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Psychology: Grey literature

Library support for the School of Psychology

What is grey literature?

Grey literature refers to research and information that is produced outside of traditional academic publishing channels. By its nature, grey literature is hard to locate and the content is of variable quality. Examples of grey literature include: theses, government reports, conference proceedings, research reports, newsletters, article pre-prints etc. 

It is recommended that grey literature sources are considered when undertaking a systematic review. Some sources of grey literature are listed on this page, but please note this is not an exhaustive list.

Why is grey literature important?

Using grey literature in addition to published academic resources has many benefits:

  • It shares ideas from communities, local groups and researchers outside big universities
  • It shows real world experiences 
  • It includes work that may not meet strict academic rules but is still valuable
  • It covers perspectives from the Global South and Indigenous communities
  • It helps complete the picture when academic articles miss important viewpoints

How do I find grey literature?

Some sources of grey literature for Psychology are listed below. Please note that this is not an exhaustive list.

Institutional Repositories

  • OpenDOAR (Directory of Open Access Repositories)

  • CORE: Aggregates research outputs from repositories worldwide

  • Individual university repositories eg QUB Research Portal

Preprint Servers

  • PsyArXiv: Psychology-specific preprints

  • OSF (Open Science Framework): Hosts a wide range of research materials

Government & NGO Sources

  • IRIS (Institutional Repository of Information Sharing): World Health Organization offical open access repository for its publications and technical documents

  • United Nations Digital Library: Provides access to a wide range of UN-produced materials, including documents, publications, voting data etc

  • See Official Publications Subject Guide for more sources of government information 

Conference Proceedings

Theses & Dissertations

  • Some bibliographic databases index dissertations and theses eg PsycInfo, PTSDPubs, ERIC

Search Engines & Databases

  • Google

  • Google Scholar

  • PsycExtra: Database of grey literature material relating to psychology, behavioural sciences and health. Full text is available for the majority of records - look out for the Ovid Databases PDFs link to access the full text.

  • BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine): multilingual, multidisciplinary academic search engine that indexes over 300 million documents - 60% of which are open access.

Search tips for finding grey literature

  • Use search terms like report, "policy paper", "working paper" or "conference presentation" etc alongside your topic
  • Google/Google Scholar - use filters to restrict your search:
    • By domain type eg site:.ac for academic websites 
    • By country eg site:.ke for Kenyan websites
    • By document type eg filetype:pdf for pdf documents 
    • Combine these filters with your other search terms eg "mental health" children site:.ac.ke filetype:pdf will find pdf documents on children's mental health from Kenyan universities

Evaluating grey literature

Consider the following to decide if grey literature is of good enough quality to use in your review: 

  • Authority
  • Objectivity
  • Intended audience
  • Accurracy 
  • Currency

You may find it helpful to use an evaluation tool, such as the AACODS Checklist for appraising grey literature 

Grey literature: Recommended reading