Finding Articles on Business Topics

Business Source Complete is the primary business article database available through the University Libraries.  It contains articles from

• scholarly, academic business-related journals (e.g., Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Management Studies)
• business magazines (e.g., Fortune, Forbes, Businessweek)
• trade/professional publications  (e.g., Advertising Age, Nation's Restaurant News, Supply & Demand Chain Executive)

Trade publications fall somewhere between academic journals and popular magazines.  Unlike articles in academic journals, which are written by researchers and scholars, the articles in trade publications are written by journalists and are similar to what you would find in business magazines.  However, trade/professional publications are typically focused on topics and issues that are primarily relevant to people working in particular industries and professions.

To access Business Source Complete, go to the A-Z Databases list on the Libraries' web site and look under "B."  The databases are listed alphabetically, and Business Source Complete is at the very bottom of the list. 

The link below will open a second window, so you can refer to this guide while searching the database.

To identify articles on your topic, type in your search term.  The database default is a keyword search that looks for the terms anywhere in an article's record:  author, title, name of journal, abstract/article summary, and subject headings.

(Remember: quotation marks produce phrase searching.)

Narrow or focus search results by including terms in the other search boxes.  The database search engine provides the AND. 

This is how you would enter the search "strategic management" AND "succession planning":

You can also search for articles on a specific company. 

• Change the search field to 'CO Company Entity' and put the name of your company in the search box. 
• You can simply browse all the articles about that company to see if anything relates to your topic, or you can add more specific keywords to narrow the focus of the Company search:

To search for alternate terms/synonyms for a search term, link them together with OR in the same search box:

You can also do a search on a topic and then limit the search results to those that relate to a particular company. 

For example, do a search on "brand loyalty."

On the results page, scroll down to the 'Company' limits on the left-hand side of the screen.  Then mark the box next to your company of interest to limit your search on brand loyalty to that particular company.  (Click on 'Show More' for the complete list of companies.  You can mark the boxes of as many companies as you like.)

You can search for articles related to a particular industry (or type of product or service). 

• You don't necessarily need to include the term 'industry' in the actual search.  Just use terms that describe or relate to that industry.
• You will likely get many more results from an industry search than a company search, so you will likely need to add other search terms to  specify what you would like to know or discover related to that industry.

The search results list is ranked by relevance, so if you want only more recent articles, use the Publication Date slider bar in the 'Limit To' section (on the left hand side of the search results page):

For this class, you will want to find articles from Magazines or  Trade Publications so use the the Source Type limit (also on the left hand side of the screen).  Click on the link that says 'Show More' and then mark the boxes next to those two publication types.