Written and maintained by CASRAI Editorial Board
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Short answer: EBSCO Research is not one database. It is the name people use for the research databases that EBSCO supplies to libraries, searched through the EBSCOhost platform. Most people reach it through a library or institution, and what you can search depends on which databases your library licenses. This page, checked against EBSCO’s own product pages on 2026-11-08, explains how the platform and its databases fit together, what a few flagship databases cover, and how to read vendor figures such as “peer-reviewed full text”.
What EBSCO Research is
EBSCO’s research databases page describes a catalogue of databases and collections that can be filtered by market (academic libraries, public libraries, schools, health care, corporations, publishers, and researchers and students) and by database type (Full Text, Archive). The same page lists “EBSCOhost Research Platform” as a product and tells existing users to log in to EBSCOhost. In everyday use, then:
- EBSCOhost is the platform, the interface where you search and where the sign-in is found.
- The databases are the content searched on it, such as Academic Search Ultimate, Business Source Ultimate, CINAHL Ultimate, MEDLINE Ultimate and Education Source Ultimate.
- “EBSCO research database” usually means one of those databases, not a single combined index.
Two libraries can both say they “have EBSCO” and offer quite different content, because each licenses its own selection.
Who runs it and what it covers
EBSCO publishes the platform and packages many databases on it. Some content is produced by EBSCO and some by other organizations. For example, the product pages list collections such as Psychology Resources of the APA, Music Resources from RILM and the ABC-CLIO databases, and APA PsycInfo is produced by the American Psychological Association (the page for it describes roughly 5.8 million records from 2,400+ journals, updated twice weekly).
The most useful published scale figures are for the flagship multidisciplinary database. EBSCO’s Academic Search Ultimate page (read 2026-11-08) reports:
| Measure reported by EBSCO | Count |
|---|---|
| Active full-text journals and magazines | 10,199 |
| Peer-reviewed full text | 9,581 |
| Peer-reviewed full text with no embargo | 7,493 |
| Indexed in Web of Science or Scopus | 5,873 |
| Open access | 7,153 |
The page also describes nearly all academic disciplines, ahead-of-print content, more than 6,700 videos (mostly from The Washington Post) and subject indexing in more than 30 languages. These are vendor-reported counts for one product on one date; they will change, and they are not counts for “EBSCO” as a whole.
How to get to it and start searching
- Start from your institution’s library website and look for its list of databases (often labelled “A-Z databases” or similar). Libraries usually link EBSCO databases from there.
- Choose the database that matches your field rather than the first one listed; the field guide below helps.
- If you begin from EBSCO’s research databases page instead, it directs researchers and students to find their organization first, which then routes you to the products that organization licenses. The sign-in is reached through EBSCOhost.
- Build your search from concepts and synonyms combined with operators; the general method is in Boolean search operators for literature searching.
- For database-specific field codes and controlled vocabulary, use a strategy guide for that database, for example PsycINFO search strategy.
Interface labels and menu names change between releases and between library configurations, so follow your library’s own EBSCO help or research guide for button-level instructions.
Which EBSCO database fits which field
Each row below traces to a database named on EBSCO’s research databases page; follow the link for a CASRAI guide to that database where one exists.
| If you work in | Database named by EBSCO | CASRAI guide |
|---|---|---|
| Many disciplines | Academic Search Ultimate / Complete / Premier | Academic Search Complete |
| Nursing and allied health | CINAHL Ultimate | CINAHL Ultimate |
| Psychology | APA PsycInfo; Psychology Resources of the APA | PsycINFO search strategy |
| Education | Education Source Ultimate | ERIC database (a separate, free index) |
| Business | Business Source Ultimate | None yet |
Is EBSCO a reliable or scholarly source?
EBSCO is a distributor and index, not a publisher of the articles. Whether something is scholarly is a property of the individual journal and article, not of the platform. A database like Academic Search Ultimate holds peer-reviewed journals and also magazines and videos, which is why EBSCO itself reports “peer-reviewed full text” as a separate count from total journals and magazines. In practice, check each result: confirm each result with the journal’s own policy, as described in how to know if an article is peer-reviewed. For what the term means, see peer review.
Is EBSCO free?
The research databases are provided through organizations. EBSCO’s page tells researchers and students to find their organization to access its products, and it describes separate public-library, school and academic-library markets. No individual-subscription offer is stated on that page, so for most readers access means a library card or institutional login. A library’s sign-in terms are set by that library.
Strengths and limits
- Strength: one familiar platform spans many subject databases, so searching habits transfer between them.
- Strength: several databases pair indexing with full text, and Academic Search Ultimate reports counts for no-embargo and open-access full text.
- Limit: content depends on your library’s license, so the same search can return different results at different institutions.
- Limit: a database is a selection, not the whole literature; for completeness, search more than one source.
- Limit: vendor counts describe the vendor’s collection, not the quality of any one article.
Alternatives and complements
These are general descriptions of well-known services, not rankings. Which one suits you depends on the field and on what your library licenses.
| Service | What it is | Access model |
|---|---|---|
| PubMed | Biomedical literature index from the US National Library of Medicine | Free to search |
| Scopus | Abstract and citation database from Elsevier | Subscription |
| Web of Science | Citation index from Clarivate | Subscription |
| ProQuest | Database vendor and platform comparable to EBSCOhost | Library subscription |
| JSTOR | Digital archive of journals, books and primary sources | Library subscription, with some free content |
| Google Scholar | Web search engine for scholarly literature; see Google Scholar library links | Free to search; full text varies |
FAQ
What is the difference between EBSCO and EBSCOhost?
EBSCO is the company; EBSCOhost is the research platform on which many of its databases are searched.
Is an EBSCO database the same as a library catalogue?
No. A catalogue lists what a library holds. A database indexes articles and other content, including items the library does not own, and may link to full text.
Can I use Academic Search without a library?
EBSCO’s product page points researchers to their organization for access, and states no individual option. Check with your public or academic library.
Sources
- EBSCO, Research databases, read 2026-11-08.
- EBSCO, Academic Search Ultimate, read 2026-11-08.
- EBSCO, APA PsycInfo, figures verified 2026-08-31.
