Research Guides: Gray Literature: Gray Literature

Grey Literature

Gray Literature refers to research (usually unpublished) and may include research reports, government reports, evaluations, theses, dissertations, webcasts, poster sessions, presentations, conference proceedings, PowerPoint Presentations, etc.

For more information about gray literature, try IL Toolkit-Finding Information: Gray literature.

Forms of Gray Literature
Technical reports Pre-Prints Fact Sheets Standards Patents	Working papers Committee reports Business documents Newsletters Government documents	Technical documentation (e.g., space shuttle) Conference proceedings White papers Symposia Bulletins Unpublished works

Gray literature is an important source of information. Though not scholarly, it is produced by researchers and practitioners in the field. It can often be produced more quickly, have greater flexibility, and be more detailed than other types of literature.

How do I find Gray Literature?

Search the Gray Literature Gateways listed in the next tab.
Search the corporation, institution, or agency that is most likely to produce the type of information you are looking for.
For online searches include terms to target grey literature such as: report, "think tank", "white paper", policy, statistics.
Search Free Databases.
Search library catalogs at large scientific institutions or Worldcat.
Search Google Scholar to target academic research.
Consult with a librarian.

Gray Literature Gateways

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is the lead Federal agency charged with improving the safety and quality of America's health care system. AHRQ develops the knowledge, tools, and data needed to improve the health care system and help Americans, health care professionals, and policymakers make informed health decisions.
Analytical Sciences Digital Library (ASDL) The Analytical Sciences Digital Library, ASDL, collects, catalogs, links and publishes peer reviewed web-based discovery materials pertinent to innovations in curricular development and supporting technical resources in the analytical sciences. The ASDL website (www.asdlib.org) is one of several collections initially funded by NSF’s National Science Digital Library (NSDL) program, and is currently supported by the Division of Analytical Chemistry of the American Chemical Society. ASDL grew out of discussions at regional and national meetings on ways to implement recommendations from NSF-sponsored workshops that evaluated teaching practices in the analytical curriculum.
arXiv.org arXiv is a free distribution service and an open-access archive for 1,826,113 scholarly articles in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics. Materials on this site are not peer-reviewed by arXiv.
BioOne Complete BioOne Complete is a database of more than 200 subscribed and open-access titles in the biological, ecological, and environmental sciences. The flagship product of the nonprofit publisher BioOne, BioOne Complete provides libraries with cost-effective access to high-quality, curated research and independent society publishers with a dynamic, community-based platform and global distribution. BioOne Complete's unique business model reinvests precious library funds in scientific communication, with over $45M returned to participating publishers to date.
CiteSeerX CiteSeerx is an evolving scientific literature digital library and search engine that has focused primarily on the literature in computer and information science. CiteSeerx aims to improve the dissemination of scientific literature and to provide improvements in functionality, usability, availability, cost, comprehensiveness, efficiency, and timeliness in the access of scientific and scholarly knowledge. Rather than creating just another digital library, CiteSeerx attempts to provide resources such as algorithms, data, metadata, services, techniques, and software that can be used to promote other digital libraries. CiteSeerx has developed new methods and algorithms to index PostScript and PDF research articles on the Web. Citeseerx provides the following features.
Defense Technical Information Center Technical Reports are reports created and published to our collection by organizations funded by the Department of Defense to perform research in a variety of industries and disciplines. Technical Reports found on DTIC's public website will only include reports designated as unclassified and unlimited information. Unclassified unlimited and limited information is available through the R&E Gateway.
DOAJ - Directory of Open Access Journals The DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) was launched in 2003 with 300 open access journals. Today, this independent database contains over 15 000 peer-reviewed open access journals covering all areas of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, arts and humanities. Open access journals from all countries and in all languages are welcome to apply for inclusion.
Grey Literature Report The report is a publication produced by the The New York Academy of Medicine between 1999 - 2016, alerting readers to new grey literature publications in health services research and selected urban health topics. As of January 2017, the Grey Literature Report website and database will be discontinued and will no longer be updated, but the resources will still be accessible. Grey Literature resources are cataloged and indexed using MeSH. The database allows full text keyword searching as well as subject searching and serves as an archive for the Reports.
Grey Literature Report Publishers List
GreyNet International The goal of GreyNet is to facilitate dialog, research, and communication between persons and organisations in the field of grey literature. GreyNet further seeks to identify and distribute information on and about grey literature in networked environments. Its main activities include the International Conference Series on Grey Literature, the creation and maintenance of web-based resources, a moderated Listserv and combined Distribution List, The Grey Journal (TGJ), and curriculum development. Grey Literature is a field in library and Information science that deals with the production, distribution, and access to multiple document types produced on all levels of government, academics, business, and organization in electronic and print formats not controlled by commercial publishing i.e. where publishing is not the primary activity of the producing body.
Hewlett Packard Laboratories Technical Reports HP Labs, one of the pre-eminent industrial research laboratories in the world, is passionate about making our research real - driving technology to commercialization in the areas most important to our customers and society.
iDAI.objects arachne Arachne is an internet research tool for the Archaeologies and Altertumswissenschaft. It offers a means to access objects and their states and to search efficiently in hundreds of thousands of datasets. Arachne feeds from analogue and digital sources. Archival material is often not adequately documented and in danger of being destroyed over time; Arachne is actively digitizing and documenting these materials. On the other hand, there is an ever growing amount of born-digital images and object data. By employing Semantic Web strategies, Arachne provides a low-threshold structure for these data. All digitized images and textual data in Arachne are preserved for the long term and available online
