Upcoming Changes to the ERIC Website

 
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Dear ERIC community,
 
I am pleased to tell you about exciting changes that will be coming to ERIC in the near future. These changes are being made in order to provide an improved level of service to the community, at a reduced cost to taxpayers.
 
Transition to a New Website: From August through October 2013, users will notice ongoing changes and improvements to the ERIC website. We seek to make the transition as seamless as possible and ask the ERIC community to bear with us while we make improvements.
  • New website: On August 2nd, there will be a new ERIC website, including a new ERIC logo (above). Initially, the new website will simply have the ERIC search function, which will continue to work in the way that the ERIC search function has worked in the past. Additional features and content will be added on an ongoing basis through October.
  • Delay in indexing: As ERIC transitions into a new contract cycle (see below), there will be a delay in indexing material. New material will not be released from August through October. In October, the ERIC team will index any key material not indexed during the transition period.
  • Delay in releasing full text PDFs:  Currently, the full text of all peer-reviewed articles and of all articles published after 2005 is released, as are the articles released through the scanning process. We are continuing to scan user-requested PDFs during this transition, but the mechanism to release the cleared PDFs will not go live until this fall. Starting in October, a large batch of PDFs will be released at once, and then additional PDFs will be released on a weekly basis, in order of user request.
  • Delay in requesting a PDF and submitting documents: While we transition to a new website, users will not be able to request that PDFs be restored or submit documents for inclusion in ERIC. We will work to restore these features as soon as possible, by September at the latest. However, during this period, the PDF restoration process will continue behind the scenes.
 
Transition to a New ERIC Contract Cycle: Starting this month, ERIC will begin a new contract cycle with some exciting long term changes that users will see over the next few years.
 
  • New Topic Oriented Section of the Website: In early 2015, ERIC will release a brand new section of the ERIC website that allows users to browse ERIC’s content by topic area. There will be 15 topics with between 5-10 subtopics for each topic. Each topic and subtopic will have its own webpage with a factual topic summary that is similar to the former ERIC digests in structure, but with greater detail and written on broader topics. These will be written by leading subject matter experts in the field. There will also be links to relevant ERIC documents, thesaurus terms, and information for each topic and subtopic.
  • New Selection Policy: In the next few months, the ERIC team will work with an advisory group of librarians and subject matter experts to recommend changes to the selection policy. The goal will be to ensure that ERIC continues to index relevant education literature. After the new selection policy is approved, it will be posted on the eric.ed.gov website. Shortly thereafter, this committee will revise the list of sources that ERIC indexes to make sure that the sources included are aligned with the selection policy and are the best use of taxpayer dollars.
 
We look forward to continuing to update you on the progress we’re making on these improvements and thank you for your understanding during this transition.
 
Ruth Curran Neild
 
Commissioner
National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance
Institute of Education Sciences