Library Help

The definition of grey literature is evolving but is 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.

• OECD
• World Bank
• WHO

This literature can be in the form of reports, pamphlets, bulletins, newsletters, trial data, working/technical papers, posters, guidelines, policy documents and other types of government publications. 

Pre-prints, presentations, posters, theses and patents are usually found in the research repositories of higher education institutions and on preprint subject servers. They are also considered to be grey literature. Most (current) grey literature is openly available. 

Below are some useful sites for finding grey literature. Some links will take you to databases that are subscribed to by UCL Library Services. These require that you authenticate with your UCL credentials. 

• BASE - Bielefeld Academic Search Engine includes grey literature though is a search engine used mainly to track academic content. More than half the content on BASE is open access as it searches research repositories. 
• DERA - the IOE's Digital Education Resource Archive has born-digital content published by the UK Government, UK Parliament (including devolved Assemblies), government departments, semi-official organisations (quangos) and think tanks in the areas of education, training, children and families.
• EconPapers has a list of economics working papers relating to education and the social sciences.
• Eldis is a useful source for information on global research initiatives. It is hosted by the Knowledge, Impact and Policy team at the Institute of Development Studies in the UK.
• The King's Fund Database covers UK health policy documents and has grey literature on topics such as social care, health inequalities, urban health, race and health and mental health.  
• OECD Library has reports, working papers, summaries and data on 30 member countries. It includes reports, summaries of decisions and recommendations and data in addition to books, book chapters, journal articles.
• OpenGrey is a search engine that lists open-access grey literature in Europe and includes reports, conference proceedings and official publications. 
• OpenDOAR is the global directory of open-access research repositories held at universities. In addition to these repositories generally hold reports, conference papers, presentations and posters as well as pre-print to journal articles and chapters in books.
• Overton is a subscription database. It includes policy documents, parliamentary transcripts, government guidance and think tank research outputs.
• Policy Commons has over 24 million pages of curated, high-quality policy reports, briefs, analyses, working papers, and datasets from thousands of policy organisations, including IGOs, NGOs and think tanks. This short video introduces the platform and its features.
• PsyArXiv is an archive of preprints that are uploaded by researchers to facilitate the rapid dissemination of psychological research. It is the creation of the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science and the Centre for Open Science.
• PsycEXTRA is a database of grey literature relating to psychology, behavioural sciences, and health written for professionals but disseminated outside of peer-reviewed journals. Full text is available for the majority of records. 
• PsycTESTS contains unpublished tests, developed by researchers but not commercially available. The tests link to both peer-reviewed literature and technical reports, reviews and theses.
• SocArXve is a database of open-access papers in the social and behavioural sciences.
• SSRN Research Papers SSRN is owned by the commercial publisher Elsevier. Many of the papers submitted to the SSRN Research papers site are working papers. The papers are organised by subject within the discipline. See, for instance, the Education Research Network.
• Theses (or dissertations as they are referred to in the US and in Canada) are also considered grey literature. At UCL, open-access theses are accessible from UCL Discovery.

Google and Google Scholar also list grey literature. However, combing through a large number of results can often be time-consuming, so use this as a source only if you know the title of a report, working paper or conference paper.

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.