Finding Grey Literature

What is Grey Literature?

Grey literature is print and electronic documents produced by organisations such as governments, academics, business and industry. It’s documents produced for non-commercial reasons and by organisations where publishing is not its main focus. Due to the nature of the documents not being commercially published, they can be difficult to find.Picture of a maze with a person hesitantly peeping into it to take a look.

Types of publications include: technical or research reports, doctoral dissertations, and can also include some conference papers and official publications.

Where can I find Grey Literature for Health and Biosciences?

There are a wide number of databases that include some grey literature, these listed below have a specific focus on Grey.

  • National Grey Literature Collection – Health information – search hard copy and electronic grey literature and other resources about what grey literature is and where to find it (funded by HEE)
  • OpenGrey – a multi-disciplinary European database covering science, technology, biomedical Science, economics, social science and humanities.
  • Mednar – Mednar is a free, medically-focused
  • Current Awareness Service for Health – latest news, publications and research provided by a network of librarians in the health sector.

Final note:

Grey literature is not subject to a rigorous peer-review process, so be cautious and ensure you take time to assess each document for quality, reliability and bias.

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