Global Desktop Research Databases

The Catalog of Research Databases is a global resource which lists critical business databases in countries that are free to search. You can search the directory by region of the world; by country; or by “type” of the resource, eg. directory, legal, intellectual property etc. I find this especially helpful when I am researching a country that I don’t know much about, as it gives me a head start in finding some reliable first options for that vital bit of information.

Free Academic Research

Most academic research articles are behind a paywall. I am a believer in that you pay for what you get, and that the value of this pay-per-view research is justified. Sometimes there’s nothing else to fill that desk research void in search of an answer. CORE (https://core.ac.uk/) harvests and aggregates over 176 million open access research articles from tens of thousands of journals from over 9,847 data repositories and providers around the world. A useful filter search screen allows you drill down to find the free research you need. It has good coverage for business and the sciences in particular, so provides a cost-effective way of collecting research.