2e. Find Grey Literature
Published but Not Quite
Between formally published works and unpublished manuscripts lies a murky region called grey literature—documentation produced by corporations, government bodies, and academic forums.
You may have research projects requiring gray literature. Learn about these resources here.
Search the Library Catalog
What Is Grey Literature?
[Grey literature is] 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.
Grey literature includes:
- Theses & dissertations
Conference papers & proceedings
Research reports
Government documents
Geological & geophysical surveys
Preprint articles
Fact sheets
Newsletters & bulletins
Find Grey Literature
You can find grey literature all over the web.
Often, an internet search may be the simplest way to find grey literature, as many government documents, theses, and corporate reports are available on the open web. However, see the following databases for additional grey literature:
Academic
- OAIster
OAIster is a union catalog of millions of records that represent open-access resources.
- ERIC
ERIC, the Education Resource Information Center, provides access to education literature and research. The database provides access to information from journals included in the Current Index of Journals in Education and Resources in Education Index.
Theses and Dissertations
These open databases contain masters’ theses and doctoral dissertations.
- EBSCO Open Dissertations
EBSCO Open Dissertations now includes the content from American Doctoral Dissertations. It is a free database with records for more than 1.2 million electronic theses and dissertations from around the world.
- Open Access Theses and Dissertations
OATD.org aims to be the best possible resource for finding open-access graduate theses and dissertations published around the world.
Business
This business database includes such grey literature as industry reports, SWOT analyses, and working papers.
- Business Source Complete
Business Source Complete is the world’s definitive scholarly business database, providing the leading collection of bibliographic and full-text content.
Government
Government documents are considered grey literature. The U.S. government offers unclassified documents online.
Federal Government
- Catalog of Government Publications
The CGP is the finding tool for federal publications that includes descriptive information for historical and current publications as well as direct links to the full document, when available.
- Data.gov
Data.gov is primarily a federal open government data site. However, state, local, and tribal governments can also syndicate metadata describing their open data resources on Data.gov for greater discoverability.
- Govinfo
This portal to U.S. government databases is a service of the Government Printing Office (GPO). It provides free electronic access to a wealth of important information products produced by the federal government.
- GPO Advanced Search
Covers all types of U.S. government documents, including Congressional reports, hearings, debates, and records; judiciary materials; and documents issued by executive departments (Defense, State, Labor, Office of the President, etc.).
Geological & Geophysical Information
- United States Geological Survey Publications Warehouse
The USGS Publications Warehouse contains more than 70,000 USGS bibliographic citations, including citations to USGS numbered series published as early as .
Oklahoma State Government
- Data.ok.gov
Data.ok.gov is a service designed to provide Oklahomans with deep access to data and statistics about the activities of Oklahoma’s government. It’s a simple way to explore data about the economy, public health, transportation, the environment, and more.
- Oklahoma Digital Prairie
Oklahoma Digital Prairie provides visitors unique digital content spanning more than of rich, vibrant history from the 46th State. The resource areas found here include documents, photographs, newspapers, reports, pamphlets, posters, maps and audio/visual content.