Business & Human Rights Research Guide

Choosing Your Paper Topic

• Paper Overview: This is neither a seminar paper nor a solely descriptive, superficial topic paper. Rather, this is a focused, research-based paper where you will provide a preliminary analysis on a discrete issue within the Business & Human Rights field. The approximate word count for your paper should be 5,000 words.
• Getting Started:  To begin formulating your topic, consider searching emerging legal issues, current controversies, and policy concerns. Start broadly. As you have no doubt already determined, businesses intersect with society in an uncountable number of ways. As such, on any given day, you can find a story that is relevant to the Business & Human Rights field. Consider browsing key news sources where Business & Human Rights issues are first flagged including Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Bloomberg News (access information below). After that, consider using those stories to think through issues that you feel are unusual or unjust, and then ask yourself the question: Why? 
• Staying Current. You must stay current on your topic or area of law throughout your drafting process to monitor all important changes and updates. View the full "Current Awareness Guide" for resources and strategies on remaining current. 
• A Word on Plagiarism: When researching your paper, you will likely encounter other peoples' views and proposed solutions on these topics. Remember, you can talk about what others have proposed, but if you do so, you must (1) do so from an analytical perspective (in other words, discuss why the solution may or may not work), and (2) do so with attribution and proper citation (because even stealing someone's ideas and not just their words is still plagiarism). Similarly, using ChatGPT or any other generative AI software to assist you with this paper is also considered plagiarism. 

Start Here: News & Blog Sources

Don’t forget, many Business & Human Rights issues are often first flagged in these news sources: Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Bloomberg News. The blogs on Business & Human Rights provided below also can be useful for topic generation. See the "News and Current Awareness" page on this guide for additional news and legal news sources helpful for Business & Human Rights research.

News Sources

New York Times

• WVU Libraries provides digital access to the New York Times for all affiliated students, faculty, and staff.  Use your WVU credentials to create an account here: https://myaccount.nytimes.com/grouppass/access. 
• Archives of the New York Times are available from multiple sources including: 
  • Lexis+ (6/1/1980-present) 
  • ProQuest Historical Newspapers: New York Times (1851-2014) 

Wall Street Journal 

• WVU College of Business and Economics provides digital access to the Wall Street Journal  for all affiliated students, faculty, and staff.  Use your WVU credentials to create an account here: https://wsj.com/activateWVU 
• Archives of the Wall Street Journal are available from multiple sources including: 
  • Lexis+ (6/13/1979 - present) 
  • Proquest Newspapers: Wall Street Journal (2010 - present) 

Bloomberg News

• Bloomberg Law provides access to Bloomberg news and legal news sources.
  •  Bloomberg News 
  •  Bloomberg Legal News 

Blogs:

Business & Human Rights Journal Blog 

Business & Human Rights Resource Centre Blog