by Timothy Stephen

ComAbstracts is an OpenURL-enabled database of article abstracts, books, bibliographic records, and other sources of relevance to researchers, scholars, and students interested in fields related to human communication studies (mass communication, human interaction, rhetoric, health communication, communication and new media, journalism, communication history, etc.). ComAbstracts is expanded and updated throughout the year. The database is available for library and institutional subscription at low cost and to those with personal CIOS memberships.

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The ComAbstracts database contains abstracts of articles and books published in the primary professional literature of the communication(s) field as well as bibliographic records and audio materials. No other electronic resource on the world wide web provides more comprehensive coverage of the communication discipline's first line scholarship. The full text of the ComAbstracts database can be searched; that is, records may be searched by word, phrase, or author. The search system supports full Boolean search logic (AND, OR, NOT, XOR), proximity searching, wildcard searching, and word conflation (which finds alternative forms of words based on common linguistic roots).

Synonyms are available for many clusters of terms and are included automatically in searches unless they are explicitly overriden in the search specification (for example, a search for 'YOUTH' will also match 'TEEN' and 'ADOLESCENT'). The database may also be searched using (1) a keyword system consisting of menus of prepared subject terms and search specifications or (2) using the Visual Communication Concept Explorer a next-generation visual interface build on statistical analysis of word relationships unique to the academic communication literature.

At this time, coverage of scholarly articles is as follows (note: the database is updated throughout the year with both older and newer materials -- book records are not included in the list below):