Research Guides: COMM 107: Principles and Practices: Finding Scholarly Sources

Finding Scholarly Sources

UMD subscribes to many databases that index (or include) scholarly articles. Below is a list of databases that may be helpful to you in your research. Not finding what you're looking for? Visit Database Finder --> "Browse Database By Subject" to see a list of databases specific to your subject area.

Note: Keep in mind that some of these databases include both popular and scholarly sources, so be cautious when reviewing search results. Some databases have filters on the left-hand side of the results list that allow you to narrow down results to scholarly/peer reviewed sources.

Academic Search Ultimate
Multi-disciplinary database providing information for nearly every area of academic study. Includes an enormous collection of the most valuable peer-reviewed full text journals, as well as additional journals, magazines, newspapers and books. Multidisciplinary subjects including: social sciences, humanities, education, computer sciences, engineering, physics, chemistry, language & linguistics, arts & literature, medicine, ethnic studies. 1965- present.
Communication & Mass Media Complete
Provides full text and indexing for journals in communication, mass media
and other closely-related fields. Combines the resources formerly known as
CommSearch and Mass Media Articles Index. CommSearch offered bibliographic and keyword references to 26 journals in communication studies, with coverage extending to the inaugural issue of each. It also included cover-to-cover indices of NCAs six journals, and abstracts from their earliest appearance in NCA journals. Mass Media Articles Index provided citation coverage of over 40,000 articles related to mass media and published in over 60 research journals, as well as major journalism reviews, recent encyclopedias, and handbooks in the area of communications studies. EBSCO has combined and expanded the extensive coverage of these two resources to create CMMC.
ERIC
Provides access to information from over 1000 education and education-related journals as well as a variety of non journal materials, or ERIC documents. All aspects and levels of education. 1966- present. Non-journal documents are available via microfiche; they are also online from 1993-present. The database includes an online thesaurus.
Ethnic NewsWatch
Full-text bilingual (English/Spanish) database of 200 publications of the ethnic, minority, and native press. 1990 to the present. Multidisciplinary - news, culture, and history.
GenderWatch
Full text database comprised of 175 titles, primarily of the many ongoing periodicals that deal with gender issues, including academic and scholarly journals, regional publications, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, booklets and reports. Subject areas covered include: government, history and politics, lesbian and gay studies, women's studies, and other humanities and social sciences disciplines. Dates of coverage of some publications are 1970 to the present.
PsycINFO
PsycINFO is the most comprehensive index in psychology and related fields, with more than 1.7 million citations and abstracts of journal articles, book chapters and books, technical reports, and dissertations. Its holdings include material from 1,700 periodicals in over 30 languages. Covering the entire range of psychology disciplines, PsycINFO also includes information about the psychological aspects of related fields such as psychiatry, neuroscience, medicine, sociology, education, linguistics, anthropology, business and law. PsycINFO spans 1887 to the present. PsycINFO has links to the full-text articles in PsycARTICLES and the Psychology and in the Behavioral Sciences Collection (thus the user does not have to search each of these databases separately).
SocIndex with Full Text
The index features more than 1,300,000 records with subject headings from a 15,600 term sociology-specific thesaurus designed by expert lexicographers. This product also contains informative abstracts for more than 620 "core" coverage journals dating back to 1895. In addition, this file provides data mined from more than 500 "priority" coverage journals as well as over 1,390 "selective" coverage journals. Further, extensive indexing for books, monographs, conference papers, and other sources is included. Contains full text for 242 "core" coverage journals dating back to 1895, and 72 "priority" coverage journals. This database also includes full text for 547 books and monographs, and full text for 6,711 conference papers.