To use or not to use: ERIC database for medical education research

Introduction: Bibliographic databases are essential research tools. In medicine, key databases are MEDLINE/PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane Central (MEC). In education, the Education Resource Information Center (ERIC) is a major database. Medical education, situated between medicine and education, has no dedicated database of its own. Many medical education researchers use MEC, some use ERIC and some do not.

Methods: We performed a descriptive analysis using search strategies to retrieve medical education references from MEC and ERIC. ERIC references which were duplicates with MEC references were removed. Unique ERIC references were tallied.

Results: Between 1977 and 2022, MEC has 359,354 unique references relevant to medical education. ERIC provided 3925 unique references for the same period, all of which would be missed by searching only MEC. The mean unique ERIC medical education references per year for all 46 years is 85 (SD = ±29), or 119 (SD = ±15) for the last 10 years from 2013 to 2022.

Conclusion: ERIC consistently offered a small yet significant number of unique references relevant to medical education for decades. We recommend the use of ERIC for medical education research when comprehensive literature searches are required, such as in systematic reviews, scoping reviews, evidence synthesis, or guideline development.