LibGuides: Medicine, Dentistry and Healthcare Sciences for Healthcare Library: Finding grey literature

Finding grey literature

Below are links to the some key sources of medicine- and healthcare-related grey literature, which is literature published by individuals or organisations whose primary activity is not publishing.

Examples of grey literature include newsletters, blogs, and reports found by general internet searches, as well as guidelines, dissertations and theses, clinical trial registry data, and conference abstracts.

If you have any questions about using these resources, or finding other types of grey literature, please email Richard Fallis.

Some useful sources of grey literature

Guidelines

National Institute for Health & Clinical Excellence (NICE) NICE guidance supports healthcare professionals and others to make sure that the care they provide is of the best possible quality and offers the best value for money.
Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN) The Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN) develops evidence based clinical practice guidelines for the National Health Service (NHS) in Scotland. SIGN guidelines are derived from a systematic review of the scientific literature and are designed as a vehicle for accelerating the translation of new knowledge into action to meet our aim of reducing variations in practice, and improving patient-important outcomes.

Dissertations and theses

Healthcare Library members can use various online university repositories to view open access (i.e. free) dissertations, theses, and other research outputs from the institutions in question.

Find repositories by searching the internet for university repository, or for a specific university name plus the word repository e.g. Queen's University Belfast repository.

Clinical trial registries

clinicaltrials.gov Includes details of trials which have not yet been completed or remain unpublished.
ISRCTN Registry Registry of trials designed to assess the efficacy of health interventions in any human population.
WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) The ICTRP Search Portal aims to provide a single point of access to information about ongoing and completed clinical trials. It provides a searchable database containing the trial registration data sets made available by data providers around the world meeting criteria for content and quality control.

Cochrane Library can also be used to find clinical trials indexed in Cochrane CENTRAL, by clicking on the Trials results tab after running a search.

Cochrane Library Collection of databases containing high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making. Includes the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL)

Conference abstracts

The Ovid database Embase can be used to find conference abstracts, by running a full Embase search, then limiting results to conference abstracts only.

Embase Ovid database, covering biomedical and extensive amounts of pharmacological research dating back to 1974.

Video guide to finding grey literature

The video below gives an overview of how to find medical and healthcare grey literature online, including identifying trials in Cochrane Library, and conference abstracts in Embase.

Video length: 6 minutes 6 seconds