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Genetics: Postgrad Research

Your guide to quality information and resources to help with your research in Genetics.

Library Services for Postgraduate Students

Check out our Postgraduate Introduction to Library Services and Resources guide for resources on writing your thesis, search strategies, research data management, researcher profiles, impact metrics, getting published, postgrad workshops, and more!

Postgraduate Library Information Sessions by Zoom

These Library Information Sessions are provided specifically for postgraduate students. For more information, topic help, and 2023 recordings see Postgraduate Library Services Guide.  Check back in Feb 2025 to register via this link  

Keep up to date with new research on your topic - with Search Alerts!

Most research databases allow you to create alerts that email you when any new research is published in your specific area.  This could be a search alert (based on your search terms), author alert or citation alert for a key article.

Finding Kaupapa Māori research resources

Grey literature

The term 'grey literature' (GL) is used to describe materials not published commercially or indexed by major databases. While GL may be of questionable quality, it has been shown to have an impact in research, teaching and learning. Sometimes, GL is the only source of information for specific research questions. While some GL may be published eventually, and may be easier to find, sometimes it never is.

GL may not go through a peer-review process, and its authority must be scrutinised. For more information on how to evaluate resources, check out the Journals & Databases page on this Subject Guide, and in particular the box ‘Assess your findings’.

Traditional sources of grey literature include, but are not limited to:

  • Theses and dissertations
  • Census, economic and other “grey” data sources
  • Databases of on-going research
  • Statistics and other data sources
  • Conference proceedings and abstracts
  • Newsletters
  • Research reports (completed and uncompleted)
  • Technical specifications, standards, and annual reports
  • Informal communication (i.e. telephone conversations, meetings, etc.)
  • Translations

In essence, grey literature is:

  1. Not formally part of ‘traditional publishing cycles’ – producers include research groups, universities and government.
  2. Not widely disseminated – dissemination of published materials is the goal in traditional publishing.

'New' forms of grey literature include:

  • E-prints, preprints
  • Electronic networked communication
  • Blogs, podcasts (audio or video)
  • Repositories
  • Listserv archives
  • Digital libraries
  • Spatial data (e.g. Google Earth)
  • Meta-searching, federated searching, portals
  • Wikis, Twitter, other social media

Advice on ways to find grey literature:

  • Traditional databases. Many databases allow you to search not only published journal articles, but also other resources, like conference papers & theses.
  • Specialised databases. For example, theses databases (see our Thesis Guide for resources).
  • Directories and organisations. Check out some of the links in the 'Psychology Associations, Societies & Research Centres' box on this page to get started searching organisation's websites. Check out the 'Selected Web Resources' box, to access a few key Psychology directories.
  • Library catalogues. Many catalogues (including Library Search | Ketu) now index more than traditional sources of information, including things like; technical reports, research datasets, and sometimes even websites & blogs.
  • Repositories. To get you started, check out the list in the 'Research Repositories' box on this page.
  • Personal communications. For example; phonecalls, emails, blogs, Twitter and other types of social networks.
  • Hand-searching of relevant publications. Sometimes resources may not be available online, or even have any information about them online. In these cases, you have to search the old fashioned way!
  • Internet searches. If you are not getting results on Google Scholar, try regular Google. There are other search engines available that are alternatives to using Google, e.g. Bing & DuckDuckGo.

This box has used information adapted from the 'Grey literature in health: Home page' of a library guide that was put together by my Health Sciences Librarian colleagues, who in turn referred to the University of Pennsylvania Libraries' grey literature information page as a source for content.

Finding Conference Papers

Conference papers are an excellent source of current research, best practices and new innovations in a research area.  For a start, search the Web using the name of the conference, meeting or symposium.

Full-text conference papers may be hard to obtain; sometimes abstracts are the only items available online. If a full paper is not available online, you could contact the author and request a copy. Also, the Library may be able to borrow or purchase published proceedings -- talk to your Subject Librarian.