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Health Science: Finding Grey Literature

This guide contains resources and guidance to help students completing the Bachelor of Health Science.

What is grey literature?

 

The term grey literature refers to published and unpublished research, such as reports, government documents, and presentations which you can find simply through Google!

Grey literature is often the best source of up-to-date research as you don’t have to wait for it to go through the publication process. Grey literature usually is not found on the library website or in databases.

Grey literature does not go through the same peer-review process as journal articles. However, it can still be a reliable resource for you to use. Just make sure that you evaluate grey literature before using it.

Health

 

Grey Literature is a valuable resource for all health students, from government and non-government organisation (NGO) reports to guidelines and statistics. They often contain an overview of an issue as it applies to a specific region, state, country or even worldwide.

Statistics

Government reports

NGO reports

You can also try searching other NGOs or Organisations that are specific to diseases and conditions you are researching, such as DiabetesAustralia.

Searching Google

Grey literature can be hard to find, sometimes the best thing to do is try a Google search, You may not find exactly what you are looking for, but it can help you get a little bit closer.

Try searching for your keywords along with site:org.au OR site:gov.au

Google Web Search

Evaluating grey literature

 

Most grey literature is not peer-reviewed and should be evaluated for quality.

To evaluate a piece of grey literature – you can use the C.R.A.P. Test.