Grey literature for Health

Finding Unpublished Reports and Reviews

In the Cochrane Handbook it is noted that "... failure to identify trials reported in conference proceedings and other grey literature might affect the results of a systematic review." (In: Cochrane Handbook - 4.S1 Technical Supplement to Chapter 4: Searching for and selecting studies)

Key sources of unpublished systematic reviews include:

• Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ): Assessing grey literature biases.
• Campbell Library (Campbell Collaboration)
• Centre for Reviews and Dissemination (University of York) Accesses DARE (Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects) and NHS EED (NHS Economic Evaluation Database). DARE contains abstracts of quality assessed systematic reviews and summaries of Cochrane reviews and protocols. NHS EED provides economic evaluations of health and social care interventions.
• Health Services Research Project (HSRProj)  Coordinated by the NIC on Health Sciences Research and Health Care Technology.
• U.K. Clinical Research Network

See the Library's Systematic and Systematic-like Review Toolkit guide for comprehensive information on developing systematic reviews.

Finding Clinical Trials

• ClinicalTrials.gov  U.S. government & privately funded clinical trials. 
• Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials
• E.U. Clinical Trials Register  Information about clinical trials in the E.U. from EudraCT.
• Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ANZCTR) funded by NHMRC
• International Standard Randomised Controlled Trial Number (ISRCTN) registry: searchable registry.
• PhRMA Clinical Study Results  Focuses on marketed pharmaceuticals.
• WHO ICTRP  WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform

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