• Bianca Calabria
• National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, UNSW

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18 July 2008Grey literature is material that is not formally published by commercial publishers or peer
reviewed journals. It includes reports, fact sheets, conference proceedings and other
documents from institutions, organisations, and government agencies.

The advancement of the internet has made grey literature easily accessible electronically
(eg. PDF file). Many organisations, institutions and agencies make grey literature available
on their websites. There are also several grey literature databases which can be searched
for references of data sources. Authors are often willing to provide the document of
interest upon request, if the source is unavailable online.

The searches for grey literature that resulted in this reference document were conducted
in late 2007 and early 2008 as part of two larger projects being carried out at the National
Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) at the University of New South Wales,
Sydney, Australia. Grey literature searches began as part of the work by the Secretariat for
the Reference group to the United Nations on HIV and injecting drug use. Grey literature searches are also carried out as part of the work by the Mental Disorders and Illicit Drug Use Expert Group for the Global Burden of Disease project. This report presents a comprehensive list of relevant websites and databases that has been collated from the work of both projects.

This report was written by Bianca Calabria, Benjamin Phillips, Jessica Singleton, Bradley Mathers, Eva Congreve, Louisa Degenhardt and Jennifer McLaren