Resources by topic

  • Business News
    • News databases
      This webpage provides lists of the news databases available at SOAS. You can access newspapers, news wires and news transcripts from around the world.
    • Al-Jazeera (English)
      An international, multi-award winning news channel with over sixty bureaus around the world that span six different continents. Also available in Arabic.
    • Business Week
      A Bloomberg production, this online magazine is renowned for its business news, trends and profiles of successful businesspeople.
    • Reuters – Business News
      Provides up to the minute news with an extensive business section.
    • FT.com (Financial Times)
      The online version of the Financial Times with extra features and regular updates. You need a subscription for the latest news (student rate here), but you can access up to the previous month via our Access World News database- see the News Databases page for details.
    • Forbes
      A leading US source for reliable business news and financial information.
  • Data and Statistics

    Data and statistics play a crucial role in Social Science research. This page lists some of the major sets of data available, by region covered. In addition there are also some Chinese language statistical databases.

    Data and Statistics
    SOAS Library subscribes to a number of databases, such as DataStream and UK Data Service- which provides IMF data, International Energy Agency data, International Social Survey and OECD data. For details, please consult this listing.

    There are also many free sources of statistics on the web

  • Public Opinion and Surveys
    • UK Data Service : includes World Values Survey, Young Lives Survey, Afrobarometer, Arab Barometer, AsiaBarometer and Asian Barometer Survey.
    • Global Attitudes Project: a series of worldwide public opinion surveys that encompasses a broad array of subjects.
    • World Public Opinion: consortium of research centres studying public opinion on international issues in their respective countries.
    • Gallup: data driven news based on US and world polls.
    • Mansfield Asian Public Opinion Poll Database : English translations of key policy-related issues from major media organizations and other agencies in Japan, South Korea, and China.
  • Demographic information
  • Country-Level Information
    • EIU CountryData contains over 280 variables, divided into the following major categories: Gross domestic product, Fiscal and monetary indicators, Demographics and income, Foreign payments, External debt stock, External debt service, External trade, Quarterly, and for some countries, Monthly indicators. Covering 150 countries, this powerful database contains more than a million individual data points-covering over 280 series and running from 1980 to 2008. Updated monthly.
    • Business Source Complete contains some country reports.
    • UK Data Service is a comprehensive source of data, covering key economic and social data, both quantitative and qualitative. Including World Development Indicators, OECD, ILO, IMF and UN data.
    • CIA World Factbook provides basic country level data produced for US policymakers and coordinated throughout the US Intelligence Community.
    • BBC News Country Profiles provide basic information on topics such as press freedom and key events, alongside audio and video clips from BBC archives.
    • UN Data contains lots of UN metrics for different countries- ranging from agricultural production to the World Statistics Pocketbook.
    • Global Edge Insights by Country statistical data for nearly every country around the world. In addition to statistics, historical, economic, and political conditions are available.
    • A M Best is a global credit rating agency with a unique focus on the insurance industry. They produce free short briefing papers about the various risks of investing in countries.
    • Coface a French company specialising in export credit insurance, provides limited economic data for countries- including the option to run a brief comparision.
  • Banking and Financial Services Sector
  • Islamic Banking/Finance
  • Transparency

    The UK Data Service contains figures on the ease of doing business and corruption

    Freely available resources:

  • What is OA?

    Open Access (OA) refers to free, unrestricted online access to research outputs, which is open to all, with no access fees. Academics around the world are increasingly making their work Open Access.

    General Open Access resources can be found at the library web site .

    Specialist resources: