Integrating grey literature into a scientific and technical watch

The open science movement is improving the accessibility of grey literature. However, the lack of identifiers and problems of quality and richness of metadata are still a handicap when it comes to finding these documents, and long-term preservation represents a major challenge for their long-term survival.

• What does this little-known term "grey literature" mean?

• When should you include conferences, reports, dissertations or working papers in your monitoring system?

• Are there differences according to field or theme?

• How do you assess the quality of this type of document?

• Where can I find these documents?

• Is grey literature royalty-free?

This fact sheet will help to make better use of unpublished or unmarketed scientific and technical work, in particular conferences, reports, dissertations and working papers.

It will also address a number of issues relating to the integration of grey literature into a scientific and technical watch system.