Grey literature
What Grey literature is, and useful resources to find this.
Definition and issues
Possibly the hardest thing about grey literature is that it is defined by its absence of qualities rather that its actual properties. The Prague definition is the most recognised definition (Schöpfel, 2010). It is inclusive of virtually all publications but, as highlighted, it is the lack of control by commercial publishers and the resource’s content that it is deemed by the holder to be of a quality to curate
“Grey literature stands for manifold document types produced on all levels of government, academics, business and industry in print and electronic formats that are protected by intellectual property rights, of sufficient quality to be collected and preserved by library holdings or institutional repositories, but not controlled by commercial publishers i.e., where publishing is not the primary activity of the producing body”
Effectively it means grey is in the eye of the beholder. Bibliographic control by ISBN or ISSN is not a marker because the definition is based on the motivation of the producer. For example, the Oxford University Press is a commercial publisher so their external publications are unlikely to be considered grey literature. However, a short print run report published, for example, by the University of Liverpool Press, might be issued with an ISBN but still be considered a grey literature publication.
This is further muddied by the question ‘sufficient quality to be collected and preserved by library holdings or institutional repositories’. The curation process determines this, but one person’s sufficient quality is another person’s ephemera. When dealing and handling grey literature is about your own understanding of what it might be and setting your own curation parameters.
Why use it?
Grey literature often where things develop first, it doesn’t suffer from the inherent time lags a formal publication process engenders. It is the repository of what actually goes on indeed it “may provide data not found within commercially published literature, providing an important forum for disseminating studies with null or negative results that might not otherwise be disseminated” (Paez, 2017). For practitioners it also provides a ready resource of contacts who are working in a given area with whom they may choose to network and obtain expert views from.
What does this mean to the librarian tasked with searching for grey literature?
Understanding the nature of the publishers you are handling when looking at literature is key.
“Any publication created outside recognised academic or commercial outlets and difficult to classify (e.g. policy documents and organisational reports)”(Henwood, 2021)
It may be useful to think in more practical terms. If it’s about policy or is an organisational report from a government body, quasi-autonomous non-government organization, think tank, charity, public sector body it is likely to fall within the field of grey literature. When you are searching for grey literature bear this in mind and you’ll soon start finding grey literature everywhere, it won’t be labelled as such, and you are constantly making the judgement call.
Limiting retrieval
The sites listed below are best regarded as starters for 10, no one site is totally comprehensive in its coverage of grey literature. Google and other search engines should be used to widen the search.
To limit the search results think about using:
Phrase searching (e.g. “outcomes based commissioning”)
site: (e.g. site:nhs.uk)
filetype: (e.g. filetype:pdf)
Quality
There is generally, but not exclusively, a lack of peer review in grey literature, think tanks can be prone to inherent bias but we should be critically appraising the quality of all materials we handle and advising our users to do likewise. Again, it is about understanding the nature of the producer and producers of both white and grey literature are equally subject to inherent bias’. The key question to ask yourself is, what is this trying to tell me, and why?
References
Henwood, F. (2021, 18 March 2021 ). [Grey Literature Definition for Normal People].
Paez, A. (2017). Grey literature: An important resource in systematic reviews. Journal of evidence-based medicine.
Schöpfel, J. (2010). Towards a Prague Definition of Grey Literature. Paper presented at the Twelfth International Conference on Grey Literatur: Transparency in Grey Literature. Grey Tech Approaches to High Tech Issues. , Prague. https://archivesic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/sic_00581570
Example from practice
The King’s Fund Library Service regularly works with grey literature and provides formal training as well as pointers through our enquiry service on approaches to searching and appraising health and care grey literature materials.
In our training we highlight many of the sources listed below. Approaches to searching for grey literature is often less systematic than searching peer review materials. There isn’t one database which includes all grey literature sources, understanding where, and also, how to use these databases is essential in finding the right information. We consider who produced the work, biases, does it enrich or is it unique research? As well as is it representative of work in that field?
Grey literature is often providing timely information which is useful on topics such as system change like Integrated Care Systems. The work we need to inform cannot wait months or years for articles to be published. Also, not all grey literature form long reports, often we will consider using short briefings or blogs if that is the only information available on a topic. But always mindful of critically appraising and relaying the context to the user.
Resources
Blogs
Research repositories and grey literature: what does user research tell us?
Post about HEE user research on research repositories and grey literature.
Books
Maybin, J. (2016) Producing Health Policy: Knowledge and Knowing in Government Policy Work (Palgrave Studies in Science, Knowledge and Policy). Palgrave Macmillan, London
In this book Jo Maybin draws on rare access to the inner-workings of England's Department of Health to explore what kinds of knowledge civil servants use when developing policy, how they use it and why. Combining ethnographic data with insights from psychology, socio-linguistics, sociology and philosophy, she demonstrates how civil servants engage in a wide range of knowledge practices in the course of their daily work.
Case studies
FutureNHS is open to anyone working in or for health and social care. It is not always searchable but some good case studies can be found here.
