Gray Literature and How to Find It

What is gray literature?

While researching your latest paper, project, or grant proposal, have you ever spent hours looking in vain for a conference paper or an obscure technical report from a government agency? If you answered "yes," then you know what it’s like to deal with "gray literature."

According to a 1995 report, "Gray Information Functional Plan," by the US Interagency Gray Literature Working Group, gray literature is: "foreign or domestic open source material that usually is available through specialized channels and may not enter normal channels or systems of publication, distribution, bibliographic control, or acquisition by booksellers or subscription agents." In other words, it is scientific or scholarly literature published outside normal commercial channels such as journals and books.

Examples of gray literature could include:

  • technical reports from government, business, or academia
  • conference papers and proceedings
  • preprints
  • theses and dissertations
  • newsletters
  • raw data such as census and economic results or ongoing research results

How can you locate and search gray literature?

Searching the gray literature isn't easy. There isn't a "one-stop shopping" search engine or database that broadly indexes the material the way Medline does for biomedical sciences or CINAHL does for nursing and allied health. Still, if you’re hunting for a particular document or you want to see what resources are available on a given topic, there are some places to start.

Many gray literature materials can be found via an emerging form of scholarly communication known as institutional repositories. These are electronic databases maintained by universities in order to make their scholarly output available online. Conference papers by faculty and technical reports by research organizations are among the types of documents found in these repositories. Some online repositories even archive materials encompassing entire scholarly disciplines, rather than just the output of one institution.

Researchers wishing to conduct a thorough search of the gray literature should be sure to search through institutional and discipline-based online repositories. These resources are covered in a separate section of the Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center website. Interested readers can find this section at http://hsc.unm.edu/library/sc/.

The remainder of this section provides a list of other resources you can consult when attempting a thorough search of the gray literature for health related information.

If you need additional help, please contact the library and ask for a reference librarian at 272-2311, or use the online reference request form at http://hsc.unm.edu/library/webforms/refquest.shtml.


[top]


Health Sciences Gray Literature Resources

  1. New York Academy of Medicine Gray Literature Report
    http://www.nyam.org/library/pages/grey_literature_report
    A quarterly list of gray literature documents in the field of public health. You can browse the reports, or you can search the library catalog of the New York Academy of Medicine, which is linked from the URL listed above.


  2. CRISP Database
    http://crisp.cit.nih.gov/
    CRISP" stands for Computer Retrieval of Information on Scientific Projects. It is a listing of biomedical research projects funded by the US National Institutes of Health. Includes contact information for institutions and individuals engaged in the research projects.


  3. Health Technology Assessment Database
    http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/crd/htadbase.htm
    Large index of reports on health care technology trends by government healthcare agencies from around the world.


  4. Health Research Projects in Progress
    http://wwwcf.nlm.nih.gov/hsr_project/home_proj.cfm
    Database from the National Information Center on Health Services Research and Health Care Technology at the US National Library of Medicine. Contains descriptions of research projects in the field of health services. Each entry describes research methods and preliminary findings of each project prior to formal publication.


  5. Health Services/Technology Assessment Text
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/bv.fcgi?rid=hstat
    Online compilation of various US government reports in the health sciences, focusing on the topics of health services and technology assessment. Particularly good for reports from the Surgeon General’s office and on the NIH Consensus Development Program.


  6. National Guideline Clearing House
    http://www.guideline.gov/
    Compilation of clinical practice guidelines from a broad variety of professional organizations and government agencies.


  7. National Research Register (UK)
    www.nrr.nhs.uk/
    Guide to research projects sponsored by, or of interest to, Great Britain's National Health Service.


  8. National Library of Medicine's LocatorPlus
    http://locatorplus.gov/
    Search engine for holdings in the NLM’s extensive collection. Good source to look for reports by government agencies. Generally doesn’t provide full text access to documents, but an excellent way to see what sorts of government reports exist on a specific topic.


  9. World Health Organization current bibliography
    http://www.who.int/library/
    Catalogs of publications by the World Health Organization and affiliated agencies, including technical and policy documents.


  10. Partners in Information Access for the Public Health Workforce
    http://phpartners.org/guide.html
    Nice collection of links to gray lit (as well as some non-gray) resources in public health, including newsletters, reports, and guidelines.

[top]


Agencies and Organizations that Produce Gray Literature in the Health Sciences

  1. Directory of Health Organizations Online
    http://dirline.nlm.nih.gov/
    National Library of Medicine Search database containing descriptions and contact information for thousands of health organizations around the world.


  2. New York Academy of Medicine List of Gray Literature Producing Organizations
    http://www.nyam.org/library/pages/grey_literature_producing_organizations
    Comprehensive list of non-profits and government agencies that produce gray literature, from the American Lung Association to the World Health Organization. Scan the list for the organization that published the document you need. Then go to that organization’s web site and use the search tools provided there to locate your document.


  3. Virtual Technical Reports Center, University of Maryland Libraries
    http://www.lib.umd.edu/ENGIN/TechReports/Virtual-TechReports.html
    Staggeringly long list of organizational web sites and search tools that can be used to find technical reports.


  4. American Library Association gray literature page
    http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/
    crlnews/backissues2004/march04/graylit.htm
    Description of gray literature and advice on how to search for gray literature documents, as well as a large list of links to gray lit resources and organizations.

[top]


General Purpose Gray Literature Search Engines

  1. National Technical Information Service
    http://www.ntis.gov/products/
    Comprehensive index of technical reports published throughout the US government. Very limited full text access, but does have an online ordering system to purchase documents.


  2. Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI)
    http://cat.cisti-icist.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/search
    Index of collections in science and engineering at one of Canada’s major research libraries. Extensive holdings in conference proceedings and technical reports from around the world. Very limited full text access, but does have an online ordering system to purchase documents.


  3. Complete Planet
    http://www.completeplanet.com
    A search engine that simultaneously searches more than 70,000 specialized databases and search engines for information on a variety of technical topics. The material contained in these databases and search engines typically does not show up on popular commercial search engines like Google, due to their specialized nature.


  4. FirstSearch (must be UNM faculty, student, staff to access)
    http://hsc.unm.edu/library/databases.shtml (listed alphabetically along with other HSLIC databases)
    Collection of databases in multiple disciplines. Includes resources for searching conference papers and proceedings.


  5. Conference Papers Index (must be UNM faculty, student, staff to access)
    http://elibrary.unm.edu/applications/articles/databasesindexes.php
    (listed alphabetically along with other University Libraries databases)
    Index of papers presented at academic conferences, along with information on where and how to obtain them. Covers conferences from 1982 to the present, with an emphasis on the life sciences since 1995 and physical sciences prior to that date.


  6. Proquest Digital Dissertations (must be UNM faculty, student, staff to access)
    http://elibrary.unm.edu/applications/articles/databasesindexes.php
    (listed alphabetically along with other University Libraries databases)
    Online index of doctoral dissertations and theses. Includes citations and abstracts.

[top]