LibGuides: TCPCG: Reports & Grey Literature

Reports & Grey Literature

Government agencies, think tanks, non-profits, professional organizations and similar groups often publish research relevant to education that is not included in journals and books. These publications take the form of resources such as fact sheets, reports, white papers, conference proceedings, online articles, etc. and are often referred to as grey literature. Below are some resources to explore to locate this type of research.

Federal Sources

WWC What Works Clearinghouse
Sponsored by U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences. A central and trusted source of scientific evidence for what works in education. While also indexed in ERIC, the sorting options available directly through the website facilitates discovery.
DiscoverGov
DiscoverGov provides simple, one-stop searching across multiple U.S. Federal Government databases including GPO's Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP) and GovInfo. It will retrieve reports, articles, and citations while providing direct links to selected resources and publications available online. Include broader terms when searching DiscoverGov and use the dropdown menu to select "Federal Databases." Find something interesting that's not full text? Search the lib.uconn.edu for full text options.
Institute of Education Sciences (IES) - Resources
Resources on education topics, including fact sheets, training materials, reports, and videos.

Regional Education Laboratory (REL)
An IES program. Regional Educational Laboratories partner with educators and policymakers nationwide. REL work is change-oriented, supporting meaningful local, regional, or state decisions about education policies, programs, and practices designed to improve learner outcome.

Education Evidence Resources

EdReports
EdReports works to ensure teachers, administrators, and leaders have the information necessary to identify and demand the highest quality instructional materials. Reports focus on English Language Arts, Math, and Science.
Best Evidence Encyclopedia (BEE)
The Best Evidence Encyclopedia (BEE) is a free website created by the Johns Hopkins University School of Education’s Center for Research and Reform in Education (CRRE). It is intended to give educators and researchers fair and useful information about the strength of the evidence supporting a variety of programs available for students in grades K-12. Program reviews including reading, mathematics, writing, science, special education, and more.
Evidence for ESSA
Created by the Center for Research and Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins University, in collaboration with a distinguished Technical Work Group, this website provides a free, authoritative, user-centered database to help anyone – school, district, or state leaders, teachers, parents, or concerned citizens – easily find programs and practices that align to the ESSA evidence standards and meet their local needs.

Databases

JSTOR
In addition to scholarly journals, JSTOR also provides access to research reports from think tanks and research institutes around the world. After entering your search terms, select the "Research Reports" radio button before executing your search. UConn login required.
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global
Indexes doctoral dissertations completed in the U.S. Includes some master's theses and foreign language dissertations.

Preprints

A preprint is a full draft of a research paper that the author has made available online that allow scholars to disseminate their findings quickly and more widely. Remember that preprints have not yet gone through a peer review process and must be read critically.

SSRN

Access to article abstracts from scholarly journals covering various aspects of social science research. Users are encouraged to register for a free personal account at SSRN, in order to access the selected, freely available content.

EdArXiv
EdArXiv is an open archive for education. It is a free, open source, non-profit service that allows researchers to post and search working papers, unpublished work, conference materials, and articles under review (preprints). Open Science Framework (osf.io) also hosts other discipline-specific preprint servers, including psychology and sociology. If your research is interdisciplinary, be sure to search PsyArXiv and SocArXiv as well.

Think Tanks

Think Tanks are organizations which conduct research and advocate for a particular issue or movement. It is important to consider implied biases when accessing these resources.

Harvard Kennedy School Think Tank Search
A directory of U.S. and international think tanks, as well as a custom Google search of more than 250 think tank websites. If you are not sure which think tank may have issued a paper on your topic, this resource is a good starting point. NB: This resource is no longer updated as of 2/7/25 and has been replaced by Policy Commons, which requires an account. The Think Tank search box continues to work for the Think Tank sites added prior to Feb. 2025.
Brookings Institute
The Brookings Institution is a non-profit public policy organization based in Washington, D.C.. It conducts research and analysis on a variety of issues, including education.
Urban Institute
Urban Institute is a non-profit research organization focused on providing data and evidence to inform policy decisions. Research areas include education and workforce.
RAND Corporation
Conducts research and analysis on a wide variety of social and economic policy issues, including teachers and teaching.

Searching the Internet for Grey Literature

Many non-profits, professional organizations, etc. publish reports and studies of relevance to their communities that might not be indexed in library databases. Searching by domain is an effective way to find these types of resources. Below is a brief video that explains the domain search process.

Searching by domain by Karen Tatarka

TCPCG — Reports & Grey Literature