Digital publishing, Open Access, and Grey Literature: the war in Ukraine 2022 as a use case

The underlying strategy in this study focuses on digital persistent identifiers and other linked open data as they become connected and interrelated in the course of research and whose outcome is published as grey literature. On January 31st 2022, GreyNet published its 2nd edition of the International Directory of Organizations in Grey Literature (IDGL). This edition includes record entries from 45 countries worldwide with a listing of 224 organizations. Each entry contains the organization's URL and ROR ID, which further provides access to other linked open data such as GRID, ISNI, CrossRef Funder ID, and Wikidata. GreyNet will use this information resource as a lead into the project dealing with digital publishing, open access, and grey literature, whereby the War in Ukraine will serve as a use case. The population of the study relies for the greater part on IDGL, a digital publication that contains access to persistent identifiers, specifically the ROR ID. An online survey is then further designed, the questions are formulated in such a way that a number of the responses provide other linked open data and digital persistent identifiers namely ORCiDs and DOIs. Survey data together with the linked metadata gathered and compiled in this study will then be analyzed. The results are expected to demonstrate the currentness of grey literature, its diverseness in formats and document types, the organizations that stand behind these publications, and how actionable persistent identifiers opens research in grey literature to a new level playing field situated in a FAIR environment. An environment where data is not only findable and openly accessible but also interoperable and reusable by means of digital publishing. Records harvested via the online survey will be included in the RGL Collection (Resources in Grey Literature) housed in the GreyGuide Repository.