Today the presenter at a research seminar  explained the difference between research databases offered by the  Macquarie University library. Publisher databases like Informaworld, Science Direct, Sage and Informit were preferred over secondary databases due to their speed and reliability. As well, viewing results of searches in HTML rather than PDF format had the advantage of often being able to link directly to related articles in the library database.

Consider searching A+ Education for Australian resources – this is somewhat analogous to ERIC but for Australia. The CSA Illumina database is preferred for ERIC over the direct ERIC database because it has more full-text linking options that Macquarie has integrated.

Setting up alerts on CSA Illumina allowed subscription to alerts for new issues of journals such as Computer Science Education and Educational Technology Research and Development. Setting up alerts on Science Directallowed subscription to Computers + Education. Note that you had to set up an account in order to be able to receive such subscriptions.

mattbower