Grey literature

Grey literature (or gray 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 (annual, research, technical, project, etc.), working papers, government documents, white papers and evaluations. Organizations that produce grey literature include government departments and agencies, civil society or non-governmental organizations, academic centres and departments, and private companies and consultants.

Grey literature may be difficult to discover, access, and evaluate, but this can be addressed through the formulation of sound search strategies. Grey literature may be made available to the public, or distributed privately within organizations or groups, and may lack a systematic means of distribution and collection. The standard of quality, review and production of grey literature can vary considerably.

Other terms used for this material include report literature, government publications, policy documents, fugitive literature, non-conventional literature, unpublished literature, non-traditional publications, and ephemeral publications. With the introduction of desktop publishing and the Internet, new terms include electronic publications, online publications, online resources, open-access research, and digital documents.

Though the concept is difficult to define, the term grey literature is an agreed collective term that researchers and information professionals can use to discuss this distinct but disparate group of resources.

Definitions

While a hazy definition of "grey literature" had existed previously, the term is generally understood to have been coined by the researcher Charles P. Auger, who wrote Use of Reports Literature in 1975.^[1] The literature he referred to consisted of intelligence reports and notes on atomic research produced in vast quantities by the Allied Forces during World War II. In a conference held by the British Lending Library Division in 1978, Auger used the term "grey literature" to describe the concept for the first time.^[2] His concepts focused upon a "vast body of documents" with "continuing increasing quantity" that were characterized by the "difficulty it presents to the librarian". Auger described the documentation as having great ambiguity between temporary character and durability, and by a growing impact on scientific research. While acknowledging the challenges of reports literature, he recognized that it held a number of advantages "over other means of dissemination, including greater speed, greater flexibility and the opportunity to go into considerable detail if necessary". Auger considered reports a "half-published" communication medium with a "complex interrelationship [to] scientific journals". In 1989 Auger published the second edition of The Documentation of the European Communities: A Guide, which contained the first usage of the term "grey literature" in a published work.^[3]

The "Luxembourg definition", discussed and approved at the Third International Conference on Grey Literature in 1997, defined grey literature as "that which is produced on all levels of government, academics, business and industry in print and electronic formats, but which is not controlled by commercial publishers". In 2004, at the Sixth Conference in New York City, a postscript was added to the definition for purposes of clarification: grey literature is "...not controlled by commercial publishers, i.e., where publishing is not the primary activity of the producing body".^[4] This definition is now widely accepted by the scholarly community.

The U.S. Interagency Gray Literature Working Group (IGLWG), in its "Gray Information Functional Plan" of 1995, defined grey literature as "foreign or domestic open source material that usually is available through specialized channels and may not enter normal channels or systems of publication, distribution, bibliographic control, or acquisition by booksellers or subscription agents". Thus grey literature is usually inaccessible through relevant reference tools such as databases and indexes, which rely upon the reporting of subscription agents.

In 2010, D.J. Farace and J. Schöpfel pointed out that existing definitions of grey literature were predominantly economic, and argued that in a changing research environment, with new channels of scientific communication, grey literature needed a new conceptual framework.^[5] They proposed the "Prague definition" as follows:

Grey literature stands for manifold document types produced on all levels of government, academics, business and industry in print and electronic formats that are protected by intellectual property rights, of sufficient quality to be collected and preserved by library holdings or institutional repositories, but not controlled by commercial publishers i.e., where publishing is not the primary activity of the producing body.^[6]

Due to the rapid increase

Organizations are often looking to create the required output, sharing it with relevant parties quickly and easily, without the delays and restrictions of academic journal and book publishing. Often there is little incentive or justification for organizations or individuals to publish in academic journals and books, and often no need to charge for access to organizational outputs.[8] Indeed, some information organizations may be required to make certain information and documents public. On the other hand, grey literature is not necessarily always free, with some resources, such as market reports, selling for thousands of dollars. However, this is the exception and on the whole grey literature, while costly to produce, is usually made available for free.

While research and production quality may be extremely high (with organizational reputation vested in the end product), the producing body, not being a formal publisher, generally lacks the channels for extensive distribution and bibliographic control.^[9]

Information and research professionals generally draw a distinction between ephemera and grey literature. However, there are certain overlaps between the two media and they undoubtedly share common frustrations such as bibliographic control issues. Unique written documents such as manuscripts and archives, and personal communications, are not usually considered to fall under the heading of grey literature, although they again share some of the same problems of control and access.

Impact

The relative importance of grey literature is largely dependent on research disciplines and subjects, on methodological approaches, and on the sources they use. In some fields, especially in the life sciences and medical sciences, there has been a traditional preference for only using

Grey literature is particularly important as a means of distributing scientific and technical and public policy and practice information.[13] Professionals insist on its importance for two main reasons: research results are often more detailed in reports, doctoral theses and conference proceedings than in journals, and they are distributed in these forms up to 12 or even 18 months before being published elsewhere.^[14] Some results simply are not published anywhere else.

In particular, public administrations and public and industrial research laboratories produce a great deal of "grey" material, often for internal and in some cases "restricted" dissemination.^[15] The notion of evidence-based policy has also seen some recognition of the importance of grey literature as part of the evidence base; however, the term is not yet widely used in public policy and the social sciences more broadly.

