About this Guide
This guide contains information, instructions, and examples to help you select and search grey literature sources for your research or systematic or systematic-like reviews. It’s important to note that there is no set standard for searching grey literature, so this module will provide recommendations and advice from Deakin Library on the process.
What is grey literature?
‘Grey literature’ encompasses outputs or material which are not classed as peer reviewed journal articles, academic books or material produced by commercial publishing (‘black literature’). Grey literature is diverse and includes content such as:
Reports and white papers
Relevant company, government or organisation websites
Dissertations and theses
Specific databases (ProQuest), Trove, Institutional repositories
Conference papers
Bibliographic databases, conference websites
Social media
Relevant platforms, potentially aggregated search engines
Data and statistics
Scholarly literature, government and non-government organisaitons
Clinical trials
Scholarly literature, government and non-government organisations
Multiple other sources
Patents, datasets, fact sheets, maps and more!
Why include grey literature in your review?
Inclusion of grey literature in advanced reviews supplements traditional published sources, enhancing the richness, diversity, representation, context, and comprehensiveness of a review. However, not all grey literature types may be suitable or relevant for inclusion in a search (and review). Please check with your research team, assessment or project instructions or guidelines to determine if grey literature is appropriate for your work.
Note
When deciding whether include grey literature in your review, please note that there currently are no established universal methods for grey literature searching like there is for bibliographic database searching. If you are doing a systematic or systematic-like review, Cochrane, JBI and other key players in evidence synthesis provide brief overviews, recommendations, and some suggested sources.