Welcome to the 'Grey Literature Searching Pathway'. The aim of this is to recommend an initial search of Grey Literature in a reasonably systematic manner. However the type of databases and resources searched will vary considerably in content and functionality, please contact facultylibrarians@lancaster.ac.uk if you require advice
Harvesting is bringing of references into your reference management software, excel spreadsheet or other documents however it is very important that you spend some time looking into what best suits your research style. Setting up your Endnote (or other referencing software) with the ability to send references directly from a browser will save time in the future:
Browser Capture Tools
The 'Capture Reference Tool' is available to copy the whole reference from a Websites or Database and add them to Endnote and Endnote Online. Information can be found on the EndNote: Capture Reference Tool guidance from Clarivate. Other reference management applications such as Mendeley also have similar functionality. Mendeley Web Importer.
Export .RIS
Many resources have the option to export a .RIS (Or sometimes BibTex). These are reference files that are automatically imported when opened into your reference management software installed on your computer. They are not ubiquitous, but if you see the option always select it in the first instance. a .RIS file will have the most comprehensive and fully featured reference, so you will have to tidy up your library less.
Drag and Drop Import
Many reference management applications use 'Crowdsourcing' to improve references. If you drag and drop or import a PDF into your reference management software it often will automatically complete the reference. If not you can add the reference, and it will be shared with other researchers. Always double check these references as they are unmoderated.
Excel
Although trickier than the other options, you can create an Excel Spreadsheet from your search, and export it into Endnote as a 'Tab Delimited Format'. The Creating a Tab-Delimited format help document from Clarivate will be of use if you choose to record your search in this way.
Consider the type of document that will be most commonly produce in your field. A good start is by talking to subject experts, librarians and working professionals. Some examples:
Health and Medicine: Protocols, Policy and Service Commissioning Documentation
Business: White Papers, Executive Summaries
Science and Technology. Blogs, Social Networking, Code Snippet Websites, Patents
Arts and Literature. Blogs, Book Reviews, Opinion Pieces.
Focus on the best quality sources first, and try to avoid 'scope creep!'. Blogs and Social networking might be interesting in some subjects, for example, politics, but may be heavily biased which could limit their usability. A comprehensive list of library sources can be found in the Library A-Z and some key Grey Literature resources can be accessed in the Grey Literature Libguide.
Please consider if your search has a Worldwide focus if you need to include 'in country' local sources (See Decolonising Grey Literature)
It is good practice to have produced at least a Scoping Search through the journal databases. This will allow you to understand the common terminology and acronyms in your subject area. The Literature Searching and Systematic Review Guidance discuss literature searching.
I have a literature search! It is a bit complex though....
You don't need to do a comprehensive search, as many of the resources you will search do not support this and will have issues with complex literature searching.
Example:
DE "SOLAR panels" OR TI ( (photovolt* Or solar) n3 (panel* or cell*) ) OR AB ( (photovolt* Or solar) n3 (panel* or cell*) )
Can become (only in Overton.io)
(photovolt* OR solar) AND (cell* OR panel*)
or
"solar panel*"~3 OR "photovolt* cell"~3 (The word Solar and Panel or photvolt* and cell within three words of each other)
Read the help sheets and simplify your search for core concepts. If not possible just type the most likely search terms in and trust the search engine!
Many resources and websites have excellent search engines, and you shouldn't hesitate from using them as intended for your Grey Literature search even if they are not as fully featured as an academic database.
Instead, search multiple resources rather than just one and you will approach the subject from different angles and with different interfaces, filling in gaps in your search.
It can be difficult to systematically search grey literature, as often you will have 100s of thousands of results. Instead use the filters and some sensible limits to approach the search pragmatically.
Relevance: Search the resource based on the most popular items first, then browse the list. At some point items will become less relevant to your search and you can stop.
Date: In the website change to 'Newest First' and then browse. You may wish to select an arbitrary data range (No older than three years) but it is always a good idea to consider a justification for this. An example could be, In 2020 the International Forum for Geoscience produced the 'Field Guidance for Geoscience Research'. The search will be limited from 2020 onwards to retrieve new evidence.
Custom: Does the website have custom filters that allow you to 'drill down' into your search? An example would be socioeconomic filters for poverty and crime? Geographic filters for countries and continents? Investigate if it is possible to filter in this way?
A
Search is a powerful tool for 'surfacing' unique papers, however, it can be quite overwhelming due to the number of results. It is however a very good source of Grey Literature if used carefully and in combination with Google Search Operations:
Google Site Searching
Investigate the most common domain names for governmental or policy organisations. The Ministry for Health in Somalia is https://moh.gov.so/
Note the TLD or 'Top Level Domain'. https://moh.gov.so/ We can use this to limit the google search. .so for any website in Somalia, and .gov.so for any governmental organisation in Somalia.
Add the command site: to your search as below to limit the search to only results from a specific domain.
You can improve this further by adding some other 'Google Hacks' to refine your search:
In Title Search
intitle:"health literacy" (Only retrieve websites with Health Literacy in the title, rather than in the entire page. This ensures that the websites retrieved are strongly relevant. As an example site:nhs.uk intitle:"health literacy")
Filetype Search
site:nhs.uk filetype:pdf intitle:psoriasis (Only retrieve PDF files from NHS websites that have Psoriasis in the title)
In URL Search
inurl:ac ("living library" OR "living libraries") (Retrieves websites that have "living library" in the text as long as they have ac in the URL, such as ac.uk websites)
This method shows a very high sensitivity, but does retrieve some irrelevant hits. It can be better to use the site: option if you know the domain name you are searching
Google is a very powerful search if used this way, and some time spent reading the many custom operators for the Google Search is time well spent!
Grey literature has not been through any sort of peer review process. Therefore it is particularly important that you evaluate material very carefully to decide whether to use it.
The AACODS checklist is designed to enable evaluation and critical appraisal of grey literature:
Credit to the AACODS is given to Flinders University and there is a very helpful annotated checklist.