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Psychology: DClin systematic literature searching: 7. Finding Grey Literature

This tutorial will guide you through the steps required to systematically search for literature for your service-related project and thesis.
The term grey literature is used to describe a wide range of different information that is produced outside of traditional publishing and distribution channels, and which is often not well represented in indexing databases. Grey literature includes reports, conferences proceedings, government publications, working papers and much more.

APA PsycExtra is a psychology specific grey literature database that can help you find this material.

Other potential sources to find material include:

  • Websites of research active organisations, including government bodies, non-governmental organisations, charities, university research groups.
  • Academic search engines and repositories e.g. Google Scholar.
Searching these sources involves a variety of techniques, such as:  browsing web pages, keyword searching or 'related item searching'.  It is not always possible to search for the literature in a structured, systematic way. You may need to evaluate the quality of information sources you find using these methods.

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