Gray literature
Encyclopedia
Gray literature is a field in library and information science
. The term is used variably by the intellectual community, librarians, and medical and research professionals to refer to a body of materials that cannot be found easily through conventional channels such as publishers, "but which is frequently original and usually recent" in the words of M.C. Debachere. Examples of grey literature include technical report
s from government agencies or scientific research groups, working papers from research groups or committees, white paper
s, or preprint
s. The term grey literature is often employed exclusively with scientific research in mind. Nevertheless, grey literature is not a specific genre of document, but a specific, non-commercial means of disseminating information.
The identification and acquisition of grey literature poses difficulties for librarians and other information professionals for several reasons. Generally, grey literature lacks strict bibliographic control, meaning that basic information such as author, publication date or publishing body may not be easily discerned. Similarly, non-professional layouts and formats and low print runs of grey literature make the organized collection of such publications challenging compared to more traditional published media such as journal
s and book
s.
Information and research professionals generally draw a distinction between ephemera
and grey literature. However, there are certain overlaps between the two media and they certainly share common frustrations such as bibliographic control issues.
The concept of grey literature is historical. Some decades ago the term grey literature did not exist as a category although what is considered grey today was among the existant literature. When Butterworths published the first edition of Charles P. Auger’s landmark work on grey literature in 1975, paradoxically neither the summary nor the index mentioned this term. The book was just about reports literature (Auger, 1975).
Despite the absence of a label, Auger described the nature of this “vast body of documents” in a way that would later characterize grey literature, referring to its “continuing increasing quantity”, the “difficulty it presents to the librarian”, its ambiguity between temporary character and durability, and its growing impact on scientific production. He also pointed out the “number of advantages over other means of dissemination, including greater speed, greater flexibility and the opportunity to go into considerable detail if necessary”. For Auger, reports were a “half-published” communication medium with a “complex interrelationship (to) scientific journals”.
“Semi-published literature” is a connotation of grey literature (Keenan, 1996). But it reminds, too, that one can speak about reports without a generic concept. Auger promoted the term of “grey literature” only in the 2nd edition of his book (Auger, 1989). Since then, the meaning of “GL” remained a challenge to scientists and librarians. Does “GL” make sense? Is it necessary? Is it (still) helpful for the study and processing of scientific literature? Or using a variation on the famous quote from Dorothy L. Sayers
, will it “run away (…) like cows if you look (it) in the face hard enough”?
There are several definitions of grey literature, the most common being the so-called “Luxembourg definition,” which was discussed and approved during the Third International Conference on Grey Literature in 1997: “[Grey literature is] 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
, a postscript was added for purposes of clarification “...not controlled by commercial publishers, i.e., where publishing is not the primary activity of the producing body” (see Schöpfel & Farace, 2010).
The Luxemburg definition accentuates the supply side of grey literature, e.g., its production and publication both in print and electronic formats. It calls attention to the question of dissemination, the difficulty to identify and access documents described as ephemeral, non-conventional or underground.
Material that “may not enter normal channels or systems of publication, distribution, bibliographic control, or acquisition by booksellers or subscription agents” (U.S. Interagency Gray Literature Working Group): this concept meets Mackenzie Owen’s observation that “grey does not imply any qualification (but) is merely a characterization of the distribution mode” (1997).
Internet transforms the whole value chain of publishing. The Web offers new tools and channels for producing, disseminating and assessing scientific literature. Author and reader, producer and consumer change their information behaviour. We definitely left the Gutenberg era. So what about the definition of grey literature? Is it still empirically sound?
The definition of grey literature is also an economic definition. With the changing research environment and new channels of scientific communication, it becomes clear that grey literature needs a new conceptual framework.
The Grey Literature Network Service
defines grey literature as "information produced on all levels of government, academics, business and industry in electronic and print formats not controlled by commercial publishing i.e. where publishing is not the primary activity of the producing body." (Luxembourg, 1997 - Expanded in New York, 2004).
The U.S. Interagency Gray Literature Working Group (IGLWG) "Gray Information Functional Plan," 18 January 1995, defines 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."
The typological approach doesn’t provide an exhaustive and explicit list of items. The economic approach of the New York definition, on the other hand, is intensional and specifies the necessary condition for a document being part of the grey literature. But the same definition is not sufficient in the context of Internet publishing, and we need to designate more essential attributes to clearly differentiate grey from other items.
The proposal is to add four attributes to the New York definition:
The proposal for a new definition ("Prague Definition") of grey literature is 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."
Grey literature includes all kind of quality or seminal documentary material a library would like to collect but can’t easily because of non-conventional distribution channels. It is not (only) a question of production and dissemination but (also) of quality and collection. Without (inter)mediation by libraries, no grey literature. It is a case for LIS professionals, a challenge that brings together the communities of grey literature and special collections.
