IA 501: Global Issues in International Affairs (UNH Durham)

Grey literature is material of a scholarly nature produced outside the usual publication channels such as peer-reviewed journals; it is generally not commercially published (Example). Grey literature can include

• government publications
  • may be US or another country, and any level from local/municipal to national
• think tank reports
  • aka policy institutes or research institutes. A think tank may have an ideological perspective or may be  nonpartisan. Example is the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
• studies from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)
  • "a legally constituted organization created by private persons or organizations without participation or representation of any government...[and] are not conventional for-profit business." NGOs can be organized at any level from local to international. Example is Amnesty International
• reports from or intergovernmental organizations (IGOs)
  • "an organization composed primarily of sovereign states, or of other intergovernmental organizations [and usually] are established by treaty or other agreement..." Example is the United Nations (UN)
• publications from charitable or non-profit organizations
• conference proceedings
• working papers
• evaluation reports
• technical reports
• theses and dissertations
• preprints
• digital libraries or repositories
• spatial data

Grey literature can be harder to identify and find because it often isn't formally published or indexed in the databases used to find scholarly literature.

Some specialized databases may include some grey literature; for example

Other strategies to help identify grey literature include:

• check lists of references in books or articles
• identify likely producers of grey literature (think tanks, government agencies, NGOs, etc.)
  • Look for Resources, Publications, Reports, Data or similar categories on agency or organization websites
• identify experts in the topic and check their CVs for their publications, reports, conference talks, etc.
• search online - for example, limit Google searches to organization sites by including 'site:.org' (no quotes) in the search

If you're not familiar with the think tank, IGO, NGO, etc., it's useful to review the About Us section of their website and look for other views about the organization in order to place their work in context and better evaluate the authority and credibility of their work.