These resources provide financial information, products & services, competitors, etc. They also provide access to trade journals, reports, news, and articles about individual businesses.
What are trade publications?
Like scholarly journals that you may have used in other courses, trade publications or journals are
published regularly (weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly) and have to do with a specific topic or
field. However, instead of in-depth technical research, trade publications often contain important
news that is relevant to the field, summaries of new research (rather than the research itself),
trends and predictions for the field, and advertisements for products or services that people in
that field might be interested in. Some are broad (e.g. Engineering News Record) and some are
incredibly targeted (e.g. Bicycle retailer and industry news).
Who reads trade publications and why?
Generally, trade publications are geared very specifically towards professionals currently and
actively working in a field. They’re a quick and easy way to keep your finger on what’s important,
begin to understand the broad context of research in a field, and just get an idea of what’s
important right now. Often, professionals will pick out individual ideas or articles that they
gained a basic understanding of in a trade publication and explore those in-depth using a more
scholarly resource.
Trade Publications By Discipline
Biomedical Engineering
IEEE engineering in medicine and biology magazine: this quarterly publication focuses on current technology in the biomedical engineering field.
IEEE pulse: focuses on current technology, news, and societal implications within the field.
Biotech business week: a summary of research, financial, and other news pertaining to the field from the past week.
Biotech week: a weekly summary of biomedical research and findings
Civil Engineering
Engineering News Record: news from the engineering field with a heavy focus on infrastructure & building.
New civil engineer: civil engineering news published in England (so not all of the articles about government are relevant), but good info about the industry overall.
Civil engineering news: News, trends, and analysis pertaining to structural and civil engineering. To view the publication, visit the “Magazine” tab on the website.
Chemical Engineering
Chemical and engineering news: “news edition” of the American Chemical Society: news, research, and analysis of the field produced by the American Chemical Society.
Chemical week: information and news dealing with chemical markets and industries
The chemical engineer: news and resources published by the Institution of Chemical Engineers.
Computer Engineering
ACM queue: tomorrow’s computing today: covers a wide range of computing topics and is produced by the Association for Computing Machinery.
Computer: this publication bills itself as being a resource that falls in-between a research journal and a trade publication. There are a number of articles characteristic of trade publications, as well as a few original research articles in each volume.
Electrical Engineering
IEEE spectrum: covers trends in engineering, science & technology, with a focus on electrical engineering. Has lots of cross-disciplinary information that would be of interest to other types of engineers!
IEEE power engineering review: covers power and energy industry news.
IEEE power & energy magazine: news and research relevant to power and energy.
Mechanical Engineering
Machine Design: research, industry, business, news and manufacturing information relevant to the mechanical engineer.
Professional engineering: covers a wide range of engineering topics with a heavy focus on mechanical.
Air conditioning, heating, & refrigeration news: a trade journal dealing with a fairly specific subset of mechanical engineering.
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
ASBMB today: an online publication produced by the American Society for Biochemistry and molecular Biology.
Microbiology today: each issue is geared towards a given theme or topic relevant to current microbiology news. Produced by the Society for General Microbiology.
Geological Engineering
Mining Engineering: publication of general mining news and research by the Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Explorations.
Industrial Minerals: trade publication with a specific focus on minerals and mining.
General Sciences & Arts
Below are a few trade publications that deal with a range of fields that fall under the heading “General Sciences & Arts” that may be of interest. However, if none of fit what you’re looking for, contact the library for assistance at reflib@mtu.edu.
Franchising world: covers all aspects and news that would be relevant to a small business or franchise owner.
Book business: articles, ideas, and news relevant to writers and publishers.
BioScience: publishes news and research reviews as well as occasional peer-reviewed research articles on key life science and ecology topics.
Veterinary Economics: information on how to run a veterinary practice as well as relevant business news.