A couple of years ago, the main problem with grey literature appeared to be economics. Simpson (1995) observed, "peripheral materials, including grey literature, expand unabated. Libraries having difficulty collecting traditional materials have little hope of acquiring the periphery."
Today, due to the overwhelming success of web publishing and access to documents the focus has shifted to quality, intellectual property
and (inter)mediation. Without a revision that includes the mentioned attributes, the current definition risks being increasingly unable to differentiate grey from other documents.
The proposal for a revised “Prague definition” brings together the former economic approach with new attributes. The next step should be to check this definition against common usage in libraries and different types of grey and other documents. Once done, the value of the definition can be evaluated on the basis of the answers to the following two questions: does this new definition include all kind of documents usually considered by LIS professionals as grey literature, including today’s difficult-to-process and hard-to-collect items, and does it lead to further differentiation or better understanding of how grey literature may be distinguished from other forms of literature? Three challenges in particular are said to face professionals in the field at the present moment:
With reference to grey literature, replies to a survey in 2010 stated “(…) it is important for knowledge” and “it is a question of freedom” or “non-mainstream publishing”. The future will show if the concept of grey literature remains “ephemeral” and if it contributes to better understanding and processing of this special part of scientific and technical information.
The term traditionally referred to reports, conference proceedings and doctoral theses. In the OpenSIGLE
repository, reports are the most numerous among the different types of grey literature. The ‘reports’ category covers a wide variety of very different documents: institutional reports, annual or activity reports, project or study reports, technical reports, reports published by ministries, laboratories or research teams, etc. Some are disseminated by national and international public bodies; others are confidential, protected, or disseminated to a restricted readership, such as technical reports from industrial R&D laboratories. Some are voluminous, with statistical appendices, while others are only a few pages in length.
In the other categories, citation analyses
offer a wide range of grey resources. Besides theses and conference proceedings, they also include unpublished manuscripts
, newsletters, recommendations and technical standards, patents, technical notes, product catalogs, data and statistics, presentations, malin-grey literature, personal communications, working paper
s, house journals, laboratory research books, preprints, academic courseware, lecture notes, and so on. The international network GreyNet
maintains an online listing of document types.
The internet
is altering the landscape, not only by changing user behaviour, but also, and especially, because more and more grey and malin-grey literature is being published on the Web. The internet has radically changed access and distribution methods, accentuating the ephemeral and volatile nature of grey literature, and is set to become the major area for grey literature research in the years ahead.
, and publishing in its most paradoxical and internally self-contradictory aspect. By contrast with grey literature writ large, 'malin-grey literature' refers to publications whose construction and self-referencing are actively construed to avoid the attention of information professional
s. Typically such professionals employ various parameters in identifying which publications are suited to incorporation within a particular collection. To avoid dissemination and archiving the authors of malin-grey literature employ the absence of bibliographical indicators, deception
, disinformation, rapid decomposition
(or other self-destructive construction), obscurity or atypical formats. Malin-grey literature should not be confused with samizdat
or underground literature per se, as these publications often are only concerned with disguising the author and distributor's identities, not actively preventing dissemination.
Some commentators have suggested that the name derives from the French for 'deceptive ingenuity', others - less convincingly - that it is a reference to the Anne-Marie Malingrey (fl. 1960s-70s), a French historian.
A Franco-Dutch study reviews 64 citation analyses published between 1987 and 2005, citing altogether several thousand references. The table below shows the proportion of grey literature cited in publications from different scientific disciplines.
The relative importance of grey literature is largely dependent on research disciplines and subjects, on methodological approaches, and on sources used. In some fields, especially the life sciences and medical sciences, there has been a traditional preference for conventional distribution media (journals), while in others, such as agriculture, aeronautics and the engineering sciences in general, grey literature resources tend to predominate.
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.
Following another study, grey literature seems also to play a considerable part in the library and information sciences, accounting on average around 20% of all sources used a figure that may be compared with the citation habits in economics and educational sciences. Even so, citations to grey material vary widely between different papers from 0% to 50% and more, depending on subject areas and methodologies.
During this conference, the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS) (Rome, Italy) presented guidelines for the production of scientific and technical reports included in the wider category of grey literature. The Italian initiative for the adoption of uniform requirements for the production of reports was discussed during a Round Table on Quality Assessment by a small group of GL producers, librarians and information professionals who agreed to collaborate in the revision of the guidelines proposed by ISS. The group approving these guidelines – informally known as the “Nancy Group” – has been formally defined as the Grey Literature International Steering Committee (GLISC).
The Guidelines include ethical principles related to the process of evaluating, improving, and making reports available and the relationships between GL producers and authors. The latter sections address the more technical aspects of preparing and submitting reports. GLISC believes the entire document is relevant to the concerns of both authors and GL producers.
