DESCRIPTORS are:
- Subject headings; they describe the subject content of an ERIC journal article or document.
- Assigned to each record in the ERIC database
- Identified by using the ERIC Thesaurus
What is a Descriptor search?
- It only searches the Descriptors field (DE=) of an ERIC record
- It is the most focused and precise way of searching for a particular subject.
KEYWORDS are:
- Any terms you search for anywhere in the record
What is a Keyword search?
- It looks for your term in the Title, Abstract, Descriptors, and Indentifiers fields.
- If the keyword appears just once in any of those fields, the search will retrieve it. It may be used in a different context than the one you're looking for, but it will still show up in your results list.
A keyword search will often produce results that are not relevant to your topic!