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CA 500: Foundations of Graduate Study in Communication: Finding Articles

This guide was designed to support CA 500 at USA.

How to Find Articles

When you research a topic, you are looking for resources that provide more information and context on your topic. There are two major ways to find articles:

  1. Through searching databases and Google Scholar.
  2. Through citation mining.

A database is a collection of journal articles (and usually other items) that you can search all at once. Databases are usually searched using keywords or terms.

How to Search a Database

A database is searched by creating a search query. A search query is the combination of:

  • Search terms - These are the words or phrases you want the database to look for. Databases may search the article's text and/or they may search the description of the article.
  • Boolean Operators - AND OR NOT
  • Punctuation -
    • "complete phrases" in quotes
    • Wild card * allows you to leave the end of a word flexible. ex: read* tells the database to search for all these terms at once: reading, reader, readmit...
  • Filters - The available filters depend on the database. Some filters only become options after you have clicked to run the search.

This is an example of a search in Academic Search Complete:

Screenshot of Academic Search Complete search function. Two terms are entered, "cooking shows" and "health behavior."

Google Scholar

You can use Google Scholar to find versions of articles that you can access for free. 

Whenever you use Google Scholar, make sure to be logged into your JagMail account on that browser. Google Scholar will then understand that you have access to USA Libraries. 

In Google Scholar, you can search by author, article title, or subject. 

1. Search Google Scholar. Find an article in which you are interested.

Screenshot of Google Scholar search result

2. Select the "Full-Text@USA" option below the article you want to read. You might need to click on the arrows to show this option. You may also see a PDF option to the side of the article's search result.

3. If you do not have any accessible version, you can still try to request access to the article through Interlibrary Loan.