, organizes the International Conferences Series on Grey Literature, producing a substantial body of scientific and professional papers on grey literature:
Currently, the conference papers from GL1 to GL12 are openly available in the OpenGrey Repository, http://www.opengrey.eu
GreyNet also organizes GreyWorks the Summer Workshop Series on Grey Literature:
GreyNet likewise publishes the only international scientific journal on grey literature, The Grey Journal (ISSN print 1574-1796, ISSN e-print 1574-180X). The Grey Journal appears three times a year - in spring, summer, and autumn. Each issue in a volume is thematic and deals with one or more related topics in the field of grey literature. The Grey Journal appears both in print and electronic formats. The electronic version on article level is available via EBSCO’s LISTA-FT Database (EBSCO Publishing
). The Grey Journal is indexed by the Scopus
database and other A&I services.
The Grey Journal, International Journal on Grey Literature:
Scientists ask for trustworthy information. The ClimateGate discussion showed that the question of quality needs attention. Of course, one part of grey literature has some kind of quality label (Ph.D. jury, scientific committee selection of communications etc.). What about the rest? How can libraries
guarantee high quality for grey items? Can they? Will Web2.0 item tagging
become an alternative to review and selection?
Another question is about impact and usage. In the past, impact metrics were limited to citations and journals. Today, usage metrics
offer new opportunities to measure impact of a large scale of digital resources, also on the individual item level. Tomorrow, these metrics will provide additional information on quality and popularity to the end user.
Open archive
s will offer more appropriate services and functions for at least some segments of grey literature if not for all. But bibliographic control of grey literature will remain problematic despite the trend toward standardization of digital documents. And the libraries, together with their scientific communities, need to find new forms for the fundamental functions of scientific publishing, applied to open repositories
, non-commercial items and datasets.
Library and information science
Library and information science is a merging of the two fields library science and information science...
. The term is used variably by the intellectual community, librarians, and medical and research professionals to refer to a body of materials that cannot be found easily through conventional channels such as publishers, "but which is frequently original and usually recent" in the words of M.C. Debachere. Examples of grey literature include technical report
Technical report
A technical report is a document that describes the process, progress, or results of technical or scientific research or the state of a technical or scientific research problem. It might also include recommendations and conclusions of the research...
s from government agencies or scientific research groups, working papers from research groups or committees, white paper
White paper
A white paper is an authoritative report or guide that helps solve a problem. White papers are used to educate readers and help people make decisions, and are often requested and used in politics, policy, business, and technical fields. In commercial use, the term has also come to refer to...
s, or preprint
Preprint
A preprint is a draft of a scientific paper that has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.-Role:Publication of manuscripts in a peer-reviewed journal often takes weeks, months or even years from the time of initial submission, because manuscripts must undergo extensive...
s. The term grey literature is often employed exclusively with scientific research in mind. Nevertheless, grey literature is not a specific genre of document, but a specific, non-commercial means of disseminating information.
The identification and acquisition of grey literature poses difficulties for librarians and other information professionals for several reasons. Generally, grey literature lacks strict bibliographic control, meaning that basic information such as author, publication date or publishing body may not be easily discerned. Similarly, non-professional layouts and formats and low print runs of grey literature make the organized collection of such publications challenging compared to more traditional published media such as journal
Academic journal
An academic journal is a peer-reviewed periodical in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as forums for the introduction and presentation for scrutiny of new research, and the critique of existing research...
s and book
Book
A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of hot lava, paper, parchment, or other materials, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf or leaflet, and each side of a leaf is called a page...
s.
Information and research professionals generally draw a distinction between ephemera
Ephemera
Ephemera are transitory written and printed matter not intended to be retained or preserved. The word derives from the Greek, meaning things lasting no more than a day. Some collectible ephemera are advertising trade cards, airsickness bags, bookmarks, catalogues, greeting cards, letters,...
and grey literature. However, there are certain overlaps between the two media and they certainly share common frustrations such as bibliographic control issues.
The Definition of Grey Literature
Despite the absence of a label, Auger described the nature of this “vast body of documents” in a way that would later characterize grey literature, referring to its “continuing increasing quantity”, the “difficulty it presents to the librarian”, its ambiguity between temporary character and durability, and its growing impact on scientific production. He also pointed out the “number of advantages over other means of dissemination, including greater speed, greater flexibility and the opportunity to go into considerable detail if necessary”. For Auger, reports were a “half-published” communication medium with a “complex interrelationship (to) scientific journals”.
“Semi-published literature” is a connotation of grey literature (Keenan, 1996). But it reminds, too, that one can speak about reports without a generic concept. Auger promoted the term of “grey literature” only in the 2nd edition of his book (Auger, 1989). Since then, the meaning of “GL” remained a challenge to scientists and librarians. Does “GL” make sense? Is it necessary? Is it (still) helpful for the study and processing of scientific literature? Or using a variation on the famous quote from Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy Leigh Sayers was a renowned English crime writer, poet, playwright, essayist, translator and Christian humanist. She was also a student of classical and modern languages...
