Political Science (UNH Durham)

In addition to using the library search box and/or Google Scholar to identify relevant articles, the following specialized databases are also recommended:

Go to the website for the specific state or country and search within that site. There may be deeper levels of content that aren't crawled (or crawled regularly) by search engine bots.

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).

Strategies to help identify grey literature include:

• search online - for example, limit Google searches to organization sites by including 'site:.org' (no quotes) in the search; use 'site:.gov' for government sites. Add keywords for your topic. Specify a specific, state, region or country, if appropriate. Include the word "reports" if original results are too general.
• 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.

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.

Other names for think tanks include policy institutes or research institutes.

A think tank may have an ideological perspective or may be nonpartisan. It's useful to review the About Us section of the think tank's website and look for other views about the think tank in order to place their work in context and better evaluate the authority and credibility of their work.

Note that many think tanks don't take institutional positions on topics but their researchers, scholars, or fellows may take individual, personal positions on policy and other issues, so being aware of the backgrounds of a policy report's author(s) is also helpful.

The Union of International Associations describes

• an IGO (intergovernmental organization) as "an organization composed primarily of sovereign states, or of other intergovernmental organizations [and usually] are established by treaty or other agreement..."
•  an NGO (nongovernmental organization) as "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.