How to find articles in EconLit

EconLit with Full Text provides access to the American Economic Association's authoritative index for economic literature. It is a key resource for Economics students.

Beth Paton
37 steps
4 minutes

Oclc

Libkey

Brookes

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Find articles using Advanced Search

Follow the link to **EconLit** from the [Course Resource](https://www.brookes.ac.uk/library/resources-and-services/course-resource-help/business/how-to-use-journal-article-databases#econlit)page for Business. You may be prompted to enter your Brookes login (student number and password). This is the **Advanced Search** screen, which is the default searching option on EconLit.

In this example, we are looking for articles about the impact of the 2008 financial crisis. By typing "financial crisis" in quotation marks, the database will search for the phrase "financial crisis" instead of the individual keywords 'financial' and 'crisis', which could return a lot of irrelevant results.

The default search option is **All fields,** which will search across everything in the database. You can change this to just search for the **Title**, **Author** or other more specific fields within the database using the drop-down menus.

In this example, we will select **Title** to just search within the article title field.

You can narrow your search by adding additional keywords. In this example, we will also search for 'impact' and select **Title** in the search options. Once you are happy with your chosen keywords or phrases, click **Search**.

To narrow down your results further, click on **All Filters** under the search box at the top of your results list.

This will open a pop-up list of filter options on the right-hand side of the page. To view only peer reviewed articles, tick the **Peer Reviewed** box.

To narrow down by date, select **Publication Date**. You can choose from one of their set options (e.g. Past 10 years) or **Custom range** to enter a specific date range.

Once you have chosen your filters, click **Apply** at the bottom of the pop-up menu.

Scroll through your search results. Click the **Show more** option to read the article Abstract and check if the content is relevant to you.

To read one of the articles in your results list, click on the **Access now** or **Access options** button below each result...

...or click on the title to see more details.

Using subject descriptors in EconLit

**Descriptors** are specific words or phrases that are indexed in the EconLit database and assigned a code. If you are having trouble finding relevant results, or getting too many or not enough results, they can be useful to improve your search. They appear under **Subjects** in your results list...

...and in the **Descriptors** section of the article details page.

You can select one or more of these descriptors to run a subject search. In this example, we have selected **Financial Crises (G01)**.

This has returned a very large number of results, as it is quite a broad subject area.

However, you can add more descriptors to your search, or add in your own keywords and use filters, to narrow down your results.

Check for full text with LibKey Nomad

In some cases, you may see **Check for Full Text** under a journal article in your results list instead. Click on this link to see if the Library has access through our current subscriptions.

If you have the browser extension **LibKey Nomad** installed, this will quickly check our subscriptions and open full text options for you if they are available (find out more about how to install it on the [Library blog](https://brookeslibrarynews.blog/2021/03/02/what-is-libkey-nomad/)).\ \ You should see options to download the PDF or go to the article link on the journal site.

Cite, download and share articles

If you click on an article title, it will show you the article details page. From here you can select **Access now (PDF)** to open and read the article. In some cases, there may be an option to **View online** as well, which will open the HTML version.

Reading the **Abstract** can also tell you if the article is relevant to your search, as it will give a summary of the content.

Check for any **Keywords** or **Descriptors** tagged in this article, which you could use in future searches to find more relevant articles. **Descriptors** are subject terms indexed in the EconLit database. You can also use these to build a subject search.

At the top right of the screen, you will see some more icons that give you extra functionality. If you are creating a bibliography or using reference management software like EndNote, you can generate citations or export this article to your library by clicking the **Cite** icon.

The **Copy citation** option will let you view, copy and paste the citation in different styles (e.g. Harvard).

Select **Export citation** to see the different options for exporting to reference management software, such as EndNote.

If you have a MyEBSCO account set up, **Add to project** will let you save results in a folder to view later (see section [**Setting up MyEbsco account**](https://scribehow.com/viewer/How_to_find_articles_in_EconLit__yaAIi40mTjOryRhxN2Volw?scrollToActionId=ccdbc8d0)).

The **Share** icon will let you save the article to Google Drive or OneDrive to read later...

...or email it to a friend (useful if you are working on a group project).

The **Download** option also appears in this top menu. This will allow you to download the PDF to read later.

Be cautious about using the **Save** icon - you can use it to bookmark articles, but these will disappear once you log out of EconLit, unless you have set up a **MyEbsco account** and are logged in (See section [**Setting up MyEbsco account**](https://scribehow.com/viewer/How_to_find_articles_in_EconLit__yaAIi40mTjOryRhxN2Volw?scrollToActionId=ccdbc8d0)).

Setting up MyEBSCO account

To access additional options, such as saving articles or searches after you have logged out of EconLit, adding articles to project folders, or setting up citation alerts, you will need to set up a MyEBSCO account. This is free for Brookes students.\ \ To get started, click on the **MyEBSCO** icon in the top right corner of the screen.

Advanced search screen with the 'MyEBSCO' icon highlighted in orange.

Select **Create an account** in the pop up window.

Pop-up window with account creation or sign in options for MyEBSCO account.

The simplest way to set this up is to select **Continue with Google** and sign in with your Brookes email credentials.

The MyEBSCO Create an account screen, with the 'Continue with Google' option highlighted in orange.

Once your account is set up and you are logged in, you can configure your settings by clicking on the **MyEBSCO** icon and selecting **My preferences** in the pop-up window.

Pop-up window of MyEBSCO options showing 'My preferences' highlighted in orange.

Click on the **three lines** icon to open the sidebar menu.

My preferences screen in MyEBSCO with three lines (burger menu) option highlighted in orange in the top left.

Click on **My dashboard,** and you will see that you now have access to extra functions such as creating projects and saving articles or searches, viewing recent activity and setting up citation alerts. You can find more information about these features on EBSCO's [Quick Start Guide](https://connect.ebsco.com/s/article/New-EBSCOhost-Quick-Start-Guide?language=en_US) under **Using the Dashboard** and **Using the Tools**.

My dashboard options highlighted to show new functionality such as Save, Projects and Alerts.

Further help

If you need more help with using Business Source Complete, please email us at **library@brookes.ac.uk** or check our [Get help and support page](https://www.brookes.ac.uk/library/how-to/get-help) for more options.