Systematic review searches are thorough and sensitive. Multiple pertinent sources are searched. Sources chosen depend on the topic.
Searches are developed over time with repeated cycles of testing until the search is effectively finding the desired information while attempting to minimize the number of irrelevant results.
UCSF Librarians can best contribute to your team during this step of your review. Once you have submitted your Getting Started form, we will contact you regarding next steps including our role in supporting your search.
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dissertations and theses, Conference abstracts, proceedings, policies & procedures, patents, pharmaceutical data, unpublished trial data.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
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
ClinicalTrials.gov https://clinicaltrials.gov/
ISRCTN registry http://www.isrctn.com/
WHO ICTRP http://www.who.int/ictrp/en/
BIOSIS Previews (UCSF only)
EMBASE (UCSF only)
Web of Science (UCSF only)
Dissertations and Theses
NDLTD Global ETD Search http://search.ndltd.org/index.php
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
California Health Benefit Review Program: bill analysis https://chbrp.org/completed_analyses/index.php
HSRProj https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/health-services-research-projects-in-progress-hsrproj-dc510
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
British Library http://explore.bl.uk/
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.