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Mat-Su College: Business

A guide for Mat-Su College students taking BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION courses, especially BA 151.

Kinds of business articles

There are different kinds of business articles. Here are a few.

  • Newspaper article. These will be short, very current (they might be written the same day as whatever they're writing about), and focus much more on facts -- what, when, why, who, where -- than on opinions or analysis. An example would be the article "Fortnite, Spider-Man Set to Help Sony Score Another Record Profit," which simply informs us of Sony's latest earnings report.
  • Magazine article. Like the newspaper article, but more in-depth, possibly with more opinion or analysis. An example would be "Sony Chases Apple's Magic," an article about Sony's efforts to adopt an Apple-like corporate image. The article includes interviews with businesspersons and features the writers' opinion that Sony has failed to become Apple-like.
  • Trade publication article. Trade publications are basically magazines, but written for people within a particular profession or industry. Trade publications will report in detail on what matters to people within that occupation. An example would be the article "Sony outsources disc manufacturing, plans layoffs in Indiana" in Plastics News. The article is very much written for people who are following the plastics industry (and may be of little interest to anyone else).
  • Scholarly article. Scholarly articles are written by academics ("scholars"), mostly for other academics. These articles are very detailed and rigorous. They typically report on a study or the careful application of a theory to a particular case. An example would be "Samsung's catch-up with Sony: an analysis using US patent data."

Finding business articles

Through the library you have access to millions of business articles! These articles are collected in several different databases, each with its own features and set of articles.

Here are two of those databases:

How to find an article in a database

Let's look at finding an article in a database. Let's use Business Source Premier as an example.

First, find the Business Source Premier link by clicking "Databases A-Z" on the Mat-Su College library website:

MSC library homepage with Research Databases link highlighted

Then click the link for Business Source Premier (after clicking it, if you're off-campus, you may have to login with your UA username and password):

Business Source Premier link highlighted

Within Business Source Premier, simply enter your search terms on the first line and click "Search":

Business Source Premier search interface

On the results page the left side of the screen offers many options for narrowing down your search results. You could show only results from certain kinds of publications, from a specific date range, and so on:

Business Source Premier results page with limits options highlighted

In the results screen you can read an article by clicking "PDF Full Text," "HTML Full Text," or "Check Library for Full Text":

Business Source Premier results page with full text links highlighted

Click an article's title to see its Detailed Record, which contains a summary ("abstract"), credentials for the authors, and much more. It even has an option to generate a citation!

Business Source Premier detailed record page with cite button highlighted