Databases

  • Databases are collections of publications. Some specialise in academic research publications (scholarly or peer-reviewed articles and conference papers), others specialise in market research (market analysis, data and statistics).

  • See the university LibGuide for a list of all electronic resources.

  • Moodle details and university email address are required to access university databases.

Business

Scholarly publications (academic research)

Market research

Study skills, research management and referencing

Computing

Scholarly publications (academic research)

  • IEEE Xplore is the world's largest research database in technology and engineering.

    1. On-campus access: no login is required when using the campus wifi or classroom and library computers.

    2. For off-campus login, use the link on Moodle. Further guidance

  • O'Reilly: e-books and videos in computer science, digital photography, technology, and business.

  • Science Direct: Technical and scientific journals.

Market research

Study skills, research management and referencing

Search techniques

Databases respond well to the following search techniques:

  • Use search terms (e.g. important words or phrases), not sentences or questions.

  • Combine search terms using search operators (AND, OR, NOT), e.g. sole trader AND legal obligations.

  • Use truncation (* = substitute for any number of characters) to broaden the scope of your search (e.g. searching for market* will return results with market, markets, marketing etc.).

  • Use phrase search (search for a phrase in speech marks, “…”) if searching for a stable expression (e.g. searching for “social media marketing” will ignore any results where these three words are not together).

Refining your search results

Databases contain lots of information and searches usually retrieve many results. You may wish to reduce the number of results by refining your search. Below is an example of how to refine search results:

  • Enter your search terms. Think carefully about which words you use as this will affect the results you retrieve (synonyms, alternative spellings etc.).

  • We recommend restricting your search to full-text documents and altering the date range.

  • You may wish to further limit your results by publication.

Remember, all databases will look different because they have different user interfaces, but you search them all in a similar way.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is an academic, multi-disciplinary database provided by Google. It is Open Access, meaning usernames and passwords are not required.