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To explore the changing nature of grey literature, the British Library collections of grey literature and the future challenges of collecting and supplying this type of material.

This article provides an informal description of the British Library grey literature collection and views on challenges in acquiring and supplying grey literature.

The nature of grey literature is changing in an increasingly electronic environment. In this new environment of electronic access there is still a need and demand for organisations to collect, preserve and make this material accessible.

Provides an insight in to the British Library treatment of grey literature.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how electronic grey literature is being incorporated into Women's Studies collections at academic libraries.

The electronic grey literature holdings of four American academic libraries at universities with graduate Women's Studies programs were collected and analyzed. This included: databases; digital special collections; web sites; and online course guides that the library had created for Women's Studies courses.

Women's Studies International and GenderWatch were the two most popular databases, being available at three of the four libraries studied. The most popular web sites were University of Wisconsin – Women's Studies Librarian (www.library.wisc.edu/libraries/WomensStudies/) and WSSLinks: Women and Gender Studies web sites (http://libr.org/wss/wsslinks/index.html). Recommended web sites were overwhelmingly multidisciplinary in nature and covered a variety of topics related to Women's Studies such as business, art, health, music, and philosophy. The digital collections with women's grey literature all dealt with historical topics and were either about a specific group of people or a specific person or place that had a tie to the university where it was housed.

Grey literature is becoming an increasing popular topic in collection development and document preservation. However, there is little research on grey literature created by women. Specific databases and web sites that were found in the collections studied are mentioned so that other libraries may use the information to enhance their own collections.

The study aims to showcase the developmental perspective of “grey literature” and its importance to different sectors of the society. Furthermore, issues, challenges and possibilities concerned with the existence of “grey literature” have also been discoursed.

The study is based on the existing literature published in the field of “grey literature” which was identified with the aid of three leading indexing and abstracting services, Web of Science, SciVerse Scopus, and Google Scholar. Keywords like grey literature, black literature, The Grey Journal, The International Journal on Grey Literature, International Conference on Grey Literature, non-conventional literature, semi-published literature, System for Information on Grey Literature in Europe (SIGLE), European Association for the Exploitation of Grey Literature (EAGLE), white literature, white papers, theses and dissertations, GreyNet, grey literature-electronic media, Grey market, open access, OpenNet, open access repositories, institutional repositories, open archives, electronic theses and dissertations, institutional libraries, scholarly communication, access to knowledge, metadata standards for grey literature, metadata heterogeneity, disciplinary grey literature, etc. were searched in the select databases. Simple as well as advanced search feature of the databases were made use of. Moreover, for more recent and updated information on the topic, the “citing articles” feature of the databases was also used. The “citing articles” were consulted on the basis of their relevance with the subject content.

The study helps to understand the definitive framework and developmental perspective of “grey literature”. “Grey Literature” has emerged as a promising content for enhancing the visibility of the ideas that were earlier unexplored and least made use of “Grey literature” has also overcome the problems and issues with its existence and adoption. Technology has played a catalytic role in eradicating the issues and problems pertinent to the “grey literature” to a greater extent.

The study is based on the published literature that is indexed by only three databases, i.e. Web of Science, SciVerse Scopus and Google Scholar. Furthermore, some limited aspects of “grey literature” have been covered.

The study will be of great help to various stakeholders and policymakers to showcase the value and importance of “grey literature” for better access and exploitation. It will also be of importance to those interested to know how the literature tagged as grey changed with the passing time and how it through its unseen characteristics has evolved as an important source of information at par with the “white literature”.

The study tries to provide a demarcated and segregated outlook of the “grey literature”. It also focuses on various issues, problems and possibilities pertinent to the adoption and existence of “grey literature”.

While distribution channels of theses and dissertations have changed significantly in the digital age, they are generally still considered grey literature. This paper aims to argue the applicability of the concept of grey to electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs).

The paper is presented as a debate between two contradictory opinions on the application of the grey literature concept to ETDs.

The paper provides a definition of grey literature and then discusses its application to electronic dissertations and theses. In particular, it assesses the aspects of acquisition, quality, access and preservation. Some arguments highlight the “grey nature” of ETDs, such as the limited access via institutional and other repositories. Other arguments (e.g. the development of ETD infrastructures and the quality of ETDs) question this grey approach to ETDs. The paper concludes that “greyness” remains a challenge for ETDs, a problem waiting for solution on the way to open science through the application of the FAIR (findability, accessibility, interoperability reusability) principles.

Library and information science (LIS) professionals and scientists should be careful about using the concept of grey literature. The debate will help academic librarians and LIS researchers to better understand the nature of grey literature and its coverage, here in the field of ETDs.

Some definitions from the print age may not be applicable to the digital age. The contradictory character of the debate helps clarify the similitudes and differences of grey literature and ETDs and highlights the challenge of ETDs, in particular, their accessibility and findability.

This article seeks to investigate the impact of the open archive initiative on the document supply of grey literature.

The article is based on a comparative survey of five major institutions: The British Library (UK), CISTI (Canada), INIST‐CNRS (France), KISTI (South Korea) and TIB Hannover (Germany).

All major document suppliers are more or less deeply involved in the open archive movement, and this involvement has an obvious impact on the policy of acquisition, archiving and supply of grey literature (dissertations, reports, conferences, etc.).

Even if the impact of increased access to digital resources on document supply is relatively well documented, little is known about the specific effect on grey literature, especially in the OA environment. This study provides some evidence concerning this effect.

The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical insight into the use of the term and concept of grey literature in recent scientific papers.

The author conducted a scientometric analysis with Scopus data on 1,606 papers mentioning grey (or gray) literature published in 2018. Additionally, the author analysed the evolution between 1999 and 2018, and performed a content analysis on a random subsample of 70 papers in open access.

The percentage of papers that mention grey literature is low (0.05%) but steadily rising. They are from over 100 countries and a long tail of institutions, covering, namely, medical and health sciences and related topics. The dominant document type is systematic reviews, defining grey literature generally thought of as “unpublished”, “not peer reviewed” and “not in databases” and meaning, most of the time, all kinds of reports and conference papers. A large variety of sources and options on how to retrieve grey literature is mentioned, including Google and Google Scholar, specialised digital libraries, relevant websites, handsearching in bibliographic references and contact with experts in the field.

The study is limited to papers indexed in the Scopus database, mainly journals, written in English, with a bias in favour of medical and life sciences.

There is no recent study on the real usage of the term of grey literature in a large sample of academic papers.

The purpose of this study is twofold. First, the study shall evaluate the extent of usage of grey literature and its different types of addiction research. The second purpose of the research is to analyze the extent of usage of reports such as research reports, survey reports, data reports, etc. As the reports are produced in general by various organizations and can be accessed by not only academicians but also the general public, they play an important role in the dissemination of research to the people. Therefore, the study endeavored to identify the major organizations that are involved in the publishing of research reports in the field of addiction.

Scopus database was used for the purpose of collecting the data. References in the reference lists of the articles published in 2018 in the journal Psychology of Addictive Behaviors of the American Psychological Association were collected. Scopus indexes the references of the papers in two different categories, namely, indexed in scopus/scopus references and reference lists. They were then categorized as grey literature and non-grey literature. Further, reports were searched manually so that their producers/authors can be found and categorized according to the organizations.

The study found that grey literature comprises a very small proportion of citations in addiction research (just approximately 5 per cent). This suggests that the improper indexing and bibliographic control of grey literature may be one of the reasons behind the low numbers. Reports comprised the largest proportion of the grey literature cited in addiction research, followed by software documentation, unpublished manuscripts, guidebooks, handbooks, manuals, websites, government publications, etc. The reports of the US Department of Health and Human Services comprised the maximum citations in the reports category because of the reports produced by organizations like Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) which comprised 17.59 per cent of the total reports. National Institute of Health (USA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others. Other than the reports of the organizations of the USA, the reports published by the organizations of Canada, Australia, UK, New Zealand and one European Body were also cited by the articles of the journal.

The research focuses on the use of grey literature in addiction research. The findings of the study indicate very low citations to grey literature in addiction research. This reinforces the need for a separate worldwide information retrieval system for grey literature for researchers to conduct systematic reviews.

Very few studies have been conducted on the use of grey literature and hardly any research focuses on the use of grey literature in addiction research. The study goes one step further and identifies major organizations that are involved in the production of research reports in the field so that their reports can be properly indexed.

Throughout its history feminism has produced “grey” literature. This material has played an important part in communicating women’s knowledge(s) and instigating activism. This paper considers the development of grey literature within feminism and its value to feminism, in brief. The key focus of the paper is in the potentials of the Internet as a communication mechanism and for feminist grey literature. Consideration is given to rapidly expanding forms of feminist grey literature on the Internet, and the potentials and concerns raised by this grey medium are discussed. Despite fears raised by some writers about the dangers and difficulties of cyberspace for women, overall this paper is optimistic about the potentials for feminist grey literature. Hence, it is suggested that grey literature on the Net offers global feminist sustenance; potential empowerment; and a means to challenge social inequalities.

This paper seeks to investigate the impact of the open archive initiative on the document supply of grey literature.

The article is based on a comparative survey of five major scientific and technical information centres: The British Library (UK), CISTI (Canada), INIST‐CNRS (France), KISTI (South Korea), and TIB Hannover (Germany).

All major document suppliers are quite deeply involved in the open archive movement, and this involvement has an obvious impact on the policy of acquisition, archiving and supply of grey literature (dissertations, reports, conferences etc.).

The paper is a follow‐up study of the survey published in 2006.

In this article, grey literature is identified as unregistered textuality (radicalizing its characteristics, such as the difficulty of its identification, access, bibliographic control, and its undervaluation, etc). It can be deduced that, in this scope, what is called “grey” represents a mode of expressing the unconscious that is described by psychoanalysis. This leads to a Freudian practical observation that no other than grey discourses can accurately talk about grey literature. I shall then suggest how the factor of cybernetics (aka artificial intelligence), according to the theory of Jacques Lacan, modifies this logical condition of “impossibility” to render a grey discourse by the University. This can also be described as the detection of the unregistered.