First, follow your professor's instructions, as some may require the "APA" style, others the "Chicago" style, and so on.

A copy of the Publication manual of the American Psychological Association is available in print at the Rod Library Reference Desk, as is a copy of the APA Style Guide to Electronic Resources. The APA style is summarized at this page.

The Chicago Manual of Style is also kept at the Rod Library Reference Desk. This quick guide from The Chicago Manual of Style Online provides tips on how to cite different types of publications.

The Library at UNC-Greensboro has done a nice summary of how to cite articles and documents from business databases like Mintel. It recommends citing Mintel reports in APA style as follows:

Mintel. (2008, December). Breakfast Foods: the Consumer - US. Retrieved from http://academic.mintel.com/.

This guide prepared by the Library at Boston University provides suggestions on how to cite sources from business databases in Chicago style.

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Professors may require that all or at least some sources for assignments come from "academic" or "scholarly" journals. Both terms are used to describe such journals. So what is an academic journal?

A "journal" is a publication that is published on a regular basis such as four or twelve times a year. Academic journal articles are aimed at faculty, students, and other researchers in a field. Published academic journal articles typically have been evaluated and "graded" by two or more experts in the field before being published.

Academic journal articles typically include a list of works cited (references). The authors are named and their academic qualifications and affiliations are listed. Academic journal articles often report on an empirical study and include sections such as a literature review, description of the methodology used in the study, the results, and discussion and implication of the results.

This page goes into more detail on the characteristics of academic journals, particularly in comparison with magazines.

Rod Library databases provide ways to help identify academic or scholarly journal articles in accounting, economics, finance, management, and marketing. ABI/INFORM Global is one example; the database publisher arranges search results by publication type, including Scholarly Journals. While this method does NOT work perfectly, it does speed up the process of finding scholarly or academic journal articles on a topic.

ABI/INFORM and other business databases with this feature such as Business Source Elite and Business & Company Resource Center can be accessed from the Rod Library home page under Databases A-Z or from the Rod Library Business Portal.

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International market reports may be available in Rod Library databases and from professional association and federal government web sites. International markets for specific products may be discussed in articles as well.

About half of the reports in the Mintel database, which can be accessed from the Rod Library home page under Databases A-Z and also from the Business Portal, cover non-U.S. markets. Most of the non-U.S. reports cover specific European countries. Some reports cover international markets as a whole, though; for example, the International Hotel Industry report includes sections on China. (A personal account must be created to access this database.)

Business & Company Resource Center, also available through the Business Portal and through Databases A-Z, contains reports on products in specific countries. Go to Advanced Search, and switch the Content Area to Industry Overviews. Entering the country terms in the first box, such as China or Chinese, and the product in the second box, such as wine, in some cases retrieves overviews of the market for a given product in a specific country. You may need to change what's being searched from Keyword to Full Text. Also, watch for the green Market Research tab in the upper right side of the screen for more sources.

A Rod Library research guide for International Business & Economics gives a few more suggestions. For example, the Industries & Markets section suggests trying a U.S. government site on exports which leads to reports on doing business in other countries and sometimes on specific products in other countries.

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There are different ways to do this. One approach is to use LexisNexisAcademic or WestLaw Campus. Both are available from the Rod Library Databases A-Z page or from one of the Business Portal pages.

In LexisNexis Academic, for example, click the Legal link at the top of the page. After reaching the Legal section, click the Federal & State Cases link on the left side of the screen. The resulting form includes a place to enter the case name or citation if you already have such information.

A drop-down menu on the Federal & State Cases search form can be used to pick (and search) only U.S. Supreme Court cases or Iowa, Federal & State Cases combined, for example.

One way to find cases that deal in a significant way with some topic, from the North Western Reporter (court cases from Iowa and other midwestern states), is to structure the search as in this example:

Cite (n.w.) and headnotes (breach of contract) [and add either more keywords, or a date range, etc.]

Or pick the Iowa, Federal & State Cases combined drop-down to search Iowa Federal and State court cases. Here's what LexisNexis says about what's available through the drop-down for Iowa, Federal & State Cases combined:

"The Iowa combination of Federal and State case law provides all available case
law for jurisdictions relating to Iowa.

The Federal case law includes the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, as well as the U.S. District Court and Bankruptcy Courts for the State of Iowa.

The State case law includes the Supreme Court of Iowa and the Iowa Court of Appeals."

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One source that may work for some marketing reports is IBISWorld. (It's also available from Rod Library Business Portal and home page.)

IBISWorld contains about 700 industry market research reports. The one on caterers, for example, covers topics like market characteristics, industry conditions, key sensitivities and success factors, competitors, and outlook for the industry.

Most reports are updated at least once a year.

