Reports from several publishers with differing focuses or viewpoints. 

Industry information allows you to see how your individual company is doing within the larger industry.

Be sure to use proximity commands in the first two databases, ABI/Inform Collection and Business Source Premier.  More about proximity commands below.  

'Traditional' library article databases:

Other article databases:

These commands tell the search engine to find two words near each other, separated by a maximum number of words.  The search terms will be retrieved regardless of the order they're in.

➤  Search within the full-text of articles (not the default) for better results.  
➤  Especially useful for searching in news and trade articles.

These commands are very useful!  Here are two scenarios:

• When searching on people's names, you have to allow for the use or absence of a middle name/initial. 
• When searching for phrases where the significant words can be used in different ways/orders, but still have the same meaning.  For example, the following phrases all mean basically the same thing: 

   –  commercials aired during recent superbowls
   –  superbowl LVII commercials
   –  commercials from superbowl 57  

Truncation: 

Truncation just means that you shorten a search word so that the search engine will retrieve variations of that search word. You type fewer words and tell the search engine to do the work!  The asterisk (*) is the truncation symbol for most platforms.

➤  Search within the full-text of articles (not the default) for better results.  
➤  Especially useful for searching in news and trade articles.

* (the asterisk) in most platforms:

Works in ProQuest, Ebsco, Nexis Uni, NewsBank and Gale databases:

Here are examples that show how to format a search and spell out what will be retrieved:  

educat* retrieves: educate, educated, educates, educating, education, educator, educators
govern* retrieves: govern, governed, governing, government, governments, governor, governors, governs

About truncation: 

 –  Requires a root 'word' of 3 letters minimum
 –  Works better with a root of 4 or 5 letters (that is, will retrieve more relevant keywords)
 –  Cannot be used on the left side (beginning) of the root word

Wild card characters:

Wild card characters allow more control than simple truncation:  for example, they can be used for spelling variations (woman vs. women; color vs. colour), or for limited truncation (for example, adaptor or adapted or adapts, but not adaptation or adapting). 

But there is NO standardization among database platforms, so check the help pages for each platform you use!  Characters used as wild cards include:  the asterisk (*), the question mark (?), the number or pound sign (#), and even the exclamation point (!).