NexisUni (Previously LexisNexis Academic)

What is it?

NexisUni is a database that covers news, business and legal sources; including US Supreme Court decisions. NexisUni also contains company profiles and SEC filings. The cost of this database is on par with other database offerings for CCCs, although NexisUni is for a more targeted audience. As with most database vendors, NexisUni offers a personal experience with the creation of an account.

Quick Evaluation

Although NexisUni offers a wide variety of searching capabilities, it can only be successfully navigated by the savvy researcher. The information contained is targeted to specific disciplines, and is most useful to researchers who have specific interests in mind.

The interface, in its simplicity, is difficult to navigate, offering choices that are generally not applicable to the general community college student. This database is more suited to legal or business students that are in their final/senior classes at a CC.

When viewing the database on a mobile device, the general interface appears to scale to mobile. However, the dark option for mobile is scrolled to the right and difficult to access or even know it exists. The option to initiate searches beyond the basic ‘Home’ option to Power Search, News, Companies, Market Insight, Biographies, Legal and Sources remains a mystery to the mobile student, as the scaling issues for mobile remains for these categories.

NexisUni articles may be activated in Primo, although there may be issues with article level linking according to a 2022 ExLibris article. There is no up to date information on this issue.

As a parent company, LexisNexis professes to comply with 508 regulations for Federal Government agencies. Most of their content is rated at WCAG 2.1 A and AA.

LexisNexis has a privacy policy that clearly states they collect personal information (name, email address, social media handles, etc.) as well as information from your institution, including cookies. This information is then used to develop products, contact users for surveys, etc. There is no ability to opt-out of information sharing. Every page of LexisNexis as a whole gathers user data via RELX. This is not made clear to the average user who is browsing the site unless a user chooses to follow the link at the bottom of the page (both web and mobile) browsing. For more information on LexisNexis privacy, readers may wish to review professional literature on this company as a data broker.

Relevant Links

2019 Review of NexisUni