Searching for Thesis & Dissertation Literature Reviews: Gray Literature
Think Tank Search & Policy Commons
Think tanks are institutions or organizations that are affiliated with universities, governments, advocacy groups, foundations, non-governmental organizations, and businesses that generate public policy research, analysis, and activity. (Harvard Kennedy School, Library & Knowledge Services)
Policy Commons searches across millions of think tank and government agency reports, and is a bit more international in scope than Think Tank Search.
Searching both is highly recommended.
- Think Tank SearchThink Tank Search is a custom Google search of over 690 think tank websites.
- Policy CommonsProvides indexed access to government grey literature and reports from national and international governmental agencies.
- Policy Commons CitiesContains reports generated by local government agencies, civic organizations, and metropolitan and regional planning agencies for major cities in the United States and Canada.
Search for Government Documents
- USA.govThe USA.gov website allows you to search multiple federal and state agency website and reports.
Gray Literature Resources
- Web of ScienceMaintains citation searching for high impact research journals in the arts and humanities, social sciences, and sciences and includes emerging sources citation indexing from 2005.
- arXivProvides open access to e-prints in physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, and statistics.
- IssueLabContains free access to case studies, evaluations, white papers, annual reports, issue briefs, and numerous other materials addressing the world's social problems that include aging, crime and safety, government reports, nonprofit and philanthropy, race and ethnicity, and transportation.
- Social Sciences Research Network (SSRN)Features academic networks for many disciplines in the social sciences. Includes a database with abstracts of scholarly working papers and forthcoming papers. Also includes a paper collection of full-text documents.
Proceedings in Web of Science
After performing a search for your topic in Web of Science, use the Proceedings limit under "Document Types" to refine your search to conference proceedings.
What is Grey Literature?
Watch this two-minute video for a brief introduction to grey literature from Western University.