Occupational Therapy

Grey (or gray) literature is a term for literature not published in traditional research publication venues like scholarly journals. It includes theses, whitepapers, reports, policy documents, and government data.

Because this information is often self-published by an organization, it is typically not peer-reviewed. However, grey literature serves a really important function because:

• it provides a glimpse into what organizations are working on right now
  • without peer review, organizations can publish reports immediately after writing them
• gives you an idea of what is going on outside of academia
  • non-profit and advocacy organizations, government, hospitals and clinics, all are more likely to publish about their newest programs in a report than an academic journal article
• illuminates what is important to society at large
  • patient values are 1/3 or evidence-based practice

By type:

• reports
  • a catch-all category of publication that presents information in a very concise manner
  • usually written at a basic reading level to appeal to many audiences at once
  • often used to educate non-experts in academia, corporate industry, government, or non-profit realms about a topic
  • example: North Dakota Interagency Council on Homelessness. (2018). Housing the Homeless: North Dakota’s 10-Year Plan to End Long-Term Homelessness.
• whitepapers
  • a very formal category of publication, similar to a report, but with an ultimate purpose of articulating an organization's opinion or position on an issue
  • example: Wyoming Survey and Analysis Center and University of Wyoming. (2019). Background for Identifying Wyoming’s Grand Challenges: Preliminary White Paper.
• theses
  • a category of publication more defined by who has written it (students in pursuit of a degree) than its structure or purpose.
  • usually communicate original research, though they can be primary or secondary research
  • functionally, they may identify gaps in available evidence, summarize some evidence, or even articulate an opinion or position
• public-use datasets
  • sets of data typically compiled by the US government, which are available for the public to download and use
  • examples:
    • County Health Rankings and Roadmaps
    • National Center for Health Statistics Public Use Data Files from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control
    • Biologic Specimen and Data Repository Information Coordinating Center (bioLINCC)
    • Demographic and Health Surveys (mainly 3rd world countries)
    • Global Health Observatory data repository from the World Heath Organization
    • Health Data Tools and Statistics from Partners in Information Access for the Public Health Workforce
    • ICPSR Health and Medical Care Archive 
    • ICPSR National Addiction and HIV Data Archive Program
    • National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health
    • National Cancer Institute SEER data

With the exception of theses, grey literature is not held in academic databases. Instead, you can

• identify and search within the websites of organizations relevant to your topic, focusing on pages like Resources or Publications
• use google power searching to search across many websites at once

Google Power Searching

• similar to using Boolean commands, "power" searching gives you the ability to be very specific when you search google.
• specify that search results contain certain filetypes, search for synonyms of your search terms, or only come from websites with certain kinds of urls, like .edu or .gov

Google Custom Searches

NGO Search
NGO Search is a Google Custom Search that searches across hundreds non-governmental organization (NGO) websites. NGO Search is a project of the International Documents Taskforce (IDTF) and the Government Documents Roundtable (GODORT) of the American Library Association (ALA). This is a spreadsheet of NGOs included in the project. 

IGO Search
International governmental organizations (IGOs) are organizations made up of more than one national government—examples include NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and the WHO (World Heath Organization). The governments are the members. IGO Search is a Google Custom Search that searches across IGO websites. It is a project of the International Documents Taskforce (IDTF) and the Government Documents Roundtable (GODORT) of the American Library Association (ALA). Here is the growing spreadsheet of IGO urls included in the search.