COMM 308 Chapter 4

popular articles

-published without a refereeing process, -typically in daily or weekly media -are targeted to a lay audience. -They do not have the formal subheadings noted above or a list of references as scholarly articles do. -Newspaper and magazine stories are typical examples of popular articles.

Literature Review Process

1. select topic 2. search and choose the literature 3. analyze and interpret the literature 4. write the review

bibliographic research

Build a foundation for your research. Get help with methods. Anticipate ethical issues. See standards for language, style and format

databases

Communication and Mass Media Complete (access through academic library) -have a defined number of entries, and many databases consist of scholarly articles that have been peer reviewed. You will not get millions of irrelevant hits as the result of a search, and your research results should have a high level of credibility. You can automatically improve the quality of your search results simply by preferring databases to search engines

search engine

Google, Yahoo, Bing, Lycos, and Dogpile -elegantly simple interfaces. A one-line box allows you to type in search terms and get results, usually far more than you can cope with. -The pluses of search engines are ease of use, ease of access, and a simple interface. -The minuses can be a totally unmanageable number of search results, many of questionable quality.

the literature review

Narrative that pulls together research you have read into a rationale for YOUR study -Structure - chronological or pro/con. -Format - introduction-body-conclusion. -Cites all work you have read using a scholarly style such as APA, MLA or Chicago.

the literature review

Shares the results of other studies Relates the study to the larger dialogue in the literature Provides a framework for establishing the importance of the study Provides a benchmark for comparing the results to other findings

trade publications

Trade publication articles, like academic articles, are written by experts, but the experts are more likely to be practitioners than academics and their articles are not usually peer reviewed or refereed. Articles in the trade press are more topical than academic articles because they appear daily, weekly, or monthly and do not get held up by a review process. However, information important to you as a researcher such as a literature review, method description, and references will not be included.

impact factor

a measure of the number of times the articles in a journal are cited by other scholarly articles. An impact factor of two would indicate that, on average, the articles in a journal were cited twice by other authors; a factor of three indicates that on average the articles were cited three times. The impact factor is the subject of debate, as with any such metric, but journals with a high impact factor can be regarded at least as publishing articles that are influential in their field.

search fields

allow you to search for an article by author, date of publication, title, subject matter, or any combination thereof, resulting in a much more targeted search. A well-executed database search should give you the results you want and none of the results you don't want.

secondary source

another author's summary of the primary source -Lacks the original detail of the original study, especially with regards to methodology.

Scholarly articles

go through a process of peer review before publication. Peer review means that before journal editors will accept an article for publication, they will seek the opinions of other scholars doing the same kind of research as the author of the article. These reviewers read the article to determine whether the research has been done to professional standards, that the article makes a contribution to knowledge, and that there are no apparent ethical violations such as plagiarism. quarterly and monthly

refereed article

is one that has been reviewed or refereed by other researchers in the author's field (peers) before being accepted for publication. Academic journals by definition contain refereed articles that meet scholarly standards; most other journals do not.

primary source

original article -Has method detail and references to build their case

how do we find scholarly information?

prefer databases to search engines

what we want from a literature source

relevant information: want info that speaks to your research (broad/ specific) quality information: scholarly sources that are credible, reliable, written to scholarly standards

bibliographic research will take the profile of a champagne glass

true