Definition
The standard definition of grey literature is information produced on all levels of government, academics, business and industry in electronic and print formats not controlled by commercial publishing, i.e. when publishing is not the primary activity of the producing body. Because grey literature isn't published commercially, it can be challenging to track down. Fortunately, the internet has made grey literature much more accessible to use and locate. This guide will introduce you to grey literature and provide some resources on conducting a grey literature research.
Farace, D and Schöpfel, J. (2010) Grey Literature in library and information science. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/New York.
Grey literature can be described as any information produced outside of traditional publishing channels--essentially anything besides articles published in scholarly journals. Grey Literature refers to a body of materials that cannot be found easily through conventional channels such as publishers.
Grey literature can include, but is not limited to: pre-prints, reports, white papers, theses, conference proceedings, technical specifications and standards, technical and commercial documentation, and government documents. For this reason, grey literature can be difficult to systematically search for and evaluate.
Grey Literature is a potential useful source of material, if you are prepared to do the extra work to use it. Typically grey literature has to be searched using multiple tools. The links below contain links to specific sites and search tools to find grey literature.
This is a good starting point produced by the University of Illinois at Chicago.
http://researchguides.uic.edu/c.php?g=252186&p=1684970
A similar resource from New York University.
http://guides.nyu.edu/greylithealth
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