LibGuides: Systematic Reviews: Grey literature

What is grey literature?

Grey literature is “information produced by all levels of government, academics, business and industry in electronic and print formats not controlled by commercial publishing”. (GreyNet)

Grey literature includes:

Theses and dissertations, conference proceedings, newsletters, reports, government documents, informal communications, translations, census data, research reports, technical reports, standards, patents, videos, clinical trials and practice guidelines, eprints, preprints, wiki articles, emails, blogs, listserv archives, repository content.

Grey literature may present a number of challenges for the researcher:

Difficult to find
Many documents are not web published
Older documents may not be archived
Short print runs may lead to lack of availability
Format and citation information may be inconsistent
Volume of material may be over-whelming and consuming
Quality of evidence varies.

Clinical trial registers

Cochrane Central Register of Clinical Trials (CENTRAL)
Details of published articles taken from bibliographic databases (notably MEDLINE and EMBASE), and other published and unpublished sources. In addition, each Cochrane Review Group maintains and updates a collection of controlled trials relevant to its own area of interest.
ANZCTR - Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry
Primary Registry in the World Health Organisation (WHO) Registry Network. It accepts trials for registration from all countries and from the full spectrum of therapeutic areas including trials of pharmaceuticals, surgical procedures, preventive measures, lifestyle, devices, treatment and rehabilitation strategies and complementary therapies.
ClinicalTrials.gov
Registry and results database of publicly and privately supported clinical studies of human participants conducted around the world.
OpenTrials
New database of information about the world’s clinical research trials.
ISRCTN registry
primary clinical trial registry recognised by WHO and ICMJE that accepts all clinical research studies (whether proposed, ongoing or completed), providing content validation and curation and the unique identification number necessary for publication. All study records in the database are freely accessible and searchable.
CenterWatch
Clinical trial database that contains thousands of currently enrolling trials. Information on drugs and new medical therapies are available to review. CenterWatch also provides patients with health and educational resources about clinical trials and other health information.
NCIC Clinical Trials Group
Cooperative oncology group which carries out clinical trials in cancer therapy, supportive care and prevention across Canada and internationally.
NIHR Clinical Research Network
WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform
Access to a central database containing the trial registration data sets provided by the registries from Australia, UK, USA, Japan, Korea, Brazil, China, Iran, Sri Lanka, Netherlands, Germany, Cuba, India. It also provides links to the full original records.
Cancer Research UK
National Cancer Institute Clinical Trials
EU Clinical Trials Register
The European Union Clinical Trials Register allows you to search for protocol and results information on:
interventional clinical trials that are conducted in the European Union (EU) and the European Economic Area (EEA);
clinical trials conducted outside the EU / EEA that are linked to European paediatric-medicine development.

Conference presentations

BioMed Central Meeting Abstracts
Archive of abstract collections originally published in BioMed Central’s Meeting Abstracts Service between 2001 and 2004. Published as individual supplements to BMC Meeting Abstracts, all collections are fully searchable.
Biosis Previews
Limit search by "Publication Type" to meeting, meeting abstract, meeting Paper
Embase
Limit search by "Publication Type" to conference abstract, conference paper, conference review, proceeding

Medline (1946-)
Journal database covering biomedicine, nursing, life sciences, toxicology, nutrition and other related disciplines.

NLM Meeting Abstracts
Search, then follow the “Meeting Abstracts” link

Scopus
Abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed journals, books and conference proceedings in a wide range of disciplines. Includes author and affiliation searches, citation impact and analytical tools.
PDFs are currently only able to be downloaded through Internet Explorer 10 or higher.
Web of science
Indexes high impact journals through ISI's citation indexes: Science Citation Index Expanded - 1956 to present; Social Sciences Citation Index - 1956 to present; Arts and Humanities Citation Index - 1975 to present.

Databases indexing grey literature

Australian Policy Online
Australian public policy reports and articles from academic research centres, think tanks, government and non-government organisations. Also features opinion and commentary pieces, video, audio and web resources focused on the policy issues facing Australia. A partnership of ANU's Australian National Institute for Public Policy and Swinburne's Institute for Social Research.
Google Scholar
Articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites.
MedNar
One-stop search across medical societies, NIH resources, other U.S. government websites, and patents.
OAIster
Catalog of millions of records representing open access resources from open access collections worldwide. OAIster includes more than 25 million records representing digital resources from more than 1,100 contributors.
OpenDOAR
Directory of academic open access repositories. Search for the full-text of material held in open access repositories listed in the Directory using 'Search Repository Contents', or use OpenDOAR to find repositories or groups of repositories that fit particular needs using our 'Find' facility.
OpenGrey
Open access to 700.000 bibliographical references of grey literature (paper) produced in Europe and allows you to export records and locate the documents.
PsycExtra
Grey literature database relating to psychology, behavioural sciences, and health. Full-text is available for the majority of records (approximately 70% and growing), in addition to a complete abstract record.

Coverage consists primarily of material written for professionals but disseminated outside of peer-reviewed journals.
Science.gov
Gateway to over 50 million pages of authoritative selected science information provided by U.S. government agencies, including research and development results
WorldWideScience.org
Global science gateway-accelerating scientific discovery and progress through a multilateral partnership to enable federated searching of national and international scientific databases.

Publishing your protocol

PROSPERO
Contains over 2000 records of prospectively registered systematic reviews. As the content grows the register provides a increasingly valuable resource for identifying on-going reviews to help avoid unplanned duplication of reviews.

Cochrane Library
The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews includes protocols of Cochrane Reviews that are planned or in progress.
Joanna Briggs Institute
Includes protocols for JBI reviews that are planned or in progress.

BMC Journals
Protocols have been published in a range of BMC journals, including Systematic Reviews
National Information Center on Health Services Research and Health Care Technology (NICHSR)
HSRProj provides information about U.S. research-in-progress before results are available in a published format.

Theses

The Theses and Dissertations Guide provides details for how to find University of Newcastle higher degree theses, as well as other Australian and international electronic and print theses.

Web searching

Google Scholar
Articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites.
MedNar
One-stop search across medical societies, NIH resources, other U.S. government websites, and patents.

Systematic Reviews: Grey literature

What is grey literature?

Clinical trial registers

Conference presentations

Databases indexing grey literature

Publishing your protocol

Theses

Web searching

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University of Newcastle