Other tools for finding industry and market reports are listed on the Business Portal and on a handout called Industry and Market Research Steps.

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There are different ways to find economic and demographic data on the states. One way is to go to government agencies collecting and distributing such data, like the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Another way to get started, which does not require knowing which government agency may collect desired data, is to use LexisNexis Statistical; it also can be accessed from the Rod Library home page, under Databases A-Z.

This product's Find a Table search form includes a box in which to enter a variable such as per capita income and checkboxes for narrowing the search. These narrowing options include:
*geographic areas, such as by states
*demographics, such as by sex
*economic, such as by occupation
*frequency of data, such as annual
*period of coverage (all years, last x years, or a range of years)

LexisNexis Statistical includes data from the U.S. government, state governments, associations, and international organizations.

Some tables are in PDF format and some are in Excel.

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Datamonitor company reports can be found in a database called Business Source Elite (see this blog entry for details. Look under the Company Profiles tab at the top of the screen.)

Datamonitor Industry Market Research reports such as:

United States - Pharmaceuticals.(Industry overview)
China - OTC Pharmaceuticals.(Industry overview)

can be found in Business & Company Resource Center, which is listed on the Rod Library Business Portal. It also is listed on the Rod Library home page under Databases A-Z.

After connecting to Business & Company Resource Center, select Advanced Search. Change the Content Area to Industry overviews, and then type an industry of interest such as pharmaceuticals. The results may include industry overviews from encyclopedias as well as Datamonitor market research reports; look for the green Market Research tab in the upper right for Datamonitor reports.

Other databases on the Business Portal such as IBISWorld, Mintel, and Standard & Poor's NetAdvantage also analyze industries and markets.

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IBISWorld reports cover factors like these for nearly 700 industries.

The Industry Market Research report for consumer electronics stores, for example, discusses issues like these in the Industry Conditions section:
-barriers to entry
-regulation
-cost structure, including wages
-capital and labor intensity
-technology and systems
-globalization

The Market Conditions section discusses size of the market, demand determinants, and the basis of competition. The Key Competitors section discusses leading companies.

Another database, Mintel Reports, analyzes the market for various consumer products. The one for Audio/Video Hardware Retailing, for example, includes these sections:

-Market Drivers
-Market Size & Trends
-Market Segmentation
-Retail Distribution
-Advertising & Promotion
-The Consumer

You must create a personal account when you access Mintel Reports for the first time.

The 10-K Annual Reports for publicly held companies sometimes address supplier, raw materials, and distribution issues in Part I, Item 1. The 2007 10-K for Best Buy, for example, discusses supplier strategy and distribution of products to its retail outlets.

IBISWorld and Mintel are available from the Rod Library home page under Databases A-Z and also from the Rod Library Business Portal. 10-K reports are usually listed on corporate web sites under headings such as Investor Relations or directly from the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission EDGAR database.

Other search tools listed on the Business Portal, such as ABI/INFORM Global and Business Source Elite and Business & Company Resource Center, may lead to useful information in academic journals, trade journals, and business magazines. These pages list additional sources that may be useful for classes like Business Policy.

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Datamonitor company reports can be found in the database called, "Business Source Elite."

Business Source Elite is listed on the Rod Library Business Portal. It also is listed on the Rod Library home page under Databases A-Z.

After connecting to Business Source Elite, click the Company Profiles link in the middle near the top of the page. After reaching the Company Profiles part of the database, enter a specific company name such as Hy-Vee in the search box or browse by letter of the alphabet. After reaching the page that lists the company, click on "Datamonitor Report" in the PDF Complete Report column.

Datamonitor company profiles usually include sections such as the following: Business Description, History, Major Products and Services, SWOT analysis, and Top Competitors. The SWOT analysis includes a summary table plus a few paragraphs on each factor listed in the table.

The Business Source Elite entry on the Library Business Portal page includes a short video that shows these steps.

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Business journal databases like ABI/INFORM Global provide a way to limit results to academic (or scholarly or peer-reviewed) . This method does not work perfectly, but it will get you to academic journals faster. In the case of ABI/INFORM, check the box for Scholarly Journals at the bottom of the search box, or click the Scholarly Journals tab after you get the search results.

Let's say the management concept is social responsibility. If you want articles that deal with some specific company, such as Nike, enter the term like this in Basic Search in ABI/INFORM:

nike and social responsibility

If you want to find articles on social responsibility in regard to a specific company, and it doesn't matter which company, enter the search like this:

case studies and social responsibility

This tends to get articles that discuss a specific company or companies and the other specified topic.

The search can be tightened up in some cases by going to Advanced Search and looking for
cases studies [dropdown: in Subject]
and
social responsibility

ABI/INFORM is available from the Rod Library home page under Databases A-Z and also from the Rod Library Business Portal.

