Systematic Reviews for the Health Sciences: Searching Grey Literature
Grey Literature: Overview
Types of grey literature:
Include, but not limited to: abstracts, bibliographies, book chapters, clinical trials, conference proceedings, dissertations and theses, government reports, newsletters, preprints, regulatory documentation
Benefits of including grey literature:
Current perspective, minimizes time-lag bias in publishing
Minimizes positive publication bias
Minimize geographical bias
Minimize gaps in published literature
Potential disadvantages of grey literature:
Lack of peer review
Potentially less reliable or of questionable quality
Includes millions of records representing open access resources that was built by harvesting from open access collections worldwide using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH)
Allows you to search across multiple institutional repositories as well as locate specific institutional repositories that might house materials related to your area of interest
Includes data on various public health topic, including AIDS, cancer statistics, tuberculosis, birth rates, and more. Researchers can freely download, use, and write about the data as long as they cite the data providers
Includes national health care indicators and expenditures; Medicare enrollment, utilization, and expenditure; Medicare Chartbook; Data Compendium; Medicaid data
Provides access to reports, data sets, and other types of information generated by various health related agencies sponsored by the federal government.
Provides detailed information on dental events, including source of payment(s), total payment and total charge, type of provider seen and procedures(s) associated with each dental event
A service of the Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP), searches multiple U.S. Federal government databases, retrieving reports, articles, and citations while providing direct links to selected resources available online
Bibliographic database that provides a highly concentrated source of reports of randomized controlled trials. Records contain the list of authors, the title of the article, the source, volume, issue, page numbers, and, in many cases, a summary of the article
Provides a searchable database containing the trial registration data sets made available by data providers around the world that meet criteria for content and quality control
Primary clinical trial registry recognised by WHO and ICMJE that accepts all clinical research studies (whether proposed, ongoing or completed), providing content validation and curation and the unique identification number necessary for publication
Searches the University Hospital Medical Information Network Center (UMIN-CTR), the Japan Medical Association Center (JMACCT), and the Japan Pharmaceutical Information Center (JAPIC)
ProQuest Digital Dissertations-- Provides bibliographic citations, and full-text access for doctoral dissertations and master's thesis completed at over 1,000 accredited colleges and universities worldwide.
This search engine developed by Bielefeld University Library can be used to access open access materials, including metadata of all kinds of academically relevant resources – journals, institutional repositories, digital collections, etc.
BIOSIS Previews is the most comprehensive life science database in terms of its subject coverage and source material. It contains millions of records from thousands of life science literature sources across the globe. 1969 to current.
Scopus uniquely combines a comprehensive, expertly curated abstract and citation database with enriched data and linked scholarly literature across a wide variety of disciplines. Scopus quickly finds relevant and authoritative research, identifies experts and provides access to reliable data, metrics and analytical tools. Be confident in progressing research, teaching or research direction and priorities — all from one database and with one subscription.
From the World Health Organization, this database contains over 2 million bibliographic records in the health sciences. Includes the regional databases AIM, IMEMR, IMSEAR, LILACS, and WPRO (links below)
