Management & Entrepreneurship Research

Library databases are collections of articles, reports, or information that are not easily available for free via a Google search. These licensed resources are purchased by the library and university for use by our students, faculty, and staff -- therefore you are required to login with your Rowan credentials. Click the links below to start your research on companies, industries, consumers, and more! 

Additional databases, such as Bloomberg (terminals in Trading Room in Business Hall) or Capital IQ and Wharton Research Data Service/WRDS (online access by specially assigned username/password only) are available to Rohrer College of Business students for certain courses. Contact your professor for more information on these. POM for Excel, SAP, Stata, and other software applications can be accessed on the Rowan cloud (to access, download the Rowan Citrix client and login with your Rowan credentials). Faculty, check with your colleagues for passwords to these and the instructor notes for the Sage Business Cases database. Not all library databases provide their article links via the Library Search "big box" -- you need to go to the individual business databases too!

Remember to always start your search from the Campbell Library home page, where links to all of our database subscriptions are located.

• For key ratios analysis, try the database called IBIS World Global Industry Research, which has “key ratios” tables, plus lots of info on trends for various industries (just search or choose one from the links on the opening screen). Also try ABI/Inform for key ratios by going to Advanced, and then typing “first research” in the top search box, and the industry you want in the second search box.  This provides "first research reports" which show financial benchmarks and ratios at the end of each PDF. (Remember to filter results by this year's publication date).
• For comparison of more than a few of the leading companies, you could use the Mergent Online database. to choose your firms first by stock ticker or NAICS code, and then download their financials into an Excel spreadsheet. Revenue, EBITDA, and other financials for public companies is easily available, but private company financial data is not as easy to find, so try the PrivCo database which may give company contact information where you can inquire further. 
• When searching for the Beta of a stock, you can start at Yahoo! Finance (which also provides 3-year Beta against standard index for each stock you choose; check under 'key statistics' on left menu). If not, you may need to calculate/estimate it for yourself using the formula. But remember, Betas are closely correlated to S&P, so you may find some wild numbers in random sources online; always double-check a figure that you find against others, and note the dates of these assessments. Check Wikipedia's Beta explanation or search Google for many more good how-to pages and videos.
• ABI/Inform has a video to describe how to get Economist Intelligence Reports (world commodity forecasts, country finance reports, etc.), which may be useful for class projects in various business discipline.
• More company research is found in library databases like Mergent Online, PrivCo, ReferenceUSA, and PassportGMID. (These are all 'best databases' and linked in the box above.)  For nonprofits, try http://foundationcenter.org/find-funding/990-finder (to look for their tax filings). 
• SWOT analyses can be found in multiple library databases: In Business Source Elite, choose 'Company Profiles' from top blue menu before searching, then choose a company from the list by starting to type it in. Each company's MarketLine PDF contains a SWOT section.In ABI/Inform, use the ABI/Inform SWOT tutorial. ABI/Inform also has a tutorial on G20 country statistics in spreadsheets. In Mergent Online, also look at the 'Government Filings' tab to find companies' annual 10-K reports to the SEC, in which they will also explain some of their business risks.
• Market research data,, or data from consumer surveys, is found in a database called Simmons OneView and in some free data resources located on the menu of this page. In the Data Planet Statistical Datasets database, you can choose 'browse by source' to view the EASI marketing data there.
• Some useful market share data is in a multi volume series called Market Share Reporter in the database called Gale Directory Library. Use drop-down menu to 'select series' by scrolling down to Market Share Reporter. Check the box first, and then type your industry/topic in the usual way (e.g., trying the term 'fitness' for example, will provide reports on Top Fitness Equipment Makers, Largest Gym Companies Worldwide, Gym Industry Revenue, etc.).
• Try the new Census Business Builder: Regional Edition for demographics of our local area. Choose the 'businesses' tab or the 'consumer spending' tab to see counts of total payroll, employees, and revenue of local businesses in a particular industry, or to find out annual consumer expenditures on financial investments, housing, local transportation, etc. This uses similar data as ReferenceUSA's "Search Businesses," which can also create heat maps of different demographic densities or company locations.
• Need Hoover's content?  It is now in ProQuest's Business Market Research Collection database.  Check the box for company information (which appears halfway down the page below the search boxes).
• The popular "NOLO Business Start-up" book series are all online in the Small Business Reference Center database.
• How do you find books again? Use the main search box on the Campbell Library home page at   https://www.lib.rowan.edu/campbell 
  Just start a fresh search if it seems to have no good results at first.
  Type a title or topic or book title into the "big box," and on the subsequent results screen, choose "available online" and "books" from the resource type filters on the left, which will give you links to our online ebooks, 
• To get business plan examples for a variety of industries from the library's main search screen, search the 'big box' with the terms "Business Plans Handbook" and your topic. Business Plan examples for every industry are actually in the Business Plans Handbook series, which are online ebooks from Gale Publishing -- on the Gale screen, you can type your business idea in the box, then choose to search 'within this publication' and "all volumes" on top right of the screen (e.g., the terms 'gym' or 'fitness' will give examples of market size, funding amounts, etc. for that type of business).  You can also get here via the database called Gale Virtual Reference Library. Use the search boxes to type both your topic/industry as 'keyword' and "Business Plans Handbook" as Publication Title. Although there are many strange ways to get there, the business plan examples are great!
• And don't forget to use our other Research Guides in Marketing, Entrepreneurship, etc. for each year's business competitions at Rowan!

