Grey Literature
What is grey literature
Grey Literature is a term used to describe publications that are unpublished or have been published outside of traditional publication processes.
Examples of grey literature include but are not limited to:
- Clinical trials
- Conference papers/presentations
- Government reports
- Policy statements / Practice guidelines
- Theses and dissertations (honours, masters & doctoral)
Grey literature can be used when:
- You are looking at newly emerging research areas.
- You are looking for sources of raw data such as data sets and statistics.
- You are looking for information that can only be found in unpublished research studies.
Like any other resource, you will want to make sure that you evaluate any grey literature you find.
For help with evaluating unpublished research studies and randomised controlled trials (RCT) see the Evaluating Resources page.
For all other grey literature, the Authority – Accuracy – Coverage – Objectivity – Date – Significance (AACODS) checklist has been created as a guidance tool that can be used to aid with the evaluation of grey literature.
Systematic, scoping, or integrative reviews require that researchers take a rigorous approach to searching for available evidence or literature. Because not all available evidence or literature on a research topic will be published commercially, searching for and including grey literature as part of your review can be helpful in ensuring this approach is followed. Other reasons to include grey literature are:
- Studies which indicated a negative or no effect in the results tend to appear more in grey literature than scholarly journals due to publication bias.
- The publishing of research isn’t instantaneous and opportunities for researchers to share their research findings at conferences can occur, meaning the study results for research may be presented at a conference before the research findings are published.
Where to search for grey literature
You can find grey literature in databases that index grey literature.
- GreyNet International - Indexes grey literature in a number of subject areas.
- OAIster Database - A union catalogue of millions of records that represent open-access resources. OAIster includes more than 50 million records that represent digital resources from more than 2,000 contributors.
- WorldWideScience.org - Global science gateway comprised of national and international scientific databases and portals.
CQUniversity Library provides access to databases which contain specialised information such as standards, statistics, etc. Below are the instructions to locate these databases:
- Go to the search bar under ‘Search Resources’ on the Library homepage.
- Click on the ‘Database’ tab.
- Then click ‘Browse Databases’. This will take you into our Database Search.
- From here, go to the options on the left-hand side of the page and click the arrow next to ‘Type of Resource’.
- A drop-down of options should appear. Select the resource type you need.
Now all the results that appear will be databases that contain that resource type.
You can find grey literature in online repositories.
- aCQUIRe
ACQUIRE is CQUniversity's research repository. Search here for theses, journal articles, conference papers and other types of research outputs. - Australasian Open Access Repositories
Lists of links to repositories in Australia and New Zealand. Published by the Australasian Open Access Strategy Group (AOASG). - OpenDOAR
The Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) provides a list of repositories as well as a search for repositories or a search of repository contents. - Research Data Australia
A database of research data provided by the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC).
You can find grey literature on websites. For example, if you wanted to look for population-wide health reports, you would look them up on websites such as the Australian Institute of Health and Wellbeing.
For information on evaluating grey literature from websites, see How to evaluate grey literature on this page.
Clinical Trial Registries can be used to search for clinical trials which have been conducted or are being conducted. They are useful for researchers who would like to see what research is currently being conducted on their topic and for researchers who need to use clinical trials as part of their research. Below are the registries which allow you to search for clinical trials:
