to the chart (warning: the text generated is Gen AI-created and can vary from the actual paper)
-click on item (or the doi) to see more information about that citation and for the link to full-text. Use caution if you do not recognize the journal.
Consensus
Consensus works well to search for a yes or no question. It will offer you a snapshot of research on this topic offering levels of agreement or disagreement. Uses Semantic Scholar as the dataset to search. Can use filters to limit results. Freemium option.

How to use:
- type in your question (yes or no question)
- click on the item for more information (the text here is actual text from the paper)
Undermind.ai
This is a 'deep research agent' and different type of AI search engine (it is slower-- aka will email you when it is ready). Undermind.ai searches on Semantic Scholar and arxiv to search. Freemium option available.

How to use:
-Make an account
-Type in a lot of details!
-Interact with the chat box to narrow your question(the more information, the better)
-Search and wait
-Use links to find the full-text of the articles. (use caution with some of the results, eg. critically evaluate the items)
LitMaps
This is not a RAG system, or but instead a 'recommender system' or reference tracking. Litmaps will make connections based off of citations you've already found (looks at who has cited who). It visualizes information in a list as well as a web. Uses crossref, semantic scholar and OpenAlex to search. Freemium option available.

How to use:
-type in the article title
-Search and follow the trail of relevant articles
Perplexity
Searches the web & Semantic Scholar. You can think of this as a web search enhanced with AI. Be careful of the summaries and view the actual results. Freemium option available.
The Literature
Searches on PubMed only & how you ask the question (aka the input) matters. Critically reflect on the question. Free and no account needed! If you are searching for a clinical question, this could be a good spot to look.

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How it works: uses words from your question to create a keyword search. It will manipulate that and send it to ChatGPT to create a search query. ChatGPT will generate a query and run it in PubMed. You will then see 20-30 articles.