A guide for finding scientific and technical grey literature. Topics include search engines and tools, repositories and subject specific databases. Emphasis on open access/low cost resources.

1. WELCOME TO
“FINDING SCITECH GREY LITERATURE:
RESOURCES FOR NEW AND INTERMEDIATE
LEVEL RESEARCHERS”
ROCKY MOUNTAIN CHAPTER SLA VIRTUAL
LUNCH
FEBRUARY 13, 2014
Speaker:
Matthew Von Hendy, Green Heron
Information Services

2. The recording of this
program will be posted at
http://rockymountain.sla
.org.
More to discuss?
Use Twitter hashtag
#rmsla

3. Today’s Presenter
Matthew Von Hendy, Green Heron Information Services

4. FINDING SCITECH GREY LITERATURE:
RESOURCES FOR NEW AND INTERMEDIATE
LEVEL RESEARCHERS
Matthew Von Hendy MA/MLS
Green Heron Information Services

5. WELCOME!
Owner—Green Heron
Information Services
 Professional
Librarian—National
Academies of
Science, EPA, NASA
 Birder, cyclist, runner—
recent Alaskan
adventurer


6. VIRTUAL LUNCH GOALS
Briefly discuss what defines grey literature, what
type of resources are covered/what are not, trends
and issues in this area
 Cover key search tools for scitech grey literature
and touch on strengths/weakness of each
 Look at the role of repositories in this area and take
a peek at some leading examples
 Discuss subject specific databases that contain
extensive scitech grey literature
 Questions and answers


7. A FEW NOTES
Scientific and technology grey literature resources
will our major topic
 We will not be covering health sciences grey
literature resources
 We will be focused primarily on major/well known
resources—there are many more specialized
sources
 Also, we will concentrate primarily on open
access, low cost resources although we will touch
on some subscription databases/resources


8. WHAT IS GREY LITERATURE?

Pull up a chair and have some coffee/tea…

9. WHAT IS GREY LITERATURE (CONT.)
That which is produced on all levels of
government, academics, business and industry in
print and electronic formats, but which is not
controlled by commercial publishers."PloS
description– The Fourth International Conference
on Grey Literature 1999
 Peer-reviewed journal
articles, academic/commercially published books
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10. WHAT DOES THAT LEAVE?

11. MANY FORMATS
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Technical reports
Pre-Prints
Fact Sheets
Standards
Patents
Working papers
Committee reports
Business documents
Newsletters
Government documents
Technical documentation
Conference proceedings
White papers
Symposia
Bulletins
Conference Papers

12. BENEFITS OF SCITECH GREYLIT
Provide high level overviews
 Recent bibliographies
 Source of cutting edge information– grey literature
can frequently appear before conventional
academic literature
 Source of statistics and datasets


13. LIMITATIONS OF SCITECH GREY LIT
Reliability of information—is there any peer-review
or evidence base
 Who is publishing it—have you heard of the
organization and/or do they have a particular point
of view
 Searchability—even if it’s a great or useful piece of
work can it be found?
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14. STATUS OF SCITECH GREYLIT SEARCH
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The Mediocre, the Bad and the Ugly
(apologies to Clint Eastwood)

