Tl;dr:
- ERIC continues to operate, but is indexing fewer journals
- The contents of ERIC are reported to be stable with no plans to delete records
- If/when potential alternatives to ERIC emerge, we would assess these in collaboration with TAL (because ERIC is in the TAL Core set of subscriptions)
As we’re all aware, lately there’s been a lot of worrying news about widespread defunding and dismantling of American research and knowledge infrastructures. In CSU, we’re working to stay informed and to understand the impacts on our collection.
One resource that’s been under a cloud of uncertainty is core Education database ERIC. The US Department of Education’s research arm, the Institute of Education Sciences, runs and maintains ERIC.
In late April 2025, it was announced that ERIC would continue to operate, albeit on a smaller scale. The acting head of the Institute of Education Sciences, Matthew Soldner, has stated that “no content has been removed or deleted from ERIC,” and that the database’s “preservation policy is unchanged: we will not remove an article in ERIC unless it is retracted by the publisher.”
At this time, we do not have a complete sense of how ERIC’s reduced capacity will affect its coverage. There’s a collaborative list of journals no longer covered by ERIC, but this is an incomplete list, based on reports from individual journal editors. It has been reported elsewhere that ERIC’s indexing will shrink from 1,200 to 700 titles.
Vendors such as EBSCO are working on ERIC alternatives, but nothing has been announced or offered yet. Because ERIC is so widely important, it’s part of The Alberta Library’s TAL Core set of subscriptions. We’ll work with the TAL team as they monitor the situation surrounding ERIC and consider options for additional coverage of education research.