, will it “run away (…) like cows if you look (it) in the face hard enough”?
There are several definitions of grey literature, the most common being the so-called “Luxembourg definition,” which was discussed and approved during the Third International Conference on Grey Literature in 1997: “[Grey literature is] 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
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, a postscript was added for purposes of clarification “...not controlled by commercial publishers, i.e., where publishing is not the primary activity of the producing body” (see Schöpfel & Farace, 2010).
The Luxemburg definition accentuates the supply side of grey literature, e.g., its production and publication both in print and electronic formats. It calls attention to the question of dissemination, the difficulty to identify and access documents described as ephemeral, non-conventional or underground.
Material that “may not enter normal channels or systems of publication, distribution, bibliographic control, or acquisition by booksellers or subscription agents” (U.S. Interagency Gray Literature Working Group): this concept meets Mackenzie Owen’s observation that “grey does not imply any qualification (but) is merely a characterization of the distribution mode” (1997).
Internet transforms the whole value chain of publishing. The Web offers new tools and channels for producing, disseminating and assessing scientific literature. Author and reader, producer and consumer change their information behaviour. We definitely left the Gutenberg era. So what about the definition of grey literature? Is it still empirically sound?
The definition of grey literature is also an economic definition. With the changing research environment and new channels of scientific communication, it becomes clear that grey literature needs a new conceptual framework.
The Grey Literature Network Service
Grey Literature Network Service
The Grey Literature Network Service is a service to facilitate the production, distribution and access to grey literature. Grey literature is "information produced and distributed on all levels of government, academics, business and industry in electronic and print formats not controlled by...
defines grey literature as "information produced on all levels of government, academics, business and industry in electronic and print formats not controlled by commercial publishing i.e. where publishing is not the primary activity of the producing body." (Luxembourg, 1997 - Expanded in New York, 2004).
The U.S. Interagency Gray Literature Working Group (IGLWG) "Gray Information Functional Plan," 18 January 1995, defines 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."
Towards a New Definition
The 12th International Conference on Grey Literature at Prague in December 2010 discussed a new approach to grey literature. The current definition of grey literature – the New York definition – remains helpful and should not be replaced but adapted to the changing environment.The typological approach doesn’t provide an exhaustive and explicit list of items. The economic approach of the New York definition, on the other hand, is intensional and specifies the necessary condition for a document being part of the grey literature. But the same definition is not sufficient in the context of Internet publishing, and we need to designate more essential attributes to clearly differentiate grey from other items.
The proposal is to add four attributes to the New York definition:
- The document character of grey literature (concept of the French multidisciplinary network .)
- Legal nature of works of the mind, e.g., protection by intellectual propertyIntellectual propertyIntellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...
. - A minimum quality level (peer reviewPeer reviewPeer review is a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance and provide credibility...
, label, validation). - The link to intermediation, e.g. the interest of grey items for collectionCollectionCollection or Collections may refer to:* Collection , the abstract concept of collections in computer science* Collection , the actions of a creditor seeking to recoup a debt...
(and not for the end-user).
The proposal for a new definition ("Prague Definition") of grey literature is 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."
Grey literature includes all kind of quality or seminal documentary material a library would like to collect but can’t easily because of non-conventional distribution channels. It is not (only) a question of production and dissemination but (also) of quality and collection. Without (inter)mediation by libraries, no grey literature. It is a case for LIS professionals, a challenge that brings together the communities of grey literature and special collections.
A couple of years ago, the main problem with grey literature appeared to be economics. Simpson (1995) observed, "peripheral materials, including grey literature, expand unabated. Libraries having difficulty collecting traditional materials have little hope of acquiring the periphery."
Today, due to the overwhelming success of web publishing and access to documents the focus has shifted to quality, intellectual property
Intellectual property
Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...
and (inter)mediation. Without a revision that includes the mentioned attributes, the current definition risks being increasingly unable to differentiate grey from other documents.
The proposal for a revised “Prague definition” brings together the former economic approach with new attributes. The next step should be to check this definition against common usage in libraries and different types of grey and other documents. Once done, the value of the definition can be evaluated on the basis of the answers to the following two questions: does this new definition include all kind of documents usually considered by LIS professionals as grey literature, including today’s difficult-to-process and hard-to-collect items, and does it lead to further differentiation or better understanding of how grey literature may be distinguished from other forms of literature? Three challenges in particular are said to face professionals in the field at the present moment:
- The development of institutional repositories by publishing organizations as a complementary and sometimes concurrent service to tradition library holdings; and the place and processing of grey literature in theses archives.
