9. Frequently asked questions

Are these documents copyright-free?

Don't think of grey literature as "royalty-free". It is protected by copyright. Beware of plagiarism or counterfeiting. However, some of these documents are now available online under a free license, such as "Creative Commons", which authorizes sharing on the Internet and tells users what they can download and under what conditions.

Can we trust the quality of grey literature?

Not always. Most of these documents (theses, but also some reports and conferences) have been validated, controlled and filtered by scientific or professional bodies. Others are less reliable, especially when they come from personal websites, are self-published or distributed without an institutional label, or are non-evaluated documents (without peer review), such as preprints. In all these cases, we must...