Part 3: Going Grey and Supplementary Search Techniques

Audience: University of Toronto graduate students and faculty engaged in health science research

Date: Monday, December 4, 2017

Time: 1:10pm - 3:30pm

Location:Gerstein Science Information Centre, Instruction Lab (2nd floor)

Note: this course may be taken as part of the Graduate Professional Skills Program.

Knowledge syntheses that rely solely on published academic literature are at high risk of publication bias. Searching the grey literature is essential for mitigating this risk, but ‘grey literature’ is a nebulous concept, tricky to incorporate into syntheses and difficult to find.

Building on the skills we practiced in Parts 1 and 2, in this hands-on workshop students will learn to:

• Define what is grey literature (and what’s it’s not)
• Develop a strategy for identifying appropriate sources of grey literature 
• Utilize a methodological, transparent approach to searching sources of grey literature
• Demonstrate best practices for supplementary search techniques including hand-searching and reference tracking
• Integrate strategies for incorporating grey literature and supplementary search techniques into the review workflow
• Evaluate search methods to identify proper reporting