Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication

College of Liberal Arts & Sciences

Academic Research

Testing your source

  • Is it peer reviewed?
  • Is it published in a reputable journal?
  • How often it is cited by other reputable articles/journals?

Journals

Not all journals are created equal. You can get a general sense of a journal by its Impact Factor, a moving scale of the average time an article within the last two years is cited by another article.

  1. ISI Web of Knowledge
  2. Additional Resources -> Journal Citation Reports
  3. Communications Journals will be listed under “Social Science Edition” with the category communication.

Searching

Communication Abstracts

Citations and abstracts of articles and other materials in all areas of communications research including journalism, public relations, and mass communications.

Academic Search Elite

A good general-purpose periodical index with journals and popular magazines. Remember to Limit to Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals.

Proquest

General Search with ability to limit journals to scholar sources. You can also obtain ISU theses here as well.

Scirus

Scirus is a free, comprehensive science-specific Internet search engine. Searches can be filtered by the content's source.

Parks Library

Listing of online Abstracts (all the above were listed there)

Lexis Nexis Academic

*Not a source for academic journals. LEXIS-NEXIS Academic covers top news, general news topics, and news transcripts; foreign language news sources; company, industry, and market news; legal news; company financial information; general medical and health topics and medical abstracts; accounting, auditing, and tax information; law reviews; federal case law; U.S. Code; and state legal research.

Google Scholar

*Not all search results will be appropriate.

Google Scholar aims to rank documents the way researchers do, weighing the full text of each document, where it was published, who it was written by, as well as how often and how recently it has been cited in other scholarly literature.

Obtaining Articles

Greenlee Reading Room

The Greenlee Reading Room contains hard copies the theses and creative components for form Greenlee Graduates as well as hard copies of the following journals.

  • Communication Research
  • Journal of Advertising
  • Journal of Advertising Research
  • Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media
  • Journal of Communication
  • Journal of Media Economics
  • Journalism Educator
  • Journalism History
  • Journalism Monographs
  • Journalism & Mass Communication Monographs
  • Journalism & Communication Monographs
  • Journalism Quarterly
  • Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly
  • Journal of Visual Literacy
  • Media Studies Journal
  • Newspaper Research Journal
  • Public opinion Quarterly
  • Public Relation Quarterly
  • Public Relations Review
  • Visual Communication
  • Visual Communication Quarterly

Journals available at Parks Library

Complete listing of all the journals available through Parks library.

Parks Library Interlibrary Loan

Articles not available through the above Parks Library or the Greenlee Reading room may be obtained through interlibrary loan. Most requests are free.

Interlibrary loan requests can be made online. Most of the time the article will be scanned and emailed to the requester. Please allow time for the delivery of materials.

The Interlibrary Loan/Document Delivery (ILL/DD) Office is located in Room 204, on the second floor of Parks Library. The major function of this unit is to provide ISU students, faculty, staff and Library Visitor Cardholders access to materials that are not available in the ISU Library collections.

Other help

Greenlee Reading Room, stop by 171 Hamilton Hall and ask for help.

Parks library subject librarian for the Greenlee School, Tobie Matava (515) 294-2849 tmatava@iastate.edu is also available appointments if you are finding difficulties.