Grey literature is materials and research produced by organizations outside of the traditional commercial or academic publishing and distribution channels. Common grey literature publication types include reports, working papers, government documents, white papers and evaluations (Wikipedia, 2022).

There are numerous other places to find grey literature. For example, databases like the WSU search catalog, Web of Science, IEEE Xplore, etc. all have the ability to limit results to grey literature (such as reports, government documents, dissertations, and more).

Find Grey Literature 

arXiv - is a free distribution service and an open-access archive for scholarly articles and pre-prints across multiple science disciplines.

Using the WSU Libraries Catalog to Find Grey Literature 

Using Web of Science to locate grey literature

Google Scholar can be a great place to locate grey literature. If you do use Google Scholar, I strongly suggest setting it up so it recognizes that you are a WSU researcher. This will give you immediate access to resources that you find in Google Scholar which may be behind a paywall.

To setup Google Scholar to recognize that you are a WSU researcher follow these directions:

Go to scholar.google.com and select the the hamburger menu (three short parallel lines) in the upper left

Then select  Settings, and then select Library links and do a search for Washington State University and select all options. 

Every so often you may need to re-do these settings if you are not seeing the FindIt@WSU button in your results (sometimes a browser update or history/cookies flush erases your settings) - note also that if you flush your cookies automatically your setting won't be saved. Also note that the Find It @ WSU button will not show up for every result.

Hard-copies of engineering, physical sciences, and agriculture dissertations through the mid 2000s can be found in the Owen Science and Engineering Library.

You can also locate WSU and external dissertations at:

Additionally, you can find theses and dissertations by searching the WSU Libraries' catalog and limiting your source type to "Dissertations & Theses."

Corporate and industry resources may come in the form of trade publications, press releases, and company profiles. Although you may be able to find some of that information within the newspaper database resources provided above, Lexis Uni provides a in-depth resources.