What is VOCEDplus?
VOCEDplus is a free international research database for tertiary education, especially as it relates to workforce needs, skills development, and social inclusion.
It encompasses vocational education and training (VET), higher education, adult and community education, informal learning, and VET in Schools. It is international in scope and contains over 95 000 English language records, many with links to full text documents.
It also provides access to several value-added resources including:
The VET Knowledge Bank contains a suite of complementary products that together provide a collected memory of reference information about Australia's vocational education and training system.
The Pod Network provides a single-entry point to collections of research and resources. These collections are presented within themed Pods with more specific sub-topics presented within smaller Pods called Podlets.
The VET Practitioner Resource draws on VOCEDplus, NCVER products and external links to present a range of information, both free and for purchase, designed to support VET practitioners in their teaching and assessment practice and in undertaking research.
VOCEDplus is produced by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER), based in Adelaide, Australia. VOCEDplus is funded by Australian Commonwealth, State and Territory Governments and is endorsed by the UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre in Bonn, Germany.
In 2019, VOCEDplus celebrated 30 years of providing information to the tertiary education sector. View the History of VOCEDplus timeline.
VOCEDplus content
VOCEDplus covers the outcomes of tertiary education in the shape of research, policy, practice, and published statistics. It has extensive coverage of Australian material and includes a wide range of international information.
Each database entry contains standard bibliographic information and an abstract. Entries are predominantly in English and some refer to publications in other languages. We strive to provide full text access via the publisher's website or a digitised copy.
VOCEDplus includes entries for:
research reports
journals and journal articles
books and book chapters
conference proceedings and papers
working/discussion/occasional papers
policy documents
survey results
published statistics
podcasts
theses
webinar recordings.
VOCEDplus selection criteria
Selection for VOCEDplus content is undertaken by the Knowledge Management branch at NCVER. The selection of material is based on existing collection requirements and user needs. VOCEDplus users are encouraged to contribute suggestions for selection.
Selection criteria include:
material must be related to research, policy or practice in tertiary education (higher education and vocational education and training) about skill development for the labour market, work, social inclusion and lifelong learning
material will be selected if they are 'key' documents
if resources are not 'key', they should be of sufficient high quality.
VOCEDplus uses the following sources for the items indexed:
key Australian and international vocational education and training journals
key Australian and international higher education journals
key organisations worldwide which produce publications about vocational education and training and higher education (including government bodies, national and international agencies and networks, research centres, universities and commercial publishers)
contributions from partner organisations
publishers' blurbs and catalogues
direct submissions from users of the database.
No preferential treatment is given to the work of any specific publisher when selecting content for VOCEDplus.
Archiving and preservation
VOCEDplus plays a key role in the archiving and preservation of VET research, including:
- identifying and adding historical documents to the database
- digitising old, non-commercial, print and microfiche documents so that they can be accessed online
- providing access to NCVER's archived statistical collections and surveys.
These historical documents can be accessed from the VOCEDplus Special collections and Statistical resources pages or by using the search tools available on the website.
If you are aware of other historical VET documents that are not yet in VOCEDplus, you can let the VOCEDplus team know via the Document submission form.
How to submit to VOCEDplus
The public is encouraged to submit relevant documents for inclusion in VOCEDplus. Please refer to the selection criteria for guidelines on what is included in VOCEDplus.
There are three ways to submit your document:
If your document is available online, you can submit details of the document using this form.
If your document is not available online, you can send an electronic copy of the document by email.
If you would like to submit a print copy of your document, please send a completed copy of this form together with the document to:
Knowledge Management branch
National Centre for Vocational Education Research
PO Box 8288 Station Arcade
Adelaide SA 5000
Australia