Research Guides: Organizational Communication: AOD 3396: Home

Find Sources

APA PsycInfo This link opens in a new window
APA PsycInfo contains citations and summaries of journal articles, book chapters, books and technical reports, as well as citations to dissertations, all in the field of psychology and psychological aspects of related disciplines, such as medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, pharmacology, physiology, linguistics, anthropology, business and law.
Business Source Complete This link opens in a new window
Business Source Complete contains full text journals and business periodicals covering management, economics, finance, accounting, international business. Some of the titles included are Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, California Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, etc.
Communication & Mass Media Complete This link opens in a new window
Communication & Mass Media Complete (CMMC) contains databases in the fields of communication and mass media studies. It includes CommSearch and Mass Media Articles Index.
Communication Abstracts This link opens in a new window
Communication Abstracts contains communication-related articles, reports, papers, and books from a variety of publishers, and research institutions in all areas of communication.
Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Note: Follow these instructions to link Google Scholar with Temple's resources.
Google Scholar provides search for scholarly literature. It covers disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations.
Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection This link opens in a new window
Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection includes full-text journals covering topics in emotional and behavioral characteristics, psychiatry & psychology, mental processes, anthropology, and observational and experimental methods.
Sociological Abstracts This link opens in a new window
Sociological Abstracts provides coverage of the world's literature on sociology and applied aspects of sociology.

Writing and Synthesizing Your Sources

What is Synthesis?

From the Temple University Writing Center

Synthesis writing is a form of analysis related to comparison and contrast, classification and division. On a basic level, synthesis requires the writer to pull together two or more summaries, looking for themes in each text. In synthesis, you search for the links between various materials in order to make your point. Most advanced academic writing, including literature reviews, relies heavily on synthesis.

Synthesizing Sources
Handout from TU's Writing Center on how to synthesize sources

Literature Reviews

Provides comprehensive discussion of the scholarly research that has already been done on a topic.
Includes some summary of important articles on a topic.
Includes comparison: between how different authors discuss the same topic and how the topic has been handled over time.
Synthesizes previous ideas on a topic, but also looks for gaps in the literature: what needs to be investigated further

Once you've gathered sources, you want to assess how your sources relate to one another and group sources by theme, topic, or methodology. See the handouts below for examples of literature reviews and advice on the process of writing them.

Writing a Short Literature Review
Provides an example of a literature review and documents the author's steps for assembling the literature review from multiple sources.
Literature Reviews
A visual layout of the steps of doing a literature review