Grey literature: digital scholarship and digital dust

26 February 2013 | It’s called grey literature because it’s typically unregulated and beyond the scrutiny and control of the peer reviewed journals or public service processes. But is grey literature credible? Does it genuinely add to our store of knowledge?  and how much of this digital scholarship will become digital dust?

Websites by their very nature tend to focus on the here and now with little attention given to long term access and storage. Capturing, assessing and keeping all this content is becoming a big issue for researchers, librarians and archivists

This episode of ABC Radio National's Big Ideas presents highlights from the conference Where is the evidence? Policy, research and the rise of grey literature which took place on October 2012.

Speakers include:

Professor Julian Thomas - Director of the Swinburne Institute for Social Research, Professor of Media and Communications at Swinburne University and Chair of the management committee of Australian Policy Online.

Amanda Lawrence - Managing editor of Australian Policy Online.

Derek Whitehead - Director, Information Resources and University Copyright Officer, Swinburne University of Technology.

Roxanne Massingham - University Librarian and Chief Scholarly Information Officer, ANU.

Dr Gerald White - Principal Research Fellow, Teaching Learning and Leadership at the Australian Council for Educational Research.

Bernard Keane- Writer and Canberra based correspondent for Crikey.