Finding academic sources for your annotated bibliography and essay
This page will help you find credible academic sources for your annotated bibliography and essay.
Remember, always read the assessment details in your course website to know what you need to do.
For these assignments you need to find academic (scholarly) sources which includes peer reviewed journal articles. Peer reviewed (refereed) journals are of a high quality as articles are evaluated by experts in the field before being published.
Academic sources can also include other types of information like books.
We recommend you watch or read the following:
Always refer to the task instructions of the assessment in your course website.
Identify and discuss how public relations was used to communicate with target publics and stakeholders. You need to draw on and apply TWO public relations theories of your choosing, to demonstrate how public relations influences behaviour and builds organisational reputation. You should choose ONE of the suggested examples or nominate a campaign of your choosing in consultation with teaching staff. |
Start by breaking down the question:
Once you do this plan a strategy to give you the best chance of finding relevant information.
A mind map or table can be useful to plan your search.
Main concepts |
Concept 1 Public relations |
Concept 2 Excellence Theory |
Concept 3 Systems Theory |
Synonyms (similar concepts) |
PR management public relations |
excellence theory of excellence Grunig's excellence theory |
systems system effectiveness |
Tips:
Watch or read the following to learn more:
Try creating a mindmap below using your assignment question.
Tip: When you're finished, go across to slide 2 and select the printer icon to print your mindmap.
You can start by searching the Library Catalogue or Google Scholar.
The Library Catalogue can be useful place to start locating academic sources.
To do a search:
Google Scholar
Try Google Scholar to find scholarly information. An advantage of Google Scholar is that it provides access to the full text of many UniSA scholarly (academic) articles if you connect via the link above, or from the Library home page.
The Advanced Google Scholar search option gives more flexibility when you search. To access it select the menu (three lines) in the top left hand corner of Google Scholar. This menu will appear once you do an initial search in Google Scholar.
Here is an example:
You should also try searching library databases for relevant academic sources.
Databases are search tools for finding articles, papers, reports and more. Find databases by browsing the database list by subject.
Two useful databases you should become familiar with are:
Here is an example search in Business Source Complete.
1. Put each different concept on a new line. Notice these are connected with AND.
2. You may want to consider putting some synonyms (similar concepts) into your search. There are connected with OR.
To look for recent scholarly articles you can apply the limits:
Here is an example search in ProQuest Social Science Premium Collection.
1. Select the Advanced Search option (top). Add a different concept (keyword) in each new line using the connector AND.
2. Add any synonyms (similar concepts) to each line using the connector OR. This will broaden your search.
3. Focus your search further by using the options to the left of the results: