Finding the hard to finds: searching for the grey literature in medicine

’ Finding the hard to finds: searching for the grey literature in biomedicine’ Dean Giustini, UBC Biomedical Branch Librarian - March 2010 ’ Finding the hard to finds: Searching for grey literature’ – LIBR534

"information produced on all levels of government, academia, business and industry in electronic and print formats not controlled by commercial publishing"
ICGL Luxembourg definition, 1997 - Expanded in New York, 2004
“… a body of materials [not] found easily through conventional channels such as publishers … frequently original and usually recent“
Wikipedia entry on ‘gray literature’
Definitions of “grey literature”… Dean Giustini, UBC Biomedical Branch Librarian - March 2010 ’ Finding the hard to finds: Searching for the grey literature’

Grey literature…in the news Dean Giustini, UBC Biomedical Branch Librarian - March 2010 ’ Finding the hard to finds: Searching for the grey literature’ …” The UN climate panel's credibility [was called into question recently] A British newspaper found holes in the IPCC report on the potential of tidal wave power claiming it was based on information, sourced from the website of a commercial wave energy company and student dissertations. This points to a fundamental flaw in the IPCC report - the use of what is called grey literature .” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3gm97icPVM

In-between metaphor – grey zone… Dean Giustini, UBC Biomedical Branch Librarian - March 2010 ’ Finding the hard to finds: Searching for the grey literature’

Different types of grey literature
Theses & dissertations
Conference proceedings
Newsletters
Reports
Government documents (including NGOs, IGOs)
Informal communication (telephone calls, meetings)
Translations
Census, economic & other data
Conference proceedings & abstracts
Research reports (completed & uncompleted)
Technical reports, standards, patents
Videos
Clinical trials & practice guidelines
Dean Giustini, UBC Biomedical Branch Librarian - March 2010 ’ Finding the hard to finds: Searching for the grey literature’

New sources of grey lit & data
e-prints, preprints, post-prints
emails, blogposts, even tweets
Web 2.0 communication channels
wiki articles & virtual worlds like Second Life
listserv archives (i.e. Google Buzz , Wave )
digital libraries (i.e. Institutional Repositories)
grey (gray) data; spatial data (ie. Google Earth )
meta-searching, federated searching, portals
databases of ongoing research
electronic & social networks
images, maps

Differences between grey and published literature Commercial interests based on economic models not scholarly Some make content free to be good corporate citizens Role of publishers Problems arise due to copyright, licensing issues New opportunities and roles for search-savvy librarians Impact on librarians Also difficult due to legal restrictions, space limitations and selection Difficult due to sheer volume & formats Archiving Generally stable Improving but ‘hit and miss’ Findability Excellent, edited, peer-reviewed Highly variable Quality Locked, gated access, $$$ (some OA) Free, open, immediate in most cases (some $$$) Accessibility High, increasing all the time Low (in most cases), free Cost Slow(er), due to costs & editing process Instant, due to self-publishing on the web, speed Speed of production Increasing, but at a more measured pace Increasing at exponential rate # of documents being published Published literature (easier to find) Grey literature (hard to find)

Traditionally, grey literature is hard to find & control
Difficulties with classification and cataloguing; storage
Shorter print runs lead to lack of availability
Eventually becomes invisible
Digitization trends = easier to find
Open access publishing
Search engines crawl web content
Collaborative writing
Informal scholarly publishing via wikis and blogs
Shifts in grey literature Dean Giustini, UBC Biomedical Branch Librarian - March 2010 ’ Finding the hard to finds: Searching for the grey literature’

Impact in medicine
Although not considered a scholarly form of publication, grey literature is produced by experts … and “serves scholars and lay readers alike with research summaries, facts, statistics, and other data that offer a more comprehensive view of the topic of interest.”
Outten , C. Gray Literature. 2008
Medline is not enough…
Grey literature opens doors -- fills in ‘evidence’ gaps
Accessible on the open web via Google for free
Outside mainstream scholarship & research; unconventional format
Data-mining - think of hospital patient & epidemiological data

Why grey is needed in trials Hopewell et al. (2007) Grey literature in meta-analyses of randomized trials. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews Dean Giustini, UBC Biomedical Branch Librarian - March 2010 ’ Finding the hard to finds: Searching for the grey literature’ “… published trials tend to be larger and show an overall greater treatment effect than grey trials . This has important implications for reviewers who need to ensure they identify grey trials… to minimise the risk of introducing bias into their review. “

Extended search techniques
Database searching & specialized databases and portals
Searching obscure or small library catalogues
Hand-searching
Personal communication (i.e. telephone, email, tweets )
Scanning reference lists, bibliographies & academic CVs
Googling (i.e. Google, Google Scholar)
Contact experts in the field
Blogsearch, podsearch, specialized directories

Expert strategies
Document searches fully ; ask for help from peers
Network; modify your strategies as needed
Import citations into RefWorks
Watch scholarly publishing trends; copyright & ‘self-archiving’
Identify relevant organizations to search
Consult hotspots of grey lit expertise:
CADTH - Peer Review of Electronic Search Strategies http://www.cadth.ca/index.php/en/publication/781
GreyNet - http:// www.greynet.org
Health technology assessment (HTAi) portal http://www.htai.org/index.php?id=229
OpenSIGLE - http:// opensigle.inist.fr

“… it’s all grey – until you find it” Dean Giustini, UBC Biomedical Branch Librarian - March 2010 ’ Finding the hard to finds: Searching for grey literature’ htpp://slais.ubc.ca/index.php/Grey_literature The End

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Finding the hard to finds: searching for the grey literature in medicine

by Dean Giustini

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