Introduction

We are excited to bring you this Special Issue devoted to Grey Literature.

The idea for the issue emerged after a very successful satellite meeting “Grey Literature: Scholarly Communication in a Digital Age” of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) 85th World Library and Information Conference (WLIC) held in Athens, Greece on August 23, 2019. The satellite meeting was jointly sponsored by the Serials and Other Continuing Resources Section (SOCRS) and the National Library Section of IFLA. SOCRS decided to create an expanded publication related to Grey Literature since there was obviously considerable interest and activity surrounding the topic area. Margaret Mering from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a member of the SOCRS committee agreed to co-edit the issue with Sharon Dyas-Correia from the University of Oxford, Editor-In-Chief, The Serials Librarian and a member of the SOCRS committee.

This special issue begins with “Resourcefully: Grey Matters” written by our regular columnist Lindsay Cronk who presents a thought-provoking view of grey literature and how libraries can learn from past mistakes in supporting and preserving independent open access publishing in the future. The articles that follow are grouped around the following three themes: types of grey literature, issues related to grey literature and how libraries around the globe are dealing with grey literature.

Types of grey literature

In their article, “Government Information: Readily Accessible yet Also Grey Literature,” Tom Rohrig and Laura Sare discuss the importance and the unique challenges of local, state, national and international government information as grey literature. While the primary focus is on United States government publications, examples from other countries are included for comparison. Colleen Williams’ article, “Discovering and Identifying Grey Literature in the Field of Law,” explores what legal materials qualify as grey literature. It also considers the difficulties in discovering this type of grey literature and offers possible solutions in assisting with discoverability. In her article, “Grey Literature Searching for Systematic Reviews in the Health Sciences,” Lilian Hoffecker offers guidance in searching for health sciences grey literature that balances practicality while maintaining methodical rigor. The article also provides a primer on using Google to locate grey literature. Robert E. Sedgwick and Rachel Ross’s article, “Making Grey Literature Discoverable and Impactful on JSTOR through Comprehensive Search and Rich Metadata” details JSTOR’s work to make technical reports more accessible by creating a centralized curated collection and by enhancing discoverability through scoped searching and rich metadata.

Issues relating to grey literature

Regina Romano Reynolds and Karen E. A. Ross’s article, “ISSN Is for Black, White, and Many Shades of Grey” spotlights the types of grey literature which are in scope for ISSN and describes the bibliographic metadata for these resources with ISSN assignment. The benefits of assigning ISSN to grey literature are also covered in this article. In his article, “From Zines of Peer Reviewed Journals: Cataloging Contemporary Pagan Resources,” Guy Frost provides insight into some of the unique challenges of cataloging Pagan and Wiccan serials and introduces new MARC fields. In the context of Danny Kingsley’s article “Impact Opportunity’ for Academic Libraries through Grey Literature,” impact is considered to be the effect of research beyond the academic environment. Drawing on experiences in Australia and the United Kingdom, this article proposes a new role for libraries in relation to scholarly communication and research impact.

How libraries are dealing with grey literature from National Libraries to individual libraries

Sophie Vandepontseele and Nadège Isbergue’s article, “Grey Literature and Legal Deposit: The Approach of the Royal Library of Belgium,” analyses possibly merging the content of the Belgium Open Access Repository for Federal Organizations into the national libraries’ collections. This analysis includes a reflection on how a national library, whose mission includes legal deposit, can play a role with grey literature. In their article, “How accessible is our collection? National Library of Iran’s strategies for Grey Literature,” Reza Shahrabi Farahani and Somayeh Sadat Hashemi report on the National Library’s processes for collecting, organizing, digitizing and disseminating grey literature. Shu Liu’s article “New Knowledge Services for Grey Literature: Innovative Ways to Improve Our Services in China” outlines the results of a study investigating knowledge services for grey literature provided by Peking University and other Chinese universities. Karlene Robinson, Audrey Saddler, Maureen Kerr-Campbell, Sonia Patrickson-Stewart and Godfrey Walker in their article “Digital Accessibility: Overcoming the Challenges of Managing Grey Literature in Jamaica: The Case of The University of the West Indies Mona Library” document the challenges of accessing grey literature in Jamaica and the success the UWI Mona Library has had using digitization to provide access to grey literature. Robyn Price explains in her article “A grey literature publishing model for the Imperial College London institutional repository” how the library made the IR a good option for authors to publishing their grey literature. For example, they developed the functionality to assign DOIs and communicated how to cite grey literature. In her article, “Providing public access to grey literature at the National Transportation Library,” Mary Moulton describes implementing an official public access plan for a library made up of grey literature and creating and maintaining a public access repository. The articles by Vandepantseele and Isbergue, Farahani and Hashemi, and Liu, as well as the articles by Robinson, Saddler, Kerr-Campbell, Patrickson-Stewart and Walker, and Moulton appearing in this issue are expanded and enhanced articles based on presentations from the IFLA satellite meeting.

We hope you find this special issue interesting, informative and helpful and that the articles serve to inspire further exploration and research into the many issues surrounding grey literature internationally.

Sincerely,