 Hi, my name is Clare Twos. In this section, I'm going to cover gray literature. So what we're going to cover in this section is what gray literature is and what it's not. Examples of producers and the types of gray literature, why you would want to be using this in your searches and in your research, how to document your searches, and I'll point you to some key helpful sites. Gray literature is almost like art. You know it when you see it. There have been numerous attempts to define gray literature. It has been part of research from at least the turn of the 20th century. According to a report in the gray literature on gray literature, the term itself, what didn't mean bleak or gray or heavy, but was intended to refer to the fact that this literature has a lot of depth and intelligence, like gray matter, like the brain. You will see gray literature spelt both with an American and a British spelling. The most common definition for gray literature is the one that's presented here. That which is produced on all levels of government, academics, business, and industry in print and electronic formats, but which is not controlled by commercial publishers. That is publishing that's not done by a company that for which is their primary business. So it's more almost like what gray literature is not. It's not the materials that you find in classic peer-reviewed journal literatures. It may be peer-reviewed. It may not. Examples of types of gray literature that you're probably familiar with include conference abstracts. Well, oftentimes they are peer-reviewed. You send in your abstract, a group decides whether to accept it or not. It's a form of peer-review. Other times, it may be an expert paper that's been accepted that's not classically peer-reviewed. Gray literature is not defined by where you find it. Sometimes people talk about, oh, non-database searching. Well, because of the development of the internet, there are now databases of gray literature that you can also use to find this material as well as individual websites. And it's not a format question. Gray literature exists in both print and electronic forms. And just to be really confusing, again, because of the development of the publishing world, some of those formal publisher-controlled databases like M-Base and Scopus now also include some gray literature. There have been continued attempts in the field to define gray literature in a way that's more understandable in terms of the character of the document, types of documents, in terms of the fact that it has intellectual property. There's an authorship and there's a character to the work. There's a minimum quality level. Whatever it is, it's something that people feel is valuable enough to be collected. There's an ongoing conversation in the scholarly literature about what gray literature is, and there was a new definition offered in 2010, which is still under discussion. Perhaps one way to think about this is the way the group GrayNet International does. Gray literature is really a field of its own in information and library science that deals with the production and distribution and access to these multiple document types that are produced at all levels of government, academics, business, and organization. At this point, you might be asking, okay, gray literature is a rich resource, but why would I be interested in using it? Let's move into that question by looking at some examples of producers of gray literature, which we've been naming. Those producers include associations. In the medical area, the American Medical Association would be an example. They have policy papers, guidelines, reports that you won't necessarily find in journals. On the public health side, the American Public Health Association has similar materials. For-profit companies, if you have a research question and you are interested in the impact of a particular drug and it's a pharmaceutical company that has done the trials, they're the ones that have the reports of the results of that trial. That's a form of gray literature. All government documents, if you're looking at a policy question, if you're looking at a legal question, all of the legislation, all of the policy papers that come out from the various branches of any government in the world, if you are looking at a different kind of government produced document, government provides funding for international aid, there's documentation of all those final reports. If you're interested in knowing what works and what doesn't work, it would make sense to try to see what's already been done. There are ways to find that, for example, through USAID's website. At a super government level, there are federations that produce this material similar to the government level, United Nations, World Health Organization, the EU, stepping down. Educational institutions, there are materials particularly in areas like economics and computer science, working paper series, you're not going to find those materials in the classic journal literature, rich source for information, dissertations and theses. So much effort goes into these. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to mine those for as you develop your research? And then there are many other non-government organizations. Depending on your area of focus, they may be the only ones that have the information that you need. Medecins sans frontières, Doctors Without Borders goes into areas that other people don't, can give you reports on situations that others can't. With the limitation on funding for gun violence, there is a non-profit devoted specifically to collecting and making available statistics on a daily basis on gun violence in America. Those are just examples. So why would you use gray literature? Many times the production of a gray literature report is faster than the production of a journal article. You're going to get more current information on some topics through using gray literature. Again, because of a lack of constraints on numbers of pages, you may find that you have a greater depth of technical information and scientific information within the gray literature source. In some cases, it may be the only source available. If you're