Quality of grey literature in the open access era : Privilege and Responsibility

Abstract

The privilege recently gained in the dissemination of Grey Literature (GL) through the widespread use of the Internet implies a new level of responsibility for GL authors and issuing organizations. In the past, in fact, only a limited number of copies were produced, generally in-house printed, and the target readers were very well focused and known beforehand. Now in the open access era, greater care should be assured not only to the scientific content of GL, but also to the respect of editorial standards to allow easy readability, understanding and retrieval of the document in the Internet. The differences in the editorial processing of GL documents versus articles published in open literature stress the uncertain borders existing between the two channels of publication. In particular, the different levels of technical editing, applied also to non-officially refereed documents, can be compared to the editorial process followed in conventional literature. The long experience in the production of GL by the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (the Italian National Institute of Health) allows reflecting on these issues related to GL production, circulation and use. Besides the authors' primary responsibilities, it is important to focus on the educational role of the editorial staff (inside the research institute producing also open literature), actively contributing to guarantee a better quality to all documents issued by the organization.Includes: Conference preprint, Powerpoint presentation, Abstract and Biographical notes, Pratt student commentaryXAInternationa