Communication Abstracts is a comprehensive index to communication‐related publications world‐wide, covering articles, reports, papers, and books from a wide variety of publishers and research institutions. Along with publications in general and mass communications, Communication Abstracts covers advertising, marketing, broadcasting, theory, inter/intrapersonal communication, small group and organizational communication, journalism, public relations, radio, public opinion, speech and television! All that a researcher in this area could need. The abstracts cover publications from 1977 to the present, and over 600 new records are added on a bimonthly basis. Over 115 journals are indexed in this source; over 160 sources are covered in total. The abstracts are edited by Tom Gordon at Temple University. The special feature of subscribing through CSA is the additional bonus of linking to full‐text articles from sixteen specific communication journals through Sage Full‐Text Collections (also reviewed in this issue, RR 2004/192), which CSA offers as well. However, this database is only accessible at further cost to subscribers.
This index, as with most CSA products, offers a full range of search capabilities: both a quick search and advanced search are available, and users can also browse through various indexes. All Boolean, truncation/wildcard, proximity searching and field specific options are also easy to access. Records in Communication Abstracts provide all relevant bibliographic detail as well as an excellent abstract of each item, full descriptors, and further identifiers for more unique terms thanks to the work done by Tom Gordon. When available, cited references are included in records, but these appear to be limited to the citations specifically from the related Sage Full‐Text Collections. Search help is exhaustive and provides excellent examples to illustrate the use of each feature. Save, print and e‐mail functions are provided to allow full access to citations for later manipulation. In the help function, further details on using CSA's RefWorks bibliography manager are provided. Again, however, this product requires a further subscription to use.
This is an invaluable tool for researchers. However, access to the product is only truly enhanced with the addition of the full‐text complementary source at additional cost. In comparison, a similar database, ComAbstracts, is published by the Communication Institute for Online Scholarship and is made available as part of the membership subscription. It is a much more economical alternative. However, ComAbstracts only covers about 60 journal titles (two/three of these titles are also indexed in Communication Abstracts via CSA), and no links to full‐text are provided.
Communication Abstracts via CSA is recommended for higher education institutions offering programmes in communication and media studies.