15. SEARCH TOOLS– THE MEDIOCRE
DOE Information Systems Science Accelerator-http://www.scienceaccelerator.gov/dsa/search.html
Federated search covering DOE related
research, articles and conference proceedings
 Science Gov http://www.science.gov/scigov/
Searches over 50 U.S. Government science-related
databases and websites
 WorldWideScience.Org -http://worldwidescience.org/wws/
Federated search that covers national and
international government science resources
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16. SEARCH TOOLS- THE MEDIOCRE (CONT.)
SciTech Connect
http://www.osti.gov/scitech/
Consolidates OSTI’s Information Bridge and Energy
Citations database.
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17. SEARCH TOOLS – THE BAD
OAIster http://oaister.worldcat.org/advancedsearch
Open access project started by University of
Michigan—picked up by OCLC-designed to pick up
hard to find grey literature
Tip: Corporate/Conference Name can be very useful
 Open DOAR Content Search
http://www.opendoar.org/search.php
Maintained by the University of Nottingham—very
good quality control. A directory of open access
directories—many scitech organizations included
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18. SEARCH TOOLS – THE UGLY
Google Scholar – scholar.google.com
Use Advanced Search features
Tip: Use ‘thesis dissertation’ in the ‘with at least one
of the words’ field if you are looking for these
 Google – www.google.com
Tip: Limit your search to a specific domain or site
and use the filtertype search filter since a lot of gray
literature appears as PDFs
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19. SUBSCRIPTION DATABASES
Scopus, Web of Science—conference papers
 Proquest Dissertations Abstracts--- maybe
dissertations and theses?
 Biosis, Compendex, GeoRef, IEEE
Xplore, Inspec, Environment Sciences and Pollution
Management– conference papers, meeting
publications, some technical reports
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21. INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORIES
See Ranking Web of Repositories for a decent
listing of US university repositories
http://repositories.webometrics.info/en/Americas/USA
 Just some examples:
Virginia Tech Digital Library and Archives
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/
MIT Institutional Repository
http://dspace.mit.edu/
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22. DON’T FORGET ABOUT DATA AS A SCITECH
GREYLIT RESOURCE
Explosive growth, development of many resources
 Databib— http://databib.org/
Major directory of data repositories--searchable
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Brian Westra’s (University of Oregon library)
excellent guide to data research management
resources-http://library.uoregon.edu/datamanagement/reposito
ries.html

24. SCITECH GREYLIT DATABASES
Agricola-- http://agricola.nal.usda.gov/
Agriculture and agriculture-related database from the
USDA
 arXiv-- http://arxiv.org/
Provides open access to nearly 800,000 e-prints in
the area of physics, mathematics, computer
science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance and
statistics.
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25. SCITECH GREYLIT DATABASES II
CiteSeer http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/
Digital library and search engine focused on
computer and information science.
 Defense Technical Information Center
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/
A searchable repository for all publicly accessible
DOD science and technical research
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26. SCITECH GREYLIT DATABASES III
ENTEWEB World Energy Base
https://www.etde.org/etdeweb/basicsearch.jsp?pg=
2
International database covering all aspects of energy
research. Now publicly available.
IAEA’s INIS Database http://www.iaea.org/inis/
International Nuclear Information System database
on nuclear science and technology
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27. SCITECH GREYLIT DATABASES IV
INSPIRE-HEP http://inspirehep.net/
A database of high energy, particle physics and
astrophysics .
 NASA Technical Reports Server
http://nix.nasa.gov/search.jsp?N=125
NASA funded aerospace and related research.
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28. SCITECH GREYLIT DATABASES V
Astrophysics Data System (NASA) 1975+
Funded by NASA, ADS maintains 3 bibliographic
databases - Astronomy and Astrophysics, Physics
and Geophysics, and ArXiv Preprints - containing
more than 8.5 million records, and digital scans of
archival materials.
 PubMed-- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez
22 million citations for biomedical literature from
MEDLINE, life science journals, and on-line books.
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29. SCITECH GREYLIT DATABASES VI
National Technical Information Servicehttp://www.ntis.gov
Source for unclassified reports from U.S. government
and international government agencies. 2 million plus
records. Vendor interfaces much more user friendly.
Most documents don’t wind up here.
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United States Geological Service Publications
Warehouse http://pubs.er.usgs.gov/
Database of USGS funded research reports and
publications.
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31. DATABASES EXTRA-Dozens of open access technical scientific
databases with primarily grey information are also
available
 An excellent example—listing of open access
databases in geology and marine sciences from the
University of New Orleans library
http://libguides.uno.edu/content.php?pid=161121&sid
=1400581


32. FUTURE TRENDS SCITECH GREYLIT
Increasing quantity—perhaps decreasing quality
 More collaborative—people will be able to
manipulate documents in real time
 Problems with finding resources will start to be
addressed—metadata should be able to provide a
solution—financial incentive for government
agencies/vendors to tackle this issue
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33. QUESTIONS?

34. CONNECT WITH ME

Matthew Von Hendy
Green Heron Information Services
(240) 401-7433
info@greenheroninfo.com
www.greenheroninfo.com
LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/vonhendy
Twitter
@GreenHeronInfo
FB: www.facebook.com/GreenHeronInfo

35. THANK YOU!