Research Guides: Journalism: Scholarly Databases

Scholarly Databases

The following databases can help you locate peer reviewed and scholarly journal articles in the fields of communications and journalism. You can also access issues of the top scholarly journals on the study and practice of journalism.

If you are looking for scholarly sources on other topics, check out our list of Research Guides on other subjects.

Communication Research Databases

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.
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.
Alternative Press Index
Alternative Press indexes journals covering cultural, economic, political and social change, providing a comprehensive guide to alternative sources of information. Its scope is international and interdisciplinary providing in-depth coverage in the humanities and social sciences.
Maximum 1 simultaneous user.
Alliance for Audited Media and Media Intelligence Center
The Alliance for Audited Media is a nonprofit, member-based organization led by North America’s leading advertisers, advertising agencies, advertising technology providers and content providers. AAM provide independently verified data and information critical to evaluating and purchasing media.

Broad Use Scholarly Research Databases

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.
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
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
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

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.