LibGuides: CMS 363C: Communication in Sports (MacCambridge): Scholarly Articles

Why Should I Seek Out Scholarly Articles?

Scholarly articles are the lifeblood of academia. Your professors and other researchers spend a great deal of their time researching, writing, and publishing them. Because of a process called peer review, scholarly articles are arguably the pinnacle of academic literature. In the peer review process, before an article can be published it must be critiqued by a number of other researchers in that field. These anonymous reviewers send their notes to the author(s) (via the publisher), and the author(s) must keep reworking the article until it has been deemed satisfactory by the reviewers.

All scholarly articles contain references, either as footnotes, endnotes, or a works cited page.
Researchers typically write scholarly articles in order to report on their work. As such, they typically operate as interpretations of different issues. Other researchers may write responses in which they offer a different interpretation or present new evidence. Academia is a conversation.
You can access scholarly articles through the library website, databases (accessible via UT Libraries), Google Scholar, or open access websites.

Recommended Databases

UT Libraries has over 800 databases. The following databases are recommended for your class. However, you are welcome to use other databases if you prefer. You can also search on lib.utexas.edu.

Academic Search Complete
Unlimited users.
Updated daily. A comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full text database, with more than 5,300 full text periodicals, including 4,400 peer-reviewed journals. Offers indexing and abstracts for more than 9,300 journals and a total of 10,900 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc.
Features PDF content going back as far as 1865, with the majority of full text titles in native (searchable) PDF format. Searchable cited references are provided for 1,000 journals.
JSTOR
Unlimited users.
Updated regularly. Offers a high-quality, interdisciplinary archive to support scholarship and teaching. Includes archives of over 1,000 leading academic journals across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, as well as select monographs and other materials valuable for academic work. The entire corpus is full-text searchable, offers search term highlighting, includes high-quality images, and is interlinked by millions of citations and references.
For more information on ebooks see the Ebook Guide
SPORTDiscus with Full Text
Unlimited users.
Updated monthly. Provides citations, many with abstracts, of periodical and monographic literature in the areas of sport, recreation, exercise physiology, sports medicine, coaching, physical fitness, the psychology, history and sociology of sport, training, and conditioning. Includes full text coverage for more than 415 indexed journals starting in 1985. Coverage is international.

Library Website

Communication & Mass Media Complete (CMMC)
Unlimited users.
Updated regularly. Provides indexing for some 400 periodicals, including full text for over 200 titles, in areas related to communication and mass media. CMMC incorporates CommSearch (formerly produced by the National Communication Association (NCA)), and Mass Media Articles Index (formerly produced by Pennsylvania State University). CommSearch offered bibliographic and keyword references to 26 journals in communication studies, with coverage extending to the inaugural issue of each -- some from as far back 1915. It also included cover-to-cover indices of NCA's six journals (from their first editions to the present), and abstracts from their earliest appearance in NCA journals. Mass Media Articles Index provided citation coverage of over 40,000 articles related to mass media and published in over 60 research journals, as well as major journalism reviews, recent encyclopedias, and handbooks in the area of communications studies.