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Because this information is often self-published by an organization, it is typically not peer-reviewed.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

"Reports" are 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:

Whitepapers are 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:

A category of publication more defined by who has written it (students in pursuit of a degree) than its structure or purpose. Theses and Dissertations usually communicate original research, though they can be primary or secondary research, and functionally, they may identify gaps in available evidence, summarize some evidence, or even articulate an opinion or position.

Sets of data typically compiled by the US government, which are available for the public to download and use

Examples:

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.