UTEP Library Research Guides: PSYC 4343/PSYC 6303- Seminar in Meta-Analysis: Gray Literature

About Grey Literature

What is Grey Literature?
Why is Grey Literature Important?

Grey literature is created by researchers and practitioners in various fields, but is not controlled by commercial publishing. The groups that produce grey literature may be government, industry, advocacy or other organizations that disseminate information in the form of reports or working papers rather than by publishing scholarly articles in commercial journals.

Grey literature can be found in the form of:

reports
conference papers, posters or proceedings
policy documents
preprints
data sets
standards

translations
clinical trial data
factsheets
dissertations
committee reports

This diagram provides a visual representation of the various sources and types of grey literature considered when conducting a thorough review of the literature:

Image obtained from: Rose Relevo Slide Presentation from the AHRQ 2011 Annual Conference http://www.ahrq.gov/news/events/conference/2011/relevo/index.html

Grey literature is vital for developing a more complete view of research on a particular topic and for producing systematic reviews and other rigorous approaches to evidence synthesis. Grey literature can be a good source for data, statistics and for very recent research results. Because there's no publisher-enforced limitation on length, these reports can be much more detailed than the journal literature. And they can help to offset issues related to publication bias such as:

publication lag Results of studies may appear in grey literature, such as conference proceedings, a year or more before they appear in a peer-reviewed publications.
positive result bias Study results that show a negative or no effect are published in scholarly journals less often than those that show a positive effect. Those negative results may be found by reviewing the grey literature.

Grey Literature- Where to Find It, by Category

OAIster
Contains digital resources from open archive collections.
Open Grey Repository
Open access to 700.000 bibliographical references of grey literature (paper) produced in Europe, w/ tools to export records and locate documents. Covers Science, Technology, Biomedical Science, Economics, Social Science and Humanities.

FigShare

Authors can upload figures, datasets, media, papers, posters, presentations and filesets. Free but requires registration.

HSRProj (Health Services Research Projects in Progress)
Find Health Research projects that are in progress from the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

The following resources can be searched for conference papers and abstracts. Be sure to search the websites of individual organizations as well.

NLM Gateway
Searches the Meeting Abstracts database for selected abstracts from meetings and conferences in the subject areas of AIDS, Health Services Research, and Space Life Sciences. The database is still accessible, but no new data has been loaded since 2010.
BMC Proceedings
Open access journal publishing proceedings of conferences, including both peer-reviewed full-length articles and collections of meeting abstracts.

British Library Conference Collections

Do a keyword search of conference titles in the search box.

Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
Click on "Advanced Search". Enter keywords into the search box. Click the + sign to the left of the search box to add a second search box. Select "Source" from the dropdown menu. Type "conference" into the second search box.
Web of Science (Web of Knowledge)
In the All Databases dropdown menu select BIOSIS Citation Index. Or in the Topic dropdown menu, select "Conference".

ProQuest Digital Dissertations and Theses
Includes nearly 3 million searchable citations to dissertation and theses from around the world from 1743 to the present day.
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD)
International list of links to electronic theses and dissertations databases.
OpenDOAR - Directory of Open Access Repositories
Link goes to by country list of institutional repositories. Click on "Home" or "Find" links at top right of page for various search options.

TRIP
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.

NIH RePORTER
search a repository of NIH-funded research projects from the past 25 years, access publications since 1980. Here's a detailed manual on how to use it, but you can also try entering your terms into the text search field.
FEDERAL RePORTER
A searchable database of scientific awards from federal agencies. Search results= awarded projects; click any project, then go to the "results" tab to find publications that resulted from the research from the funded project.
HSRProj (Health Services Research Projects in Progress)
Information about ongoing health services research and public health projects
AHRQ GOLD (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Grants On-Line Database)
(this link is set to search AHRQ's working papers resulting from findings/outcomes from funded projects)
NICE Evidence Search (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence)
Evidence search provides access to selected and authoritative evidence in health, social care and public health. (An NHS UK service).

Partners in Information Access for the Public Health Workforce
A collaboration of U.S. government agencies, public health organizations and health sciences libraries. This portal contains many resources for public health practice. Content includes health data and statistics, grant & funding information, publications, conference information, news and more.
The Community Guide
Contains findings on programs and policies identified by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to improve health and prevent disease in local communities. Includes literature on Healthy People 2020 topics.

WHO - Global Health Library
Includes links to WHO regional libraries. Click on Global Index link to search Medline, SciELO for literature from Latin America, and WHOLIS (KMS) for WHO publications.
World Wide Science - The Global Science Gateway
Search globally-dispersed multilingual scientific literature by keyword or country specific databases. Results include journal articles, technical reports, conference papers, and other textual information. Search engine offers translation feature.
MedNar - Deep Web Search Engine
Search over 300 authoritative science and technology collections. Results include both published and grey literature.
Science.gov
Gateway to U.S. Federal Science. Search over 60 databases and over 2,200 selected websites from 15 federal agencies, for research and development results. Topics include health and science, agriculture, environment, informatics, and more.

Heads of Medicines Agencies
Common website for the authorities/organizations responsible for human and veterinary medicines in Europe. Includes links to meetings, publications and reports, a national contact list and more.
European Medicines Agency (EMA)
The EMA evaluates and supervises medicine for human and veterinary use. To access documents, scroll to the "How to submit a request" section. Click the "online form" link or "guide on access to unpublished documents" for more information.

Trial registries can be used to search for protocols and to identify unpublished studies and outcomes. Resources with the broadest global perspective are listed first.

WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP)
The ICTRP Search Portal groups together multiple records about ongoing and completed clinical trials. It provides a searchable database that also contains trial registration data sets (English only).
ISRCTN Registry
The ISRCTN registers all clinical research studies (proposed, ongoing or completed) and provides each one with a unique identifying number. All study records in the database are searchable and freely accessible.
Clinical Trials Registers
Links to an international listing of clinical trials registers compiled by the York Health Economics Consortium, University of York, UK.
ClinicalTrials.gov
U.S. National Institutes of Health registry and results database of publicly and privately supported clinical studies of human participants conducted around the world. A list of which databank sources are included in the Medline database can be viewed here: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/medline_databank_source.html
Eudra CT
European Clinical Trials Database
European Union Clinical Trials Register
Search for protocol and results information on interventional clinical trials conducted in the European Union (EU) and the European Economic Area (EEA); and those conducted outside the EU / EEA that are linked to European paediatric-medicine development.
Centerwatch Clinical Trials Listing Center
Source of clinical trials and drug information for both clinical research professionals and patients. Includes white papers, trial listings seeking study volunteers, and news and analysis on the industry.
The Yale University Open Data Access (YODA) Project
Clinical trials data.

OpenTrials (beta)
An open, online database of information about the world’s clinical research trials. Matches documents and data for each trial including registry entries, papers, regulatory documents; methods and results; researchers, clinical study reports, and more.