About ERIC

ERIC is one of the largest and most popular Education database and is a foundational source for research in education, the social sciences, and beyond. It contains over 2.1 million educational documents and used by over 14 million people per year (Barshay, “A Treasure Trove of Education Reports and Studies Is under Threat.”) 

It is also the largest open access source for education research, with free open access to over 400,000 resources. This makes ERIC an essential tool for anyone without access to expensive subscription-based alternatives. Federal budget cuts here means less access to high quality education research to scholars, students, teachers, journalists, and the general public. 

Federal funding cuts

This year, the department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has taken several actions affecting this essential resource, and announced plans for further cuts and changes. This has included reducing the budget by 50% (as well as a temporary complete budget cut in April). 

In response, the Institute of Education Sciences, which runs ERIC, plans to close their helpdesk and to reduce the number of journals indexed in the database by 45% -- meaning that almost half of the journals currently included would have no new articles added. However acting director Matthew Soldner said that "no content has been removed or deleted from ERIC" (Soldner, "Continuing the work of ERIC.”) 

A group of Canadian Education librarians has emailed Soldner to ask for more details about the “cost efficiencies,” in particular, about any plans to reduce indexing of journals as previously announced.  

The story is evolving, and we will continue to post here as we learn more.

Why access to ERIC matters 

About 1,000 journals are indexed by ERIC, allowing their articles to be searchable through tools like Google Scholar and search engines. Individual authors and small or niche journals rely heavily on ERIC for discoverability. They want their articles to be read and cited widely and face a loss of readership their work is harder to find.

Why not just use a search engine instead?

In Why can’t you just use Google instead of ERIC, Erin Pollard Young, until recently the ERIC Program Officer, argues that without ERIC's metadata, search engines wouldn't find the high-quality resources that researchers are looking for -- and more reasons why the ERIC database is invaluable. 

In addition, researchers doing evidence synthesis need to be aware of the journal coverage in the databases they use. If many journals are delisted, systematic, scoping or rapid reviews using ERIC will potentially miss a significant portion of material published in 2025 and beyond.   

What’s happened so far 

In February 2025, DOGE announced massive cuts to the Department of Education. The Department of Education runs the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) which funds research into education and manages the database ERIC. 

To meet the budget cuts demanded by DOGE, the Department of Education laid off about 50% of their permanent staff, including Erin Pollard Young, the only Education Department employee involved with ERIC on a daily basis. Pollard Young supervised the team of contractors from the vendor, AEM Education Services, who did much of the work in adding new material to the database and making it discoverable through tools like Google Scholar.  

Funding to the IES lapsed on April 23, 2025, putting the entire future of ERIC into question. Then, on April 28, the Department of Education announced that a new but smaller contract with AEM Education Services had been signed and ERIC would continue to be supported (Barshay, “Education Department Restarts Online Library ERIC.”) 

Similar actions by DOGE have affected the reliability of other sources of US government data. If you're looking for US data or government reports, start with this list of US-specific resources the SFU Library has either licensed or which have been made available by various organizations

Alternatives 

ERIC backups 

Since the budget reduction announcement, many researchers, librarians, and digital preservationists have created backups of the existing ERIC database. While they do not include updates for new publications and may not have all the same functionalities, these preservation projects safeguard ERIC's existing content. Here are some of the largest: 

• The Internet Archive’s WayBack Machine has over 8 million captures of the eric.ed.gov web domain, with indexing and selected full-text materials, dating back to 1995.
• The ERIC Archive, also hosted in the Internet Archive's WayBack Machine, contains 509,664 full-text documents (as of April 5, 2025), including journal articles and government and non-government reports.
• The Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) Archive (the Internet Archive's stand-alone collection) is a smaller collection of full text documents, but the site has facets (such as subject and publications year) on the left-hand side, to aid in filtering results.
• The ERICA (ERIC Archive) from the Data Rescue Project has scraped over 500,000 full-text documents from ERIC and provides a basic search box. 

Subscription resources through SFU Library 

SFU Library subscribes to many Education databases that have overlapping content with ERIC. 

The vendor EBSCO has confirmed that they will be expanding abstracting and indexing coverage in their Education Abstracts database. This expanded version of Education Abstracts will cover 100% of the content lost in ERIC, and will be freely available to subscribers starting mid-May 2025. Information on how to access content from Education Abstracts will be shared in a future post.  

Grey literature 

One of the main strengths of ERIC is its collection of grey literature, such as research done by private organizations, school districts reports, white papers, and policy literature.  

Some alternatives for Education grey literature are: 

• Policy Commons: This database brings together grey literature -- reports, working papers, policy briefs, data sources, and media -- from NGOS, think tanks, and research centers around the world.
• EdArXiv a pre-print server for the education research community. EdArXiv (Education Archive) is a free, open source, non-profit service that allows researchers to post and search working papers, unpublished work, conference materials, and articles under review (preprints). Learn more about EdArXiv from the steering committee.
• Education resources Facts + Data: Statistics and reports from BC, Canada, and the US. 

If you have any questions about ERIC or Education research in general, please contact Education Librarian Adena Brons at abrons@sfu.ca  

Sources 

Barshay, J. (2025a, April 21). A treasure trove of education reports and studies is under threat. The Hechinger Report. http://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-eric-under-threat/ 

Barshay, J. (2025b, April 28). Education Department restarts online library ERIC. The Hechinger Report. http://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-restart-eric-ed-library/ 

Hechinger Report. (2025, February 19). Tracking Trump: His actions to dismantle the Education Department, and more. The Hechinger Report. http://hechingerreport.org/tracking-trump-his-actions-on-education/ 

LeBlanc, H. (n.d.). Education: NEWS ALERT! (January, 2025 on) Cuts to the U.S. Department of Education & its information... Wilfrid Laurier Library Education Guide. Retrieved May 12, 2025, from https://library.wlu.ca/research/subject-guides/education/news-alert-january-2025-cuts-us-department-education-its 

Pollard Young, E. (n.d.). Why Can’t You Just Use Google Instead of ERIC? LinkedIn. Retrieved May 12, 2025, from https://www.linkedin.com/posts/erin-pollard-young-4894147_why-cant-you-just-use-google-instead-of-activity-7317528612692242433-V292 

Price, G. (2025, April 23). Accessing Archived Material From ERIC (Education Resource Information Center) via the Internet Archive & Elsewhere. Library Journal infoDOCKET. https://www.infodocket.com/2025/04/23/accessing-archived-material-from-eric-via-the-internet-archive/ 

Soldner, M. (2025, April 28). Continuing the Work of ERIC [Online post]. IES Newsflash. https://connect.ala.org/acrl/discussion/fwd-continuing-the-work-of-eric-1 

Wong, D., & Webb, J. (2025, March 25). Education Resources Information Center (ERIC). OISE Library Blog. https://oise.library.utoronto.ca/oise-library-blog/education-resources-information-center-eric 

Further information

For more resources and information visit SFU Library's Education resources, or contact Adena Brons at abrons@sfu.ca