FOR ROCK, AS WELL AS MANY OTHER MUSICAL GENRES AND MANY OTHER TOPICS IN GENERAL, ACADEMIC
RESEARCH INVOLVES READING ARTICLES IN SCHOLARLY JOURNALS OR OTHER SCHOLARLY COLLECTIONS
SUCH AS BOOKS OF ESSAYS. 

The best way to begin such research is to search the MUSIC-SPECIFIC article databases we subscribe to. Each of these covers a wide variety of musical genres, including rock. One way to access them is to click the links below. However, if you already know the name of the one you want, an efficient way to access it is by going to the library homepage,
library.unt.edu
clicking the Databases tab on the left, and entering the name of it in the search box. 

A very important database for rock is Music Index:
Music Index
Indexes hundreds of music journals and magazines from many different countries, and provides full text of many articles. It originated as a print publication in 1949; the database covers the years from 1970 to the present. It has always included all kinds of music, so it is a good resource for research in fields such as jazz, popular music, rock, world music, and music education. 

The RILM database was once limited almost exclusively to classical music, but that is no longer the case. It now covers rock and many other genres:
RILM Abstracts of Music Literature
RILM (Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale) is a vast international bibliography of scholarly writings on music and related disciplines. It covers music journals and other scholarly sources such as books of essays and conference reports. It began as a print publication in 1967, providing citations and abstracts of articles. The electronic product now has full text of over 300,000 articles. 

The  RIPM database might be helpful for research concerning rock's precursors:
RIPM Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals 1800-1950. Published under the auspices of the International Musicological Society, International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres, and UNESCO’s International Council for Philosophy and Humanistic Studies. This full-text database is similar in purpose to RILM, but covers a different time period.

An important multi-disciplinary database, Academic Search Complete, might include articles on rock music in sources not indexed by the music-specific databases:
Academic Search Complete
A database providing full-text journal coverage for thousands of journals in diverse academic disciplines, including social sciences, humanities, education, computer sciences, engineering, language and linguistics, arts & literature, medical sciences, and ethnic studies. Helpful for interdisciplinary research.

JStor is a multi-disciplinary article database:
JStor
A full-text database of journal articles from a large number of disciplines; provides backfiles of whole runs of many important journals in numerous fields, including music. 
CAUTION: JStor is very popular. However, since its specialty is providing back issues, this means that it may not provide current issues of the journals you need. Thus, do NOT limit yourself solely to it when searching for articles.

PLEASE NOTE: If an electronic article database says we do not have a certain article, it is only reporting on our electronic holdings. Please search our online catalog discover.library.unt.edu to see if we have a print copy of the journal or other kind of publication that contains the article.   
 

VERY IMPORTANT to know about as you do research:
WorldCat
A gigantic online catalog of more than 450 million bibliographic records describing items owned by libraries around the world, with information on which libraries own the items; includes entries for musical scores and sound recordings; does not include articles; use this resource to initiate inter-library loan requests for books and scores we do not have.
Please note: This is not a full-text database.
 

ProQuest Dissertations and Theses (electronic version of earlier print resource Dissertation Abstracts) bibliographic citations for doctoral dissertations and master's theses in all fields completed at numerous accredited colleges and universities worldwide, with emphasis on U.S. schools; abstracts included from 1980 forward; currently includes full text of over one million dissertations.