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Reading some business articles in your area of interest is a great way to start getting information on the general outlook and conditions in your field of interest.
Generally, articles will fall into one of three categories. Each one has different audiences and purposes:
News articles are intended for the general public.
Types of content:
Full-text, individual articles from print and online editions (online edition since 2010). Does not include images, multimedia presentations, or data visualizations.
Current and archival to 1980s U.S. news featuring key national and regional sources including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Newsday, and Chicago Tribune.
Regional business magazines, newspapers, and wires from Canada and all metropolitan and rural areas in the United States.
Database with global, national, and regional news, featuring newspapers, newswires, magazines, and video in English and many other languages.
Trade Journals are intended for practitioners in a field.
Types of content:
Scholarly journals are intended for scholars and some practitioners.
Types of content:
International business intelligence offering case studies, in-depth statistical data, and the ability to compare global economies, countries, and industries.
Peer-reviewed journals, business trade journals, and news, in both full-text coverage plus indexing and abstracts dating back as far as 1886.
It can also be searched using Enhanced Interface Searching.
Online business library database of millions of full-text items across scholarly and popular periodicals, newspapers, market research reports, dissertations, books, videos and more. See Vendor's guide for useful information.
Consider these differences when searching for articles. Each may provide you with different useful information. In any of the databases below, you can limit to any one of the types.
The above databases have more than just scholarly articles for your school research papers! You can find all kinds of information on a specific company or industry, particularly in the trade journals.
Try searching for your industry with some keywords related to what you want to know. For example:
"craft beer" AND competitors
"mobile app*" AND marketing
Other keywords: Competitors, Competition, Marketing, Advertising, Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats, SWOT analysis, Financing, Financials, Market segmentation, Costs, Pricing, Market share, Target market.
You can also use a tool called truncation to make your searching more efficient. Many of the possible keywords above have many variations of the word. So, instead of searching finance, finances, financial, financing... and all other variations separately, search for financ* -- the asterisk tells the database, find any possible endings of this root word after the C. (Some databases may use the ? or another symbol, but most use the asterisk -- look for a Help screen if you're not sure.) Some more examples:
Market* = finds market, markets, marketing...
Analy* = finds analysis, analyses, analyze, analyzed....