- The tendency of disintermediationDisintermediationIn economics, disintermediation is the removal of intermediaries in a supply chain: "cutting out the middleman". Instead of going through traditional distribution channels, which had some type of intermediate , companies may now deal with every customer directly, for example via the Internet...
in the traditional value chainValue chainThe value chain, is a concept from business management that was first described and popularized by Michael Porter in his 1985 best-seller, Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance.-Firm Level:...
of scientific and technical information. The “risk” of grey literature is not web-based technology but the somehow fading role of libraries and information professionals as intermediaries between authors, publishing bodies and the end-user. And tell the reader why this is important other than job preservation. - The so-called 'Fourth Paradigm', e.g. data-intensive science and the access to datasets that together generate a trend to transform and/or marginalise literature (documents).
With reference to grey literature, replies to a survey in 2010 stated “(…) it is important for knowledge” and “it is a question of freedom” or “non-mainstream publishing”. The future will show if the concept of grey literature remains “ephemeral” and if it contributes to better understanding and processing of this special part of scientific and technical information.
On the Typology of Grey Literature
OpenSIGLE
The OpenSIGLE repository provides open access to the bibliographic records of the former SIGLE database. The creation of the OpenSIGLE archive was decided by some major European STI centres, members of the former European network EAGLE for the collection and dissemination of grey literature...
repository, reports are the most numerous among the different types of grey literature. The ‘reports’ category covers a wide variety of very different documents: institutional reports, annual or activity reports, project or study reports, technical reports, reports published by ministries, laboratories or research teams, etc. Some are disseminated by national and international public bodies; others are confidential, protected, or disseminated to a restricted readership, such as technical reports from industrial R&D laboratories. Some are voluminous, with statistical appendices, while others are only a few pages in length.
In the other categories, citation analyses
Citation analysis
Citation analysis is the examination of the frequency, patterns, and graphs of citations in articles and books. It uses citations in scholarly works to establish links to other works or other researchers. Citation analysis is one of the most widely used methods of bibliometrics...
offer a wide range of grey resources. Besides theses and conference proceedings, they also include unpublished manuscripts
Manuscript
A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...
, newsletters, recommendations and technical standards, patents, technical notes, product catalogs, data and statistics, presentations, malin-grey literature, personal communications, working paper
Working paper
A working paper or work paper or workpaper may refer to:*A preliminary scientific or technical paper. Often, authors will release working papers to share ideas about a topic or to elicit feedback before submitting to a peer reviewed conference or academic journal.* Sometimes the term working paper...
s, house journals, laboratory research books, preprints, academic courseware, lecture notes, and so on. The international network GreyNet
Grey Literature Network Service
The Grey Literature Network Service is a service to facilitate the production, distribution and access to grey literature. Grey literature is "information produced and distributed on all levels of government, academics, business and industry in electronic and print formats not controlled by...
maintains an online listing of document types.
The internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
is altering the landscape, not only by changing user behaviour, but also, and especially, because more and more grey and malin-grey literature is being published on the Web. The internet has radically changed access and distribution methods, accentuating the ephemeral and volatile nature of grey literature, and is set to become the major area for grey literature research in the years ahead.
Malin-Grey Literature
Malin-grey literature has long intrigued grey literature researchers in representing the nexus of an exclusive view of intended readershipTarget audience
In marketing and advertising, a target audience, is a specific group of people within the target market at which the marketing message is aimed .....
, and publishing in its most paradoxical and internally self-contradictory aspect. By contrast with grey literature writ large, 'malin-grey literature' refers to publications whose construction and self-referencing are actively construed to avoid the attention of information professional
Information professional
An information professional is an individual who preserves, organizes, and disseminates information. Information professionals are skilled in the organization and retrieval of recorded knowledge. Traditionally, their work has been with print materials, but these skills are being increasingly used...
s. Typically such professionals employ various parameters in identifying which publications are suited to incorporation within a particular collection. To avoid dissemination and archiving the authors of malin-grey literature employ the absence of bibliographical indicators, deception
Deception
Deception, beguilement, deceit, bluff, mystification, bad faith, and subterfuge are acts to propagate beliefs that are not true, or not the whole truth . Deception can involve dissimulation, propaganda, and sleight of hand. It can employ distraction, camouflage or concealment...
, disinformation, rapid decomposition
Putrefaction
Putrefaction is one of seven stages in the decomposition of the body of a dead animal. It can be viewed, in broad terms, as the decomposition of proteins, in a process that results in the eventual breakdown of cohesion between tissues and the liquefaction of most organs.-Description:In terms of...
(or other self-destructive construction), obscurity or atypical formats. Malin-grey literature should not be confused with samizdat
Samizdat
Samizdat was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader...
or underground literature per se, as these publications often are only concerned with disguising the author and distributor's identities, not actively preventing dissemination.
