Grey Literature Law and Legal Definition
Grey literature refers to documents issued by governmental agencies, academic institutions and other groups. Documents include papers, reports, technical notes newsletters, reports, working papers, theses, government documents, bulletins, fact sheets, conference proceedings and other documents. Grey literature is not distributed or indexed by commercial publishers. Grey literature forms a non commercial way of access and dissemination of information. Strict bibliographic control is lacking in Grey literature. One cannot discern basic information such as author, publication date or publishing body from a Grey literature. The purpose of issuing Grey literature is to disseminate current information to a wide audience. Most popular Grey literature in the U.S. is the government publications issued by the United States Government Printing Office (GPO).