Problems

For a number of reasons, discovery, access, evaluation and curation of grey literature pose a number of difficulties. Generally, grey literature lacks any strict or meaningful bibliographic control. Basic information such as authors, publication dates and publishing or corporate bodies may not be easily identified. Similarly, the nonprofessional layouts and formats, low print runs and non-conventional channels of distribution make the organized collection of grey literature a challenge compared to journals and books.^[3]

Although grey literature is often discussed with reference to scientific research, it is by no means restricted to any one field. Outside the

Some of the problems of accessing grey literature have decreased since the late 1990s as government, professional, business and university bodies have increasingly published their reports and other official or review documents online. The informal nature of grey literature has meant that it has become more numerous as the technology that allows people to create documentation has improved. Less expensive and more sophisticated printers increased the ease of creating grey literature. And the ability to post documents on the internet has resulted in a tremendous boom. The impact of this trend has been greatly boosted since the early 2000s, as the growth of major search engines has made retrieving grey literature simultaneously easier and more cluttered.^[16] Grey reports are thus far more easily found online than they were, often at no cost to access. Most users of reports and other grey documents have migrated to using online copies, and efforts by libraries to collect hard-copy versions have generally declined in consequence.

However, many problems remain because originators often fail to produce online reports or publications to an adequate bibliographic standard (often omitting a publication date, for instance). Documents are often not assigned permanent

Various databases and libraries collect and make available print and digital grey literature; however, the cost and difficulty of finding and cataloguing grey literature mean that it is still difficult to find large collections. The

Many university libraries provide subject guides that give information on grey literature and suggestions for databases.

The annual international grey literature conference series has been organized since 1993 by the Europe-based organization GreyNet.^[18] Research in this field of information has been systematically documented and archived via the International Conference on Grey Literature series.^[19]

On 16 May 2014, the Pisa Declaration on Policy Development for Grey Literature Resources was ratified and published.[21]

See also

• Alternative media
• European Association for Grey Literature Exploitation
• Grey Literature International Steering Committee
• Grey Literature Network Service
• OpenSIGLE
• Paraliterature
• System for Information on Grey Literature in Europe

References

Further reading

• Braun, Janice; Hopkins, Lola Raykovic (19 July 1995). "Collection-Level Cataloging, Indexing, and Preservation of the Hoover Institution Pamphlet Collection on Revolutionary Change in Twentieth Century Europe". Technical Services Quarterly. 12 (4): 1–8.
  doi:10.1300/J124v12n04_01
  .
• Cedefop; Eurolib. "EU grey literature: long-term preservation, access, and discovery". Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2012. Available: http://www.cedefop.europa.eu/EN/Files/6115_en.pdf
• Childress, Eric; Jul, Eric (2003). "Going grey: Grey literature and metadata". Journal of Internet Cataloging. 6 (3): 3–6.
  doi:10.1300/J141v06n03_02 (inactive 2024-02-22).{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of February 2024 (link
  )
• Denda, Kayo (June 2002). "Fugitive Literature in the Cross Hairs: An Examination of Bibliographic Control and Access". Collection Management. 27 (2): 75–86.
  S2CID 58495493
  .
• Harrison, John (2005). "Grey Literature or Fugitive Report Project". MLA Forum. 4 (1). Archived from the original on 2007-08-16.
• Hirtle, Peter. 1991. Broadsides vs. Gray Literature
• P. Pejsova (ed.) (2010). Grey Literature Repositories. Radim Bacuvcik VeRBuM, Zlin CZ.
• Schöpfel, Joachim (2006). "Observations on the Future of Grey Literature". Observations on the Future of Grey Literature. 2 (2): 67–76.
  hdl:20.500.12210/71957. INIST 17935615
  .
• Schöpfel, J.; Farace, D. J. (2010). "Grey Literature". In Bates, M. J.; Maack, M. N. (eds.). Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences (3rd ed.). CRC Press. pp. 2029–2039.
• Seeman, Corey (June 2002). "Collecting and Managing Popular Culture Material: Minor League Team Publications as "Fringe" Material at the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library". Collection Management. 27 (2): 3–21.
  S2CID 143397777
  .
• Sharma, Jagdish; Nandan, Poonam (2020). "Grey Literature in Health Science Libraries and Indian Institute of Technology Libraries". SRELS Journal of Information Management. 57 (2): 76–83.
  S2CID 229143632
  .
• Sulouff, Pat; Bell, Suzanne; Briden, Judi; Frontz, Stephanie; Marshall, Ann (1 July 2005). "Learning about grey literature by interviewing subject librarians: A study at the University of Rochester". College & Research Libraries News. 66 (7): 510–515.
  doi:10.5860/crln.66.7.7475
  .
• White, Herbert. 1984. Managing the Special Library. White Plains, N. Y.: Knowledge Industries Publications, Inc.

External links

Look up grey literature in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• About grey literature in medical systematic reviews
• GreyNet International
• Science.gov: a gateway to over 50 million pages of authoritative selected science information provided by U.S. government agencies, including research and development results.
• Science Accelerator searches science, including R&D results, project descriptions, accomplishments, and more, via resources made available by the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI), U.S. Department of Energy
• The GrayLIT network: A science portal of technical reports Archived 2007-10-28 at the Wayback Machine. From the Office of Scientific & Technical Information at the United States Department of Energy.
• Grey Literature Library for UK Archaeology
• The International Journal on Grey Literature published one volume in 2000. Content may be limited to subscribers.
• OpenGrey Repository, formerly OpenSIGLE