doing large studies like a systematic review of a medical intervention, the current standards require you to search some gray literature sources in order to reduce publication bias. Hopewell at all was one research study that demonstrated the impact that including trials found in the gray literature has on final results of systematic reviews. In some areas like public policy, you have to use gray literature. That's the materials that you're studying. Again, another reason to use it, it's typically not always, but typically available freely online or outside of the commercial publishers limitations. So some of the most common types of gray literature are listed here. Reports, discussion papers, briefings, dissertations and theses, registered clinical trials, any kind of clinical trial conference proceedings. That list comes from the GrayNet International, which is one of the groups working to make this material more available. And one of their approaches is to look at the types of gray literature. The list you're seeing here comes from their website. The five or so that I listed are among the more than 150 different types of gray literature, brochures, handouts, all sorts of things. I'm going to move to a little more specific information and talk about some of those key types that I just described. Trials, registries and registries of other study types are key sources, as I said, if you are doing any kind of systematic review or if you're really interested in collecting all of the information about answering a particular clinical question. Because of the importance of clinical registries, they have become more prevalent and the World Health Organization has an international clinical trials registry platform. The WHO does not actually have a registry, but it points you to all of the national registries that meet a certain standards for quality of registering trials. Clinicaltrials.gov is the US National Clinical Trials Registry. All government funded trials are required to be registered there and you will also find many pharmaceutical or other company funded studies because it's an excellent recruiting tool for participants. If your topic has to do with drug information, the FDA is another excellent source for trials information in that area. Because of the burgeoning number of systematic reviews, there is now also emphasis on registering systematic review protocols before they're done. So before you undertake a review, you might want to check and see if there's one that's already out there or also find other information that's related but not exactly perhaps your topic. Dissertations. Successful doctorate level work is a rich source for information on very specific questions. Before you undertake your own doctorate level work or if you have a question that you think someone might already have worked on, it would be an excellent idea to find what's already been done. There is a database of most dissertations that have been done in the US, Canada and Western Europe because of changes in requirements of submitting them. Not all of them are in digital dissertations as they used to be, the UMI Clearing House, but it's still an excellent source. Again, with that change, if you might also want to check the institutional repositories for specific universities that have strength in the area that you're interested in. Additionally, some databases in specific areas, the compendium in nursing and allied health and psych info also list dissertations. Conference proceedings are another source that's well-recognized in the great literature. When a conference occurs, most conferences publish their proceedings. It's not considered peer-reviewed journal literature, but it will give you the titles of all papers and posters and presented and in some cases abstracts for most of those materials. You'll also get contact information. Again, this is one place that you can find relevant pointers to trials that you might not find anywhere else if you're looking at trying to answer a clinical question and collect all relevant clinical trials, although there's a lot of follow-up work that's required to collect enough information to include it in a study like a systematic review. Numerous databases like M-Base, Scopus, and Synol are also moving towards including more and more conference proceedings. Another one is if you're interested in medical informatics, the InSpec database is another good source in that area. Additionally, if you know the name of the conference you're interested in, they almost all have a website that will point you to a source for those materials. So now comes the question of documentation. When you do a search, particularly in a systematic review, you need to document as clearly as possible what you searched, where, and when for the case of grade literature you'd want to list any websites, any databases, and other sources that you used. You might record the search terms and search strategy if that was in fact necessary for the search that you did. Record the date you did the search and a number of results and ideally the individual results that you found. Another aspect of documentation is when you write a paper you're supposed to cite your sources. It can be a challenge to figure out how to cite a grade literature document, a manuscript. The major formats that you will be expected to use, APA or the Vancouver style, all have rules for how to cite different formats. You can find them in the style guides. If you use bibliographic management software like RefWorks or EndNote, they also have formats and they will do that formatting for you if you select the appropriate document type for the record of the citation that you're including. So that's a very general introduction to the area of grade literature. Some understanding of the nuances of what it is and what it isn't. Some understanding of the different types of grade literature and who produces them and some pointers to where you can find this information. Here also are pointers to three different helpful resources, the Gray Guide, the GrayNet International and for the medical area in particular, Gray Matters, a practical tool for searching for health-related grade literature.