Some commentators have suggested that the name derives from the French for 'deceptive ingenuity', others - less convincingly - that it is a reference to the Anne-Marie Malingrey (fl. 1960s-70s), a French historian.
The Impact of Grey Literature
Grey literature has a role of its own as a means of distributing scientific and technical information. 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. Some results simply are not published anywhere else.A Franco-Dutch study reviews 64 citation analyses published between 1987 and 2005, citing altogether several thousand references. The table below shows the proportion of grey literature cited in publications from different scientific disciplines.
| Field | Grey literature citations (in %) |
|---|---|
| Soil sciences | 14% |
| Biology | 5-13% |
| Veterinary medicine | 6% |
| Psychiatry (addiction | 1% |
| Psychology | 3% |
| Engineering sciences | 39-42% |
| Economic sciences | 9-17% |
| Sociology | 7-9% |
| Education sciences | 14-19% |
The relative importance of grey literature is largely dependent on research disciplines and subjects, on methodological approaches, and on sources used. In some fields, especially the life sciences and medical sciences, there has been a traditional preference for conventional distribution media (journals), while in others, such as agriculture, aeronautics and the engineering sciences in general, grey literature resources tend to predominate.
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.
Following another study, grey literature seems also to play a considerable part in the library and information sciences, accounting on average around 20% of all sources used a figure that may be compared with the citation habits in economics and educational sciences. Even so, citations to grey material vary widely between different papers from 0% to 50% and more, depending on subject areas and methodologies.
The Grey Literature International Steering Committee (GLISC)
The Grey Literature International Steering Committee (GLISC) was established in 2006 after the 7th International Conference on Grey Literature (GL7) held in Nancy (France) on 5–6 December 2005.During this conference, the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS) (Rome, Italy) presented guidelines for the production of scientific and technical reports included in the wider category of grey literature. The Italian initiative for the adoption of uniform requirements for the production of reports was discussed during a Round Table on Quality Assessment by a small group of GL producers, librarians and information professionals who agreed to collaborate in the revision of the guidelines proposed by ISS. The group approving these guidelines – informally known as the “Nancy Group” – has been formally defined as the Grey Literature International Steering Committee (GLISC).
The Guidelines include ethical principles related to the process of evaluating, improving, and making reports available and the relationships between GL producers and authors. The latter sections address the more technical aspects of preparing and submitting reports. GLISC believes the entire document is relevant to the concerns of both authors and GL producers.
Grey Literature Resources
Since 1993, GreyNet International, the Grey Literature Network ServiceGrey Literature Network Service
The Grey Literature Network Service is a service to facilitate the production, distribution and access to grey literature. Grey literature is "information produced and distributed on all levels of government, academics, business and industry in electronic and print formats not controlled by...
, organizes the International Conferences Series on Grey Literature, producing a substantial body of scientific and professional papers on grey literature:
- 1993 GL1 Amsterdam, “GL’93, Weinberg Report 2000” http://www.opengrey.eu/search/request?q=partner:(greynet)+AND+year:1994
- 1995 GL2 Washington D.C. ”GL’95, Grey Exploitations in the 21st Century” http://www.opengrey.eu/search/request?q=partner:(greynet)+AND+year:1996
- 1997 GL3 Luxembourg, “GL’97, Perspectives on the Design and Transfer of STI” http://www.opengrey.eu/search/request?q=partner:(greynet)+AND+year:1998
- 1999 GL4 Washington D.C., “GL’99, New Frontiers in Grey Literature” http://www.opengrey.eu/search/request?q=partner:(greynet)+AND+year:2000
- 2003 GL5 Amsterdam, “Grey Matters in the World of Networked Information” http://www.opengrey.eu/search/request?q=partner:(greynet)+AND+year:2003
- 2004 GL6 New York, “Work on Grey in Progress” http://www.opengrey.eu/search/request?q=partner:(greynet)+AND+year:2004
- 2005 GL7 Nancy, France “Open Access to Grey Resources”http://www.opengrey.eu/search/request?q=partner:(greynet)+AND+year:2005
- 2006 GL8 New Orleans, “Harnessing the Power of Grey”http://www.opengrey.eu/search/request?q=partner:(greynet)+AND+year:2006
- 2007 GL9 Antwerp, “Grey Foundations in Information Landscape”http://www.opengrey.eu/search/request?q=partner:(greynet)+AND+year:2007
- 2008 GL10 Amsterdam, “Designing the Grey Grid for Information Society”http://www.opengrey.eu/search/request?q=partner:(greynet)+AND+year:2008
