Grey literature
Learning objectives
At the end of this module, you will be able to:
- explain the concept and importance of grey literature
- find grey literature in Australian libraries
- find grey literature in libraries overseas.
What is grey literature?
The term grey literature refers to research that is either unpublished or has been published in non-commercial form. Examples of grey literature include:
- government reports
- policy statements and issues papers
- conference proceedings
- pre-prints and post-prints of articles
- theses and dissertations
- research reports
- market reports
- working papers
- geological and geophysical surveys
- maps
- newsletters and bulletins
- fact sheets.
Academics, postgraduate students, government agencies, professional associations, pressure groups, private companies, and research institutes are only some of the sources of grey literature. Much grey literature is of high quality.
The importance of grey literature
Grey literature is often the best source of up-to-date research on certain topics, such as rural poverty or the plight of homeless people in Sydney.
An increasing amount of grey literature is now available on the Web in the form of Adobe Acrobat (PDF) documents. This means that it is relatively easy to find recent examples of grey literature using a simple Google search. Adding filetype:pdf to the search will restrict your results to PDF documents.
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Using Google to find grey literature To demonstrate the usefulness of Google as a tool for finding grey literature, lets find information about homelessness in Sydney.
How many potentially useful documents did you find on the topic? |
Institutional repositories
An increasingly important source of grey literature are the institutional repositories being created by universities world-wide. Most institutional repositories collect grey literature written by academics at their institution.
Web sites that index and collect grey literature are also growing in number. A useful starting place is the ACRL page on Grey Literature: Resources for Locating Unpublished Research.
Trove
Trove is an Australian access point to resources found in the "deep web". Along with historic newspapers and old photographs, Trove includes references and full-text links to a range of grey literature resources. The Trove interface does not require any special knowledge of Library catalogues.
Older grey literature
Large libraries often collect grey literature in paper form. Examples are the State Library of NSW or the Australian National Library. You can usually find this material by searching the online catalogue. It is often possible to arrange loans or to purchase copies of such material through document delivery.
The UNE University Library also collects grey literature, both as part of its general collection and its special collections.
WorldCat
WorldCat, which includes the holdings of over 20,000 libraries world-wide includes grey literature. For information on searching WorldCat, see the module on searching library catalogues.
Costs of grey literature
Most grey literature, however, is free. However, some sources of grey literature, such as market research firms, charge for access to their material.
Where there is a charge, don't forget to check first in a source like the Libraries Australia catalogue. You might find that a copy is available in another academic library, and is therefore available for loan.
Evaluating grey literature
The danger of grey literature is that some of the "think tanks" which publish reports and working papers have their own political or social agendas.
In a few notorious cases, organisations have been set up for public relations reasons to promote bogus research.
For further information on this point, see the Sourcewatch site in the United States.
| Another perspective on global warming Look at these samples of grey literature regarding global warming. Each contains facts, figures and citations to academic-sounding sources. The appearance of the each report is professional and is intended to convince. But most experts in climate change would consider these reports very poor science. Marshall Institute (2006) Climate Issues and Questions, 2nd edition, George C. Marshall Institute, Washington, DC. Gerald Marsh (2002) A Global Warming Primer, National Center for Public Policy Research, Washington, DC. You might like to do a quick Google search on the Marshall Institute or the National Center for Public Policy Research. Make you own assessment of their objectivity. |
Conference proceedings
These can be some of the hardest forms of grey literature to locate. Where papers presented at an academic conference have been published as a book or as a special issue of a journal, these can be readily found in library catalogues.
Far more difficult to locate are unpublished conference papers, or conference proceedings that have yet to be published in book form. There are a number of databases which contain details (and occasionally the full-text) of papers from academic conferences.
The All Academic site provides the full-text of papers delivered at academic conferences which used the company's software.
ProQuest has a database Conference Papers Index which includes details of conference papers in the life sciences, environmental sciences and aquatic sciences. The entries in this database include ordering information to obtain abstracts and copies of papers.
Individual databases (such as Agricola, APA Full-Text, MEDLINE, ERIC and PsycINFO) index or abstract conference proceedings or individual papers.
Summary
This module dealt with the following:
- the concept of grey literature
- the importance of grey literature as a resource for research.
- how to find grey literature in Australian libraries
- how to find grey literature in libraries overseas.