Grey literature

Material produced outside commercial publishing, such as reports, theses, conference papers and policy documents. It is often hard to find and often not peer reviewed.

Grey literature is information produced by governments, universities, businesses and other organizations in print or electronic form, where publishing is not the producer’s main activity and commercial publishers don’t control it. The definition most libraries use comes from the Grey Literature Conferences of 1997 and 2004.

Typical examples are government and agency reports, theses and dissertations, conference proceedings and white papers. Many guides also include preprints and policy documents.

Why it matters when you cite.

• It is often missing from the big scholarly databases, and often has no DOI. A reference to a thesis or a report may come back from PaperCitation as “Couldn’t verify” even though the document is real. That is a limit of the databases, not a sign the source is made up.
• It is frequently not peer reviewed, so weigh it differently from a journal article.
• It can be more recent than anything published in a journal, which is why researchers often search it on purpose.

Where to look. Library guides point to the thesis databases (ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, WorldCat), agency websites and conference indexes. Your library’s catalog is the best first stop for a thesis.

For how to cite a report, see citing a PDF or online report.