Law Subject Guide

Finding grey literature

Grey literature includes materials and research that do not appear in traditional academic publications. This may include law reform publications, government documents, working papers, reports, parliamentary materials, theses and other publications.

Law reform publications

Australian Law Reform Commissions produce publications such as issues papers, discussion papers and reports. These documents provide useful information about the state of the law and future directions.

Parliamentary publications

Use Australian federal, state and territory parliamentary websites to locate reports, tabled papers, research and other publications. For example:

Publications directly related to legislative research, such as Hansard and Explanatory Memoranda, are discussed in the section on Australian Legislation.

Google Advanced Search

Google's Advanced Search options can help you find other grey literature on the Internet. For example, government and organisational reports and policy. Advanced search options include:

• all these words - search results must contain all of the words in this search box
• this exact word or phrase - results must contain these words together in the specified order
• any of these words - results must contain at least one of the words in this search box. Use for synonyms or alternative search terms
• none of these words - exclude results containing a certain word/s. Use with caution as it could also exclude useful results.

Consider narrowing your search results by:

• site or domain - restrict search results to a specific URL, eg use .gov.au for Australian government websites
• file type - restrict search results to specific formats such as pdf documents. This will surface documents like reports that are often in this format.

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