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Privately held companies are not required to file financial disclosure documents with government regulators such as the SEC, so detailed financials usually are not readily available to the public.

Company profile sources may provide private company information such as sales, number of employees, number of stores if a retailer, and other general indicators. Journal and newspaper articles about a given company may give some general financials.

LexisNexis Academic, which can be also be accessed from the Business Portal and the Rod Library home page, includes general information on private companies. After connecting, click the Business tab, then enter the private company name, such as Kwik Trip, and then click the Financial Information link on the resulting company profile.

Industry average sources, such as RMA Annual Statement Studies (UNI Reference HF 5681 B2 R6 ) provide median figures for companies in particular industries. For the convenience store industry, for example, median figures are provided for the sales/total assets ratio and other key income statement and balance sheet values.

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One way is to look in Mergent Online. It includes the last 15 years of financial statements for publicly-held U.S. companies in Excel format. Companies that are going through bankruptcy or have been acquired by other companies are not included.

Mergent is listed on the Rod Library home page under Databases A-Z. It's also listed on the Rod Library Business Portal under Company Information Search Tools. To the right of the link to Mergent is a short video that shows how to get the 15 year run of financial statements. To summarize: go to Mergent, click Enter Mergent Online in upper left corner of Mergent screen, enter company name, and pick Company Financials tab when you reach the company entry.

There's a limit on how many people can use Mergent at the same time, so it's possible you'll get a "busy signal" if others are using it.

For older years and companies that no longer exist, Rod Library has a print source called Moody's Handbook (title changed to Mergent Handbook around 2001) that can be helpful in finding company financial data. It's located in the stacks, third floor of the library, at HG4905.M815. The 1997/97 volume of this title has an entry for Kmart, for example, and includes a table with key income statement figures for 1986-1995. If you look at a later year of the handbook, such as winter 2002/2003, you'll get the income statement figures for 1993-2002. So, in two lookups you'd get 1986-2002 annual revenue figues.

Historical financial statements for publicly-held companies also are available through their U.S. Securities & Exchange filings at the SEC, back to about 1993, and via LexisNexis Academic, Business tab/SEC filings, back to about 1987.

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There are different ways to do this. Here are two:

1. Business journal databases like ABI/INFORM and Business Source Elite have a way to look for articles on a topic in specific journals. With Business Source Elite (access from Rod Library home page, Databases A-Z, or from Business Portal), enter the search like this on the form; the italicized words are what you would type:

"journal of marketing" or "journal of marketing research" in SO Publication Name
and pharmaceutical*

This says the search results must have Journal of Marketing or Journal of Marketing Research in the Publication Name field and they must also have the root word pharmaceutical. Puting the asterisk at the end of the word also gets pharmaceuticals.

If the database itself does not have the full text, look for the yellow Find It! button; it may be available in another database or in print at Rod Library.

The same type of search can be done in Advanced Search in ABI/INFORM and in Business & Company Resource Center. ABI/INFORM also has a Publications tab; there, you can pick a specific journal and then search for articles in it.

2. Using Panther Prowler, you can search several databases such as the above simultaneously, by picking Marketing or a related Field of Study.

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Let's say you want to find articles on cheating that appeared in the Journal of Business Ethics. There are different ways to do this; here's one approach:

1. find a database that indexes Journal of Business Ethics. Databases like ABI/INFORM and Business Source Elite index several thousand business journals and magazines.

2. Connect to ABI/INFORM. Click the Publications tab and enter Journal of Business Ethics in the Search box. You will get a page for this journal - the page lists available issues and includes a search box to enter terms. Click here to see what the page looks like.

3. Enter the term cheating in the search box to identify articles on this topic from this journal.

Another approach is to use the Advanced search form in databases like ABI/INFORM. In the Advanced multi-row search form, enter the name of the journal in the first row and use the drop-down to indicate the name must be the journal title field. In the second row of the form, enter the search term, like cheating. This can also be used to identify articles by a certain author in a certain journal.

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Answer: Business students are probably looking for the ProQuest database called ABI/INFORM Global. (Rod Library subscribes to other ProQuest databases that cover fields like criminal justice, art, and music.) When you connect to ABI/INFORM, you'll see that ProQuest is in large letters, and the name of the database is in small letters.

1. ABI/INFORM Global can be accessed from the Rod Library Business Portal at http://www.library.uni.edu/ris/business/

2. It can also be accessed from the Databases A-Z and by Field of Study in the middle of the Rod Library home page.

3. And this nasty looking URL should work from on campus as well as off campus: http://0-www.umi.com.unistar.uni.edu/pqdauto?COPT=REJTPTM@

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