Procedures for Writers in the Field of Education: How to Make Publications More Consistently Accessible within Computerized Information Databases

Abstract

Educators writing documents or articles for publication in professional and scholarly journals desire to have their writing read and cited. Today, as a part of achieving this end, publications need to be easily accessible through computerized searching (online and CD‐ROM) in databases such as ERIC. There are specific techniques for achieving this. The trend toward end‐users doing their own computerized information retrieval and the implications this has for educational writers are discussed, and five hints are given for writers in the field of education: 1) having a clear and unambiguous title, 2) providing a narrative abstract or annotation, 3) citing authors’ names in a consistent format, 4) selecting appropriate words for the title and abstract, and 5) furnishing an informative document title page.