Need more library database tutorials? Check the menu of this page for more info.

Need to cite a business database for your bibliography?  Use the tips located at https://libguides.bentley.edu/citingsources-apa/references (choose database name by scrolling to get the APA citation example for each library database). Want to practice in-text citations of sources in APA format? Try our Citing Sources tutorial module for explanations.

Journal articles usually report on the results of experiments, studies, or projects, and often include advice on best practices and "what works" in various areas of business. Articles and reports of business information are usually found in library databases.

To select a library database, go to the Best Databases for Accounting and Finance link, or the All Business Databases at Rowan link.

For a quick search of your topic in some of the databases at once, try your topic in Library Search (sometimes called "Primo"). Although it says that you are searching library resources in Rowan Library, you are mostly searching the business databases with traditional newspaper and journal articles here, such as ABI/Inform or ProQuest Central, and some ebooks such as those from Springer.  Remember that this search does not search most business databases with 'non-article' type content like the reports in IBIS World or the data in Passport or PrivCo. For those, you'll need to go to the business database links above and choose the particular database for the type of information you need.

You can also use the Library Search for Specific Journal Titles in order to find articles from a specific periodical (journal, newspaper, magazine), by typing its title or ISSN #. Sometimes it is helpful in this Journal Title box to include the title of the item in quotes (such as "Financial Times"). As you can see below, we have MANY business publications for you to search. Here are some examples: 

Most Common Newspapers

The websites of major newspapers often do not have the same contents as the printed or subscribed versions of those newspapers. Websites often include user-generated content like comments, blogs, etc. in addition to real articles from journalists. BOTH of these types of articles will often appear in the library's holdings. Use the Library Search/Journal Search to query a specific periodical (journal, newspaper, magazine) by its title or ISSN #. Sometimes it is helpful to include the title of the journal in quotes (such as "Financial Times"). Then be sure to choose the right version from the list.

Need more help effectively using the Library Search ("big box") on the Campbell Library front page? Read some tips here.

Library Databases to Find Even More Newspapers

In addition, some library databases serve as aggregators for newswire articles and newspaper articles from around the country or around the world. As an alternate way to search, choose a newspaper database first, then see if that database has the particular newspaper title and/or dates that you need. Below are some library databases that have business news articles, both current and historical:

As always, request other newspaper articles that Rowan does not own by using the forms on the Interlibrary Loan page.

The PREP STEP database on library home page provides practice tests online.

We are pleased to provide you with a curated repository of resources available to Rowan faculty who seek to help their students develop an entrepreneurial mindset. The resources below are all freely available online and/or licensed through Rowan University Libraries (log in with your usual credentials if needed). The Rowan Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, in partnership with the Faculty Center, also run an annual certificate program for faculty who wish to take a deeper dive into how to integrate entrepreneurial mindset into their courses. For more information on this program please contact RCIE@rowan.edu