Business: Using Business databases

• Subject guides A-Z
• Drill Hall Library website
• Library catalogue

Business Source Ultimate is a useful place to start if you are unfamiliar with databases. It references many sources relevant to business including accounting, management, banking and financial journals.

Not all articles will be in full text. Watch the video below to find out more: 

The goal of the Open Access initiative is to make academic research freely and widely available, thereby improving the quality and frequency of future discoveries whilst enhancing your own impact and citation rate. 

Watch the short video below to find out more:

Databases are specialist tools to help you locate useful information for your assignments.

In Business, there are a broad range of databases containing company information, newspapers, journal articles, financial reports, statistics and theses. How much use you make of them during your studies is down to you.

Help with using databases is available - please consult the Skills and Workshops tab or send me an email to book a 1-2-1 tutorial. 

Accessing databases through your university

Each university maintains a list of databases which can be accessed by students and staff. The links on these pages are checked and updated regularly.

• University of Greenwich - go to the My Learning page in the Portal and select Online databases and academic journals.
• University of Kent - Use the e-resources A-Z list from the University library webpages.
• Canterbury Christ Church University - log in to LibrarySearch and select Find Databases A-Z on the home page (left-hand column).

• ABI Inform Global (available via Greenwich): An in-depth resource for business and finance. Includes full access to many periodicals, including Economist. It also searches for other forms of information such as dissertations, business cases and conference proceedings.


• Business Source Ultimate (available via Kent) / Business Source Premier (available via Greenwich and CCCU): Full text and citation information from thousands of journals, plus company profiles, author profiles, trade magazines and more. A great starting point for searches relating to business and management.


• EconLit with Full Text (available via Kent): Authoritative index and full text for key economics journals and books, provided by the American Economic Association.


• International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS) (available via Kent): This indexes about 3,300 journals and 6,000 multi-author books per year. Coverage starts in 1951 and has a UK and European bias lacking in many US based sources. The core disciplines indexed are anthropology, economics, politics and sociology.


• ProQuest Business Premium Collection (available via Kent): Comprehensive collection of literature for business, economics, management, finance and related subjects. Includes thousands of full-text journals and papers. Covers from 1971 to the present.


• Statista (available via Kent): Pulls together statistics and data sets from many fields and sources, including statistics, forecasts, studies, dossiers and industry reports, infographics, or by topic, and makes them available as charts or tables.

• FAME (available via Kent): Company reports and information service.


• Financial Times Historical Archive (available via Kent): Complete facsimile run of the FT from 1888 until 2008; fully searchable and browsable. [all 3 universities have access to the current Financial Times]


• Mintel (available via Kent and CCCU): Lots of data including market research, product intelligence etc.


• Orbis (available via Greenwich): International company accounting data.


• Nexis (available via Kent) / LexisLibrary (available via Greenwich and CCCU: A large service containing the full text of business and industry related journals plus many newspapers from around the world. Each university has access to different collections within this service.


• WARC (World Advertising Research Center) (available via Greenwich, Kent and CCCU: A large service with a focus on best practice in advertising from many major brands. Also offers company profiles and case studies.

See the University of Kent's Economics subject guide for more specialised suggestions regarding statistical and data sources.

• Emerald Insight (available via Kent, Greenwich and CCCU): A collection of over 200 journal titles from MCB University Press. Although this is a useful site, it is recommended that in most cases, you commence your literature search with one of the databases suggested above as you will be able see relevant articles spanning all the journals and publishers.


• Henry Stewart Talks (Business and Management Collection) (available via Kent and Greenwich): Seminar-style audiovisual talks presented by world leading scientists to keep researchers up to date. Click Browse Series for an alphabetical list of topics covered.


• OECD iLibrary (available via Kent and Greenwich): OECD's Online Library for books, papers and statistics and the gateway to OECD's analysis and data; does not include access to the IEA statistical series.


• World Competitiveness Yearbook Online(available via Kent): A comprehensive database on the competitiveness of nations; world competitiveness is a field of economic theory, which analyses the policies and factors that contribute towards the successful and sustainable prosperity of nations and enterprises.


• XpertHR (available via Kent): A collection of Human Resources related resources. Mainly a full text resource for Human Resources workers with a few journals included in the collection. To access click Log in (top right), click Shibboleth and choose 'University of Kent' from the drop-down list.