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- Select Gray Literature Sources
Evidence Synthesis, Systematic Review Services : Select Gray Literature Sources
The Importance of Searching the Gray/Grey Literature
Searching the gray literature as part of your review process is an important step toward countering publication bias. For instance, relying solely upon what is easily discovered or readily available through commercial publishing platforms, or is published only in English, or that only reports on a study's significant findings may miss critical research outputs and voices.
Defining Gray/Grey Literature
Gray literature is the research (materials and data) produced by individuals and organizations who may communicate this output through non-commercial publishing channels including reports of various types (annual, project, research, technical), working papers, white papers, theses and dissertations, preprints, and conference meeting proceedings. These individuals and organizations may be affiliated with academic institutions and/or conduct their research as staff or partners with the following:
- Government Agencies
- Agricultural Experiment/Research Stations
- Extension Services
- Intergovernmental and Non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
- Professional, membership organizations and societies
- Businesses
This page provides links to a few library-licensed and freely-available resources. It is by no means an exhaustive list. While some resources to the gray literature will have powerful search engines for constructing and running a search and a means by which to export records, many will not and may necessitate browsing files or running simple site searches.
Finding Aids by Subject and Type:
Agriculture, Environment, Life Sciences
- ACSESS Digital Library (library-licensed)Tri-Societies: American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America
- AgriRxivPreprints for agriculture and allied sciences.
- bioRxivPreprint server for biology.
Education, Social Sciences
- EconPapers, "Economics at your fingertips"Provides access to a collection of online working papers and journal articles from1100+ archives operated by research organizations, academic departments and publishers worldwide.
- ERIC, Institute of Education SciencesBibliographic and full-text database of education research and information.
- World Bank Documents & ReportsThe D&R repository contains final and official documents and reports from 1946 through the present (openly available).
- World Bank Open DataFree and open access to global development data.
Engineering
- ASABE Technical Library (library-licensed)American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers
- engrxiv (Engineering Archive)Preprint server.
Medicine, Nursing, Public Health
- World Health Organization, WHO Library & Digital Information Networks, United NationsThe WHO Library holds and stores all the published information produced by WHO, including proceedings of the World Health Assembly and Executive Board, monographs, periodicals, unpublished technical documents, press releases, fact sheets and administrative documents of the governing bodies.
Multidisciplinary
- Google Advanced Search ModeProvides additional search options for web searching. A user has the option to filter by "site or domain," for example by .org or .gov.