GreyNet International

The international Grey Literature Network Service celebrated its Thirtieth Anniversary and understands that this milestone was reached in great part through the financial and content contributions of its associate, institutional, and individual members. In recent years, a number of GreyNet Members have retired or moved on to other positions; however, they continue to share interest in the field of grey literature and remain in contact with GreyNet’s range of information and data resources. As an organization, GreyNet chooses to honor these information professionals and seeks to offer a token of lasting thanks for their sustained support.

Each entry in this online register contains the name of a GreyNet Honorary Member accompanied by their photograph.  Each entry further contains a brief text that reflects their involvement with grey literature. By clicking on the Honorary Member Logo within each entry, one or more of their known contributions to this field of information are displayed. New entries will be periodically added to this online register.

“To all of you that are deeply immersed in the world of grey literature, your work championing these unconventional sources has never been more important. Historically, grey literature, from institutional reports and policy briefs to conference papers and field data, has served as the backbone of empirical research, capturing insights that traditional academic publishing often overlooks. By preserving perspectives that exist outside commercial publishing channels, you help ensure that our collective body of evidence remains rich, diverse, and genuinely reflective of real-world complexities. Today, your dedication to grey literature takes on an even greater significance as we shape the future of artificial intelligence. For AI systems to build truthful, robust, and unbiased knowledge bases, they cannot rely solely on homogenized datasets; they desperately need the granular, specialized, and ground-level truths found in grey literature. Your advocacy ensures that these vital, lived perspectives are woven into the fabric of emerging technologies, creating a smarter, more equitable digital ecosystem for everyone.”

“The application of legal concepts to the location, collection, storage, access and retrieval of grey literature poses additional legal, policy and ethical issues. While many traditional legal concepts can be readily applied to these activities, others are more challenging and involve copyright, trade secret or the assertion of proprietary rights, either by institutions, organizations and associations, as well as licensing, contract or click-to-agree in order to access, which can include restrictions on downstream uses. While it isn't necessarily so that the resolution of these problems requires the creation of a new "grey" law. There are instances where the challenge of access and ownership is compounded by the nature of the grey outside of traditional publication and acquisition processes. This requires legal vigilance, and if necessary, the consideration of sui generis legal solutions to maintain desired levels of access and availability.”

“Grey literature has long posed a challenge for librarians and information professionals. As a valuable and often unique source of information and knowledge, it remains essential for special collections, systematic reviews, and intelligence gathering. While the internet and open science have improved accessibility, persistent challenges remain, including discoverability and access, limited interoperability, the lack of persistent identifiers and comprehensive metadata, and the risk of loss. Today, grey literature contributes significantly to the diversity of scientific and technical information. Much of it is produced through models resembling diamond or institutional publishing, consistent with open science principles of equity, inclusivity, and affordability. Looking ahead, artificial intelligence may help address some of the longstanding challenges of grey literature while creating new ones. Grey literature is therefore likely to remain an important issue for information professionals in the years ahead.”

"His design and development of the GreyGuide Portal and Respository has enabled GreyNet's digital collections and resources to become openly accessible and preserved. The GreyGuide provides a unique testbed for research projects in the field of grey literature that includes actionable persistent identifiers such as ORCiDs, DOIs, and ROR IDs." Computer Scientist and Information Professional, ISTI-CNR (Retired)

"In our time of technological transformation, grey literature has taken on an elevated position of importance at all levels of the pursuit of knowledge.  As information professionals, we must develop the skills necessary to evaluate it and deploy it in our everyday practices, and instruct our clienteles on its value in research." Law Librarian of Congress (Retired)

“In the field of grey literature, special interest and active support coming from France has been mainly conveyed by my home institution, Inist, through its long-time engagement in GreyNet, leading in particular to the creation of the OpenGrey platform.

I was happy to be part of our small Inist team in charge of relations with GreyNet, and also to have the opportunity to help getting GreyNet solidly anchored in ICSTI (International Council for Scientific and Technical Information). The most pleasant experience in this context was my involvement in getting requirements and opportunities for grey literature development exhaustively formalized in the Pisa Declaration.

Current changes in scientific publishing, the move away from classical models, as well as the integration of new research objects, provide room for such development. GreyNet’s Resource Policy Committee, which I had the honor to chair in the past, had paved the way to opening up to new content, the current focus on research data, often intimately linked to text in grey literature, is the most tangible example. Shades of grey may still diversify in the future.”

"I have been involved with the GreyLit Community since 2005 when it was brought to my attention by the President at Information International Associates, Bonnie Carroll and Gail Hodge, a colleague. My primary research at the time was to identify open source information relevant to medical infrastructures and capabilities in foreign countries. This grey information was usually found in a variety of foreign country agencies and non-governmental organizations. Gail and I co-authored my first paper Repositories, Tools for NGOs Involved in Public Health Activities in Developing Countries which I presented in Nancy, France at the GL7 Grey Lit Conference in December 5, 2005. From that point, my interest grew in this field.  Over the years I have presented several papers at the GreyLit annual conferences and served on a few committees.  Topics that I researched and presented papers on include: the importance of grey literature data in the Intelligence Community; scientific data analytics in the Greylit Community, Grey literature sources for researching public health in Developing Countries; scientific data transparency (how grey is it) and its impact on data discovery; open data; and bibliometric research on cultural studies, one of the eight focus areas of the Homeland Defense and Security Information Analysis Center (HDIAC) repository. This research examined the taxonomy of cultural studies and its overlap with the other major focus areas. I really enjoyed traveling to the conference venues and seeing my international colleagues. The Greylit Community provided a great learning environment as well as wonderful camaraderie among its members."

"Leonid Pavlov has been involved in research and development of GL information processes and systems since 1976 when he joined the Federal Centre for Scientific and Technical Information of Russia – a national body responsible for legal deposit collection of scientific reports and dissertations  (in 2009 merged with the Centre of Information Technologies and Systems for Executive Power Authorities - CITiS).  Participated in the designing, implementation and management of nation-wide information systems for grey literature as scientific researcher, project manager, acting director. Author of more than 110 scholarly works (including those written in English like the Russian chapter in the book “Open Access in BRICS countries” published in the USA in 2015). In 2016 published the book “Grey Literature as the Source of Scientific and Technical Information” - ISBN 978-5-9912-0613-6, the first Russian-language monograph devoted entirely to Grey Literature. Now he is a staff member in CITiS as a specialist-in-chief."

"As a former Director of the New York Academy of Medicine Library it was my pleasure to lead the Grey Literature Report development in support of designing retrieval, structuring organization, and offering access to this “hidden” information; it was a segment of research that needed to be captured and brought to light. The Grey Literature Report grew into a unique tool to retrieve non-indexed, unknown information that had relevance to many aspects of health services research and, until the Report, was mostly inaccessible. The logo of the Report basically said it all- Grey literature was a large part of the information research puzzle that was mostly unknown or hard to find."

"Over the course of my career, I learned to honour grey literature and I would never suggest to academic libraries to neglect searching and collecting grey material, especially in digital form.  We all know that in many instances, grey literature is more rigorously inspected than a peer-reviewed paper.  We only have to consider how often a thorough examination is used with regard to grey material.  For me, grey literature was, in many cases, the only source of information available on a topic that I could convey to students, faculty, and staff."