- 2009 GL11 Washington D.C., “The Grey Mosaic: Piecing It All Together”http://www.opengrey.eu/search/request?q=partner:(greynet)+AND+year:2009
- 2010 GL12 Prague (CZ), “Transparency in Grey Literature: Grey Tech Approaches to High Tech Issues”http://www.opengrey.eu/search/request?q=partner:(greynet)+AND+year:2010
- 2011 GL13 Washington D.C., "The Grey Circuit: From Social Networking to Wealth Creation" Library of Congress (forthcoming) December 5–6, 2011
Currently, the conference papers from GL1 to GL12 are openly available in the OpenGrey Repository, http://www.opengrey.eu
GreyNet also organizes GreyWorks the Summer Workshop Series on Grey Literature:
- GreyWorks 2009, Amsterdam, "Benchmarks and Forecasts on Grey Literature"
- GreyWorks 2010, Washington D.C., "Transparency Governs the Grey Landscape"
- GreyWorks 2011, Amsterdam, "Ten Strategies for Grey Literature"
GreyNet likewise publishes the only international scientific journal on grey literature, The Grey Journal (ISSN print 1574-1796, ISSN e-print 1574-180X). The Grey Journal appears three times a year - in spring, summer, and autumn. Each issue in a volume is thematic and deals with one or more related topics in the field of grey literature. The Grey Journal appears both in print and electronic formats. The electronic version on article level is available via EBSCO’s LISTA-FT Database (EBSCO Publishing
EBSCO Publishing
EBSCO Publishing, headquartered in Ipswich, Massachusetts, is an aggregator of premium full-text content. EBSCO Publishing's core business is providing online databases via EBSCOhost to libraries worldwide. EBSCOhost is used by libraries, schools, academic institutions, medical institutions, and...
). The Grey Journal is indexed by the Scopus
Scopus
Scopus, officially named SciVerse Scopus, is a bibliographic database containing abstracts and citations for academic journal articles. It covers nearly 18,000 titles from over 5,000 international publishers, including coverage of 16,500 peer-reviewed journals in the scientific, technical, medical,...
database and other A&I services.
The Grey Journal, International Journal on Grey Literature:
- TGJ Volume 7, Number 1, Spring 2011 Transparency in Grey Literature
- TGJ Volume 7, Number 2, Summer 2011 System Approaches to Grey Literature
- TGJ Volume 7, Number 3, Autumn 2011 To be announced*
- TGJ Volume 6, Number 1, Spring 2010 Government Alliance to Grey Literature
- TGJ Volume 6, Number 2, Summer 2010 Shared Strategies for Grey Literature
- TGJ Volume 6, Number 3, Autumn 2010 Research on Grey Literature in Europe
- TGJ Volume 5, Number 1, Spring 2009 Paperless Initiatives for Grey Literature
- TGJ Volume 5, Number 2, Summer 2009 Archaeology and Grey Literature
- TGJ Volume 5, Number 3, Autumn 2009 Trusted Grey Sources and Resources
- TGJ Volume 4, Number 1, Spring 2008 Praxis and Theory in Grey Literature
- TGJ Volume 4, Number 2, Summer 2008 Access to Grey in a Web Environment
- TGJ Volume 4, Number 3, Autumn 2008 Making Grey more Visible
- TGJ Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2007 Grey Standards in Transition and Use
- TGJ Volume 3, Number 2, Summer 2007 Academic and Scholarly Grey
- TGJ Volume 3, Number 3, Autumn 2007 Mapping Grey Resources
- TGJ Volume 2, Number 1, Spring 2006 Grey Matters for OAI
- TGJ Volume 2, Number 2, Summer 2006 Collections on a Grey Scale
- TGJ Volume 2, Number 3, Autumn 2006 Using Grey to Sustain Innovation
- TGJ Volume 1, Number 1, Spring 2005 Publish Grey or Perish
- TGJ Volume 1, Number 2, Summer 2005 Repositories - Home2Grey
- TGJ Volume 1, Number 3, Autumn 2005 Grey Areas in Education
Perspectives
In the ongoing discussion on new business models of academic publishing, eScience and open access to public research results, non-commercial distribution channels will continue to play a central role as vectors of scientific communication, alongside commercial publishing.Scientists ask for trustworthy information. The ClimateGate discussion showed that the question of quality needs attention. Of course, one part of grey literature has some kind of quality label (Ph.D. jury, scientific committee selection of communications etc.). What about the rest? How can libraries
Academic library
An academic library is a library that is attached to academic institutions above the secondary level, serving the teaching and research needs of students and staff...
guarantee high quality for grey items? Can they? Will Web2.0 item tagging
Tag (metadata)
In online computer systems terminology, a tag is a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information . This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching...
become an alternative to review and selection?
Another question is about impact and usage. In the past, impact metrics were limited to citations and journals. Today, usage metrics
Web analytics
Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage....
offer new opportunities to measure impact of a large scale of digital resources, also on the individual item level. Tomorrow, these metrics will provide additional information on quality and popularity to the end user.
Open archive
Open archive
An open archive is an institutional repository or some other web-accessible digital database that is compliant with the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting ....
s will offer more appropriate services and functions for at least some segments of grey literature if not for all. But bibliographic control of grey literature will remain problematic despite the trend toward standardization of digital documents. And the libraries, together with their scientific communities, need to find new forms for the fundamental functions of scientific publishing, applied to open repositories
Institutional repository
An Institutional repository is an online locus for collecting, preserving, and disseminating - in digital form - the intellectual output of an institution, particularly a research institution....
, non-commercial items and datasets.
See also
- European Association for Grey Literature ExploitationEuropean Association for Grey Literature ExploitationThe “European Association for Grey Literature Exploitation” was created in 1985 by European scientific and technical information centres and libraries in order to produce the bibliographic database “System for Information on Grey Literature in Europe” .The objective was to improve information...
: EAGLE - System for Information on Grey Literature in EuropeSystem for Information on Grey Literature in EuropeThe “System for Information on Grey Literature in Europe” was established in 1980, two years after a seminar on grey literature organised by the European Commission in York...
: SIGLE - OpenSIGLEOpenSIGLEThe OpenSIGLE repository provides open access to the bibliographic records of the former SIGLE database. The creation of the OpenSIGLE archive was decided by some major European STI centres, members of the former European network EAGLE for the collection and dissemination of grey literature...
- Grey Literature Network ServiceGrey Literature Network ServiceThe Grey Literature Network Service is a service to facilitate the production, distribution and access to grey literature. Grey literature is "information produced and distributed on all levels of government, academics, business and industry in electronic and print formats not controlled by...
: GreyNet - Grey Literature International Steering CommitteeGrey Literature International Steering CommitteeThe Grey Literature International Steering Committee was established in 2006 after the 7th International Conference on Grey Literature held in Nancy on 5–6 December 2005....
: GLISC
Further reading
- Braun, Janice and Lola Raykovic Hopkins. “Collection-Level Cataloging, Indexing, and Preservation of the Hoover Institution Pamphlet Collection on Revolutionary Change in Twentieth Century Europe”. Technical Services Quarterly 12:4 (1995): 1-8.
- Childress, Eric and Erik Jul. "Going Gray: Gray Literature and Metadata". Journal of Internet Cataloging 6:3 (2003): 3-6.
- Denda, Kayo. “Fugitive Literature in the Cross Hairs: An Examination of Bibliographic Control and Access”. Collection Management 27:2 (2002): 75-86.
- D. J. Farace & J. Schöpfel (eds.) (2010). Grey Literature in Library and Information Studies. De Gruyter Saur.http://www.degruyter.de/cont/imp/saur/detailEn.cfm?id=IS-9783598117930-1&fg=BB-01
- Harrison, John. 2005.Grey Literature or Fugitive Report Project . MLA Forum, 4(1).
- Hirtle, Peter. 1991. Broadsides vs. Gray Literature. Available: http://www-cpa.stanford.edu/byform/mailing-lists/exlibris/1991/1 I/msgOO02O.htm (June 15, 1997).
- Information World. 1996. What is gray literature? Available: http://info.learned.co.uk/li/newswire/I196/wiII96.htm, (June 18, 1997).
- P. Pejsova (ed.) (2010). Grey Literature Repositories. Radim Bacuvcik VeRBuM, Zlin CZ.http://nrgl.techlib.cz/index.php/Book
- Schöpfel, Joachim. Observations on the Future of Grey Literature. The Grey Journal 2:2 (2006): 67-76. Available: http://archivesic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/sic_00168998/fr/ (December 2009)
- J. Schöpfel & D. J. Farace (2010). `Grey Literature'. In M. J. Bates & M. N. Maack (eds.), Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences, Third Edition, pp. 2029-2039. CRC Press.
- Seeman, Corey. "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 (2002): 3-20.
- Sulouff, P., et al. Learning about gray literature by interviewing subject librarians: A study at the University of Rochester. College & Research Libraries News, 66(7) 2005, p. 510-515.
- White, Herbert. 1984. Managing the Special Library. White Plains, N. Y.: Knowledge Industries Publications, Inc.
External links
- About grey literature in medical systematic reviews
- ALA Internet Resources: Gray Literature
- GreyNet: The Grey Literature Network Service
- Science.gov is a gateway to over 50 million pages of authoritative selected science information provided by U.S. government agencies, including research and development results.
- http://www.scienceaccelerator.gov/ 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. From the Office of Scientific & Technical Information at the United States Department of EnergyUnited States Department of EnergyThe United States Department of Energy is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government concerned with the United States' policies regarding energy and safety in handling nuclear material...
. - Grey Literature Library for UK Archaeology
- http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu CiteSeerX indexes some of the gray literature such as technical reports in computer and information science
- http://www.opengrey.eu OpenGrey Repository, formerly OpenSIGLE