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Qualitative Research Guide: Gray Literature

Online and collection-based resources to aid in conducting, finding, using, synthesizing, and teaching qualitative research in the health sciences.

Grey Literature

Examples of grey literature include publications/reports/white papers from governments, academics, think tanks, organizations, business or industry,  dissertations and theses, Conference abstracts, proceedings, policies & procedures, patents, pharmaceutical data, unpublished trial data.

Searching Grey Literature

Google Search: Using Google's site limit feature to find government or institution reports.

Example: searching for grey literature from government or education institution

Prenatal care AND telemedicine AND site:gov

prenatal care AND telemedicine AND site:edu

Selected Grey Literature Resources

  • Repositories and Reports

Grey Literature Network Service: http://www.greynet.org/greysourceindex/documenttypes.html

Grey Literature Report www.greylit.org

Open Grey www.opengrey.eu

OSF https://help.osf.io/article/330-welcome-to-registrations

PROSPERO https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/

Registry of Open Access Repositories http://roar.eprints.org/

Registry of Research Data Repositories http://service.re3data.org 

  • Clinical Trial Registries

ClinicalTrials.gov https://clinicaltrials.gov/

ISRCTN registry http://www.isrctn.com/

WHO ICTRP http://www.who.int/ictrp/en/

  • Conference Abstracts, Proceedings

BIOSIS Previews (UCSF only)

EMBASE (UCSF only)

Paper First

Web of Science (UCSF only)

  • Dissertations/Theses

Dissertations and Theses

NDLTD Global ETD Search  http://search.ndltd.org/index.php

  • Evidence-Based Guidelines

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality https://www.ahrq.gov/research/data/index.html

National Health Service (NHS) Centre for Reviews and Dissemination https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/CRDWeb/

National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE),https://www.nice.org.uk/

Scottish Intercollegiate Guideline Network https://www.sign.ac.uk/

U.S. Preventive Services Task Force https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org

  • Legislation/Policies

California Health Benefit Review Program: bill analysis https://chbrp.org/completed_analyses/index.php

  • Research Registries

HSRProj https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/health-services-research-projects-in-progress-hsrproj-dc510

  • Statistics, Health

HealthData.gov (beta) http://www.healthdata.gov/

National Center for Health Statistics http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/

Phpartners Health Data Tools & Statistics: Partners in Information Access for the Public Health Workforce https://healthdata.gov/dataset/Partners-in-Information-Access-for-the-Public-Heal/v3ib-u4vn

RAND Corporation http://www.rand.org/pubs.html

  • Other Resources

British Library   https://bll01.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/search?vid=44BL_INST:BLL01&lang=en

National Technical Reports Library www.ntis.gov

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation www.rwjf.org/en.html

WorldCat http://www.worldcat.org/

 

 

The basis for this list is a handout from Ahlam Saleh, MD, MLIS related to Midday at the Oasis presentation August 2015.