Basic Tips to Focus Your Search
As the scope of grey literature is extremely broad, Franklin Sayre (Introduction to the Grey Literature for the Health Sciences, slide no.8, February, 2014) recommends considering the following questions in order to narrow down your search:
- Who are your stakeholders?
- Government?
- Non-government?
- Academic?
- What kinds of literature are you interested in?
- Theses and dissertations?
- Conference proceedings?
- Reports?
- Statistics?
- What time period or geographic/geopolitical area is relevant to your search?
Source Guide: USC and Whichita (see links and license below)
Guides to Searching for Grey Literature
The resources below provide detailed guidance on how to approach searching grey literature.
- Grey Matters: a practical tool for searching health-related grey literatureCADTH’s free online resource for grey literature searching. Once on the website, click the link to download the checklist. The checklist is organized by broad topics (health economics, guidelines, drug and device regulatory documents, advisories and warnings, drug class reviews, statistics, and subject specific resources) and by country.
- Grey Matters LiteAvailable under the "Other Resources" tab of the Grey Matters page.
- CADTH Grey Matters! Finding Grey LiteratureSlide presentation. 2010. By Sarah McGill and Amanda Hodgson.
- SRC Grey Literature - Tips and ChecklistLibrarian Robin Paynter provides a checklist of resources searched by librarians when conducting a systematic review. Three specific categories are covered: regulatory information, trial registries, and abstracts & conferences.
- Finding Grey Literature Evidence and Assessing for Outcome and Analysis Reporting Biases When Comparing Medical Interventions: AHRQ and the Effective Health Care ProgramDownload the AHRQ Methods Guide for Finding Grey Literature Evidence. Provides guidance as to which resources to search and how often.
- Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions, version 6 (2019)Chapter 4 on Searching for and Selecting Studies addresses expectations for identifying relevant unpublished studies.
- Cochrane Handbook for Diagnostic Test Accuracy ReviewsChapter 7 (2008) covers searching for unpublished literature.
Handbook
Searching the grey literature: A handbook for finding annual reports, working papers, white papers, government documents, and more [Dunbar Library print copy] by Call Number: Z1033.G73 B66 2018ISBN: 9781538100639Publication Date: 2018
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Permissions and License Information
We gratefully acknowledge that the content of this guide (including links, descriptions, and selected categories) is reused/remixed from the following guides and sources under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommerical ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
- Health Sciences Grey Literature, University of Southern California Libraries, Norris Medical Library
- Grey Literature [Video] Tutorial, Western University
- NURS 826 / 899B: Evidence Based Nursing - Grey Literature (reused from USC Norris Library), Wichita State University
- Finding Grey Literature, McMaster University Health Sciences Library
Confirmation of the Creative Commons status of the entire USC guide was also sought and received in writing from the USC Guide Author Karin Saric on 11 July 2019. Reuse permission was granted provided attribution is given.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial ShareAlike 4.0 International License.