A&M-SA Research Guides: COMM 3301 Reporting Research Guide: Get Started!

Library Tutorial

Academic Tools for the Research Process
This guide includes a series of tutorials which provide a general overview of the Research Process, Avoiding Plagiarism, as well as the APA and MLA writing styles. Each is followed by a quiz.

First step is to choose a topic. We recommend you consider the following:

Once the topic is selected, you should:

Do a preliminary search on the topic using the library databases such as Academic Search Complete or Communication Source (EBSCO).
Focus on the aspects that the paper will discuss.
Create initial thesis statement.
Search the topic.

These two databases are great to start your search. For more databases and journals click on the "Find Articles" tab.

Academic Search Complete (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
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A valuable and comprehensive scholarly, multidisciplinary database with full-text peer-reviewed journal articles, monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc.
Communication Source (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
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Covering materials back to 1915, Communication Source offers resources pertaining to communication, linguistics, rhetoric & discourse, speech-language pathology, media studies and related fields.