Indexing Procedure and Principles

Indexing Journals

To index a journal, the following steps are recommended:

1. Explore the content of the journal on its title level, and extract main concepts.
• Make use of the journal descriptions provided by the database, on the publisher's website, review articles, or the content page of the last 10 issues.
• If information in the aforementioned three sources contradicts each other, use the publisher's website as authority file.
2. Express the concept using ERIC Thesaurus.
• If there are geographic names, use UNESCO as authority file.
• If the journal if an official publication of an organization, include the official organization name as the index. Use Association Unlimited (Thompson Gale) or the organization's official website as authority file.
• If the term is not already in the database, add the term using the administration tool and follow the principles described in the next section.
3. Choose 1 to 12 index terms for the journal.
4. Use the online Administration Tools to add the journal into the database.
• If the journal has gone through name changes, create a separate record for individual names.
• If the journal has an alternative name, create a separate record for it and reference it to the official record name with a "See" reference.
• If multiple journals have the same title, incorporate the subtitles into the main title for differentiation. If the subtitles are the same, incorporate the publisher into the main title for differentiation.
• For the instructions on how to fill the forms, please go to the Administration Tools Guide.

Indexing Principles - Index Terms

• Index the journal with geographic names only when the region is the main forcus of the journal. As this index is constructed for an US college, , “U.S.” is not used as an index term when a journal concerns mainly of the education system in the States.
• As this index contains only education journals, “Education” is not used as an index term unless a journal’s scope is so wide it covers most aspects of education.
• Follow the spelling and word conventions of the authority files in use.
• Follow the term associations and structures of ERIC Thesaurus.
• Assign only directly or closely related terms as "See also" references. Limit the number of references to no more than 12.
• When necessary, add inactive terms to be "See" referenced to an active term. The term must follow the conventions depicted in the Thesaurus or other authority files.