Scholarly Articles - COMM-181 | Intro to Online Communication - Collins Memorial Library at University of Puget Sound

Is it Scholarly?

Here are some general guidelines to identify scholarly articles.

Search Communication & Mass Media Complete

CMMC incorporates the content of CommSearch (formerly produced by the National Communication Association) and Mass Media Articles Index (formerly produced by Penn State) along with numerous other journals in communication, mass media, and other closely-related fields of study to create a research and reference resource encompassing the breadth of the communication studies discipline.

E-Journal Collections

These e-journal collections provide access to many journals in the field of Communications Studies, but they are limited in scope and coverage compared to subject databases. In most cases, it's better to search subject databases to identify articles, and then use the Primo Search to access the materials in these e-journal collections.

JSTOR
An interdisciplinary journal archive. It includes archives of over one thousand leading academic journals across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, as well as select monographs and other materials valuable for academic work. Includes the Artstor image collections.
Project MUSE
Interdisciplinary database includes books and articles from scholarly publishers with focus on humanities and social science.

Recommended Databases for Communication Studies

CIOS (Communication Institute for Online Scholarship)
An information gateway for the communications field.
Academic Search Premier
A multidisciplinary database containing full text journal, magazine & newspaper articles, many from peer-reviewed titles. This scholarly collection covers information in nearly every area of academic study.
ProQuest Central
Covering more than 160 subject areas, ProQuest Central is a large aggregated database of periodical content. It features a diversified mix of content including scholarly journals, trade publications, magazines, books, newspapers, reports and videos.
Google Scholar
Provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources including: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, patents, legal opinions and federal & state court opinions.
Social Science Premium Collection (ProQuest)
Provides access to multiple databases covering the international literature in the social sciences, including politics, sociology, social services, anthropology, criminology and education.

Search Primo

Finding Full Text Articles

If you have a citation to an article and want to find the full text,use Primo's advanced search. Change the "any field" to title. Type the journal title and the material type to journals.

Journal example:

Tan, Chang. 2012. "Art for/of the Masses." Third Text 26, no. 2: 177-194.

Where's The Fulltext?

There are three methods for obtaining the actual articles you wish to read:

Method 1: In some databases, you will be able to link directly to the fulltext article. Look around, as different databases have different interfaces. Look for a link or buttons that says "Check for Full Text" or Download PDF or similar. If given the choice between a PDF or HTML version of the article, always choose the PDF format. This will give you an exact image, including page numbers, of the article as it appears in the paper journal.

Method 2: If a direct link to full text is not available, then look for a link that checks for fulltext in Primo Search to see if the library subscribes to the journal.

Method 3: Use Interlibrary Loan. See box below.