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In this economically challenging time around the world, it is important to base your business research on information from top quality journals from premier publishers. When searchers seek good, solid authoritative sources on economics, accounting, banking, management principles, and the whole range of essential business topics, they rely on ABI/INFORM (File 15 on Dialog and INFO on DataStar). In the following overview you will see how this database started, what it contains and how it is vital for your business research.
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If you are looking for new developments and research in economics and management science or the most recent business and industry news, look no further. ABI/Inform (File 15), produced by ProQuest, has been a premier source of business information for more than 35 years. ABI is an essential tool for planners, managers, administrators and consultants requiring reliable information on business methods and their applications. File 15 provides in-depth analysis not only of human resources issues, commerce and finance, corporate structure and organization, but unparalleled examinations of industries, manufacturing, products and processes as well. Quality journals are provided by top publishers in the business world. Its international coverage gives researchers a complete picture of companies and business trends around the world. The database covers from 1971 to the present and is updated daily so you get the most current articles available. Fulltext is included from 1991 forward.
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A bit of history describes how ABI/INFORM got its start. It was the early 1970s when three graduate students were working on an MBA project at Portland State University in Oregon that triggered the idea for ABI/INFORM. After graduating from Portland State in June 1971, the three entrepreneurs set up a business and named the company ABI/INFORM. The ABI stood for Abstracted Business Information and the INFORM recognized the Wisconsin project. The database, also named ABI/INFORM, consisted of abstracts of articles from a core list of business and management publications.
Helped by a bank loan, the three owners sent out a direct mail piece looking for investors in their company. They received little response except from one person who found the idea interesting. Barry Bingham Jr. had just become editor and publisher of the Louisville, Kentucky daily newspaper, The Courier-Journal, and in 1972 ABI/INFORM became a Bingham company. Although Bingham retained the product name ABI/INFORM, the company was named Data Courier. ABI went online in 1973 and was one of Dialog's first databases. As the database expanded, Data Courier implemented controlled vocabulary terms in 1977.
The Bingham family experienced major internal dissension in 1986 and decided to sell Data Courier. It went to UMI, which is now known as ProQuest Information & Learning.†From its origins as a graduate student project, ABI/INFORM has grown into a major business database. ProQuest started to include fulltext articles in 1991.
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ABI/INFORM has broad-based coverage of business, management and economics. Subject areas encompass a broad range such as advertising, accounting, computer, finance, marketing, management, human resources, telecommunications and many others. Typical types of information available cover market opportunities, international tax laws, environmental regulations, case studies on global companies, cross-cultural studies, labor laws, operations of non-U.S. companies, economic conditions, industry overview, country profiles and so much more.
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This year ProQuest added more than 300 new sources to ABI/INFORM on Dialog and DataStar. These include both peer-reviewed, trade and academic journals. Major publishers of articles, include Cambridge University Press and Emerald Group Publishing, Oxford University Press, the Financial Times, Springer Science and Business Media and Dow Jones, to name a few. You will also recognize many of the top journals and periodicals: MIT Sloan Management Review, The Economist, Advertising Age, Business Week and thousands more! Here's a selection of current full-text leading business journals: Time, The Economist, Business Week, Barron's, the MIT Sloan Management Review, Newsweek, and many others.
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A few statistics provide more detail about AB/INFORM. The database now contains more than four million records with over 25 percent of the journals published outside of the United States. ABI/INFORM includes over 1,000 management journals and approximately fifty percent of ABI's core titles are indexed and abstracted virtually cover to cover. Records contain bibliographic citations and detailed summaries of articles appearing in professional publications, scholarly journals and trade magazines published worldwide.
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ABI/INFORM is an excellent starting point to begin a research project to find an overview of your subject from authoritative sources worldwide. Dialog continues to add more titles both to the back file and with the regular updates. File 15 is also recognized for the high quality of its indexing. For each article, indexing includes not only bibliographic information but also subjects, companies, people and geographic areas. Indexing is performed by a staff of educated, experienced professionals applying human intelligence to index each article accurately and thoroughly. By searching keywords in the Title, Descriptor or Abstract fields, you can hone in on industry terms well-placed in the article, virtually ensuring the article is about those topics. Alternatively, you can use Classification Names or Classification Codes to focus on broad industry names, such as "electric, water and gas utilities," or a concept such as "research & development," or article treatment, such as "statistical data" or "guidelines"—managerial how-tos. Especially useful are the North American Industry Classification (NAICS) Codes or Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) Codes that allow you to narrow a search to general categories such as industries and markets, management function and into specific areas like energy policy, risk management or the health care industry. In addition to excellent indexing, the content includes quality journals from the top publishers. And you can get the latest business updates by creating Dialog Alerts in File 15. The result is a database that provides efficient and accurate searching for all types of researchers.
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ProQuest uses a proprietary, controlled vocabulary or thesaurus that's developed from the language employed in source publications. With thousands of vocabulary entries, the level of indexing detail is quite high, allowing researchers to develop searches that will retrieve only the most relevant citations. Although the Thesaurus contains numerous business and management terms, it is multidisciplinary in nature, meeting the needs of researchers across a wide range of topics and disciplines. New terms are added each year to the controlled vocabulary.
In addition, currency of vocabulary is critical to retrieve relevant information. ABI/INFORM vocabulary managers act immediately to provide editors with the terms they need to index current events precisely and accurately. For example, in the 2008 economic downturn terms like Auction rate securities; Credit default swaps; Emergency Economic Stabilization Act 2008; Food prices; Housing & Economic Recovery Act 2008; Jet fuel prices; Neighborhood blight; and Seller financing have been added to the ABI vocabulary.
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The following example illustrates the type of information you can find in ABI/INFORM. For example, a topic on the minds of individuals and businesses worldwide is the economic downturn and how it affects companies like Microsoft. Here's an article based on a search for this subject. The record is shown here:
The top of the record shows the title, author, journal and date of publication. It also indicates that this is a fulltext article and the word count.
Next, you see that the record contains a detailed abstract indicating how Microsoft plans to weather the economic downturn.
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The fulltext follows. We saw that this is a two-page article and some of it has been omitted due to space constraints. At the bottom of the record is comprehensive indexing including the company name focused on in this article and the NAICS codes. Indexing is also included for geographic names, classification codes you can use to focus on specific topics and descriptors to help you select additional search terms for other searches on similar topics.
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As mentioned earlier, ABI INFORM covers numerous industries from a variety of perspectives and on different subjects. This list of titles is on the search topic of the economic downturn. As you review this list of titles, note the different industries from U.S. East Coast refiners, to the aluminum industry, and IT organizations. The articles are all current—mainly from the month of March 2009 and the last title indicates an international article.
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As you can see, ABI/INFORM (File 15 on Dialog) provides unique, relevant information about business and management topics worldwide from reliable sources.
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This completes our overview of ABI/INFORM. Thank you for your interest in this premier business database and put it on your list to try for free in May.