Research Guides: Communication: Research Databases

Research Databases

Communication & Mass Media Complete
Communication & Mass Media Complete provides the most robust, quality research solution in areas related to communication and mass media. Contains 244 full-text journals and 1,084 active indexed and abstracted journals. 1,058 of them are peer-reviewed.

CMMC incorporates the content of CommSearch (formerly produced by the National Communication Association) and Mass Media Articles Index (formerly produced by Penn State) along with numerous other journals in communication, mass media, and other closely-related fields of study to create a research and reference resource of unprecedented scope and depth encompassing the breadth of the communication discipline.
Canadian Business & Current Affairs Database (CBCA)
This database, with 600 full text titles, is the most comprehensive Canadian reference collection available today. Accessible to readers and researchers at every level, CBCA Complete features a highly-respected, diversified mix of publications, including scholarly journals, trade publications, dissertations, books, newspapers and magazines.
Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive
An archival research resource containing essential primary sources for studying the history of the film and entertainment industries, from the era of vaudeville and silent movies through to 2000. The core US and UK trade magazines covering film, music, broadcasting and theater are all included, together with film fan magazines and music press titles. Magazines have been scanned cover-to-cover in high-resolution color, with granular indexing of all articles, covers, ads and reviews.
Coverage: 1880 - 2000
Google Scholar
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations. Google Scholar helps you identify the most relevant research across the world of scholarly research.
Access to Toronto Metropolitan resources is available to users who configure their Google Scholar Preferences as follows:
- Go to scholar.google.ca and click on the Settings icon ☰
- Choose Library Links from the left-hand menu
- Enter Toronto Metropolitan in the search box
- Click in the box beside Toronto Metropolitan University - Check TMU Libraries
- Scroll down and click on the Save button
JSTOR
JSTOR has created a full text digital archive of core scholarly journals with complete back runs of many titles. As part of JSTOR’s agreement with publishers, current issues (usually the last 3 – 5 years) are not digitized by JSTOR and may be obtained elsewhere. The Toronto Metropolitan University Library has access to the entire content of JSTOR’s archival journal collections.
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Full Text Global Closed Collection
Via Proquest Dissertations and Theses access is provided to the full-text of over 400,000 Masters and PhD theses from 1997 onwards. In addition, citations are provided for over 1.6 million doctoral dissertations and master’s theses from 1,000 North American and European graduate schools from 1861. For those dissertation listings after 1980 there are 350 word abstracts and for Master’s theses after 1988, there are 150 word abstracts.

Full-text coverage spans degree years 1743 to 2023 with citation coverage dating back to 1637.
ProQuest Research Library
ProQuest Research Library provides one-stop access to thousands of full-text periodicals from one of the broadest, most inclusive general reference databases ProQuest has to offer. Search from a highly-respected, diversified mix of scholarly journals, professional and trade publications, and magazines covering over 150 subjects and topics.
Scopus
Scopus offers access to more that 14,000 scholarly titles including approximately 750 conference proceedings, all journals in Medline, 400 trade publications and also approximately 500 Open Access Journals. In development for more than two years with the collaborative efforts of 300 librarians and researchers, Scopus covers the content of over 4,000 international scientific, technical, medical and social science publishers.
For information on Scopus APIs, go Elsevier website
Web of Science
Web of Science is the online version of the Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index. Users can search 8,500 international research journals in the sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities. The Web of Science also provides cited reference searching

Aggregated Open Searches

CORE
CORE offers seamless access to millions of open access research papers, enriches the collected data for text-mining and provides unique services to the research community.

BASE
BASE is a multi-disciplinary search engine to scholarly internet resources, created by Bielefeld University Library in Bielefeld, Germany. It is based open-source software Apache Solr and VuFind). It harvests OAI metadata from institutional repositories and other academic digital libraries that implement the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH), and then normalizes and indexes the data for searching. In addition to OAI metadata, the library indexes selected web sites and local data collections, all of which can be searched via a single search interface.

Citation Analysis

Journal Citation Reports (JCR)
Journal Citation Reports presents quantifiable statistical data that provides a systematic, objective way to evaluate the world’s leading journals and their impact and influence in the global research community. JCR is available in two editions. The Science Edition and The Social Sciences Edition.