Business

Online research resources: databases

A list of useful University databases and how to log in to them:

  • ProQuest One Business (Scholar and trade publications, and market reports)

Enter your University email and password

  • FAME (UK company data)

Select Solent University

Enter your University email and password

  • Mintel (Market data: trends, companies, industries, countries - UK)

Select Solent University

Enter your University email address and password

  • Statista (Market data: trends, companies, industries, countries - International)

Scroll down and select the 'Off campus' login

Select Solent University

Enter your University email address and password

ProQuest One Business

Full-text database with academic journals, trade publications, market reports and newspapers

Source types available: newspapers, trade journals, wire feeds, magazines, reports, scholarly journals, blogs, podcasts, websites, books, dissertations, theses, conference papers and proceedings, and working papers

FAME

Database with financial information about companies in the UK. It contains company profiles, financials, peer comparisons and stock data.

Mintel

Database with UK market data: trends, companies, industries and countries

Statista

Database with statistics, reports and market outlooks. It contains forecasts, surveys, infographics and dossiers. You may filter your search by region, country, industry and publication date.

Example of searching on ProQuest One Business

How to narrow down your search to get less results that are more relevant to your research:

SEARCH TECHNIQUES

Almost all academic databases require users to use the following search techniques, rather than doing a Google-style search:

1. Use search terms (e.g. retail, fashion retail, corporate social responsibility), not sentences (e.g. How mobile apps are used by fashion retailers).

2. Combine search terms using search operators (AND, OR, NOT), e.g. fashion retail AND apps, rather than typing sentences (e.g. How mobile apps are used by fashion retailers).

3. Use truncation (* = substitute for any number of characters) to broaden the scope of your search (e.g. searching for app* will return results with app, apps, applications and other words containing app).

4. Use phrase search (search for a phrase in speech marks, “…”) if searching for a stable expression, particularly specific terminology or spelling (e.g. searching for “relationship marketing” will ignore the results where relationship and marketing are not together). Google understands phrase search technique too.