Introduction to Grey literature for Health Sciences

Introduction to Grey Literature for Health SciencesFranklin Sayre [email protected] 2014

Objectives:

1. Define grey literature & explain why it’s important

2. Plan a reasonable grey literature search based on your topic

3. Identify some key databases

4. Search Google using advanced operators

By the end of this session you will be able to:

Activity: brainstorming keywords (2 minute)

Write down:

1.The major concepts that make up your research topic

2.The keywords, phrases, and synonyms that could be used to

describe each concept

Grey Literature is Literature that isn’t in the form of a book or a journal article

“Information produced on all levels of government,

academics, business and industry in electronic and print

formats not controlled by commercial publishing i.e.

where publishing is not the primary activity of the

producing body.”

Third International Conference on Grey Literature in 1997

What are some examples of Grey Literature?

• Conference proceedings and abstracts

• Thesis and dissertations

• Reports & publications from governmental and non-

governmental organizations

• Technical reports and standards

• Social media, electronic and personal communications

• Statistics

• Etc.

Why is Grey Literature Important?

• Helps offset the bias of published results (drug trials, etc.)

• Helps introduce alternative perspectives

• Timeliness (delay between research & publication)

• Coverage of emerging research areas

Finding Grey Literature is Difficult

• Vast

• Not systematically organized or described like

books/journals

• Not systematically archived or preserved

How to Find Grey Literature

• Who are your stakeholders?• Government? Non-Government? Academic?

• What kinds of literature are you interested in? • Theses & Dissertations?• Conference Proceedings?• Reports?• Statistics?

• What time period is relevant?

• What geographical/geopolitical area is relevant?

Narrowing your scope: things to think about

Finding Stakeholder Organizations

• Directory of Health Organizations (NLM) Directory of

health organizations maintained by the National Library of

Medicine (NLM)

• Grey Literature Publishers List (The New York Academy of

Medicine)

A very comprehensive list of organizations that produce

health-related grey literature.

• Grey Matters (CADTH) Checklist of national and

international HTA web sites, drug and device regulatory

agencies, clinical trial registries, etc.


• Specific databases • Theses and dissertations, conference proceedings,

reports, statistics, etc.

• Institutional/Subject Repositories (e.g. UBC’s cIRcle)• Theses and dissertations, reports, presentations,

conference proceedings, etc.

• Stakeholder websites (WHO, Gov. of Canada)

• Search engines (Google)

• Personal contacts

• Reference lists

Where do you find grey literature:


• PapersFirst / ProceedingsFirst

• Web of Science

• SciFinder

• EMBASE / CINAHL / MEDLINE

• & many more – see research guide

Conference Proceedings & Abstracts:

• Proquest Dissertations and Thesis

• See: UBC Library’s Dissertations & Theses guide:

http://libguides.library.ubc.ca/theses?hs=a

Dissertations and Theses:

Activity: Searching Web of Science of Conference Proceedings and Abstracts


• Canadian Health Research Collection / Canadian Public

Policy Collection

• Opengrey (more European)

• Grey Literature Report (American focus)

• Google

• & many more – see research guide

Reports and other materials:

Activity: Searching the Canadian Public Policy Collection

Canadian Health Policy Collection –Find via the UBC Library website by searching in the “Indexes & Databases” tab–Search using keywords and “quoted phrases”–Also search the Canadian Public Policy Collection

Advanced Google for Grey Literature

• “Quotation Marks” • Force words to appear in a specific order• Reduce the number of results• E.G. “cell migration” vs. “human migration”

• Verbatim Mode• Turns off synonyms, spell checking, & localization

for all search terms• To use first conduct a search then select “Search

tools” “All results” “Verbatim”

“quotation marks” & verbatim mode


• AND is implicit – don’t need to add it between search

terms

• Use OR to include synonyms• Always uppercase OR• E.G. “global warming” OR “climate change”

• Use brackets to (group keywords together)• E.G. (“global warming” OR “climate change”) (“food

security” OR “food independence”)

Building complex searches Using OR and (brackets)


• Intitle/allintitle: Specifies that the keyword(s) are located

in the title • Idea is that words in the title are more important• Use carefully, doesn’t work with filetype: operator• E.G. allintitle: diabetes mobile health

• Other operators to get at structure:• intext/allintext: Looks in text of website• Inurl/allinurl: looks in URL of website

Searching using page structure


• site: limits results to specific sites based on URLs• E.G. site:ubc.ca• E.G. site:gc.ca• E.G. site:edu OR site:gov

• filetype: limits results to specific filetypes• E.G. filetype:pdf• E.G. filetype:xls• E.G. site:pdf OR site:doc• Do not use with site structure operators like intitle:

Limiting results with site: and filetype:


• -term removes results with that term• E.G. Smithers –simpsons –homer• E.G. migration cancer -cell

• Can also be used with the site: operator• E.G. site:ca -site:gc.ca (Canadian sites but no

government of Canada sites)• E.G. -site:nih.gov (removes pubmed results from

Google Scholar)

Removing erroneous results with exclude (-)


• Wildcard Operator *• E.G. “population and * health”• * replaces 1-4 words or numbers• Use with or without quotations

Adding flexibility with wildcards

Further Information

Grey Literature for Health Research Guide:

http://libguides.library.ubc.ca/greylitforhealth

Health Statistics and Data Guide

http://libguides.library.ubc.ca/healthstats

Dissertations & Theses Guide:

http://libguides.library.ubc.ca/theses?hs=a

Power Searching with Google:

http://www.powersearchingwithgoogle.com/course/aps/skills

Education

Introduction to Grey literature for Health Sciences