What is Grey Literature?
Grey literature is literature produced outside of usual academic publishing routes, by a wide variety of stakeholders including academics, government, practitioners, business, and industry. It can be produced in print and electronic formats, usually not controlled by commercial publishers.
Examples of grey literature include:
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Bibliographies Blogs Census Data Clinical trials Company Information Conference papers Conference Proceedings Conference presentations Discussion Forums Dissertations and theses Email discussion lists Factsheets Government documents and reports |
Interviews Market reports Newsletters Pamphlets Patents Policy statements Press releases Protocols Research reports Statistical Reports Survey results Tweets Wikis |
This list is not exhaustive, and all grey literature created at University of Glasgow can be deposited into an Enlighten repository.
As reports may not be widely disseminated, published online or online with a stable URL, or have an ISBN, identifying and locating these materials can be challenging for the researcher.
Why Use Grey Literature?
Grey literature is an important information resource. Many organisations and institutions sit outside traditional academia, but they are producing work, which is influential, innovative, and relevant to academic research. Grey literature is often a means of communicating that work so to ignore it may mean missing out on highly relevant information.
Whilst there are some positives to using grey literature there are some potential negatives as well:
Works are not usually peer-reviewed and do not usually go through the same editing processes that books and journal articles do. This can mean that quality varies immensely across different work. You will need to spend time evaluating these sources and assessing them for quality, reliability, and potential bias.
It may be difficult to check the authenticity and reliability of documents. Basic information such as author, publication date or publishing body may be missing.
Thanks go to the University of Exeter & The University of Wolverhampton for some of this content. 