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Grey Literature is produced on all levels of government, academics, business, and industry in print and electronic formats, but is not controlled by commercial publishers (The Fourth International Conference on Grey Literature, 1999). Examples of grey literature include conference abstracts, presentations, proceedings; regulatory data; unpublished trial data; government publications; reports (white papers, working papers, internal documentation); dissertations/theses; patents; and policies & procedures; blogs and social media posts; clinical trials. Why to Use:
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Searching the grey literature might be discouraging:
You should search those resources that make the most sense for your research question. Keep in mind the type of information that you are interested in (e.g. theses, reports, conference materials, trials etc.). Ex. If your question involves drugs and interventions, check trial registries and pharma data. Also, check out the papers and reports of relevant stakeholder organizations.
Your search should be strategic and well planned:
Make sure you keep a record of material you wish to use/reference. It can help to capture your searching activity, using a table or spreadsheet, or reference managers such as EndNote or Zotero. This will enable you to rerun searches later and will also help you identify which resources are useful for which topics:
A thesis or dissertation is a document submitted in support of candidature for a higher degree or professional qualification, presenting the author’s research and findings. Theses are extremely valuable sources of information, as they consist of substantial primary research in specialised topics and provide very detailed data and analysis. They will also have extensive bibliographies, detailing the published literature on the given research topic.
Repositories are collections of research produced by an institution's researchers. Institutions can be governmental, organizational, and academic, such as Universities. Often contain electronic theses.
Technical reports detail the results of a project or investigation that are submitted to the sponsor of that project. They are produced by both government agencies and non-government sources.
The guiden Introduction to Patents and Patent Searching was developed to help you with patent searching.
Visit the libguide Data Intorduction where you can find resources for data by subject.
Web search engines can be used to locate grey literature not published within academic databases or via other formal publication routes. Advanced search in Google and other engines have a number of options that can help improve searching. There you can define preferences:
Region
Site or domain
Terms appearing
File Type
Grey Literature sources can vary hugely in terms of quality. Scholarly publications such as books and journals pass through a formal publishing process and are subject to in depth editing review. In many cases there is a peer review process where draft versions are subject to a scrutiny process by a panel of experts. Papers may be modified and improved in light of the expert feedback before reaching final published status. Not all grey literature material is subject to a similarly rigorous pre publication review process, so you should exercise caution and make your own assessment for quality, reliability and potential bias.
Grey literature is often not formally published. For example, a report may be posted to a government website or a poster presentation may be given at a conference. In these cases you need to consider the longevity of the resource. Something may be available on the web, or a blog for a short period only and may not be formally archived.
Use the criteria to evaluate information below and the AACODS Checklist for critical appraisal of Grey Literature
| Source of the report | Locate the source of the report. Check if this is a reliable author, organization or source. |
| Transparency of methods | It should be clear where data and other types of information came from, how it is analyzed and how the final report was compiled. |
| Currency | Find the data a report was issued. If the report (or other material) is older, try to find a more recent version or an update |
Nearly all the elements that make up a reference to any mainstream source – author(s) or the entity responsible for creation, year of publication or production, title and availability – are also applicable for grey literature. To note:
This guide is adapted from the following guides under CC BY 4.0 /modified from the original
This guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
