Category: SAgE

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SAGE Research Methods

After a recent trial we are delighted we have managed to secure access to SAGE Research Methods. This is an invaluable resources for anyone undertaking an independent research project or dissertation.

The platform contains thousands of resources, dedicated to the subject area of Research Methods.  It supports all stages of the research process from: writing a research question, conducting a literature review, choosing the best research methods, analysing data, to writing up your results and thinking about publication.

It contains information suited to all levels of researchers, from undergraduates starting their first projects to research associates. Within the resource students will be able to access dictionary and encyclopaedia entries, book chapters, full books, journal articles, case studies, some datasets and streaming video from SAGE Research Methods Video. It includes online access to the complete Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences (QASS) series, aka the “The Little Green Books,” as well as the Qualitative Research Methods Series (QRMS), or “The Little Blue Books”

SAGE Research Methods includes a wealth of teacher resources and reusable materials for academics and module leaders to draw on and are licensed for educational use, allowing you to reuse materials and show videos within your teaching free of Copyright concerns. We think the platform will work well in conjunction with textbooks on research methods as well as some of the resources we have on our ASK website.

The Methods Map can be used to navigate methods, concepts and techniques via breakout diagrams. Whereas the Project Planner Tool is a step-by-step guide to starting, developing and completing a research project.  The methods sections provide information on all aspects of the research cycle – including the formulation of research questions, research design, project management and data collection.

Coming soon, SAGE Research Methods will be embedded in Canvas as an LTI, allowing you to easily embed videos, learning materials, case studies and videos into your Canvas courses.

Access the SAGE Research Methods User Guide for an overview of the resource an use the tabs below to access videos and training materials to get started.

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Be Connected: Finding Company Information

Photo by Sean Pollock on Unsplash

As a student, it can be difficult to decide which databases or web sites you might want to use for your research and it will be dependent on the question you are trying to answer. 

Company information resources can help you compare companies across industries, financial or employee criteria and research individual companies of interest. Depending how much detail you are looking for, you can access short profiles that give you an overview of individual companies or build detailed reports for companies that fit your criteria, including full balance sheets, income statements, ratios and more. 

Where to find company information

Company Information Resource Guide

Our Company Information guide draws together the resources that we have at Newcastle University for finding company profiles, financial data and executive information. Visit the Company Information guide to access our University subscriptions on and off campus.

Business Source Complete

Business Source Complete is a full text business database that covers management, economics, finance, accounting, international business. It has full text access for nearly 3,600 scholarly, business related journals. It also includes trade publications, industry profiles, company profiles and SWOT analysis.

Company Information can be found in a basic search across all of Business Source Complete. You can either search by a company name or BSC will suggest companies that are linked to your topic keywords.

Alternatively, you can search within the Company Information section by company name.

What else can you find in BSC?

Company Profiles

The Company Profiles section found under the more menu gives
you access to a full profile report for thousands of companies.
Search by the company name. It includes detailed company
information for more than 1.1 million of the world’s largest
public and private companies.Information includes financials,
subsidiaries, products, employees, industry information and
more.

Company Profiles are drawn from a number of different sources
including:

  • Marketline: A business information company covering the automotive,
    consumer, energy, financial services, healthcare and technology
    sectors. Used to called Datamonitor.
  • Medtrack Company Profiles: A biopharmaceutical corporate intelligence company.

Industry Profiles

Nearly 10,000 Industry Profiles that are updated annually. These are full text and can come from a variety of different providers including Marketline.

Nexis

Nexis is a major full text database for global news and business information.

Access to over 35,000 sources, with more than 12,000 international news sources including UK daily and regional newspapers, and company information for over 200 million companies worldwide.

In Nexis you can :

  • find newspaper articles and trade journal articles on a business related topic
  • gather information about a company, industry, country and people
  • keep up to date on a topic of interest

Company and financial reports

  • 180 company databases from around the world
  • Coverage of over 200 million companies worldwide (public and private)
  • Over 20 million US companies included (public and private)
  • In-depth company profiles
  • Company snapshots
  • Financial analysis and competitor information

Industry and Country Reports

  • Daily industry-led news
  • Comprehensive monthly/quarterly reports
  • Industry & country driven reports including SWOT, forecastings, market trends and analysis
  • Multi-national sector directories broken down by key industry verticals

Companies Search

Use the Companies tab to look up factual data on a company. For example name of executives, ages, bonuses, salaries, description of the company, history of how they were funded and competitors.

For advanced use of Nexis, select the Power Search. This allows you to be very specific about the keywords you enter, where you would like them to appear in the article and which publications you would like to search.

Bureau van Dijk databases

At Newcastle University we subscribe to three products which provide access to company accounts, ratios, activities, ownership and management information.

Fame

This resource covers UK and Irish companies providing data for company accounts, ratios, activities, ownership and management.

