British Education Index

Inclusion Policy

The focus is on journal articles and grey literature, particularly where the latter is electronically available. Commercially published books are not normally covered.

Materials referenced in the BEI will have a balance of characteristics drawn from the following:

• They will always have a predominant focus on an area of education
• They will often constitute scholarly and substantial periodical, report and conference literature predominantly originating in the United Kingdom
• They will usually be created by individuals or organisations with a professional standing in the fields of education
• They are highly likely to be of long-term interest to educational researchers, practitioners (primarily teachers and administrators) and policy makers in the United Kingdom
• They will usually provide information about the results of some significant form of educational research or will contribute substantial reference material to support such research
• They will usually be in the English language
• Their origin will be identifiable and trustworthy
• They should have sufficient coherence and completeness to stand alone
• They are highly likely to remain accessible in some form

Geographical Coverage

• UK
• Europe

Gap Fill Policy

We routinely chase publishers' recent content whenever appropriate. Recent gaps are likely to be filled by reference to publishers' electronic contents as special or one-off exercises. Resourcing determines that priority is given to contemporary information. The BEI comprises information created by different managers over time. Within the last year, its current managers have reconciled all historical BEI information into one relational database, standardising historically distinct presentation of journal names and citation information. That, together with information collected for this study, will inform the development of a gap fill policy. This is likely to involve the identification of priority material and creation of records for such material by reference to publishers' and aggregators' sites.

Archive Policy

We would tend to refer to publishers' electronic contents as special exercises. Resourcing determines that priority is given to contemporary information (see also response to Gap Fill Policy)

Embargo Rules

None

Update Frequency

Up to daily

Content Classification

Not applicable in BEI context

Keywords and Indexes

The British Education Thesaurus, devised for the BEI, is used as the source of subject indexing terminology, together with other internally devised authority files.

Authority Files

The BEI has its own authority files for: journal names, personal names, corporate names, publications, geographical identifiers and other sundry terms.

Citation Linking

None at this time

Full Text Linking

Dialog provides full-text linking within the commercially available BEI. The BEI manages a collection of full-text electronic documents (currently also accessible independently as Education-line) deposited by individual academics and research associations, and provides records about, and links to, those texts within BEI database records. The BEI also references electronically available grey literature and includes URLs in such references. URLs are checked daily. OpenURL linking to journal articles is provided in the BEI's custom interface (currently invisible to the public).