- Learn about grey literature as a research source
- Build your confidence in finding and evaluating grey literature resources
- Discover the help and support that is available
Grey literature is defined as "information produced on all levels of government, academics, business and industry in electronic and print formats not controlled by commercial publishing" ie. where publishing is not the primary activity of the producing body." —ICGL Luxembourg definition, 1997. Expanded in New York, 2004.Grey literature can also mean literature that is hard to find or has inconsistent or missing bibliographic information.
Grey literature can also mean literature that is tricky to find and identify as such or has inconsistent or missing bibliographic information.
Why use it?
- Monitor changes in a particular field
- Balance for publication bias found in published literature.
- Locate experts in a field
- Rapidly produced and very current
- Current state of affairs and historical collections
- Unpublished research
Examples of grey literature include:
technical or research reports | pamphlet | speeches |
committee reports | conference presentations | preprint materials |
market reports | blogs | theses and dissertations |
conference papers | emails | newsletters |
white papers | podcasts | clinical trials |
poster | government documents | maps |
Who "produces" grey literature?
- Charities - List of Canadian charities
- Professional associations
- Research centers (groups on campus)
- Government & local authorities
- Businesses
- Pressure groups
- International organizations [World Bank e-Library] [IMF eLibrary] [United Nations iLibrary]
- Non-for-profit organizations
- Think tanks
Narrow down the focus of your search
- What kinds of information are you looking for?
- theses and dissertations?
- conference posters, papers, or proceedings?
- government reports?
- clinical trials?
- Who would publish this type of information?
- government?
- advocacy groups?
- academia?
- industry?
- Do you have limits to time period or geographic area that you are looking for?
Select keyword search terms for your topic
- Choose words that represent the key concepts of your research topic or question
- Use a thesaurus or dictionary to find synonyms
- Create a search string using Boolean Operators:
- Group synonyms with brackets using OR to connect them
- Use AND operator to search multiple ideas and/or phrases
- Use the truncation symbol * (asterisk) to replace word endings or variant spellings, ie: enviro*
- Use quotation marks to ensure that words are searched together as a phrase
For example: (your topic) AND (meeting* OR abstract* OR poster* OR conference* OR proceeding* OR congress* OR symposi* OR workshop* OR seminar*)
4. Locate key authors - where and how?
- Google: look through first 5-10 pages for relevant authorities, organizations or stakeholders. Look at who publishes and/or stores relevant documents. YES you can try contacting these experts.
- Academic networking
- Listservs
- Blogs (blog searching engine)
- Podcasts
Use Cited Reference Searching
Scanning reference lists ‘snowballing,’ bibliographies and academic CVs.
Manage the Grey Literature Search
- Identify and record the sources you will search. The sources you search will be informed by your research question and where you expect to find information related to your question.
- Document where you are searching and your search strategies, including document resource name, URL, search terms, and date searched.
- Collect citation information as you go.
- Adhere to your established inclusion and exclusion criteria when selecting sources.
Start with an OMNI the search engine on the library home page
- Narrow down results by resource type - see Examples of grey literature in the first section - What is Grey Literature
Many databases allow you to limit your search by content/resource type. Check individual databases to see if yours do: Databases or Databases by Subject
Explore the following databases:
- Dissertations and Theses Global
- IEEE Xplore Digital Library (narrow down to "conference publications")
- CURVE (Carleton University Repository Virtual Environment)
- Business Source Complete (select publication type "Grey literature", also search market reports and company information)
- Scopus (A multidisciplinary abstract and citation database of research literature and web sources)
- Web of Science (multidisciplinary suite of databases)
- Google Scholar
- WorldCat (covers resources outside of Carleton's collection)
- Google Scholar
- use "advanced search" options to narrow down your search
-
limit to title
“Our findings show that GS results contain moderate amounts of grey literature,with the majority found on average at page 80...We recommend that searches of article titles focus on the first 200 to 300 results.”Haddaway NR, Collins AM, Coughlin D, Kirk S. The Role of Google Scholar in Evidence Reviews and Its Applicability to Grey Literature Searching. PLoS One. 2015 Sep 17;10(9):e0138237. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0138237
- Google News
- Google Alerts (set up alerts that cover your topic or follow specific institutions)
- Google Advanced
- restricting content to file type
- type in your topic and then "filetype:pdf" or "filetype:doc"
- restricting content to site .org or .gov sites
- type in your topic and then either "site:.org" OR "site:.gov"
- restricting content to searching titles only
- type search "intitle: "climate change""
- to exclude words from your search
- to do this search use operator "-" (minus) eg. jaguar speed -car
- use Google Australia, Google UK, Google.de etc.