Catalogues
The British Library’s (BL) main catalogue for millions of records for books, journals, newspapers, printed maps, scores, electronic resources, sound archive items etc. in the BL’s collections. Some content is legal deposit or subscribed and only available to Readers. Also included are thousands of records for open access items freely available online. [Last checked: 12/01/23]
Welcome to the new Library Hub Discover, giving you access to details of materials held in many UK national, academic and specialist libraries. [Last checked: 12/01/23]
Courses
Social Science Research – a Masterclass for Information Professionals
A special workshop held at Aston University, 21st August 2018. Includes slides on official publications, unlocking grey literature and more. [Last checked: 12/01/23]
It’s a bit of a grey area – how to use Grey Literature in health and care
Padlet from a course run by The King’s Fund for HEE which includes a list of sources which participants have found useful.
Databases
The Cochrane Library (ISSN 1465-1858) is a collection of databases that contain different types of high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making. [Last checked: 12/01/23]
The Health Management Information Consortium (HMIC)
Provided by Ovid and available via HDAS (Athens account required). HMIC brings together the bibliographic database of two UK health and social care management organizations: the Department of Health’s Library and Information Services (DH-Data) and King’s Fund Information and Library Service. [Last checked: 12/01/23]
The King’s Fund Database is the online catalogue of The King’s Fund Library Service and is freely available for use by anyone looking for information in the areas they cover as well as King’s Fund published reports and briefings. Subjects include health and social care management and policy, systems, services and leadership. Coverage is from 1863 to present. [Last checked: 12/01/23]
Social Care Online is the UK’s largest online database of information on all aspects of social work and social care. It includes legislation, government documents, practice and guidance, systematic reviews, research briefings, UK grey (informally-published) literature, reports, and journal articles. [Last checked: 12/01/23]
Trip is a clinical search engine designed to allow users to quickly and easily find and use high-quality research evidence to support their practice and/or care. As well as research evidence we also allow clinicians to search across other content types including images, videos, patient information leaflets, educational courses and news. [Last checked 12/01/23]
Repositories
BASE provides more than 150 million documents from more than 7,000 sources. You can access the full texts of about 60% of the indexed documents for free (Open Access). [Last checked: 12/01/23]
From OCLC, uses Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting. [Last checked: 12/01/23]
Theses
A partnership of research libraries and library consortia working together to improve access to European research theses. [Last checked: 12/01/23]
UK’s national thesis service which aims to maximise the visibility and availability of the UK’s doctoral research theses. [Last checked: 12/01/23]
Search the 4,872,302 electronic theses and dissertations contained in the NDLTD archive. [Last checked: 12/01/23]
OATD – Open Access Theses and Dissertations
OATD.org aims to be the best possible resource for finding open access graduate theses and dissertations published around the world. [Last checked: 12/01/23]
Websites
The Current Awareness Service for Health (CASH) is a collaborative project provided by a network of librarians and knowledge managers in the health sector who monitor and capture content from across a range of subject areas. [Last checked: 12/01/23]
Website for the UK Government with a search facility for government publications. [Last checked: 12/01/23]
The report is a publication produced by the The New York Academy of Medicine between 1999 – 2016, alerting readers to new grey literature publications in health services research and selected urban health topics. It was discontinued in January 2017 discontinued but an archive is still accessible. [Last checked: 04/01/24]
The goal of GreyNet is to facilitate dialog, research, and communication between persons and organisations in the field of grey literature. GreyNet further seeks to identify and distribute information on and about grey literature in networked environments. [Last checked: 12/01/23]
The Health Foundation is an independent health think tank. Publications are available to download. Hard copies of many publications can also be ordered free of charge. [Last checked: 12/01/23]
House of Commons Library - Health
Research from the Commons Library on issues related to health.
Mednar is a free, medically-focused deep web search engine that uses Explorit Everywhere!, an advanced search technology by Deep Web Technologies. As an alternative to Google, Mednar accelerates your research with a search of authoritative public and deep web resources, returning the most relevant results to one easily navigable page. [Last checked: 12/01/23]
We bring bold ideas to life to change the world for good. Nesta is an innovation foundation. For us, innovation means turning bold ideas into reality. It also means changing lives for the better. This is what keeps us awake at night and gets us out of bed in the morning. [Last checked: 12/01/23]
NHS England - Transformation Directorate
Website for the Transformation Directorate at NHS England, driving the digital transformation of the NHS and social care.
The North Grey Literature Collection
The North Grey Literature Collection holds the hard copy grey literature collection of the former North West Grey Literature Service. It is collecting an increasing range of electronic Grey Literature relating to health and public health in the North of England. The collection is funded by the North Health Care Libraries Unit and delivered by Stockport Foundation NHS Trust. [Last checked: 12/01/23]
The Nuffield Trust is an independent health think tank. Publications are available to download. [Last checked: 12/01/23]
UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) Grey Literature: index and alternative sources and resources
This list has been compiled to help librarians and researchers, particularly in Public Health, to find resources that fall into this category and flag up alternative sources for queries not easily resolved by the clinical / medical database model. [Last checked: 12/01/23]
Page last reviewed: 26 July 2023