Global Health

• Grey literature - an overview.
• Where can I find grey literature?
• Preprints, protocols and unpublished trials.
• Newspaper articles.

Grey literature refers to any information source that is not commercially published. As these sources are dispersed and not collected by centralised publishing platforms, they are sometimes difficult to find and can be tiresome to search. 

What counts as grey literature?

• Internal reports, such as government white papers
• Meeting minutes and notes
• Conference abstracts, papers
• Theses and dissertations
• Pre-print or unpublished research
• Clinical trial data
• Patents and technical standards information, such as British Standards (BSO) or International Standards (ISO)

Why use grey literature?

• Often good quality information produced by experts in their field, e.g. white papers are commissioned by the government from a body of subject specialists
• Providing important insights into the 'reality' of research, e.g. clinical trial data that is not published because the study was not successful and therefore not commercially beneficial
• Reflects the expertise of individuals not associated with academia e.g. independent think tanks; charities representing oppressed groups or individuals; other industry experts (for example, in business or technology).

The definition of grey literature is evolving but it is generally defined as content that is produced and published by non-commercial private or public entities including pressure groups, charities and organisations such as the OECD, World Bank and WHO. 

Below are some useful sites for finding grey literature. Some links will take you to databases which UCL Library Services subscribes to. These require that you authenticate with your UCL userID and password. 

Google and Google Scholar also list grey literature. However, combing through a large number of results can often be time-consuming. Google can be useful for identifying relevant organisation websites to search for grey literature.

Grey Literature adds another layer to your research and provides a different perspective thereby making your research more interesting. However, it is important to evaluate grey literature sources carefully by considering the credentials of the entity that produced the information as there may be inherent biases associated with the production of this information.

The Nexis database provides a searchable database of international news sources. The ProQuest Central database also includes international newspaper articles. Search results can be filtered if you wish to view newspaper articles only.