This paper looks at the role of Australian Policy Online (APO) as a collection of ‘grey’ public policy research and considers how this fits within the broader context of open access publishing and policy development.

The amount of grey literature now being produced presents challenges for APO as well as other collecting agencies and society in general. This paper looks at who is operating in this space in Australia, the issues for collecting and preserving grey literature, and how bibliographic exchange and interoperability help us to manage the flood of new material and reduce the duplicated effort that currently exists.

While APO has been a foundational player in this field, it has reached a stage where a new solution is required - a national online collaborative collection of full text digital resources created with a vision for the benefits that the semantic web will bring.