  • Turnover > £1.5 million
  • Profits > £150,000
  • Shareholder Funds > £1.5 million

Amadeus

This resource covers standardised annual accounts (for up to 10 years), consolidated and unconsolidated, financial ratios, activities and ownership for over 7 million companies throughout Western and Eastern Europe, including Germany, France, Italy, Ukraine and Russian Federation. Company financials are in a standard format so you can compare companies across borders. Information includes Financial strength indicators, directors, images of reports and accounts for listed companies, stock prices and detailed corporate structures

  • Operating revenue > €15 million
  • Total assets > €30 million
  • Number of employees > 150

Oriana

This resource covers accounts, ratios, activities, ownership and management for around 80,000 very large companies across the Asia-Pacific region, including China, Singapore, Hong Kong and India. information includes company financials, financial strength indicators, directors and contacts, original filings/ images, detailed corporate structures, market research and economic country profiles and outlooks, business and company- related news and M&A deals and rumours

  • Operating Revenue >= 100 million EUR (130 million USD)
  • Total assets >= 200 million EUR (260 million USD)
  • Employees >= 1,000

Where else to look?

The University subscribes to a number of business news sources, including online access to the Financial Time and the Economist. Visit the Business News Resource Guide to find out how to access the University Library subscriptions for free, including downloading the Financial Times app.

The Business School also provide alternative resources to find company information, which you can access via the Business Subject Guide.

Don’t forget to check out our Company Information Resource Guide and the Business Subject Guide for additional help and resources.

If you have any questions about any of these resources, please contact you Business Library team via Library Help.

Slides from our Company Information session

BeConnected_NUBS-Company-InfoDownload

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Watch Christmas Films on Box of Broadcasts

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Everywhere you go
Take a look at the Christmas watch list, there’s plenty to watch, not miss
With Elf, Die Hard, and A Christmas Carol show…

Staff and students of Christmas past have selected some Christmas films to complement the Law in Literature collection. These are films to watch for fun and not with a specific law focus (although Miracle on 34th Street is there for your courtroom drama fix).

The ‘Law in Literature Newcastle University – Christmas Watch List‘ is available on Box of Broadcasts. Box of Broadcasts (BoB) is a FREE TV, film and radio streaming database that can be accessed through Library Search (University ID required, UK access only). Read more about BoB, including a review of a Law student’s film recommendation.

Take a look at the list of festive films, look at the other Law in Literature playlists, or search for films to complement your studies, and enjoy the well-deserved Christmas break!

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Resource in Focus: Construction Information Services (CIS)

Screenshot of CIS homepage

Overview

CIS is produced jointly with the National Building Specification (NBS) especially for architects, civil and structural engineers, building control officers, building services engineers and other professionals in the construction industry. CIS provides fundamental industry information and legislation, as well as additional sector material. The extensive range of full-text documents cover all aspects of the building, engineering, design and construction process in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland.

The Construction Information Service (CIS) is a comprehensive online collection of over 28,000 construction related standards, regulations, technical advice and articles from 500+ publishers. Content is updated weekly, neatly organised into topic based supplements and delivered through a function rich and easily accessible online portal.

This collection is an invaluable resource if you are studying:

  • Many of our Engineering courses
  • Architecture, Landscape and Planning
  • Geography

Subjects covered include:

  • Building regulations
  • Environmental/land Planning
  • Planning control
  • Urban planning
  • Waste/water management
  • Earthworks/foundations
  • Land drainage
  • Law/legislation
  • Transport facilities/planning
  • Tunnelling and underpinning
  • Engineering
  • Materials
  • Groundwater control
  • Roads
  • loads/stresses
  • …and much, much, much more!

Searching

Within the CIS search box you can enter your keywords or browse by subject in the left-hand menu. There is also an Advanced Search option. There is also plenty of help with how to use CIS under the Help option on the left-hand menu:

Screenshot of left-hand menu on CIS showing where to browse and where to get help with CIS.

Access

CIS is available through our catalogue, Library Search. If you are on campus no password is required. If you are off campus you will need to log in using your University campus ID and password. You can also find it under the Journals and Database tabs in our Subject Guides, and on our Standards Resource Guide.

Copyright

Every document in The Construction Information Service has copyright permission from the publisher. Some publishers do not allow use of their documents or will only give permission for certain titles. Publishers who do give permission can also place an embargo on certain documents, resulting in a delay between publication and inclusion in CIS.

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Digimap: Global and Society

Screen shot of Society Digimap.

Adding to our existing EDINA collection, we now have access to both Global and Society Digimap.

Society includes census and socio-economic data which can be layered across the map software to provide a picture and give an insight of society in a given area. For more information about how to use the Society data, watch this video from EDINA.

Whilst Global provides access to global datasets in cartographic styles and downloadable formats. It allows you to browse, annotate and print global maps and access to downloadable global datasets for use in GIS software.

To access these resources, click on the link to the Digimap collection via Library Search or our Maps Resources guide, log in with your university account and click on the Society or Global tab to access the data.  You will need to accept the license agreement the first time you use it.

