Realizing the Potential of Grey Literature by Recognizing its Publishers: The PUBGREY Project and the Case of Climate Change

The way to confront climate change is by publishing the results of research dealing with the manifold and diverse topics associated with this complex entity. In response to this, GreyNet sets out to identify among its community of practice organizations that consider themselves publishers in grey literature. This is initiated by designing a standardized template. The acquisition of the data compiled via the online template harvested 25 records. The records captured in this phase of the project now comprise the PUBGREY registry openly accessible on GreyNet’s website and via the GreyGuide, GreyNet’s web access portal and repository. The organizations that appear in the PUBGREY registry are together seen as a consortium of publishers in grey literature. Together they demonstrate the supply-side of grey literature where its production, publication, and open access adhere to FAIR principles. Following this, a selection of records is made based on three criteria forming the population of this use case. These criteria include: open access compliance, each of the publishing bodies will have already been assigned a ROR ID, and an individual’s email address is provided as the point of contact in the record. Ten of the 25 records in the PUBGREY registry adhere to the established criteria and form the population of our study. These are then asked to complete a brief online survey dealing with grey literature. The survey questions used in this study on climate change are the exact same as in a study three years earlier on circular economy. The reuse of the questionnaire was based on a recent working paper demonstrating how circular economy provides a strategy in achieving goals for climate change. Finally, via the search function on the ten websites of our survey population, a search of the terms: ‘climate’, ‘climate change’, and ‘circular economy’ are carried out. The results from both the survey and the searches from the websites are then analyzed and presented in summary.