Sanctioned Inequity and Accessibility Issues in the Grey Literature in the United States

Abstract

________________________________________________________________The so-called gray literature is a recognized category of publication the world over but for a variety of reasons it is viewed as a substandard source of scholarly information. This literature facilitates multi-vocality in a profession that is split between those who dominate power roles, educational outlets, and publication venues and those who are in-thetrench practitioners who generate voluminous amounts of material. Taken less seriously by those who incorrectly suggest that reports are not peer reviewed or are inaccessible, these sources will be more widely cited if those outside the specific report-producing communities understand how to access them and understand their scholarly responsibility to do so. ________________________________________________________________Résumé: La littérature dite grise est une catégorie de publication reconnue dans le monde entier mais qui, pour diverses raisons, est considérée comme une source d'information spécialisée inférieure. Cette littérature facilite la multivocalité dans une profession qui est partagée entre ceux qui dominent les rô les du pouvoir, l'éducation et les lieux de publication, et les professionnels de terrain qui produisent de grandes quantités d'informations. Moins prises au sérieux par ceux qui suggèrent incorrectement que les rapports ne sont pas examinés par des pairs ou sont inaccessibles, ces sources d'information seront plus largement citées si ceux qui sont en dehors des milieux spécifiques de production des rapports savent comment les utiliser et comprennent leur responsabilité scientifique de le faire. ________________________________________________________________

The peer review gap: A longitudinal case study of gendered publishing and occupational patterns in a female-rich discipline, Western North America (1974–2016)

“…In reality, there is a wide range of quality in both publication categories, though there is a persistent and often misguided tendency to conflate grey literature with poor quality and with entirely un-refereed works. The upshot is that although this body of work contains material representative of a wider breadth of participants in the field of archaeology [ 27 , 28 ], it is overlooked, and academics often perceive publication in these venues as less prestigious and less likely to be rewarded.…”

“…In publication studies of gender, publication rate—a common benchmark used to assess scientific productivity—is almost exclusively measured by the number of peer-reviewed papers an author publishes. However, some researchers have questioned whether publication rate is a relevant or unbiased metric to begin with [ 26 ] and whether peer-reviewed publications should be treated as the “gold standard” of professional achievement at the expense of extra-academic venues including the grey literature [ 27 , 28 ]. Publication rates may be misleading for women since they tend to have different publication strategies [ 29 ]; because of these strategic differences, some have called for metrics emphasizing quality and impact over quantity [ 26 , 30 ].…”

Beyond information policy

“…The main concern is, in short, that the documentation and interpretation work cannot be divided between sub-disciplines without a significant knowledge drain. The worry over this separation goes back at least to the 1980s (for a review of the earlier debate Seymour, 2010b), and is described as a crisis for the discipline (Harlan, 2010;Karlsson, 2000;Rudebeck, 2004).…”

“…Nonetheless, archaeology is unusual in that the core activity of both academic research archaeology and DL archaeology is the same: to create knowledge about the past based on material remains. The discipline's split into these two orientations present challenges to the joint knowledge making, notable for example in situations of information sharing between these two orientations (Hardman, 2009(Hardman, , 2010Seymour, 2010b).…”

Grey literature – grey sources? Nuancing the view on professional documentation

“…Seymour, 2010c). Professional reports are then more or less implicitly described as lacking academic quality (regarding structure, content, level of analysis, etc.).…”