Grey literature

About: Grey literature is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1187 publications have been published within this topic receiving 20549 citations. The topic is also known as: gray literature.

The need for multivocal literature reviews in software engineering: complementing systematic literature reviews with grey literature

Abstract: Systematic Literature Reviews (SLR) may not provide insight into the "state of the practice" in SE, as they do not typically include the "grey" (non-published) literature A Multivocal Literature Review (MLR) is a form of a SLR which includes grey literature in addition to the published (formal) literature Only a few MLRs have been published in SE so far We aim at raising the awareness for MLRs in SE by addressing two research questions (RQs): (1) What types of knowledge are missed when a SLR does not include the multivocal literature in a SE field? and (2) What do we, as a community, gain when we include the multivocal literature and conduct MLRs? To answer these RQs, we sample a few example SLRs and MLRs and identify the missing and the gained knowledge due to excluding or including the grey literature We find that (1) grey literature can give substantial benefits in certain areas of SE, and that (2) the inclusion of grey literature brings forward certain challenges as evidence in them is often experience and opinion based Given these conflicting viewpoints, the authors are planning to prepare systematic guidelines for performing MLRs in SE

Discrimination against childbearing Romani women in maternity care in Europe: a mixed-methods systematic review

Abstract: Freedom from discrimination is one of the key principles in a human rights-based approach to maternal and newborn health. To review the published evidence on discrimination against Romani women in maternity care in Europe, and on interventions to address this. A systematic search of eight electronic databases was undertaken in 2015 using the terms “Roma” and “maternity care”. A broad search for grey literature included the websites of relevant agencies. Standardised data extraction tables were utilised, quality was formally assessed and a line of argument synthesis was developed and tested against the data from the grey literature. Nine hundred papers were identified; three qualitative studies and seven sources of grey literature met the review criteria. These revealed that many Romani women encounter barriers to accessing maternity care. Even when they are able to access care, they can experience discriminatory mistreatment on the basis of their ethnicity, economic status, place of residence or language. The grey literature revealed some health professionals held underlying negative beliefs about Romani women. There were no published research studies examining the effectiveness of interventions to address discrimination against Romani women and their infants in Europe. The Roma Health Mediation Programme is a promising intervention identified in the grey literature. There is evidence of discrimination against Romani women in maternity care in Europe. Interventions to address discrimination against childbearing Romani women and underlying health provider prejudice are urgently needed, alongside analysis of factors predicting the success or failure of such initiatives.

Theory of grey systems: capturing uncertainties of grey information

Abstract: In this paper, we take a look at the state‐of‐the‐art of the theory and applications of the so‐called grey systems theory founded in the 1980s. After a brief historical review of the development history of this theory, we look at the main blocks of the theory followed by several successful applications. It is our hope that a reader who does not know anything about this branch of scientific exploration will gain a firm understanding of the basics so that the rest of this special issue becomes possible to comprehend.

Models of quality of life: a taxonomy, overview and systematic review of the literature

Abstract: The remit of this review of the literature was to document the current 'state of the art' in relation to the definition of the concept of quality of life (QoL), and with relevance to public policy. In view of a history of changing and overlapping terminology in quality of life research (see later), this review of the concept necessarily included a broad range of concepts and search terms. Measures of quality of life are outside the scope of this review and readers are referred to Sirgy (2002), Bowling (2001, 2004) and Haywood et al. (2004) for reviews of generic and specific measures. Part 1 'the taxonomy' was written by Ann Bowling, and was based on electronic and manual searches of the literature over time, and supplemented with grey literature sent by members of the European Forum on Population Aging Research. Literature from an initial, broad (exploratory scoping) systematic review, conducted by Jackie Brown and Terry Flynn, was also included. This was based on Psychlit and Medline databases from 20001 to 2003, with search terms quality of life or well-being or life satisfaction or health status and older or older or senior or aged or ageing or aging (2465 records). AB conducted a further broad search using these terms for non-English language literature (abstracts only, translated electronically). Most of the literature from the systematic reviews investigated health related quality of life and clinical outcomes. Only literature which made a contribution to the conceptual development and definition of QoL has been included here. While a wide range of relevant concepts are described in this report, discussions of them are relatively brief given the enormity of the scope of the review. It is acknowledged that each merits a report in its own right. Not all concepts used in the context of quality of life were used as electronic search terms given the vast amount of specialised literature on each, and which would have made this task completely unwieldy.

When and what to automate in software testing? A multi-vocal literature review

Abstract: Context Many organizations see software test automation as a solution to decrease testing costs and to reduce cycle time in software development. However, establishment of automated testing may fail if test automation is not applied in the right time, right context and with the appropriate approach. Objective The decisions on when and what to automate is important since wrong decisions can lead to disappointments and major wrong expenditures (resources and efforts). To support decision making on when and what to automate, researchers and practitioners have proposed various guidelines, heuristics and factors since the early days of test automation technologies. As the number of such sources has increased, it is important to systematically categorize the current state-of-the-art and -practice, and to provide a synthesized overview. Method To achieve the above objective, we have performed a Multivocal Literature Review (MLR) study on when and what to automate in software testing. A MLR is a form of a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) which includes the grey literature (e.g., blog posts and white papers) in addition to the published (formal) literature (e.g., journal and conference papers). We searched the academic literature using the Google Scholar and the grey literature using the regular Google search engine. Results Our MLR and its results are based on 78 sources, 52 of which were grey literature and 26 were formally published sources. We used the qualitative analysis (coding) to classify the factors affecting the when- and what-to-automate questions to five groups: (1) Software Under Test (SUT)-related factors, (2) test-related factors, (3) test-tool-related factors, (4) human and organizational factors, and (5) cross-cutting and other factors. The most frequent individual factors were: need for regression testing (44 sources), economic factors (43), and maturity of SUT (39). Conclusion We show that current decision-support in software test automation provides reasonable advice for industry, and as a practical outcome of this research we have summarized it as a checklist that can be used by practitioners. However, we recommend developing systematic empirically-validated decision-support approaches as the existing advice is often unsystematic and based on weak empirical evidence.