Please explore and email us if you have any questions, or post it as a comment on this blog. For other map resources, check out our Maps Resources guide.

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Resource in Focus: Fortune Magazine archive

We have recently subscribed to Fortune Magazine Archive – an extensive cover-to-cover collection of the long-running business magazine dating from its very first issue in February 1930 through December 2000.

Subjects Covered in this magazine:

  • American business
  • International business
  • Economics
  • Industry
  • Technology

Published monthly by Time Inc., Fortune Magazine sought to provide news and analysis of both American and, later, international business, economics, technology, and industry.  Each issue featured vivid color illustrations and photographs, as well as high-quality feature articles, published at a time when most business magazines were merely black and white compendiums of statistics and figures. 

Articles and cover pages are fully indexed and advertisements are individually identified, ensuring researchers and readers can quickly and accurately locate the information they seek. Fortune Magazine Archive is valuable to researchers of 20th-Century current events, politics and culture, as well as those interested in the history of business, advertising, and popular culture.

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Get more out of JSTOR!

JSTOR is one of our most popular academic databases, and you may be one of the many people who uses it regularly. It provides access to thousands of journal titles, books and other resources.

We subscribe to many of its collections, giving us access to thousands of journal backruns, spanning many decades and subject areas, together with 6,500 Open Access books (all catalogued on Library Search), and over 1.3 million images, videos and audio files, via Artstor Public Collections.

STOP PRESS! We now have access to an additional 59,000 JSTOR ebooks. Read all about it!

But are you getting the best out of JSTOR? Read on to find some tips and features you might not know about…..

Advanced search

JSTOR is a very large, multidisciplinary database, so a simple keyword search won’t usually be the most effective way to search it. Click on Advanced Search to get more options which will give you better control over your search: for example, just searching in certain fields (e.g. author or abstract) or limiting your search by date, resource type, language or subject area.

Text analyser

This exciting new feature enables you to drag and drop a document, and JSTOR will then process your document’s text to find the most significant topics and recommend other documents within its database. Try it out!

Workspace

Using Workspace, you can save, organise, and share your sources, including non-JSTOR content. You can also add notes and generate citations in many popular formats. You need to create an account on JSTOR in order to use this feature.

Text mining

Data for Research (DfR) provides datasets of JSTOR content for use in research and teaching. Data available through the service include metadata, n-grams, and word counts for most articles and book chapters, and for all research reports and pamphlets. Datasets are produced at no cost to researchers, and may include data for up to 25,000 documents.

Further help

You can get more help with JSTOR by clicking on Support at any time, or visit their specialised library guides for a more in-depth focus on particular topics. For the very latest JSTOR developments, tips and features, follow @jstor on Twitter.

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Resource in Focus: Scopus

Have you ever found yourself asking any of the questions below?….

  • Where can I find relevant, high quality information for my research?
  • How can I track who has cited an article since it’s publication, as well as looking back on the references it used?
  • How can I follow an academics work?
  • Who can I collaborate with in my research?
  • Which journal should I submit my paper to?
  • Where can I find information to support my research funding application?

…..If you have, then why not take a look at Scopus and use it as your starting point? You can access it through Library Search or through your subject guide in the ‘Journals and Databases’ section.

Whatever subject you are studying, Scopus is one of the databases that you need to get to know. It is a large multi-disciplinary abstract and citation database of peer reviewed literature. It contains over 69 million records, including journal articles (from 22,000 titles), conference papers, books (20,000 new book details added every year) and book chapters. However, it doesn’t just have a list of results for you to wade through, but it has a series of smart tools which help you track and visualise the research as well. You can search for documents, sources, authors and institutions and compare and contrast them using a variety of different tools.

If you are wondering if Scopus is for you, then check out the video below. And if you are already a user of Scopus, then why not listen to one of their webinars to get the best out of the resource or check out the Scopus blog for tips and tricks. Happy exploring!

https://youtu.be/-VE3ADZvoUY
See Scopus basic search in action.
https://youtu.be/qCu-obYMFsE
Scopus is an excellent resource to use to help you expand your search by focusing on specific authors and cited reference searching.

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A little conversation with Mintel

As a globally recognised market analyst, Mintel produces hundreds of reports into UK-specific consumer markets every year. Each report provides a unique overview of a market’s dynamics and prospects, giving you the knowledge to devise informed and profitable marketing strategy. Mintel is also one of the many Business specialist databases that we subscribe to here at Newcastle University, which you can access via Library Search, or along with many other of our resources via our Business Subject Guide.

Mintel also produce an excellent podcast, A Little Conversation Podcast, on YouTube which covers ideas and new perspectives on how we eat, drink, shop, groom and think – from the key issues impacting society to trends in food, beauty, tech and retail, they discuss what consumers want and why.

So if you are looking for an alternative resource in market research, have a look at these podcasts. You can subscribe to their podcast via their website or where you normally download your podcasts.

Here’s their latest podcast which is looking consumer behaviour of upcoming holiday shopping: