Nursing
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What is Grey Literature?
Simply put, Grey Literature consists of materials that are unpublished or have been published outside of the typical commercial publishing environment. Grey literature can consist of reports, articles, presentations, theses, conference proceedings, government documents, and much more.
Grey Literature can be diffcult to locate because it is usually only found outside of the standard commercial research databases.
If you are conducting an in-depth literature review or systematic review on a particular topic, it is important to search for grey literature in addition to studies and articles found in PubMed or CINAHL to ensure that you haven't missed anything important or useful.
Finding Unpublished (Grey) Nursing Literature
Here are some resources to assist you in finding grey (unpublished) literature in nursing and learn more about the topic.
- Proquest Dissertations & AbstractsA comprehensive collection of full-text dissertations and theses from 1861 to the present day.
- MednarA free, publicly available deep web search engine focusing on medical information.
- OpenMDOpen medical search engine including information from government agencies, reference sites, journal, etc.
- Health Sciences Online (HSO)"Search and browse any health sciences topic from over 50,000 courses, references, guidelines, and other learning resources. Materials are selected from accredited educational sources including universities, governments, and professional societies."
- TRIP DatabaseClinical search engine, focusing on high-quality research evidence but includes some potential grey literature as well.
- OpenDOARAllows you to search across multiple institutional repositories as well as locate specific institutional repositories that might house materials related to your area of interest.
- Virginia Henderson Global Nursing e-Repository"It is a global digital service that collects, preserves and shares nursing research and evidence-based practice materials."
- Open Grey"Open access database to 700,000 bibliographical references of gray literature produced in Europe."
- VadloGrey literature PowerPoint database, Biomedical and Life Sciences Search Engine. Search under unpublished nursing literature.
- World Wide Science"Global science gateway comprised of national and international scientific databases."