The content of this guide was modeled after a guide originally created by McMaster University Library and has been adapted for the NWP Learning Commons in September 2020. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 4.0 International License.
What is grey literature?
Grey literature is produced by governments, businesses, industries, and occasionally academia. Grey literature is not controlled by commercial publishing and can be found in both print and digital formats. While not peer-reviewed or considered scholarly, grey literature can still contain valuable information to incorporate into your research papers.
Some grey literature formats include:
policies or procedures
guidelines
conference proceedings, papers or posters
dissertations and theses
clinical trials
leaflets and factsheets
Searching for grey literature
A great place to start looking for grey literature is on government websites:
Grey literature is important to many health sciences (nursing, medicine, kinesiology) and there are health-specific grey literature databases:
Another place to look is on customized search engines: