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Grey Literature

Learn what Grey Literature is, how to evaluate it, what formats it takes, how to find it, and how to incorporate it in your research.

Incorportate

There are lots of ways to incorporate Grey Literature into your work and it is not much different from incorporating Scholarly works into your research. However, there are some key differences to keep in mind when using Grey Literature than using Scholarly works. 

 

Evaluate and Verify

Its worth repeating the Grey Literature is not peer reviewed like Scholarly works, so it is extremely important to evaluate and verify Grey Literature before using it. Use the "Evaluating Grey Literature" page of this guide to see how this process works! 

 

 

Citing

Firstly, make sure that you are citing your sources properly! This LibGuide on citing sources may be able to help if you are having any challenges.

As with Scholarly works, it is important to clearly and correctly cite Grey Literature. However with Grey Literature, it would behoove both you as a scholar and those who are reading your work to give more context for the Grey Literature in order to make it clear that the works you are citing could potentially be bias or inaccurate in ways Scholarly works are not. 

For example, do you see a difference between the following two in-text citations?

"A 2019  report from Amnesty International states that the Chinese government is committing cultural genocide against Ughegrs. This is corroborated by Human Rights Watch's 2020 report and the reporting of the New York Times."  

"China is committing genocide against Muslims (Amnesty International 2019)."

The first citation is very clear in giving context, speficifty, and the verification for the Grey Literature, which will be extremely helpful to furutre researchers and it makes the the statements in the paper more accurate.