A.C. Buehler Library: COM 490 COM Capstone: Databases & Articles

Communication Studies Specific Databases

These databases contain scholarly & professional articles on Communication Studies topics.

Communication and Mass Media Complete (CMMC) This link opens in a new window
Covers a variety of areas pertaining to communication and mass media. The product of a merging of CommSearch and Mass Media Articles Index, CMMC contains the full text of over 500 titles in addition to citations to several other types of documents and searchable cited references.
APA PsycINFO This link opens in a new window
Covers professional and academic literature in psychology and related disciplines including medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, pharmacology, physiology, linguistics, and other areas. There are 2,500 titles indexed, and linked full text is available.

General Databases

These databases have a variety of sources in them, on a multitude of topics. They're not a bad place to start, but you will have to be careful to make sure you are looking at scholarly articles.

Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
Provides abstracts from over 12,500 periodicals in the social sciences, humanities, general science, multicultural studies, and others, with full text articles from 8,500 titles, including more than 7,300 that are peer-reviewed. Almost every topic of study is covered. The database is updated daily, and includes searchable cited references from more than 1,400 journals.
Business Source Premier This link opens in a new window
Contains full text for more than 2,300 journals, including full text for more than 1,100 peer-reviewed titles. Covers all disciplines of business, including marketing, management, MIS, POM, accounting, finance and economics. Also includes other full text information such as: country economic reports from the EIU, Global Insight, ICON Group and CountryWatch; detailed company profiles for the world's 10,000 largest companies; and market research reports, industry reports, and SWOT analyses.
OmniFile Full Text Select This link opens in a new window
OmniFile Full Text Select Edition is a multidisciplinary, 100% full-text database providing full text articles, with their accompanying indexing and abstracts. Coverage of more than 3100 publications goes back to 1994.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
An electronic archive of journal titles in a variety of disciplines, often going back to the first issue of a journal's existence. In addition, a collection of over 1.8 million digital images of paintings, photos, architectural works, sculptures, and design pieces from around the world from all time periods.
Sage Journals Online This link opens in a new window
A collection of over 700 peer-reviewed journals in full text, covering such subject areas as business, the humanities, social sciences, and science, technology and medicine.

Scholarly VS Popular Articles

Popular articles	Scholarly Articles
Are written for a general audience- not specialists	Are written for professionals or specialists in a field
Are written by journalists	Are written by specialists or professionals in a field
Are stories typically assigned to writers by an editor	Are written by scholars who are sharing their research with fellow scholars. These articles go through a process of peer-review
Are written in language aimed at non specialists- "anyone" can understand	May be written using highly specialized or technical language- the "jargon" of a field
Can be short, to the point, summaries of a story or idea	Are more lengthy, explore a topic in depth
Magazines are often filled with pictures, advertising for general products	Journals rarely have pictures (though there may be graphs of data) and only have professional ads, if any
Never have a bibliography or list of references	Always have a bibliography or list of references

Recognizing Empirical Research

You are being asked to locate and use articles that are "empirical research". Empirical research uses data derived from actual observation or experimentation.

To determine if an article is an empirical research article, use these guidelines:

What is the name of the journal? Popular magazines like Newsweek or Time don't publish empirical research articles; publications like Communication Research or the Journal of Applied Communication Research do.
How long is the article? An empirical research article is usually substantial, not 1 or 2 pages.
Does the article contain references to other works? Serious researchers always cite their sources.
Does the abstract of the article contain variations of the words study, measure, subjects, data, survey, or statistical to describe the empirical research?
(Finding Empirical Research Articles. University of San Francisco Gleeson Library 11/03 http://www.usfca.edu/library/handouts/researcharticles.pdf Retrieved 8/28/06)

Here are some resources that explain what empirical research is.

Empirical Research Reports in... This site contains a step-by-step look at the parts of an emiprical research article, from Rutgers University.
Finding Empirical Research Articles This is a handout geared towards USF's resources but has a good definition/checklist of guidelines.
Research Methods: Understanding: Empirical Research This is a tutorial aimed at linguistics majors, but has some useful information on the process of empirical research.
Conquering Empirical Research This is a research guide developed by the University Library at Mississippi State University.
Strategies for finding empirical studies and research articles This site gives some suggestions on terms to use when searching library databases for empirical articles.