Library Resources for Business PhD Research Pathway

An overview of library resources for academic research in business disciplines.

Discovery Tools

Discovery tools support searching for a topic across multiple databases.

Literature Searching

Aggregated Full-Text Databases

Provide many types information in multiple formats from 3rd party providers.  May include articles from peer-reviewed journals, trade publications, magazines, newspapers, reports, videos, etc.

Publisher Platforms

Find Top Journals

It is helpful to be aware about top, high-impact journals in your discipline.  You may set up alerts for a new issue of this journal or for a specific topic of interest.

Dissertations

When selecting a topic for your research projects / dissertation, you may want to research if any similar work has been done, get ideas about methodology, and review the bibliography.

Boolean, Natural Language Searching, and Emerging AI Assistants

Originally, databases required the use of Boolean operators to run queries:

  • AND - requires all keywords to be present
  • OR - allows any of the keywords to be present
  • NOT - excludes the keywords from search

Advances in web searching led to natural language searching, even in some databases. Boolean operators may be implied or not required.  Searching in databases is more structured, with fewer results and less "noise." After you run your search, look out for filtering options to narrow down your search.

In the past couple of years, vendors have been introducing a number of AI-based tools that provide summaries of the articles and other features.  Beware of hallucinations where AI tools "invent" non-existent sources!