Course Number: CS235
Subject: Communication Studies
Video tutorials from class presentation, March 6
Some helpful introductory videos:
- Developing a Research Question (video: 5:07)
- Creating a Search Strategy (video: 3:45)
A) First steps for 235 assignment
For your assignment, you need to find:
- At least 4 peer-reviewed journal articles relating to your proposal topic
- At least 2 books relating to your proposal topic
- Sources connected to Communication Studies or related disciplines (Sociology, Cultural Studies, Arts …)
- Sources relevant to research and proposal
A) First Steps
- Do some preliminary research to see if your topic is covered in the research literature already
- More recent topics may not have much scholarly research conducted on them
- The narrower you start, the less you will find
- Preliminary research helps to surface themes in the research literature
- Build out your searches around concepts, for example:
- Example topic: The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Canadian national identity
- Concept 1: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation OR CBC
- Concept 2: national identity
- Conduct preliminary searching to identify additional concepts, which you can construct searches around:
- "Canadian Broadcasting Corporation" OR CBC
AND nation*
AND character OR identity OR culture
- "Canadian Broadcasting Corporation" OR CBC
- Example topic: The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Canadian national identity
B) To find scholarly, peer-reviewed articles
- Start at the Communication Studies Subject Guide
- Start with Communication Studies @EBSCOhost database bundle
- make sure you select the Scholarly or Peer-reviewed check box on the search page of the database to limit to scholarly articles
- Don't limit yourself to only 1 database; if results are not what you are needing, try another e.g. ProQuest
- Learn about different resource types:
Tips:
- Break your research question down into specific concepts and subject terms; don't enter a question directly into a database
- E.g., don't search for "Fake news" and the culture of politics on social media
- Instead, look for specific terms and link them together, e.g. "fake news" AND politic* AND "social media"
- Use " " to search an exact phrase
- Use a * at the end of a word to search for all letter combinations (wildcard)
- The “AND” operator indicates the term must be included in our search
- Scan the abstracts for related subject headings (e.g. Fake News = False News in EBSCO)
- Add related terms using “OR” e.g. "Fake news" OR "False news" - searches for both phrases
To find articles published after a particular date
- Look for the Limit area on the database's search page to limit to a particular month/year; often you can do this in the results listing as well
- keep track of where you look and the keywords you use
- start early. (library staff can deliver items from other libraries)
Additional Tips on Results:
- Change the default sort of results from "Newest" to "Relevance"
- Don't limit results only to "Full Text" in EBSCO; you'll miss a large set of full-text articles that can be accessed
C) To find books or book chapters
Use Omni to identify books:
- Use the Omni advanced search
Run your search and limit results to either Books & eBooks and/or Book Chapters in the Resource Type facet at left side of the results page
- Like searching for articles (above), break your search up into specific concepts, e.g. Media AND Convergence AND Television
- When using operators to connect terms remember Omni is case sensitive; type AND instead of and; other databases are not case sensitive
- In your results list, click the book title to find additional subject terms for books to add to your search
Additional book search tips (for print when applicable)
- Learn about call numbers
- Floor plans for locating books; shows call # ranges by floor (in the Waterloo campus library)
- Requesting books from other libraries (note videos)
D) Finding sources connected to Communication Studies or related disciplines (Sociology, Cultural Studies, Arts …)
- You can add/remove databases to search depending on the discipline in which you are conducting research
- For example, in EBSCO, on the main search page, click the "Choose Databases" option and select additional databases that are appropriate, e.g. Communications and Mass Media Complete (ProQuest also has a similar feature)
- You may also need to search in other discipline specific databases, found on the Databases page, listed by discipline
- Create your own list of journals in Communication and search by Publication Name or Publication Title
- Lists of individual journals by professional organizations or database providers:
- National Communication Association list of journals publishing communication research
- SCImago ranking of Communication Journals by journal rank indicator
- Web of Science Master List of Journals
- For Communication, use Filter at left and select Category, then type in "Communication
- Lists of individual journals by professional organizations or database providers:
How do I keep out sources from adolescent or behavioural psychology or medicine or psychiatry?
- You can remove databases by following the step 1a. above, and then deselecting those that are not appropriate, e.g. Psychology databases such as PsycInfo
- Check the results to see they are not coming from a journal outside the areas of interest:
- e.g. in your search results, look at the Publication title information at the left-side filter section in EBSCO and ProQuest; use to de-select journals in non-related fields
Sidebar: What about using Google Scholar?
The good:
- The biggest database in the world!
- Convenient, easy
- Good if you need to find a source quickly and you have a citation
- Good if using the “cited by” feature
The not so good:
- NOT only scholarly materials: Course syllabi, Academic blog articles, Discussion papers, "White papers," "think tank" papers – not all peer-reviewed - AND Predatory Journal content
- No way to get only peer-reviewed; typing "peer-reviewed" in search box won’t work
- Weird and wonky: you can’t really refine the results properly
- "Commercial" results?
- PREDATORY journal articles
- If you use Google scholar: if off-campus, follow the setup instructions here