- truncation/wildcard searching is not supported
- Google & Google Scholar show only the first 1000 results
- nesting terms in parentheses- eg. (science OR technology) AND (Ontario OR Alberta) - does not work as it does in other databases
- restricting content to file type
- Use Social media (often organizations and individuals make information about their publications available)
- Use other search engines to get broader results. For example, Duck Duck Go does not collect user information and therefore results are not filtered based on your personal profile.
- Bing
- DuckDuckGo
- Internet Archives (researching old websites, but it’s so much more)
- Search Encrypt (uses local encryption to ensure your searches remain private)
- CCSearch (copyright-free content)
- Gibiru
Clinical Trials
- ClinicalTrials.gov (US)
- Health Canada's Clinical Trials Database
- ISRCTN Registry (UK)
- WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP)
- PsycINFO - Advanced search allows for methodology searching
Conferences
Dissertations and Theses
- CURVE - the most up-to-date theses produced by Carleton researchers
- Theses and Dissertations Databases
- Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLT) Free international resource for theses and dissertations
- Center for Research Libraries (CRL) A resource for institutions outside of the U.S. and Canada.
- EThOS (Electronic Theses Online Service contains doctoral theses from candidates in the UK)
- Australasian Digital Thesis Program (Provides access to theses from Australian and New Zealand institutions. Up to 5,000 available for free download)
Government Documents
- Canadian Public Documents Collection
- Canadian Research Index
- Conference Board of Canada e-Library
- GovInfo (US)
- Government Information
- Government Information Databases
- Government of Canada Publications
- OMNI - limit to resource type or search by government body as author
- Public Policy: Key Government Resources (University of Toronto)
- Publications Canada
Institutional Repositories
Market Reports
Newspapers and Magazines
While the information in newspapers and magazines might not be acceptable as a source of scientific evidence, they can often point you to key references or provide a source of evidence for public opinion.
Speeches
- America History and Life (covers Canada and US) - search document type "speech"
- CBC Archives
- Former Prime Ministers' Archive (Canada)
- Great Canadian Speeches
- The Canadian Prime Ministers Speech Database 1995 – 2017
- Gifts of Speech: Women's Speeches from Around the World
- Historical Abstracts (covers everywhere except Canada and US) - search document type "speech"
- House of Commons Debates
- Prime Minister Speeches (Library and Archives Canada)
- Speeches and Audio (History Channel)
- United Nations Speeches
- Commission on Presidential Debates: Organization responsible for sponsoring presidential and vice-presidential debates.
- American Presidency Project Online resource that has consolidated, coded, and organized into a single searchable database:
- The Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Washington - Taft (1789-1913)
- The Public Papers of the Presidents:Hoover to Obama (1929-2009)
- The Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents: Carter - G.W. Bush (1977-2009)
- The Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents: Obama (2009-2012)
- American Rhetoric - Online Speech Bank, Index of full text, audio and video (streaming) versions of public speeches, sermons, legal proceedings, lectures, debates, interviews, other recorded media events
- Nexis Uni (formerly LexisNexis Academic) -Contains speeches (particularly political speeches). To search for Transcripts use the guided news search.
- Canadian Newsstream (ProQuest)-Look for transcripts of speeches by searching for Transcript (under document title) and person, place or event.
Search Repositories
- http://www.greylit.org/ (The New York Academy of Medicine)
- Open Grey (European focus)
- GreyNet International
- United Nations Official Document System
- WHO Institutional Repository for Information Sharing (IRIS) Institutional WHO database of intergovernmental policy documents and technical reports. Can search by IRIS by region (Africa, Americas, Eastern Mediterranean, Europe, South-East Asia, Western Pacific).
- The Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR)
- ScholarlyCommons: Repository (U of Pennsylvania)
- Social Science Research Network
- Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (US)
- World Wide Science.org
- National Technical Information Service
- The Canadian Evaluation Society
- The Canadian Best Practices Portal
- The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (US)
- Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR)
- Policy Horizons Canada
- Canadian Council on Social Development (CCSD)
- Georgetown University: Political Database of the Americas
- Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives (CESSDA)
- EGO: European History Online
- Grey Matters- Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health
- Creative Commons
- Institute of Health Economics (IHE)
- Mednar (deep web search engine, medically-focused)