Bibliographic index coverage of a multidisciplinary field

This study examines the literature of a multidisciplinary field, later‐life migration, and evaluates the effectiveness of 12 bibliographic databases in indexing that literature. Five journals—three in social gerontology, one in rural sociology, and one in regional science—account for 40% of the papers published in this area. The disciplines that publish the most work on later‐life migration are not necessarily those that provide the best index coverage, however. Moreover, four multidisciplinary databases each provide better index coverage than any single‐subject index. The relatively low degree of overlap among the 12 databases suggests that scholars working on topics such as later‐life migration must continue to rely on a wide range of bibliographic tools, both disciplinary and multidisciplinary.