Searching for Grey Literature

UBC Library: Subject Page - Searching for Grey Literature: "Subject Resources for Searching for Grey Literature



Grey literature is defined as ... 'information produced on all levels of government, academia, business and industry in electronic and print formats not controlled by commercial publishing' ie. where publishing is not the primary activity of the producing body.' (ICGL Luxembourg definition, 1997 - Expanded in New York, 2004)

Grey (or gray) literature has historically been difficult to identify and obtain. There are two reasons for this problem: 1) much of the grey literature is unindexed or unpublished (often both); and 2) it is often locked deep within the 'hidden or invisible' web, and unsearchable. However, as grey literature becomes easier to find in the emerging era of open access, its importance is likely to increase. This guide is meant to provide some assistance to those in scholarly environments wishing to extend their research to this important literature.



Start your search for grey literature by browsing relevant government or institutional websites directly. Increasingly, institutional repositories (IRs) - such as the University of Toronto TSpace - place faculty publications freely-accessible online. Much of this material is indexed by Google Scholar and Scirus. For systematic reviews of the literature, several search engines that crawl different portions of the Web should be searched as 'one-stop searching' does not (yet) exist. "