Grey literature is information that falls outside of the realm of normal publishing outputs, such as books and journals. It is typically written for a very specific audience and is often scientific or technical in nature. Examples include technical reports, patents, and dissertations and theses; items such as article pre-prints, some conference proceedings, and white papers are also considered to be gray literature.
Today we are so to say innundated with Evidence Base.... Criteria and instruments
Hard to generalize. Useful? Yes, under the scrutiny of experts in a particular field. Reliable? Perhaps, but much depends on the nature, origin and quality of the information. Probably better to avoid routine incorporation within a professional curriculum, but certainly appropriate for discussion in seminars and open forums. Also, this sort of information can be helpful as an educational tool for source criticism.
Not sure I have made myself explicit? The use of set critical appraisal tools should suffice the purpose of evaluating the requested issues above, isn t it?
Agreed. Unfortunately, so much of this sort of material has not yet been subjected to the rigors of these tools, and yet is readily accessible online by the clinician. This could possibly lead to undesirable consequences.
When we perform search on databases, we strictly apply inclusion and exclusion criteria , and on the basis of it, a flow chart is prepared according to PRISMA guidelines that explains the divisions of total number of articles. But when it comes to grey literature, there is no set data so some may get included by sheer chance and other not included because they went unnoticed. Also , its quality is under discretion of author, which itself poses a lot of bias, thus I feel unless strict norms are laid down for grey literature they should not be a part of systematic review but can be mentioned in the discussion while writing the article.
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