Databases
Databases are collections of publications. Some specialise in academic research publications (scholarly articles and conference papers), others specialise in market research (market analysis, data and statistics).
A full list of electronic resources provided by Ulster University.
USearch is a tool which searches most university databases simultaneously. It can be used to find scholarly articles. See also USearch v. Google Scholar.
Search techniques
Databases respond well to the following search techniques:
Use search terms (e.g. important words or phases), 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, particularly specific terminology or spelling (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.
To improve the accessibility of articles, link Google Scholar to your university account. To do this, select the hamburger menu (top left corner) - select Settings - select Library Links - enter/select Ulster University and University of Ulster - Save.
Ejournals
An ejournal is an online academic magazine. They contain academic articles and are stored in databases.
Ejournals can be located using the university's Journals Finder tool. This is usually done when you know the details of a particular article you would like to read (for example, one recommended in a reading list).
University credentials will be required to access the university's Journals Finder tool.
Click here to view a short video outlining how to access ejournals.
Open the university’s Library Catalogue and select 'eJournals'.
This will take you to the ejournal finder tool. Search for the title of the journal you wish to access.
Beneath the journal title is the database which houses that journal. Select the database to be taken to the ejournal.
It is worth noting any access embargos applied to the ejournal.
All issues of the ejournal are arranged in reverse chronological order. Select the publication year - then select an issue - to see a list of articles within that particular issue.