Media & Journalism  Tags: media_studies media  

1. Use your essay topic to indentify your search terms and keywords.

 
Hints

• When you identify your keywords and phrases try and think of alternative words/phrases. For example, great britain or england or united kingdom. Also consider spelling variations (American and British) e.g. organisation or organization; behaviour or behavior.

•  Use quotation marks around two or more words to search as a phrase e.g. "media research" or "moral panic" 

•  Use AND to combine keywords ie.  media AND semiotics  Will find all records containing these words anywhere 

•  Use OR to find any of these words: audience OR viewer Will find all records containing either of these words 

• Wherever possible, truncate words to search for plurals or variants e.g.  austral* will bring up Australasia, Australasian, Australia, Australian.
  Most databases use the * truncation symbol. 

2. Select your database

• Use one or several of the Library's Databases to find journal articles by topic.

• To access the databases go to the Library Homepage and select Journal Articles & Databases.

• Select Media Studies under Humanities and Social Sciences. A list of the most relevant Media databases appears on this page.

• Alternately you can select a database from the column on the right hand side of this page.

3. Search the database

4. Locate the articles

Many databases contain fulltext articles (usually as a PDF or Full text link), but some only contain citations and abstracts/summaries. If a citation appears with no fulltext article you should check to see if there is a  "Find It" or "Check your Library Catalogue" or "Library Holdings" link. This will redirect you to the library's listing for that journal.

If the citation has no full text link then you can search for the journal title in the Library Catalogue. Do a title search and enter the name of the JOURNAL (not the name of the article). In many cases you will find two catalogue records, one for the online copy and one for the print copy. See below for examples.

Click on the entry for each title to see if the library holds the issue you require.

Print copy - Held in the Library

Online copy - available through a fulltext database

Throughout your course, lecturers will ask you to use particular types of journals for your assignment research.  Some instructions you might hear include:

What are Peer Reviewed journals?

• Peer reviewed journals are also known as Scholarly, Academic or Refereed journals
• They contain articles written by and for scholars and researchers in the field
• Their main purpose is reporting of original research or experimentation
• They are usually published by a professional organisation
• They always cite sources, using footnotes and/or bibliographies
• They use terminology and jargon specific to the field
• Lists the Editorial Board, or Peer Review Panel
• They include information on how to format and submit papers is clearly stated
• They often include details of where the journal is indexed, eg. JStor, Historical Abstracts

If searching in a library database

• Check to see if there is a box on the database search page that allows you to limit your search results to  Refereed/Peer Reviewed journal articles. 

If wanting to check specific journal titles/articles here are some options:

• Look at the article itself for a header or similar which indicates refereed or reviewed.

• Look at the table of contents of the journal. Often items are grouped under a heading like "reviewed articles".

• Check the journal's website to see if a statement is made about the content being Peer Reviewed or Refereed. Although be aware that not all the contents of a refereed journal will be refereed (e.g. books reviews, practice, commentaries, editorials).

• Go to Ulrichsweb.com, under "Quick Search" drop to "Title (keyword)" and type in the journal title. Next to journal titles which include at least some refereed content is the image of a college shirt. Also you can click on the journal title and you will see down the page "Refereed - yes or no".

For further information on  how to search for or identify peer reviewed journal articles - go to Identifying peer reviewed articles.