What it is good for
Context, prevalence, policy and practice standards. A national statistics agency reporting how many people are affected by something is the authoritative source for that number, and there is no peer-reviewed alternative that improves on it.
The same holds for professional standards and clinical guidance. When you need to say what practice currently requires, the issuing body's own document is the correct citation and a journal article describing it is second-hand.
What it is not good for
Establishing effect. A report claiming an intervention worked, without a design that can support that claim and without external review, is an assertion by an interested party. It may well be true and it is not evidence in the sense a rubric means.
This is where the caution behind the advice belongs. Advocacy organisations, professional associations and manufacturers all publish material that reads like research and has not been through review.
Judge it by who published it and why
A government statistics office has an incentive to be accurate and a process for corrections. A manufacturer publishing on its own product does not. A charity campaigning on an issue occupies a position somewhere between the two and is usually explicit about its aims.
None of that disqualifies anybody. It tells you what you can take from each and how to label it, and labelling it accurately is most of what a marker is looking for.
Dissertations and theses
These are grey literature and they are genuinely useful, particularly for a topic with little published work, because a thesis reports in far more detail than an article ever can. They have been examined, which is a form of review, though not the same one.
Where you rely on one, say what it is. A reader who discovers halfway through that your key source was an unpublished doctoral thesis will wonder what else was not stated.
Preprints
A preprint is research that has not yet been reviewed, and treating it as though it had is the specific error. Where a preprint is the only available source for something recent, cite it and label it as a preprint.
Check whether it has since been published, because the reviewed version frequently differs, sometimes in the results. Citing the preprint of a paper that later changed is an avoidable and visible mistake.
How to cite it well
Name the issuing organisation as author, give the year, and provide a route to the document that will still work. Grey literature moves and disappears more often than journal content, so a stable link matters more here than anywhere else.
Where your citation style asks for an access date on such material, include it, because it is the reader's only signal about which version you were looking at.
Say what it is in the sentence
The strongest handling of grey literature is to name what it is as you cite it: according to the professional body's current standard, or in the agency's most recent survey. That tells the reader the kind of authority behind the claim.
Doing that consistently also prevents the failure this whole category is associated with, which is a reference list where a manufacturer's white paper and a randomised trial sit side by side looking identical.
Questions this raises.
Will my marker accept grey literature?
Usually, where it is doing a job it can do and is labelled accurately. Some rubrics limit the proportion, so check yours. What causes trouble is not the presence of grey literature but its use as evidence of effect, or its appearance in a list where nothing distinguishes it from peer-reviewed research.
Is a clinical guideline grey literature?
Technically yes, and it occupies a special position because it synthesises evidence and states the strength of its own recommendations. For a claim about what practice should be, a current guideline from the relevant body is usually the strongest citation available, well above an individual study.
How do I find grey literature systematically?
Search the issuing organisations directly rather than expecting a database to surface it, because much of it is not indexed where journal articles are. Government agencies, professional bodies and major charities all publish their own material. For a systematic review, that search has to be documented like any other.
Can I cite a conference abstract?
With caution and a label. A conference abstract reports work that may never be published in full, and it contains too little method for you to appraise it. It is reasonable evidence that a line of work exists and weak evidence of any finding, and it should be described as an abstract in the text.
What if a report has no named author?
Use the issuing organisation as the author, which is standard in every major citation style. Organisational authorship is normal for this material and not a weakness. What matters is that some identifiable body stands behind it, because that is what lets a reader assess where it came from.
Dr. Thandiwe Mokoena
DNP, NEA-BC, on the leadership and mha side of the hall. Writes for The Footnote and coaches the students who bring this work to the desk. The rest of the specialists.
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