6 Best Education Databases for Students
Research has always been one of the major components of effective learning. Thus, as a student, you will have to deal with lots of information.
The way students conduct research today is much different from what it used to be just a couple of decades ago. If previously students had to rely solely on textbooks and other literature, today, they have the Internet, which has opened access to an almost unlimited number of resources.
However, though it generally sounds like a good thing, it also brings along certain challenges. Namely, in the 21st century, when most of the academic research takes place online, students must know where to look for information, and this article was created to help you get on the right track.
What Are Education Databases and Why Should You Care?
In a nutshell, this term refers to databases that were designed to bolster academic research by giving students free access to a huge variety of valid sources of information. Typically, such databases include not only textbooks and literature but also academic journals, theses, dissertations, articles, and much more.
Who can use it and how? Education databases are meant for students, researchers, and professionals. They are used for conducting quality research.
Why should you use them? There are plenty of reasons. But the most important one is that such databases include only valid and trusted resources, which is important in our world, where most of the Internet is fake.
For example, when you are assigned to write an essay, it is much wiser to collect information from education databases because this way, you can rest assured that the collected data is verified and relevant. Thus, unless you have a reliable writing service to ask professionals to do my essay fast and cheap and get a well-written paper, having one of such databases in your arsenal is a good idea.
Top 6 Best Databases Students Can Rely On
Now that you know what education databases are and why it is so important to have at least one of them at hand, you are probably wondering what databases are there.
In the list below, we have collected the top six best databases that every student should know and use.
Google Scholar
It would be wrong to start this article with anything other than Google Scholar because it is by far the most famous and widely used online database for academic research. Just like any other product created by Google, this database is, without a doubt, great. It works like a search engine and gives you access to a huge number of academic resources on any possible discipline, as well as many annotations, citations, assignments, and more.
WorldWideScience
Another cool thing to add to your students’ toolkit is WorldWideScience. Unlike other options on this list, WorldWideScience works a bit differently – instead of giving you access to a wide range of sources of information, it is used to find trusted scientific databases for different purposes. To put it simply, it is a database of all databases that will definitely come in handy for your research, so it is also worth trying.
MIT OpenCourseWare
If you have never used it, you are missing out on a whole bunch of opportunities! Created by one of the leading universities in the US, OpenCourseWare is a free and publicly available database of high-quality college class materials.
Its unique nature makes MIT OpenCourseWare helpful not only to students and researchers, who can use the included materials in their studies, but also to independent learners, who can use it to study almost any subject and topic.
ERIC
If you are looking for a bibliographic database, then ERIC would be your best bet. Including over 100K non-journal documents and more than 1.1 million citations, it is one of the largest free databases existing today. Another reason that makes it a worthy resource is that all materials included here are 100% credible and reliable because the system carefully verifies every new file.
BASE
Also known as Bielefeld Academic Search Engine, BASE is another educational database that can come in handy for your research. It works similarly to Google Scholar and grants you access to 140+ million documents, each of which is being carefully verified before it is added to the database.
BASE is definitely worth trying. However, unlike the rest of the options on this list, it is not fully free of charge. Only about 60% of all files are free; the rest require payment. But if you don’t want to pay, you can filter them out and search only for open access files.
EThOS
Finally, one more database worth trying is E-Theses Online Service – a database of over 500,000 Ph.D. theses on a variety of subjects. Unfortunately, not all files are free of charge. Despite this fact, you can still make pretty good use of EThOS even if you only rely on the free materials available here.
The Bottom Line
Hopefully, each of you will find something useful in this article. Of course, the options given on this list are not all that is there. Yet, each of these databases is time-tested and has gained a good reputation among researchers. So, if you choose any of these, you will not make a mistake!
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