AccessGrey: securing open access to grey literature for science and society

Persistent identifiers such as a DOI1 for a publication and an ORCiD2 for an author/researcher can be approached from both the demand-side as well as supply-side of information. It appears however that the former attracts more attention. Here emphasis lies in the access to and preservation of research output. Yet, it is on the supply-side regarding the acquisition of research output that persistent identifiers may by the same token have influence in identifying and populating prospective data archives and repositories. This study will look at the influence persistent identifiers have in securing the acquisition of grey literature for public access. The goal of this project is twofold. First, to carry out a survey within the grey literature community as to the opinions, uses, and applications of persistent identifiers. And second, to initiate a project geared to populate a new collection housed in the GreyGuide Repository3 by using the DOI as an incentive. Resources in Grey Literature (RGL) is as a generic, multidisciplinary collection that will serve for this purpose. Using GreyNet's distribution channels and social media, stakeholders in the field of grey literature are invited to enter one or more of their publications in the RGL collection. Each new entry will receive a DOI minted by GreyNet International and further stored and preserved in the DataCite registry . Also, a system generated citation will be added to each new entry in order to facilitate record use. The types of grey literature documents eligible for entry in the RGL collection are numerous . Brief guidelines for record entry require that it be self-archived using the existing online-template and that both the metadata record and accompanying full-text document(s) are in English. An additional descriptive field does allow for entry in another language. And, a translation of the document can also be uploaded in the repository. Finally, it is understood that by submitting the metadata record and file(s), they become open access compliant under Creative Commons license CC-BY-SA. The initial phase of the project commenced in April 2019 and closed in October 2019. Records harvested during this period along with the results of the survey will be analyzed in its second phase. In the final phase, the project's outcome will be published. Results should indicate whether the AccessGrey Project be extended to other collections in the GreyGuide, and if this project would be of value to other communities of practice in the field of grey literature.