NAL - National Agricultural Library AGRICOLA AGRICOLA (AGRICultural OnLine Access), a database produced by the National Agricultural Library (NAL), consists of two subsets of records. The first contains citations for journal articles that include abstracts. The second consists of bibliographic records describing monographs, serials, audiovisual materials and online content from around the world. AGRICOLA includes but is not limited to resources available in the library. The database contains 5,200,000+ records and includes printed works from as far back as the 15th century. AGRICOLA records describe publications and resources encompassing all aspects of agriculture and allied disciplines, including animal and veterinary sciences, entomology, plant sciences, forestry, aquaculture and fisheries, farming and farming systems, agricultural economics, extension and education, food and human nutrition, and earth and environmental sciences. Both data sets are updated daily with newly cataloged and indexed materials. Each may be searched separately, or the two may be searched together. The NAL Catalog (AGRICOLA) may also be accessed on a fee basis through several commercial vendors, either online or on CD-ROM. To learn more about the NAL Catalog (AGRICOLA), see the Agricola Help page, along with the AGRICOLA Specifications for Cataloging and Indexing Records. Note: Data from the NAL Catalog (AGRICOLA) are for personal use only. Users are responsible for complying with all associated copyright and licensing restrictions.
National Institutes of Health: Databases and Gray Literature
Nature Precedings Nature Research is here to serve the research community by publishing its most significant discoveries—findings that advance knowledge and address some of the greatest challenges that we face as a society today. Our journals publish not only primary research but also reviews, critical comment, news and analysis.
Networked Computer Science Technical Reference Library NCSTRL (pronounced "ancestral") is an international collection of computer science technical reports made available for non-commercial use from a number of participating institutions. For the most part, NCSTRL institutions are universities that grant PhDs in Computer Science or Engineering, with some industrial or government research laboratories. NCSTRL stands for Networked Computer Science Technical Reports Library. More complete information about NCSTRL is available at http://www.ncstrl.org.
NTIS - National Technical Information Service The National Technical Information Service (NTIS) helps federal agencies make better decisions about data, with data. We provide the support and structure that helps our partners securely store, analyze, sort, and aggregate data in new ways. We use our private-sector partners’ knowledge to create new ways of using data to solve problems. Our Joint Venture program works side-by-side with universities, nonprofits and industry professionals — together, they can experiment with data science technologies before they’re available in the marketplace.
NTRS - NASA Technical Reports Server The NASA STI Repository (also known as the NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)) provides access to NASA metadata records, full-text online documents, images, and videos. The types of information included are conference papers, journal articles, meeting papers, patents, research reports, images, movies, and technical videos – scientific and technical information (STI) created or funded by NASA.
The OAIster Database OAIster is a union catalog of millions of records that represent open access resources. This catalog was built through harvesting from open access collections worldwide using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). Today, OAIster includes more than 50 million records that represent digital resources from more than 2,000 contributors.
Open Grey OpenGrey is a multidisciplinary European database, covering science, technology, biomedical science, economics, social science and humanities.
The Open University The University Archive holds historical materials of the Open University and unique research collections. The collections include materials relating to the history of the University and research collections relevant to many fields of research, in particular: modern political history, distance education, history of management, history of mathematics and systems behaviour.
PLOS One
PubChem PubChem is an open chemistry database at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). “Open” means that you can put your scientific data in PubChem and that others may use it. Since the launch in 2004, PubChem has become a key chemical information resource for scientists, students, and the general public.
PubMed
Science.gov Science.gov is a gateway to U.S. government science information. The portal offers free access to research and development (R&D) results and scientific and technical information from scientific organizations across 13 federal agencies. Science.gov makes it possible for users to search over 60 databases, over 2,200 websites, and over 200 million pages of authoritative federal science information in many formats, including full-text documents, citations, scientific data supporting federally funded research, and multimedia.
ScienceOpen.com ScienceOpen is a discovery platform with interactive features for scholars to enhance their research in the open, make an impact, and receive credit for it. We provide context building services for publishers, to bring researchers closer to the content than ever before. Our advanced search and discovery functions, combined with post-publication peer review, recommendation, social sharing, and collection-building features make ScienceOpen the only research platform you’ll ever need.
Springer Link
U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information The Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI), a unit of the Office of Science, fulfills agency-wide responsibilities to collect, preserve, and disseminate both unclassified and classified scientific and technical information (STI) emanating from DOE-funded research and development (R&D) activities at DOE national laboratories and facilities and at universities and other institutions nationwide. OSTI provides access to DOE STI through a suite of web-based, searchable discovery tools and through other commonly used search engines, offering ever-expanding sources of R&D information to DOE, the research community, and the science-attentive public.
US Army Corps of Engineers This collection of publications is the single official repository for official U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Engineering Regulations (ERs), Engineering Circulars (ECs), Engineering Manuals (EMs) and other official public documents originating from Headquarters USACE.
World Health Oganization We are building a better, healthier future for people all over the world. Working with 194 Member States, across six regions, and from more than 150 offices, WHO staff are united in a shared commitment to achieve better health for everyone, everywhere.
World Wide Science WorldWideScience.org is a global science gateway comprised of national and international scientific databases and portals. WorldWideScience.org accelerates scientific discovery and progress by providing one-stop searching of databases from around the world

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