Business Communication and International Trade

Books often provide an excellent overview of a topic and are a great resource when starting an assignment.

• For printed books, you can borrow and return 30 items and these automatically renew (but are recalled if wanted by another user). Use our Click and Collect service to reserve books.

To find print books:

1. Search the Library Catalogue
2. For each book, note the floor, number and letter code: FIRST FLOOR 658.00721 BRY - save time by taking a photo!

To find ebooks:

1. Search the Library Catalogue
2. Filter your search on the left hand side to 'Electronic Books'.  
3. Click on the title of the ebook to load the full record, then use 'Online access' to view.

If you want to search within ebook packages, you will find those most relevant to you in the next section.

• Think about what you need to find.
• Look at your topic and identify keywords and phrases which will help you find relevant information.
• Ask yourself whether other words are often used to describe parts of the topic e.g. teenagers, youths, adolescents and note these down for your search too.
• Decide what type of information you need and where you are going to search. The details in the Online resources section above and the other sections on this subject page will help you with this.

It is important to understand the type of information you need when researching for your assignment.  For example you may want to start by finding definitions or background information. You may have been asked to find journal articles. Alternatively you may be seeking professional information, statistics or research findings. Once you have decided what type of information you need, you can use the Ocean of Information to help you understand the value of different sources and how to access them. When using the Library's Discovery Service to search, you will find that you can get a list of sources to choose from by clicking Add filters under the search box, then moving down to Source Types in the column which pops out on the right.

Evaluating your sources is also crucial when writing a piece of academic work - the Evaluating information section on the library website will guide you through this process.

Always check the University's student guidance on the use of Generative AI.

• Using AI in academic work is a new and fast-changing area.

• Examples of academic usage that might be considered appropriate are planning an assignment, generating ideas for further investigation, or helping find additional search terms or keywords.

• Many online library resources are introducing AI features to help your research. This could include suggestions for further reading or summaries of chapters, articles and marketing reports. The AI summaries might help you decide what to read when researching for an assignment but you should quote/paraphrase directly from the chapter, article or report, not from the summary.

• Be aware that the information generated in general AI tools is not always correct! Treat AI-generated content with as much caution as materials from Google or Wikipedia - evaluate, compare against other sources and ensure you use it appropriately.

Scholarly, peer-reviewed journals are highly regarded as a source of academic information because they include expert opinions, research findings and references to follow up.

They are written by specialised professionals and academics (such as your lecturers) from around the world.

Finding, reading and referencing relevant journal articles will help you get the highest marks.

1) Use the EBSCO Discovery Service to search for journal articles on a topic:

• Think about your keywords, where you want to search and how you will filter your results
• The Peer-Reviewed Articles option returns the most academic content

VIDEO: Using Discovery for Business searches
Or watch this advanced features of Discovery video
If you are not using VPN: extra help with EBSCO login screens
 

2) If you are getting too many results that are not business-related, try this alternative resource:

• New to referencing? Watch this short APA basics video.

Can I use ChatGPT/AI to generate references? 

Be aware that ChatGPT and similar tools invent some academic references (see the next paragraph for why). Using such fabricated information in your work is considered academic misconduct so you should always double check any AI generated references. They also make some mistakes with APA 7th style.

ChatGPT is a large language model which has been trained on which words should appear and in what order - hence similar authors/titles/journals get linked with each other, producing very plausible sounding references that don't actually exist - the words simply have connections to each other within its training data.

• The University has guidance for students on the use of AI.

All reference generators make errors! 

Ensure you check and edit your references before submitting your work.  Amongst other things, make sure you don't have author names or titles all in capital letters e.g. APPLYING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN TRANSLATION. This should be written as: Applying artificial intelligence in translation (with italics if it's a book title).

There are many different ways to generate APA citations:

• Quick options:
  • Look for a "Cite" button in EBSCO databases like Discovery, or in Ebook Central, Statista, Google Scholar etc.
• Advanced options:
  • See our referencing tools page. The humanities and social sciences librarian supports the use of EndNote Online.

We do not advise using the referencing tool in Word.