Grey literature fills in gaps in the information landscape by offering a range of perspectives outside the scholarly publication cycle. Resources in academic libraries focus on peer-reviewed books and articles. Authors of these materials have to prefer book and article specific formats as the venue for their work. They must also have education and employment credentials that evidence them as authorities on a subject. Publishing in journals has moved to a model requiring significant added processing charges when the author wishes their work to be open access and this is posing a financial barrier for authors without grant or institutional funding. Institutions and governments worldwide do not publish in these commercial venues so their information must be located in a variety of ways.
Many voices are missing from peer-reviewed sources within journal literature. For this reason, you must TRACE other sources using Thorough Research Across Customized Environments. Examples of these environments include:
- Local knowledge from a specific location
- Community knowledge from a people sharing a skill or interest
- Multilingual content for global perspectives
- Unpublished research
- Practitioner experiences and applied information
- Policy and advocacy documents
- Stakeholder views
- Information in alternate formats
